back to indexAndrew Huberman: Focus, Stress, Relationships, and Friendship | Lex Fridman Podcast #277
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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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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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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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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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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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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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Over how many days?
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That was their cheat day.
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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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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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It has to do maybe with habit.
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Neuron loss, dementia.
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The sugar, the desire for that rush maybe is gone
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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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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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I feel like butter is cheating.
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I feel like you're disrespecting the fundamental food
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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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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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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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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 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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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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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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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
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to the strongest idea in your paper.
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And instead say it's kind of, or imply that it's original.
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There is a culture of kind of not celebrating others.
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I think people get most competitive in all walks of life,
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but especially in science when they're,
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the closer they get in the exact thing they work on.
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And so there's this dance,
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you know, there's a few researchers
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in each of the individual little things that you work on.
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If you're studying a particular kind of ant,
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you know that other asshole
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that also is studying that particular ant,
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and then you're not going to often give credit
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for the brilliant ideas that that other researcher is doing.
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And I think one of the things you've discovered
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and just as part of your nature,
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which is why it's really great that you have an audience
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and you inspire others to do the same,
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is you celebrate that other ant studier.
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It's great and everybody wins, it raises all boats.
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But that initial instinct to be like,
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what is it in Borat?
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Like my neighbor gets a toaster, I get a bigger toaster.
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Yeah, that mindset to, you know,
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it's not that I'm not competitive in certain domains,
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but yeah, I get great pleasure
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from sharing things that I find.
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And I think that, you know, at the end of the day,
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you're as strong as your community
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and you can build a wonderful community
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just by pointing out things that you love.
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Like these are all just loves.
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I see a paper and I love it.
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Only rarely do I think, oh, I wish we had done that.
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I usually think, fantastic,
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now I can just focus on something else
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because they checked off that box.
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And by the way, you mentioned PubMed and barbecue.
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I should mention that I got a chance to hang out
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with Rick Rubin, thanks to you.
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He's a friend of yours and you made the connection.
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That was a huge gift to my spirit, I guess.
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He's a truly, truly special human being.
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And there's a lot I could say
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about why he's a special human being.
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I'd love to learn how you met him,
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but I should also just mention on the PubMed thing,
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it was so interesting talking to him about music
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and both on the podcast and privately
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and just listening to music together.
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Because when you mention a song,
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he does this thing where he like closes his eyes
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and he finds that song in the album that we're talking about
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and he steps through the album.
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You could see the brain like stepping
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through individual songs to find that song in the album.
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And there's that kind of lookup process.
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And then he puts himself mentally in that space
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of like, okay, this is, you know, whatever the album is.
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And not just the ones he produced,
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but all of these in the encyclopedia of music.
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And it's so interesting.
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It also, the thing I really love about him
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is something like a calmness that radiates from him.
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That it's okay to close your eyes and place yourself
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in the place where that album was recorded,
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in the feeling of that album and like that silence.
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Let's go there, let's go there together.
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It's like Alice in Wonderland and we'll go there together.
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You do a good Rick Rubin, minus the beard.
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His beard is epic, right?
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You can't fake a beard like that, you know.
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How'd you guys meet?
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Yeah, well, Rick, I'm very blessed to consider a close friend.
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Rick and I got introduced through a common friend
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during the pandemic.
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And we started doing some FaceTime together
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and just talking about things related to science and health.
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And I'm not a musician, I have no musical ability or talent.
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I have a good ability to memorize lyrics
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and I love lyrics and I love poetry.
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So I asked him a lot of questions about musicians
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that I happen to love that he's worked with and knows.
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And so he would give me stories about musicians
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and I would talk to him about health.
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And then eventually we formed a friendship
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where we would talk about any number
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of different topics in life.
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And then we started spending time together in person
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when he was in town or nearby.
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And as you now know, you know, Rick,
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in addition to all his incredible accomplishments,
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has an incredible understanding
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of how to get the brain and body into state, right?
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And as you pointed out, he's willing to do the things
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that allow him to help these incredible artists
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get into the best state to do their craft.
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And so if he needs to sit there and be quiet
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with his eyes closed for a minute or two or more,
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He has routines to allow himself to get into state.
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And it's really inspired me to think about states of mind
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as something that, you know, we'd all love
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to just flip the switch and say,
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we're focused or we're creative,
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but to actually ratchet through the challenging steps
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in order to do that and to figure out
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what one needs to do on a regular basis
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to get into a proper state.
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It's not just gonna come from a cup of coffee,
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you know, a lamp of a particular wavelength or something.
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It's gonna be those things,
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but it's also going to be really teaching oneself
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how to get into proper state.
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Yeah, you did an episode on hypnosis.
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Do you think it's a kind of self hypnosis?
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Because hypnosis is a, you limit the context,
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you're very alert and you're very calm.
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And he has a number of these different practices.
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And so we would talk about those.
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And then we also have enjoyed a lot of discussions
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about deep neuroscience.
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In fact, I introduced Rick to a friend of mine
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who's a neurosurgeon and neuroscientist
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and they've become friendly.
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You know, Rick is one of these people
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that he sort of defies definition, incredibly kind,
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incredibly private person too.
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So, you know, I'm being respectful of that.
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But, and then of course he's a fan of your podcast.
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And so when I learned that,
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I just made natural sense to introduce you.
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And I know he really enjoyed meeting you.
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And we talk about you a lot.
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And of course, in a positive light, you know,
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I think his dedication to getting into these states of mind
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and his willingness to do that
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has completely transformed my routines around life.
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Like for instance,
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before doing a very long podcast recording,
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the solo ones, which often take me several hours or more,
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six hours to record, sometimes more, sometimes less.
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I realized that there's a certain brain state
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associated with that.
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So I have to really limit the kind of interactions I have
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for the two hours before.
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I actually walk and talk out loud through my neighborhood.
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People think I'm crazy,
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but I live in a neighborhood
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where there are a lot of crazy creatives anyway.
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Are you saying you're not crazy?
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Well, at least not institutionally defined as crazy yet.
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But, you know, getting into state of mind
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is something that we'd all just imagine we flip the switch,
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but Rick really convinced me,
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you have to do the work to do the work.
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Can you maybe linger on that,
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elucidate a little bit more of your process
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of how you get in that space?
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That's really interesting.
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Cause I have to admit,
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I do everything last minute before a podcast.
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Like there's a lot of anxiety because like whatever,
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if I have to pack, if I have to set up stuff,
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you were luckily a few minutes,
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you showed up a few minutes later.
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Which for an academic is right on time.
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But the stress is immense.
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And on top of that,
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you look at like a situation with Rick Rubin,
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is I had to set up microphones in front of him
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and just that stress, the anxiety.
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He knows a lot about microphones.
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Which I really loved.
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He's like, how close do you like the microphone to be?
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That's a very Rick Rubin kind of thing, right?
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That the details really matter.
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The details really matter,
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right down to your relationship to the microphone, right?
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Distance and whether or not it brings out the timbre
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But of course that's what he does.
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He produces music.
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But he also said like, you know, he is the professional.
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He said, how close do you like it to be?
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And he said it with a gentleness
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where I had like an existential crisis.
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Where I don't, I don't know.
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He gave me so much like, wow.
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Like he made me feel like an artist.
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Like that the microphone distance
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is a decision you're supposed to make.
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Well, I have to say, and this has actually come up
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in some of our conversations about you.
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I mean, you are, you are an artist.
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And actually Joe Rogan,
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once I heard him talking about podcasting
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and the fact that he's always trying to get better at it,
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you know, and he described podcasting at one moment
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And it is, it's a certain medium of communication
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and there's a cadence and a rhythm that when it's working,
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it really can facilitate the transfer of information.
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When it's not, it doesn't.
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I mean, obviously Joe just being himself
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has tapped into that cadence that allows
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and it's made so many people excited to hear him talk.
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Well, in his case and in general,
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I think part of the art is refusing the world
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as you get a bigger audience, change who you are.
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There's one quote that I've seen out there where he says,
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you know, I'm like the, talking about himself, he says,
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you know, I'm like the fish that got through the net.
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There's no stage version of me, right?
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How he is in person is how he is, you know,
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And of course there's nuance to his life, right?
link |
And his different relationships, of course, but it's true.
link |
I mean, we've had the, you know,
link |
the great fortune of spending time with him
link |
out away from the microphones, so to speak.
link |
So can you speak to your, that process you mentioned,
link |
the walking and the talking to yourself?
link |
Cause that's fascinating.
link |
Yeah, I try and do a couple of things.
link |
First of all, when I was a kid,
link |
I had a little bit of a grunting tick.
link |
When I was five or six,
link |
I would feel this buildup of tension in my throat
link |
and I would do this grunting tick.
link |
If I get very tired, I start to do it still.
link |
We actually know that this is related
link |
to these basal ganglia circuits for go, no go.
link |
You've got an accelerator and a brake basically
link |
in your neural circuitry and kids with Tourette's and OCD,
link |
the brake doesn't work quite as well.
link |
And so one thing that happens is if I wake up
link |
in the morning and especially if I'm well rested,
link |
well, if I'm not well rested, I do a hypnosis
link |
or yoga nidra in order to recover my sleep.
link |
That works really well.
link |
But then once I'm into the process of preparing the podcast,
link |
I've already gone through my notes.
link |
I know what I want to say more or less
link |
in a kind of general contour.
link |
And then I take a walk and I try to, so no phone with me.
link |
And I try to assess whether or not my energy is too high
link |
or too low for podcasting.
link |
Because when you podcast, as you know,
link |
you have to punch out a lot of material,
link |
but then there's times when you really need to slow down
link |
and emphasize and articulate.
link |
And so what I do, I've never revealed this.
link |
What I do actually is I will recite the lyrics of songs
link |
for about 10 minutes, songs I love while I walk out loud.
link |
It calms you and focuses you, what does it do for you?
link |
I think it gets my vocal cords warmed up and it also.
link |
Do you sing or speak them?
link |
I often sing them and fortunately nobody hears.
link |
And as I do this, I start to evaluate
link |
whether or not I'm straining to get the words out
link |
or whether or not I'm straining to make them slow enough
link |
so that I can articulate them.
link |
So there are days when I have so much energy
link |
that I'm trying to speak faster than I should
link |
in order to articulate properly.
link |
There are other days when I'm tired
link |
and I can't sort of keep up with my thoughts.
link |
And so what I try and do is assess that
link |
and then adjust the transmission, the RPM, so to speak.
link |
For instance, I can speak very quickly
link |
and then I can slow down.
link |
So I can change the cadence of my voice.
link |
And when you teach in the classroom,
link |
you learn as you know,
link |
cause you're an excellent teacher,
link |
I've watched your lectures in the classroom.
link |
As you teach in the classroom, when you want to slow down,
link |
every teacher knows you turn to the whiteboard or chalkboard
link |
and you start writing, right?
link |
It gives you a break.
link |
And then you turn around and you fire back
link |
the kind of machine gun fire of information.
link |
And then you slow down or you underline something.
link |
When you podcast, you don't have that opportunity, right?
link |
There are no visuals in my podcast.
link |
So what I try and do is always get my voice warmed up
link |
and make sure that I'm thinking and speaking
link |
at approximately the same rate.
link |
And then I also do this thing of as I put my vision
link |
into panoramic vision when I walk, which is very calming.
link |
And then I actually start to remind myself
link |
of the purpose of podcasting.
link |
This sounds very mission statementy,
link |
but you asked what I do.
link |
I remind myself first and foremost
link |
that what I want to communicate,
link |
what I want to come through is the beauty
link |
and utility of biology.
link |
And I only feel comfortable saying the word beauty
link |
publicly now about science things thanks to you,
link |
Yeah, love and beauty.
link |
Dr. Andrew Huberman.
link |
Love and beauty, but also darkness and hatred.
link |
And if you're talking about the Lex Friedman podcast,
link |
you have to adjust,
link |
you have to address the shadow also, the shadow side.
link |
But I think about the,
link |
I want to communicate the beauty and utility of biology.
link |
And then I check my emotional state.
link |
I want to make sure that I'm not angry about anything.
link |
And certainly if I am that I'm going to set it aside
link |
because that's not a place for my,
link |
whatever I might be dealing with.
link |
I also really start to feel into the parts of the research
link |
and the papers I found that I really love,
link |
because that's the part of me that I like the most frankly.
link |
And on the podcast, if there's a paper,
link |
like for instance, we have a paper, excuse me,
link |
a podcast coming out soon about heat as a tool,
link |
sauna, but some other things.
link |
And in researching this,
link |
I learned so much about these heat shock proteins
link |
and the use of sauna in Finland
link |
for increasing growth hormone,
link |
but also for the treatment of mental illness.
link |
And I realized I fell in love with this literature.
link |
It's just a beautiful literature.
link |
These people are true pioneers for doing this work.
link |
Now everyone's in the sauna, but this was 20 years ago.
link |
The way the experiments were done were amazing
link |
with all these Finnish people with thermocouples up there,
link |
rectum to measure temperature, swimming in pools.
link |
It's hilarious and great.
link |
And so I start to think about, and I think,
link |
I just start to really access my love of the work.
link |
And then when we finally sit down,
link |
meaning my producer Rob and I and record,
link |
I just sort of want to just bask in sharing it.
link |
Just like the little version of me when I was six or seven,
link |
I used to spend all weekend reading the encyclopedia,
link |
Guinness Book of World Records,
link |
making my mother drive me places to introduce me to,
link |
I had this obsession with trapping animals
link |
when I was a kid, meet these people.
link |
And then on Monday, I would insist on giving a lecture
link |
in class, which as a little kid.
link |
So that's basically what it is.
link |
I just try and access that childlike energy.
link |
And so I want to be clear.
link |
The goal is always to make the information interesting,
link |
clear and actionable.
link |
And if it's also surprising, then that's a bonus.
link |
But that's basically the process.
link |
But yeah, I'm singing and talking and getting into state.
link |
And I used to feel very sheepish about sharing any of this.
link |
This is the first time I've ever shared it out loud,
link |
but Rick was the one who encouraged me
link |
to find a process that works
link |
and continue to develop that process
link |
and not let anything get near that process.
link |
People in my personal life know this.
link |
And when it's time, it's like,
link |
I don't care what else is going on,
link |
I'm moving into that brain state.
link |
And there's probably a process like that
link |
for anything that you do in life that you take seriously.
link |
So the people that have perfected this is athletes.
link |
Like if Olympic level athletes,
link |
they have to have a process like this.
link |
You know what, I think Tiger Woods actually
link |
was taught self hypnosis quite young
link |
and use self hypnosis often during his tournaments,
link |
sometimes to great success and other times less so.
link |
Is there other places in life that you use
link |
kind of a protocol, like a mental protocol to get ready?
link |
Many of the best areas of life
link |
are their own form of hypnosis, right?
link |
You know that you're in hypnosis,
link |
if for instance, you're in a movie and something happens
link |
and you feel the emotional lift
link |
without being self conscious about it.
link |
Yes, I think that one thing that we've tried to do
link |
in our house is around meal times to try and set a state
link |
that food isn't just something
link |
that we just throw down our throats.
link |
And I'm fortunate that my partner cooks really well.
link |
And so I try and give her the space to do that.
link |
And that's the whole thing of her getting into state.
link |
The preparation of all the.
link |
I can just see it.
link |
I just see the way she approaches the whole thing
link |
and the pleasure in serving it.
link |
And I'm an eater, not a cooker.
link |
Both are important roles.
link |
You could be a very good eater.
link |
Like there's something about,
link |
is there anything better in this world than that feeling?
link |
Especially if it's a family, getting around a table.
link |
Just the warmth of that.
link |
It's like the cold outside of the cruel world
link |
cannot touch you in this place that you've returned to.
link |
Did you grow up eating meals as a family?
link |
I didn't really have television period outside of meals.
link |
So most of my time was spent, you know,
link |
like a stray cat outdoors, just running around,
link |
I imagine you in this like dirt or concrete lot
link |
between two very high rise buildings playing soccer
link |
in like athletic gear that you only see in Eastern Europe.
link |
You know how like you come to the States
link |
and people wear their athletic gear.
link |
You go to Europe and you see, maybe it's the soccer culture,
link |
but you see athletic gear
link |
that you just don't see anywhere else.
link |
That's interesting.
link |
I mean, I grew up pretty poor.
link |
So first of all, I was always wearing my brother's,
link |
who's an older brother, brother's clothes.
link |
And they were like old, like my favorite things
link |
were American things that I didn't understand.
link |
It would be like a Pepsi shirt or something.
link |
And it was just, that was the gear.
link |
And it was like too large for me,
link |
but I thought I was the coolest person ever
link |
just wearing this fancy like Kanye like type of fashion.
link |
Yeah, there's something about,
link |
I feel like in Eastern Europe,
link |
they wear athletic gear where like the guys like zip up.
link |
Yeah, no, that's like fancy stuff.
link |
That's if you like, those are the cool kids.
link |
Like the cool soccer players, football players
link |
that like they were in a league of some kind.
link |
So they would get uniforms or like, or they somehow,
link |
I always thought anyone who had anything nice
link |
had to do something really bad to get it.
link |
That was my way, view of the world.
link |
Because like, I guess I didn't understand
link |
how it's possible to be rich.
link |
Cause most of us were surrounded by people who are poor
link |
and that life is beautiful and simple.
link |
And it's like, why do you escape that life?
link |
But you still admire the cool,
link |
like when we got McDonald's, it was like,
link |
what kind of world does this place come from?
link |
Like who invented this?
link |
This is a fascinating view from a child's perspective
link |
of like, of capitalism essentially.
link |
Yeah, but the fact that you ate dinner together
link |
is really interesting.
link |
My parents divorced when I was an adolescent.
link |
So then there was a total fracture of any family structure.
link |
But prior to that, we ate dinner together every night.
link |
I was expected to know how to use my knife and fork.
link |
And it was like a very structured thing.
link |
I don't know if kids do that now.
link |
If I ever have kids, they're gonna do that.
link |
And certainly, actually on the way over here,
link |
I was thinking, I was like, I really want a lot of kids.
link |
I want like a whole litter.
link |
And I was thinking, if Lex has kids and I have kids,
link |
then we can like pit them against each other with jujitsu.
link |
This is my chance at redemption.
link |
It's the law game.
link |
They'll all wanna be engineers or physicists.
link |
They won't wanna be biologists.
link |
But in all seriousness, I look forward to the day
link |
that our kids play together.
link |
Yeah, I think there's something,
link |
so the family dinner, the ritual of the family dinner,
link |
but also the special occasion dinners,
link |
like where there's a little bit more preparation,
link |
a little bit more cooking,
link |
whether it's on the weekend or for some holiday.
link |
In Russia, it was a thing that actually
link |
I find completely missing for the most part.
link |
In America is there was neighbors.
link |
There was a, you broke the walls
link |
between families much more commonly.
link |
Like there would be kinda regular characters,
link |
like a sitcom almost.
link |
If you watch the sitcom, it's never just the family.
link |
There's always like other characters that.
link |
Just bursting in the door.
link |
Bursting in the door.
link |
I'm gonna start doing that here,
link |
just to make you feel at home.
link |
Just start showing up at your studio.
link |
I know where you live.
link |
I think people wanna respect,
link |
like Michael Malice lives next door to me.
link |
And I think people wanna respect each other's privacy
link |
or something like that.
link |
And I think we all get super busy.
link |
And it's kind of work
link |
to do this dinner together.
link |
Or if you see it as a thing that needs to be scheduled,
link |
There's a lot of stuff going on.
link |
But if it's part of a ritual, a part of the culture,
link |
all of those walls get broken down.
link |
And then you realize like that's,
link |
like later looking back, those are the things you miss.
link |
Like that's what life is about.
link |
Like all the stupid stuff you're doing
link |
in terms of career or whatever,
link |
all the busy things, those don't matter.
link |
What matters is the people.
link |
In academia, this changed in the last few years, of course.
link |
But one of the great joys was professors will stop by
link |
your office or your lab.
link |
Nobody set up an appointment.
link |
There was a guy when I was a professor in San Diego,
link |
a guy named Harvey Cartney,
link |
he's a member of the National Academies,
link |
truly the world's expert in the evolution of vision
link |
and evolution of brains generally.
link |
And he would show up in my lab
link |
and he would just start talking to the students in postdocs.
link |
And I mean, a pure encyclopedia.
link |
And then at some point you'd say,
link |
hey, Harvey, I gotta go.
link |
And you'd have, you'd kick him out, right?
link |
Or this guy, he's a physicist, David Klinefield,
link |
Actually, David Klinefield is an interesting one.
link |
A student of his went on to create
link |
the Beavis and Butthead cartoon.
link |
And one of them is David, he's a physics professor.
link |
Now people can look him up.
link |
And David's one of those guys who just walk into your office
link |
and you just sit down and you just start talking to you.
link |
And so there's a kind of a family field.
link |
It's like Cheers or Seinfeld or one of those shows
link |
where somebody just walks in.
link |
And yeah, I think you and I both share a love
link |
of the community around things.
link |
And podcasting is a little bit more isolated.
link |
I should say for the guest episodes,
link |
the preparation is completely different
link |
because it's more conversational.
link |
And so there, I don't do any of this business
link |
of putting myself into state.
link |
I just try and make sure that the guest is taken care of.
link |
And I do list out the questions I'm gonna ask before,
link |
but those actually really like the interview episodes
link |
far more than I like doing the solo ones.
link |
Just psychologically I mean.
link |
I just like learning from someone directly
link |
because you asking an expert about something,
link |
like sitting here with you when we recorded the podcast
link |
where you were a guest on the Huberman Lab podcast.
link |
And for the first time, and finally,
link |
someone was explaining to me the difference
link |
between machine learning, artificial intelligence
link |
and all these other things.
link |
You know, and I've finally forgiven you
link |
for making me cry about Costello on camera,
link |
because it helped me move through it.
link |
But in all seriousness, the interview ones
link |
are a sheer pleasure.
link |
The solo ones I really enjoy, but they're work.
link |
Sometimes I think like I'm gonna sweat
link |
a little blood prepping for them.
link |
Well, it's interesting because I do think prepping
link |
for interviews, having a similar process
link |
might be also very valuable.
link |
Like I have to think about that
link |
because I think when you do a conversation
link |
for several hours, especially when it's a high stakes one.
link |
So it's not like you and I know,
link |
it's more like it's just chatting and so on.
link |
The world order isn't gonna shift according to it.
link |
Although you never know, knowing you will probably
link |
be into some pretty controversial topics in a few minutes.
link |
You like to ride the edge more than I do.
link |
There are a number of topics that I just completely avoid.
link |
And my response to those is always that
link |
I have a lot of opinions about that,
link |
but not a lot to say, you know.
link |
But whereas you've become far braver
link |
in terms of the topics you'll encounter
link |
and some of your guests have been a bit controversial.
link |
Some of them are people that a lot of people don't like.
link |
And you've been willing to just sit down
link |
and maybe it's the jujitsu thing.
link |
I don't know, it is tricky.
link |
One of my goals for this year is to talk to people
link |
that a lot of people really don't like.
link |
Are you gonna share with us?
link |
People that are in prison, major political leaders
link |
have been thinking a lot about how to talk
link |
to really difficult, controversial figures,
link |
but find together something with them
link |
that's deeply honest about their nature,
link |
about the ideas they have about the world.
link |
Reveal something real.
link |
And some people, you have to be very careful,
link |
some people are very good at hiding the real inside them,
link |
even from themselves.
link |
That's something I think about a lot.
link |
I think about dictators of the past
link |
and I put myself in the mindset,
link |
well, how do you reveal something real
link |
about this person to themselves?
link |
I think that to me, and you kind of spoke to that,
link |
but a great conversation is one where
link |
both of you discover something new.
link |
So I love that too, that's my favorite thing
link |
what you mentioned, which is allowing your curiosity
link |
and ask all kinds of questions and get excited
link |
and to learn from an expert.
link |
But also to push them to discover something
link |
about themselves, about their ideas together.
link |
And then that discovery, and sometimes it's like,
link |
we don't see it in the moment, but the audience hears it.
link |
It's weird to say, I would compare it to
link |
when you're a musician and you're playing
link |
with other musicians, you lose yourself in the moment.
link |
Yeah, it's all, it's like, it's working right.
link |
It's working, but you don't really see the big picture
link |
impact of what it's working right actually feels like.
link |
And that's where the audience could see that.
link |
If you talk to somebody evil,
link |
for me as an interviewer, I have to empathize
link |
If I want to understand, I have to put myself
link |
in that mind space, and to put yourself in that mindset,
link |
you really have to understand the evil inside of you.
link |
Like you can't just think if somebody's in power
link |
and has used that power to abuse others,
link |
you can't just be a, I personally,
link |
a person who seeks to understand.
link |
You can't just be a journalist asking generic questions.
link |
You have to put yourself in a place
link |
where you're somebody who's given a lot of power
link |
and slowly you start to abuse that power.
link |
And what does that person become?
link |
I have to plug myself into those moments in my life
link |
in the past where I've been angry at something
link |
and where I've been cruel because I was angry.
link |
In little ways, but then you magnify them at scale
link |
and I have to go there and that's very human.
link |
And then I have to look at another person
link |
from across the table for me and understand,
link |
well, you're there too.
link |
And then you had more opportunity to do truly cruel things.
link |
And then where, like I have to plug myself
link |
into places where I've been, I can imagine I can go,
link |
where I was cruel to others and was unaware of it.
link |
So I was in a mind space where I was thinking
link |
that I'm doing good and I was doing not good.
link |
Again, I've never gotten the opportunity
link |
to do any of those things at large scale,
link |
but all of us have done it at a small scale.
link |
And I plug myself into that and then we're here,
link |
we're to, if it's somebody who's in prison,
link |
if it's somebody who's a dictator,
link |
we're in that space where evil is,
link |
all of us have the capacity to do that evil
link |
and I have to imagine myself being able to do that evil.
link |
And then we're here together in that dark, dark place.
link |
And then if it's just right,
link |
something real can actually come,
link |
something from that person's childhood,
link |
maybe awakening to a realization
link |
that I thought it was a good person and I'm not.
link |
And that only happens when you truly empathize.
link |
Those moments of discovery are beautiful,
link |
but they also happen in science.
link |
When you just have a conversation and you realize,
link |
I feel like talking to Stephen Wolfram,
link |
I feel like we constantly realize
link |
beautiful things together.
link |
On this element of evil and sociopathy,
link |
that Jung had this notion that we have all things inside us
link |
and that we all have the capacity to be good or evil,
link |
et cetera, but I have the good fortune
link |
of working with somebody who has deep understanding
link |
of psychiatry, but also psychoanalysis
link |
and Jungian theory.
link |
And he said to me recently, he said,
link |
whether or not all people have all things inside them
link |
is still debated in the psychology community
link |
and in the neuroscience community.
link |
And as a matter of philosophy,
link |
but there are certain people, not many,
link |
but there are certain people
link |
for whom they've actually lived out many versions
link |
of their possible selves in the first person.
link |
And so those are unique individuals.
link |
Then even if they tapped into these things,
link |
as you mentioned, at a more minor level,
link |
as opposed to impacting people negatively at scale.
link |
So being able to access those different parts of oneself
link |
is key and you've been willing to step into that.
link |
My podcast is not one in which we get down to those matters.
link |
You never know, we might do an episode
link |
on narcissism and sociopathy.
link |
The other thing that I took away from a conversation
link |
with a friend, he was a lot of years in special operations
link |
in the intelligence community.
link |
He said, if you look at somebody's past,
link |
at some point you will come to understand
link |
some pretty good reasons as to why they became who they are,
link |
but you have to draw the, his words,
link |
the red line someplace.
link |
And what he was referring to was the fact
link |
that certain people, at least in the eyes
link |
of certain communities deserve to be eliminated
link |
as a consequence of their actions, right?
link |
Regardless of what drove them to those actions.
link |
So it gets right down to the line
link |
between nature, nurture, neuroscience,
link |
and the law and justice.
link |
Complicated, complicated themes.
link |
I can think of a number of people
link |
that I would love to hear you interview.
link |
And here I'm not revealing the reasons why,
link |
but except for the fact that I think
link |
you would be uniquely suited to bring out
link |
the important components of the conversation
link |
that other people have not been able to do,
link |
which for instance, Liz Holmes,
link |
this is one of the most mysterious
link |
and yet disliked people on the planet.
link |
She's sort of synonymous with deception.
link |
I don't know if there've been any real interviews
link |
of her since the whole thing.
link |
I haven't followed that case.
link |
I listened to the book and I followed it a little bit
link |
because it was happening in my hometown, right?
link |
Theranos was right up the road.
link |
The building's still there.
link |
It's some of the most premier real estate
link |
in Silicon Valley, but nobody wants it.
link |
It's sort of like, it's very hard to sell a home
link |
where somebody committed suicide or committed a murder,
link |
even if it's a beautiful home.
link |
It sort of feel like the Theranos building is that building.
link |
So that would be a really interesting interview.
link |
I would love to hear that interview.
link |
One of the most interesting dark human beings in science.
link |
Yeah, and then there'll even be people that say,
link |
was it even science, right?
link |
It might've all been deception.
link |
It might've been one part deception,
link |
one part goal setting mixed in with,
link |
clearly that there were so many factors
link |
impacting what happened.
link |
I think the big difference between Theranos and that story
link |
and some of the other stories about Silicon Valley
link |
where people promised a lot more than they could deliver
link |
is they were promising things that were directly related
link |
to health and healthcare.
link |
People were taking blood tests with the understanding
link |
that the data they were getting was important,
link |
information about sexually transmitted diseases
link |
and other diseases and making real world decisions
link |
on the basis of that.
link |
Whereas if you remember when the iPhone first came out
link |
and Steve Jobs was still alive
link |
and the phones were dropping calls
link |
if you held it in a particular way.
link |
And his response was a little flip.
link |
He said, hey folks, it's a phone
link |
as if like don't get so worked up.
link |
But people held them understandably to a very high standard.
link |
She sort of, it seemed, and I don't know,
link |
cause I certainly wasn't there,
link |
seemed like she sort of adopted this idea
link |
that you could get it wrong a bunch of times
link |
before you get it right.
link |
Except if the allegations are true.
link |
And I think she was found guilty, I believe,
link |
on a number of counts.
link |
That a number of the things that they were doing
link |
were impacting real world decision making.
link |
So Steve's point about the phone, it's just a phone.
link |
Well, it depends on the call.
link |
If you're calling 911, then it's not just a phone, right?
link |
But in the case of blood tests and disease,
link |
I think that the Theranos case was super interesting to me
link |
because of the number of people from major universities
link |
and from government that both trusted her
link |
and the number of people who did not trust her
link |
and yet either didn't speak up or no one listened to them.
link |
It was only in the forensic version of it
link |
that everyone said, oh yeah, I knew that she was lying,
link |
et cetera, et cetera.
link |
They were lying to multiple people involved
link |
in those lies apparently.
link |
But I have a deep interest in the neuroscience
link |
of narcissism, sociopathy,
link |
and some of the darker aspects of the mind.
link |
So yeah, maybe someday.
link |
Maybe we'll do a podcast together.
link |
I mean, like in the kind of early 90s version of talk shows
link |
where we darken the lights and we do it together,
link |
you can use your voice
link |
because your voice is much more sinister sounding than mine.
link |
Good cop, bad cop.
link |
Well, it'd be interesting from a scientific perspective
link |
of somebody who is a sociopath or a psychopath,
link |
how to reveal something real about them.
link |
I think that requires not just,
link |
well, I don't know what that requires.
link |
That requires the same skill
link |
that it takes to be a good therapist.
link |
Right, and some therapists won't work with sociopaths
link |
because they don't feel any progress can be made.
link |
Some therapists will work with sociopaths
link |
because for the wealthy ones,
link |
they often, they want their money.
link |
I think most therapists are good and benevolent,
link |
but there's some that will do it
link |
just the same way lawyers will work with criminals
link |
knowing they're criminals, right?
link |
Oftentimes because they're criminals.
link |
There are certain domains of psychiatry
link |
that are more tractable than others, right?
link |
Borderlines are interesting.
link |
I should just mention
link |
because they have this phenomenon of splitting.
link |
So in the world of psychology,
link |
the idea is that being neurotic is actually the goal.
link |
The idea that you could be, you know,
link |
feel something and then work a lot to overcome it
link |
or have some sort of defense mechanism in place,
link |
but that's not destructive.
link |
That's actually a pretty healthy state to be in.
link |
It's provided it's not destructive.
link |
Psychotic is truly delusional thinking about reality.
link |
And the idea is that borderlines split,
link |
intermittently split between psychotic and neurotic.
link |
That's why it was called,
link |
there's beautiful work by Melanie Klein that describes this,
link |
which I'm just now kind of delving into.
link |
But, you know, so the borderline is the person who is like,
link |
I love you, I love you, I love you,
link |
and then truly feels as if they hate you
link |
and you become the bad object.
link |
So borderlines are challenging for psychologists
link |
because of the splitting, right?
link |
Schizophrenics are challenging
link |
because of the detachment from reality.
link |
And narcissists are challenging
link |
because they're often so charming
link |
that even the therapists are charmed.
link |
I believe you mentioned Karl Deisseroth.
link |
We'll talk about him.
link |
He was definitely not a narcissist.
link |
He's one of the more humble people, but he is brilliant.
link |
Thanks again to you.
link |
You've connected us.
link |
I had the pleasure of having a conversation with him.
link |
You had a conversation with him.
link |
I really enjoyed it on the podcast.
link |
You guys come from the same science, from the same place,
link |
maybe different journeys, fascinating.
link |
We were postdocs together.
link |
Karl is truly the Michael Jordan, the Wayne Gretzky,
link |
five children, amazing marriage to it.
link |
Also an amazing scientist.
link |
His wife, Michelle Monge,
link |
is in our neurology department at Stanford.
link |
An incredible thinker, writer, very kind person, humble.
link |
Speaking of getting into state,
link |
sorry, Karl, I'm gonna out you on this,
link |
but Karl, despite being at the highest levels
link |
of science and engineering and a practicing psychiatrist,
link |
his office is literally a coat closet
link |
with a small table lamp.
link |
When you meet with Karl, if you manage to meet with him,
link |
because he's very hard to get to,
link |
you walk in, you sit down
link |
as if you're going through some interrogation
link |
and some spy novel.
link |
And he'll ask you, what are you most excited about lately?
link |
And I've got 11 minutes or something.
link |
And that's a meeting with Karl, because he's that busy.
link |
But he doesn't have the office with the pictures of the kids
link |
and the thing and all that.
link |
All that is kept elsewhere.
link |
So in order to get, I asked him
link |
why he work in this office, right?
link |
You work on light and channels of light,
link |
things related to light of all things.
link |
Here you are in this dark room.
link |
And he said, well, this is what gets me
link |
into the state of mind to be able to do what I want to do.
link |
Very Rick Rubin ish, not at all the same person,
link |
but very similar in that he's figured out
link |
the physical space he needs in order to get
link |
into the optimal state to do the work he needs to do
link |
And it's very unusual, right?
link |
If I don't have a window, I kind of freak out.
link |
I can do it here for a while.
link |
We're in this black cube here, floating in space, of course.
link |
But I find that amazing that these people
link |
that are operating in this super high level
link |
are willing to actually deprive themselves
link |
of a lot of conditions.
link |
They're not sitting there with the secretary coming in
link |
offering them espresso every five minutes and things that,
link |
no, no, no, that's New York Neuroscience.
link |
The New York Neuroscience Mafia is kind of famous
link |
for having all the tickets to the opera and this and that.
link |
And they enjoy lifestyle a lot.
link |
The New York Neuroscience Mafia.
link |
Oh, there is one, there definitely is one.
link |
They know who they are.
link |
They know who they are.
link |
People don't know, Andrew Huberman is from the West Coast
link |
and now he's just starting wars with the Neuroscience Mafia.
link |
Well, they do amazing science.
link |
They think, they love their lifestyle and that's wonderful,
link |
but the culture is very different.
link |
Carl and I think Silicon Valley in general
link |
kind of prides itself on this kind of monk like assesism,
link |
But at the individual scale,
link |
be deliberate about controlling the environment.
link |
I think about that with the conversations too.
link |
I haven't been deliberate about that either
link |
in terms of controlling the space you're in.
link |
Visually, yes, black curtains, all those kinds of things.
link |
There is nothing like the Lex Friedman podcast studio.
link |
First of all, when you do them remotely,
link |
I always feel like I'm in a witness relocation program.
link |
You only get the coordinates at the last moment
link |
and you always get the sense that there are people
link |
behind the walls that are recording things.
link |
Well, there's something about creating a feeling.
link |
I have a sense that there's a robot over there.
link |
There's several throughout this place.
link |
And I think part of that,
link |
part of creating a feeling would be having the robots
link |
constantly moving around and having a mind of their own
link |
because that would most closely put guests
link |
and other humans that I interact with into a place
link |
that's closest to my mind
link |
because it's such an engineering mind
link |
and one where when things come to life,
link |
it's a beautiful place to be.
link |
And whatever that is, that could be like art,
link |
but to me, robots are art.
link |
And so I'm thinking about that both for me and for guests.
link |
And I'm also thinking about the difficult guests
link |
just to return to, you said, Elizabeth Holmes.
link |
One person, maybe a couple of things I want to say.
link |
One person I think I would like to talk to is
link |
Ghislaine Maxwell.
link |
I always get afraid right before you reveal
link |
these kinds of things.
link |
And now I know why I get afraid.
link |
Yeah, I mean, again, assuming that she did the things
link |
that people claim she did, they're despicable, right?
link |
I mean, these were underage children, right?
link |
There's just no version of the story
link |
where she did the things she was accused of doing
link |
and is still a quote unquote good person.
link |
There's just, in my mind, right?
link |
And yet I think there is tremendous interest
link |
in understanding like what led her to do all that.
link |
So at least for some people.
link |
Let me say a couple of things.
link |
So one is at a high level, let me say that she believes
link |
or her current story is that she's the victim.
link |
I think I'll just leave that there as is.
link |
So these are ideas that you're facing.
link |
The nature of truth and the nature of the human mind
link |
is what it is and this is, imagine folks,
link |
if you went into a room with a person that says that,
link |
what do you do next?
link |
Let me also say that I never or rarely,
link |
let me say not say never, I rarely mention names
link |
that I'm interested in talking to
link |
without having made significant progress
link |
in already securing that interview.
link |
So people sometimes ask me about Vladimir Zelensky
link |
and Vladimir Putin.
link |
I do not bring them up lightly in terms of their being
link |
a path to an actual conversation.
link |
That said, something I regret but I'm not sure
link |
I know what to do with it.
link |
But in the case of all the people I just mentioned,
link |
I haven't been preparing for those conversations.
link |
I only start really preparing seriously
link |
when it's confirmed because it's such a heavy burden.
link |
And one of the things I regret in having mentioned
link |
a conversation with Vladimir Putin
link |
before the war in Ukraine broke out in the past few years
link |
is that I would mention it very loosely, very casually.
link |
And without having really deeply put myself into a place
link |
that I'm ready to talk to him.
link |
And that's a tricky thing because then the internet,
link |
the audience in general, and just me,
link |
when I listen back to my dumb self,
link |
think, well, why are you speaking so lightly
link |
about these topics?
link |
Well, I know you've had a longstanding interest
link |
in talking to him.
link |
I think now, well, I don't understand
link |
how I would sit down and have a conversation
link |
with somebody like that,
link |
but that's not in the range of my skill sets.
link |
Or like maybe not in the range of things
link |
that you're drawn to somehow.
link |
I mean, I would watch that episode with great interest.
link |
Well, you did an episode recently with this guy
link |
who was a former cyber criminal turned state side, right?
link |
I think he works for the government now.
link |
And there was a segment in there.
link |
Remind me his name?
link |
There was a segment in there where he talked about
link |
stealing a lifetime's worth of collected coins
link |
from some elderly woman.
link |
And this was everything she had.
link |
And then he openly admitted that he felt no remorse,
link |
which is the way he described is purely sociopathic.
link |
And then of course we learned that he grew up in a family
link |
where criminal behavior was very common.
link |
It was kind of embedded into his notions
link |
of what typical behaviors were.
link |
And I found myself somewhat conflicted,
link |
but also hung up on this idea that,
link |
I mean, he had behaved as a sociopath
link |
or in a sociopathic way.
link |
And it created an internal conflict
link |
because he's quite charming guest
link |
and his stories are terrific.
link |
Especially I really enjoyed his discussions
link |
about how he would go out and do all these things
link |
out of a desire to please his girlfriend.
link |
So he was in service to other people,
link |
despite being sociopathic,
link |
he could say he was in service to them as a way to extract.
link |
Gets very complicated.
link |
I think is the reason I went into science
link |
is that at some level,
link |
it's more about facts than it is opinions and judgments.
link |
And I don't know that I have the ability
link |
to suspend judgment away from the kind of
link |
top level contours of my initial reaction to like,
link |
if it's true, like the Ghislaine Maxwell's
link |
and the Liz Holmes and the other sociopaths
link |
is one of just kind of revulsion and repulsion.
link |
But that could also reflect the fact
link |
that I'm not as neurologically sophisticated
link |
as somebody that can spin all the plates of empathy,
link |
forgiveness, but also holding people accountable
link |
That takes, if you think about it,
link |
that's three four brain circuits having to work in parallel.
link |
That's the difference between chess or a game of go
link |
and a game of checkers.
link |
I guess I'm playing checkers and you're playing chess.
link |
No, so one is actually holding in your mind
link |
and two is the raw skill of conversation.
link |
You're very, just having listened to your interviews,
link |
you're very good at conversation,
link |
but the skill of conversation is really tricky.
link |
I'm not being self deprecating.
link |
I'm being just objective.
link |
I'm not good at conversation.
link |
I'm working very hard, getting better at it.
link |
I'm speaking not about just podcasting.
link |
I'm speaking just normal life.
link |
I have anxiety from social interaction.
link |
A huge amount, yeah, yeah.
link |
So this is interesting because I never detect that in you.
link |
And I think there are people that we both know
link |
that have said to me that they too feel anxious
link |
and yet your voice is steady.
link |
I don't see any perspiration.
link |
You appear incredibly calm.
link |
I'm scared shitless.
link |
I was scared shitless with Rick Rubin.
link |
Rick Rubin is, when you first meet him,
link |
is intimidatingly calm.
link |
But as you get to know him a bit,
link |
you realize that the kindness
link |
and the generosity that you sense is real.
link |
But yeah, I would never in a million years
link |
have guessed that you get anxious in conversation.
link |
Can I just make another quick comment?
link |
This may come off entertaining to you, Andrew.
link |
Maybe you've already gotten the same.
link |
But having mentioned Vladimir Putin, Vladimir Zelensky,
link |
Ghislaine Maxwell, there is a natural question.
link |
How does Lex have access to these people?
link |
Who does he work for?
link |
Like how does he...
link |
Or who works for him.
link |
Who works for him.
link |
What does he have on others?
link |
This, I'm actually, I ask myself,
link |
when I look in the mirror,
link |
just somebody who kind of enjoys conspiracy theories,
link |
I want to ask the same question.
link |
Like, well, I usually ask in the following way,
link |
like, how the fuck am I so lucky?
link |
Like, who am I being, am I a robot
link |
being controlled by somebody else?
link |
Or like, how is this my life right now?
link |
What is happening?
link |
It really does feel like a simulation.
link |
So let me just speak to several things.
link |
First of all, I have no boss.
link |
I know of nor am I controlled
link |
by any intelligence agencies of any nation.
link |
We're going to get you a dog, Lex.
link |
So that I could talk to.
link |
I'm scared of getting a dog
link |
because I would fall in love so deeply, I think.
link |
Next time I'm bringing a puppy.
link |
I'm just going to bring a puppy
link |
and I'm going to leave it here.
link |
And then you'll never see me again.
link |
I mean, I love dogs so much.
link |
But I was also surprised and maybe,
link |
I have never talked to an intelligence agency,
link |
which is very interesting to me.
link |
That you're aware of.
link |
Cause they're very good at communicating.
link |
But I've been very suspicious on this exact point.
link |
That's the downside of kind of being an introvert,
link |
having anxiety about social interaction,
link |
but then having so much love thrown your way
link |
because we connect over podcasts.
link |
Podcasts have a powerful way of connecting people.
link |
So people come with you with love that I really love.
link |
I appreciate, but I wonder like exactly this question,
link |
like why is this person with a Russian accent talking to me
link |
and showing me so much love?
link |
Well, because, sorry to interrupt you again,
link |
but it's what we do.
link |
And it's a sign of interest, by the way, too.
link |
Sometimes. Sometimes.
link |
Yeah, I have a colleague at Stanford
link |
and she said, you know, interruption 75% of the time
link |
is a sign of real interest in what the person is saying,
link |
Well, you're very lovable.
link |
Well, that, that, but,
link |
I mean, I learned about a hedgehog in the fog from you.
link |
You know, when I learned, you know, you're very lovable.
link |
People love you because you're lovable.
link |
And it's, I mean, especially here in Austin, Texas,
link |
people are so, so amazing.
link |
I go just hugs and just, ah, I love people.
link |
Do you want a family?
link |
Or are you eventually?
link |
I mean, you're, I take what you said as a challenge
link |
in terms of having a family with kids
link |
and they do jiu jitsu and obviously defeat you
link |
and make you miserable for your failures as a father
link |
because you couldn't.
link |
But you're gonna be a great dad.
link |
Build up an army of good jiu jitsu people.
link |
But yes, I would love a family.
link |
I would love to have children.
link |
But I just want to finish that point
link |
because I'm nervous about it.
link |
I'm nervous about the way people perceive.
link |
What you're seeing is a Forrest Gump type character.
link |
Like what, who I am, I seem to be,
link |
and this is how like the world seems to work,
link |
is you just try, you try to be yourself.
link |
Like you try to find yourself.
link |
That's maybe the better way to say it.
link |
Be kind to people.
link |
Work your ass off.
link |
And say F you to anybody that wants to control you
link |
or to tell you what to do.
link |
And then put love out there in the world.
link |
This karma thing seems to work.
link |
Like how the hell, my friends as you know,
link |
how the hell did I get a chance to eat barbecue
link |
with Rick Rubin, right?
link |
You guys had a barbecue?
link |
Yeah, I had barbecue.
link |
He, right, of course I did.
link |
He's from New York.
link |
Any New Yorker that I know has very high standards for food
link |
because bad restaurants don't last long in New York.
link |
And barbecue counts as?
link |
Oh yeah, Texas barbecue.
link |
Well, you know, I would also add that you,
link |
whether or not you realize it or not,
link |
you took tremendous risk.
link |
I mean, we come from the same original community,
link |
which is academic science, right?
link |
And to be at MIT and to start posting lectures online
link |
To, you know, I was third or fourth man in
link |
in terms of podcasting as an academic.
link |
Cause you had gone on Rogan many times,
link |
David Sinclair had gone on there.
link |
You know, especially before the pandemic,
link |
you just didn't see many academics and scientists
link |
talking in a public facing way.
link |
So you took tremendous risk, right?
link |
You took tremendous risk
link |
always wearing that jacket and tie, right?
link |
The only time I haven't seen you in that truly
link |
is when we rolled jujitsu, which is,
link |
and I hear I'm being generous to myself saying
link |
I rolled jujitsu when basically you choked me out
link |
in front of hundreds of people.
link |
Thank you for doing that.
link |
It was, it was great fun.
link |
Thank you for doing that.
link |
To have a beginner's mind is a beautiful thing.
link |
I have admittedly, I have not been taking the classes,
link |
but I'm going to, I truly am.
link |
Especially there's a small chance I might find myself
link |
in Austin a bit more often in the near future.
link |
Well, if you're out in San Francisco,
link |
you should train with Mark Zuckerberg.
link |
He just started, so there you go.
link |
I mean, he's actually,
link |
I mean, people listen to an episode,
link |
perhaps he's a fascinating human being too.
link |
I listened to it, it was great.
link |
You took tremendous risk as an academic to do what you did.
link |
So I do believe that when one takes intelligent risk,
link |
because you can die or can crash your career,
link |
you can do all sorts of self destructive
link |
or destructive things when taking risks.
link |
You took risks and they paid off, right?
link |
And you take different risks at different stages,
link |
but I don't throw around the word admiration lightly.
link |
I mean, I admire that you were in this classroom at MIT.
link |
You're like, I'm gonna film this and put it online.
link |
One of your early interviews is with Ido Portal,
link |
who's very hard to get to.
link |
I've communicated with Ido a few times.
link |
You should definitely talk to him.
link |
I can't wait to talk to him.
link |
I'm dying to talk to him.
link |
I was supposed to do some course teaching with him
link |
right before the pandemic hit,
link |
and then it got canceled because he couldn't travel,
link |
but getting to him is exceedingly challenging.
link |
So you do have this incredible ability to get to people
link |
and for them to trust you and know you.
link |
And I think it's through your authenticity.
link |
And I think it's the fact that you're willing to go places
link |
where people haven't been before.
link |
You know, this is, what's the saying about pioneers?
link |
How do you spot the pioneers?
link |
They're the people with the arrows in their backs.
link |
You know, so that's the, you know, yeah.
link |
And that's actually a quote that I lifted
link |
from Terry Siknowski, who's a, you know.
link |
You should talk to Terry.
link |
He's a computational neuroscientist
link |
down at the Salk Institute,
link |
Howard Hughes investigator, et cetera.
link |
But so, you know, taking risks
link |
that other people have not taken is, that's a real thing.
link |
And to do it with integrity and rigor, that's a real thing.
link |
And so, yeah, I'm complimenting you
link |
and I hope it lands and lands deeply.
link |
But I also hope that people will hear that
link |
and understand that it's one thing
link |
to do what other people are already doing boldly.
link |
It's a whole other thing to launch an entire art form
link |
or venue and you did that.
link |
And you didn't write a book, hopefully you will someday,
link |
but you didn't go write a book.
link |
A lot of academics have written books.
link |
Jordan Peterson, another controversial character.
link |
He did it too, all those lectures that he filmed.
link |
And then it's led to this other thing.
link |
So, you know, there's karma.
link |
And then there's also having the spine
link |
to just put it all on the line
link |
and do something for which there is no prior example
link |
to hold onto while you go through those headwinds.
link |
The really fascinating thing,
link |
and actually a lot of people tell me about you,
link |
Andrew Huberman, like the reach of a podcast
link |
is really fascinating.
link |
It's not the numbers of people listen.
link |
I don't know if that's important at all.
link |
Is what's important is like the depth of connection
link |
you have with certain people.
link |
It really moves them.
link |
Like a great, and like they really get you.
link |
So there's a lot of big Andrew Huberman fans
link |
that really get you.
link |
It's not just the science.
link |
It's the stuff between the lines.
link |
It's the whole picture of a scientist
link |
that finds beauty in biology and reveals it.
link |
And they love you for it.
link |
You know, because it was on television at the time,
link |
I followed that Amanda Knox story pretty carefully.
link |
And I don't watch television,
link |
but whenever I would travel,
link |
if there was a TV on the airplane,
link |
I would find myself getting wrapped into things
link |
like locked up abroad, you know, like,
link |
and these things where they would make you terrified
link |
to travel anywhere, let alone commit a crime overseas.
link |
You know, the scenes of some of these prisons
link |
And, you know, I mean, her case got a ton of interest.
link |
And then I, you know, she went and then was a student
link |
at the University of Washington
link |
and has talked quite openly about, you know,
link |
how she was treated and how people assume guilt
link |
and, you know, and eventually, you know,
link |
she was exonerated and, you know,
link |
we can only go by what we know what the law determined,
link |
but, you know, these are people that
link |
the world is fascinated by.
link |
I would, I'm guessing about a third of people
link |
have already decided this person is despicable.
link |
Why would you ever give them an audience?
link |
About a third of people I think are open to,
link |
or at least interested in learning more about them.
link |
And then I think the remaining third,
link |
kind of the third that the category that I put myself in,
link |
which is what can I learn about people and myself,
link |
even in my revulsion, right?
link |
Yeah, what can I learn about myself
link |
from listening to this conversation
link |
with somebody that I like to think,
link |
I'm not talking about Amanda here,
link |
I'm talking about the other people that you're talking about
link |
that I don't, I can't relate to, right?
link |
Hearing conversations with and about people
link |
that you cannot relate to is informative.
link |
Otherwise, your whole mind literally becomes insular.
link |
Well, there's an interesting thing I also had to,
link |
ever since the war in Ukraine broke out,
link |
one of the questions I was asking myself,
link |
and this is not to be dramatic,
link |
it's just a very simple, honest question
link |
that I think a lot of journalists
link |
that operate in the war zone,
link |
or documentary filmmakers
link |
that ever since they got a chance to meet,
link |
have to be honest with themselves,
link |
are you willing to put at risk your life for things you do?
link |
What are you willing to die for?
link |
Yeah, what are you willing to die for?
link |
It sounds very dramatic, but whenever risk goes up,
link |
I mean, I don't know, you asked that
link |
if you wanna take a trip out to space
link |
on a commercial space flight,
link |
you have to, are you willing to die for this journey?
link |
Now, the odds, they're really small.
link |
I just watched Apollo 13 again.
link |
I'm not going to space.
link |
I'm not going to space.
link |
Afraid of heights?
link |
No, I'm not afraid of heights.
link |
I just, it feels like a terrible place to die.
link |
Well, first of all, death anywhere is not great.
link |
Yeah, although, I have a song teed up in my phone.
link |
If the plane starts to go down,
link |
I'm gonna spend the last few.
link |
It's a song off a B track of my favorite band,
link |
It's a song called The Sentence.
link |
And nobody, and I love it.
link |
And I listen to it almost every day.
link |
Rancid, The Sentence, it's called The Sentence?
link |
The band is called Rancid, famous band, relatively.
link |
Love those guys, love their music.
link |
And the song is The Sentence.
link |
You can only find it on like a B side or outtake.
link |
And it's, if you don't know how to decipher
link |
Tim Armstrong's voice,
link |
then you probably won't understand the lyrics.
link |
But because it's sung very, very fast.
link |
But if the plane ever goes,
link |
anytime there's turbulence,
link |
I put that thing in, I put the headphones in.
link |
I'm like, well, you know, if it's time, it's time.
link |
I'm gonna go out like this.
link |
I don't wanna drift off into the galaxy,
link |
just slowly asphyxiating and freezing to death.
link |
That sounds horrible.
link |
Just like I wouldn't wanna drown or burn.
link |
But on a plane is okay?
link |
Well, on a plane, I mean, like,
link |
if the thing starts going down
link |
and there's truly nothing you can do,
link |
you might as well at least listen to your favorite song.
link |
I'll probably go with The Pixies,
link |
Where's My Mind, like from Fight Club.
link |
And just the calmness, just sit back,
link |
like the musicians playing at the Titanic.
link |
I didn't know you were a Pixies fan.
link |
I'm gonna have to.
link |
Not so much a Pixies fan.
link |
Actually, I should say that I just,
link |
that was the, Where's My Mind was the chosen song
link |
for Fight Club at the end when the buildings
link |
are coming down or something like that.
link |
So that there's certain songs that just fit just right
link |
for the collapse of human civilization
link |
and you're calmly appreciating, like,
link |
that that's just it.
link |
This is how absurd this life is at any moment it can end.
link |
I love how we both have death and demise soundtracks.
link |
It's just a question when you're an academic,
link |
doesn't come up often.
link |
Yeah, there are some academics that are bold and brave.
link |
It's not a phenotype.
link |
Being bold and brave in the physical world
link |
is not a common phenotype of academics.
link |
I mean, the great neurologist, one of my,
link |
I don't have many heroes, but Oliver Sacks is a true hero.
link |
I mean, people think of him as a writer,
link |
but he was foremost a neurologist
link |
and he took tremendous pushback from the neurology community
link |
for doing his books and his articles.
link |
He has a great biography called On the Move.
link |
There's a wonderful documentary
link |
that just came out about him.
link |
I'm actually kind of a collector of his things,
link |
but he, tremendous, but he was accused of horrible things
link |
until the movie Awakenings came out
link |
with De Niro and Robin Williams.
link |
Amazing movie, by the way, people don't,
link |
they seem to not say great things about the movie.
link |
I love that movie.
link |
And it was only once he became famous from that movie
link |
that his more academic work started
link |
to receive any kind of attention
link |
and he was invited back to Columbia and NYU.
link |
You know, the New York Neuroscience Mafia is a real thing.
link |
And yes, you know who you are.
link |
And some of them are actually coming on the broadcast.
link |
I think we talked offline about this.
link |
We should start a mafia to fight off
link |
whatever's going on in the East Coast.
link |
Although I'm still at MIT, so I don't know how that works,
link |
but Boston is different than New York.
link |
Yeah, so I have tremendous respect
link |
for science done in New York.
link |
Don't get me wrong.
link |
They are excellent scientists.
link |
It's just a very different culture than on the West Coast.
link |
And the personalities, the personalities...
link |
Tremendous respect for the mob.
link |
Well, and the personalities are a bit more grandiose.
link |
However, because of some of the shift
link |
in science culture in the last few years,
link |
things around scandals and things of that sort,
link |
they've been forced to tamp down some of their personality
link |
or at least their outspoken personality.
link |
And I actually think it's revealed something
link |
really important and useful in science,
link |
which is it used to be the case
link |
you could really inject your personality into what you do.
link |
Richard Feynman is a good example.
link |
If he did today what he did then,
link |
bongo drumming on the roof of Caltech naked,
link |
working out theorems in strip clubs and things of that,
link |
he would have lost his job in moments.
link |
So that kind of behavior isn't celebrated anymore.
link |
It's actually punished.
link |
And I'm only half kidding
link |
about this New York neuroscience mafia,
link |
but because I now exist in multiple realms,
link |
I can say these sorts of things.
link |
And I, again, admiration and respect,
link |
but I will say that I think it's important
link |
that people in science and kids that are curious
link |
about science understand that you can have any personality
link |
provided that you're ethical and respectful in science
link |
and do well, right?
link |
There are true bench scientists
link |
that just want to be at the bench.
link |
There are people that just want to be in their office.
link |
There are people that really enjoy public speaking.
link |
And there are people that love meetings
link |
and there are people that hate crowds.
link |
And so there's a place for everybody,
link |
truly a place for everybody in science.
link |
I would like to be able to shine light
link |
on the fact that there are,
link |
you can have a shy personality, an outgoing personality,
link |
and you can, all of those can be,
link |
have excellent careers in science,
link |
but you have to find the community in place
link |
that's right for you.
link |
One reason I like Stanford
link |
is that Stanford is very much about the future.
link |
We have Nobel prize winners,
link |
we have field medal winners and all that stuff,
link |
and their names are on walls
link |
and we acknowledge their great works.
link |
But most of what you hear about in the halls of Stanford
link |
is about what's happening now and what could happen next.
link |
It's really about the future.
link |
Whereas when I've spent time at other institutions
link |
not to be named, you hear that,
link |
but there's a lot of kind of recycling and regurgitation
link |
of how wonderful people are
link |
based on things they did previously.
link |
And the students at Stanford, because of Silicon Valley,
link |
sure, they have respect for Nobel prizes,
link |
they're delighted to be learning from
link |
and surrounded by all these great minds,
link |
but they're mostly interested
link |
in what they are gonna create.
link |
And so I kind of, not kind of,
link |
I really like the shift toward possibility
link |
as opposed to things that are steeped in tradition.
link |
You know, I've never been to high table dinner at Oxford,
link |
I'm sure it's a wonderful experience.
link |
I'm also not sure what purpose it serves for the world,
link |
but I've never been,
link |
and so I don't know what the conversations are,
link |
and so maybe I'm, you know, speaking out of line here.
link |
And then now I'm definitely not getting invited.
link |
No, you're definitely getting invited.
link |
But yeah, I'm with you,
link |
the culture's picked the right ones for you.
link |
That's why I like MIT, the spirit of it.
link |
To me, it's not about the past or the future,
link |
it's about just tinkering and having fun,
link |
building cool stuff.
link |
Like the big ambitious projects, it's there.
link |
I mean, it may be more in the biology and the health side,
link |
but like the engineering side,
link |
it doesn't matter if this has any impact,
link |
let us build the coolest thing the world has ever built.
link |
Well, whenever I'm in Kendall Square,
link |
I've seen, they have those buildings there
link |
that actually tilt toward the ground.
link |
These are these, the architecture of MIT
link |
is also really impressive.
link |
Yeah, this, he pulled up,
link |
Sergei just pulled up Yilmaz tweet.
link |
I'm inspired by curiosity.
link |
That is what drives me.
link |
So let us expand the scope and scale of consciousness
link |
so that we may aspire to understand the universe.
link |
Those are like three tweets in one,
link |
but curiosity, yeah, yeah, curiosity for its own sake.
link |
What's that saying?
link |
I think Dorothy Parker said,
link |
the cure for boredom is curiosity.
link |
There is no cure for curiosity.
link |
And you need to celebrate.
link |
So let me just briefly mention
link |
to my lovely friends at MIT
link |
to celebrate different weirdness,
link |
to celebrate the weird characters.
link |
I've, I sometimes get loving pressure
link |
from my lovely friends at MIT
link |
to tone down the weirdness a bit.
link |
I'm very fortunate to have a lot of leverage
link |
to where I have completely resist the pressure,
link |
but I'm very sure that there's young faculty
link |
that with that subtle pressure would...
link |
Dissolve them into a puddle of tears.
link |
Oh, they're from Boston, excuse me.
link |
From Boston, that's right.
link |
They're tougher than that.
link |
That's right, but it's a slight nudging
link |
towards conformity that I think ultimately destroys,
link |
or at least lessens the power of the kind of science
link |
that you can do when you encourage diversity.
link |
Diversity in all of its forms,
link |
including the weirdness of ideas,
link |
the out of the box thinkers,
link |
including the flamboyant behavior online,
link |
how you choose to educate, how you choose to inspire.
link |
People talk about freedom of speech,
link |
but it's not just freedom of speech
link |
to say controversial things.
link |
It's also freedom of speech to be weird.
link |
If you're, for some reason, fascinated in...
link |
You look at Elon Musk.
link |
He talks about sex a lot.
link |
Let the guy put sex memes up.
link |
I mean, I feel like Elon can do basically whatever he wants.
link |
Right, there's no pressure,
link |
but there's a bunch of Elons in the academic world.
link |
There's a bunch of Elons.
link |
No, actually, sorry.
link |
Let me backtrack, because the man deserves props.
link |
Right, he's unparalleled.
link |
He's a CEO of major companies.
link |
You better believe there's pressure
link |
to behave more like a CEO,
link |
as opposed to a giggling schoolboy
link |
who's posting memes throughout the night.
link |
And that freedom, that's what freedom looks like.
link |
I talk to a lot of CEOs,
link |
and a lot of them feel like caged birds
link |
who have long ago forgotten how to sing, quite honestly.
link |
Like, there's like shareholders,
link |
and they come up with excuses for themselves.
link |
Here's why I have to be this way, you have to understand.
link |
So on, there's PR, there's marketing people,
link |
there's lawyers, there's all that kind of stuff.
link |
But the final result is the authenticity is suffocated.
link |
The beautiful weirdness of a CEO,
link |
of a leader, of a creator, of a scientist, all that,
link |
Well, Steve Jobs wouldn't have kept his job
link |
in acting the way he did in his 20s and 30s
link |
in today's climate.
link |
But he probably would have updated his protocols,
link |
so to speak. A little bit,
link |
You know, you're screaming at employees.
link |
I mean, these are anecdotes, right?
link |
I call them anecdata,
link |
because people treat them as data,
link |
but they're really just anecdotes.
link |
We don't know, I wasn't there.
link |
But, you know, I like the idea of authenticity
link |
without oversharing, right?
link |
You're very authentic, but there are aspects to your life
link |
that I'm aware of that your audiences will never be aware of,
link |
and there are aspects of your life
link |
that I'll never be aware of.
link |
And so you're still authentic, but.
link |
Yeah, wait, which ones are you aware of?
link |
People are gonna wonder, like,
link |
what is, is he up in sex dungeon?
link |
But interesting choice of examples.
link |
No, but I think that, you know,
link |
people lose the careers on the basis
link |
of the movement of their thumbs, right?
link |
I mean, the chair of psychiatry at Columbia
link |
recently lost his position based on a response to a tweet.
link |
People can look that up.
link |
This is one of the most famous psychiatry departments
link |
And he put something out there
link |
that was very insensitive, frankly.
link |
And everyone that I talked to about it was like,
link |
gosh, that was very, very insensitive,
link |
not thoughtful at all.
link |
And he lost his job, right?
link |
Or at least had to step down.
link |
I don't know the specifics.
link |
So, you know, I think I read someplace
link |
that more than half of the job loss due to online behavior
link |
is because people were trying to be funny, right?
link |
I mean, not everyone can pull off what Tim Dillon.
link |
Oh, and by the way, congratulations.
link |
I heard that you and Tim just got married.
link |
Yeah, I saw that too.
link |
No, no, we didn't just get married.
link |
Yeah, got it, got it, got it.
link |
So some people can get away.
link |
Thank you, Sergey.
link |
Has that ready to go.
link |
See those 13.3 thousand likes?
link |
One of those is mine.
link |
So for people who are not aware,
link |
one of the days in April tweeted that Tim Dillon
link |
asked me to get married and I said, yes.
link |
I think Tim said, the wedding will be on 6th Street
link |
in Austin, bring all of your weapons,
link |
which of course is totally inappropriate.
link |
This is, I was like PG funny,
link |
and he's goes rated R funny right away.
link |
But that said, I mean, if there's anyone
link |
I would like to get married with,
link |
it's that guy and we would do it in Austin
link |
and it would be epic.
link |
It would be like the wedding from November rain, one of the,
link |
Oh, Mr. and Mr., I apologize.
link |
Wow, yeah, and you broke tradition with the jacket color.
link |
So it sounds to me that you are a free speech absolutist.
link |
I think freedom is really important
link |
and that includes letting people who are hateful,
link |
letting people who are controversial
link |
have a voice on platforms.
link |
But it becomes, I'm not sure what exactly to think
link |
because I also treasure the quiet voices
link |
in the back of the room.
link |
And sometimes the assholes silence those voices,
link |
meaning by being loud and obnoxious and so on,
link |
it pushes away the thoughtful people.
link |
So I'm also a fan of creating communities.
link |
Like you should be able to let people kind of
link |
build a community that's positive, that's loving,
link |
or that's constantly trolling, or that's super hateful.
link |
All those communities should have a place in the world.
link |
But like the thing I've noticed is that
link |
hate can destroy, a community full of hate
link |
can destroy a community full of love
link |
easier than a community full of love
link |
can overtake one with hate.
link |
And so you have to kind of, I don't know exactly how,
link |
but create digital mechanisms that discourage
link |
the collision of these communities.
link |
They should all have a platform and ability to speak
link |
to a large audience, but you have to be careful
link |
to protect that like little flame of connection
link |
Yeah, that's good, the goodness, it sounds like, I mean,
link |
yeah, I think in any great city like New York,
link |
which I love, by the way, you wanna have a symphony
link |
in an opera house and you want some punk rock shows
link |
happening on the Lower East Side, you want all of that.
link |
You just don't necessarily want them to overlap.
link |
In terms of social media and then podcasts and engagement,
link |
one thing that I decided very early on
link |
is was to encourage comments and feedback, et cetera.
link |
But I have in my mind what I call classroom rules.
link |
You've taught in the university
link |
and then you teach in the university
link |
and you establish a certain etiquette within the classroom
link |
of the kinds of questions that you'll tolerate, right?
link |
So there's always the student that's gonna ask a question,
link |
which is basically a 10 minute monologue
link |
about their experience that really isn't a question
link |
that pertains to a lot of people.
link |
So you politely discourage that kind of question
link |
and you encourage the kinds of questions
link |
that are likely to be in the minds of many other students.
link |
It's just more efficient that way.
link |
Or not politely, which is more, you know,
link |
I try and respond to comments and I try and respond,
link |
but also, you know, there's this,
link |
also this really interesting question.
link |
Now, if you block people or restrict people,
link |
people think that you're somehow afraid
link |
of the information that they're posting,
link |
but that's often not the case.
link |
I'm not in the habit of blocking
link |
or restricting too many people.
link |
Occasionally we've had to do it
link |
only because of how other people are being treated
link |
in the comment section.
link |
What I can take and what I think other people deserve to take
link |
are two completely different things.
link |
David Goggins, right, who we both know well,
link |
I don't know if he still does this,
link |
but a few years ago, he posted something like,
link |
if people ask him, when do you sleep?
link |
He would just block them.
link |
Because it wasn't consistent with what he was trying to say.
link |
Of course he sleeps, but it's, you know,
link |
he's trying to get a particular message out.
link |
I think people should just understand
link |
that everybody's page is their own to moderate, right?
link |
Just like in a classroom, there are certain rules,
link |
of course, of institution,
link |
but then you establish the etiquette
link |
within the context of the kind of class.
link |
You know, a class about personality psychology
link |
or the psychology of love,
link |
you're gonna have a very different range of conversations
link |
than, you know, a class on, you know,
link |
memory and physiology.
link |
So I think social media is a great place for conversation,
link |
but it's not necessarily a great place
link |
for every kind of conversation.
link |
Yeah, and I also just say that people that do get blocked,
link |
I never, this is something I do very deliberately,
link |
blocked or ignored.
link |
I never think poorly of them.
link |
I actually explicitly think,
link |
if there's somebody that's like saying
link |
hateful things about me or whatever,
link |
I always think positive thoughts.
link |
It's not some kind of weird guru thing,
link |
but just actually found that as a hack.
link |
I think well of them,
link |
and that allows me to never think of them again.
link |
Like I send them my love,
link |
and like I think this is a like fascinating human being
link |
with a fascinating story.
link |
I would love to have time to actually learn
link |
about their story, but there's not enough time in the world.
link |
And I just think well of them and then I move on
link |
and enjoy a delicious meal with people that are close to me
link |
and I love and so on and just, and move on.
link |
And then never adding to the negativity of like,
link |
just even in the privacy of my own mind,
link |
thinking a hateful thought towards them,
link |
it serves no purpose whatsoever.
link |
Yeah, I love that about you.
link |
And I know that what you just said to be true,
link |
one of the, I think more toxic things in life
link |
is what's called, you know, a vacuative projection.
link |
When people feel something and they try and evacuate it
link |
and project it onto somebody else.
link |
Projection is fascinating, right?
link |
What you essentially just said is that
link |
you don't accept projections.
link |
And in fact, you transmute them
link |
to put it in the language of the Buddhist, you know,
link |
you transmute it into positivity.
link |
And in that way, you truly neutralize it and transmute it.
link |
I think that if people were better understood
link |
when they were experiencing
link |
or observing a vacuative projection,
link |
the world would be a much healthier and happier place.
link |
But it requires a certain stable internal rudder.
link |
And, you know, when we're tired or sick or angry,
link |
you know, we're hungry, excessively hungry.
link |
All of us are less good at it.
link |
I've been positively struck by the nature
link |
of most of the interactions, not just feedback,
link |
but my favorite thing as an educator in the classroom,
link |
but also on social media.
link |
My absolute favorite thing is when the comments
link |
about other people's comments are positively reinforcing.
link |
So you see people having conversations within the comments
link |
and you realize this is like, if you, as an educator,
link |
again, you know, it's fun to teach
link |
and it's fun to talk to the students,
link |
but the real pleasure is in walking by a small group
link |
of students on campus and hearing them talking
link |
about the material, that just fills me with joy.
link |
And because what it means is that the ideas are reverberating
link |
in their nervous systems and will eventually wick out
link |
So it's not just about feedback,
link |
it's about a venue for parsing information.
link |
So you actually posted that we're gonna talk on Instagram
link |
and I collected a bunch of the questions,
link |
which reminds me of, I have to mention Mike Jones
link |
and a question he asked, but also a gift he gave
link |
quite a while ago, if it's okay.
link |
But first, a quick bathroom break.
link |
We're looking at an Instagram page of Mike Jones,
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Knife and Tool, you should check it out.
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He, Andrew gave me a gift from him,
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that is a badass butcher knife.
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Yours is the earth, da, da, da,
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is from If by Richard Kipling.
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Yeah, the story of this knife is kind of interesting,
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perhaps, to people where it was,
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I was coming out here to Austin to meet with Lex
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and it was his birthday.
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I wanna get him a gift, but I didn't know what to get him.
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And I contacted this guy, Mike Jones,
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that I learned about through Joe Rogan.
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Cause the first, remember in the old days of Joe Rogan,
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when you go on the episode afterwards,
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you take a picture with an object.
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So it was like Elon with a flamethrower
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or people would have the ax.
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I picked up this Bushwhacker hatchet thing.
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And I was like, I love this thing.
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And Joe said, oh yeah, you should check out
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Mike Jones's work, he does these beautiful knives.
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And so then I heard your episode with Joe
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and you recited a poem at the end.
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It was right after your grandmother died.
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And there's a line in that poem from If
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that Mike engraved on that knife for you.
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So he makes these by hand.
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I love, the old days, before the podcast and all that.
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That's the first appearance.
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That was the first time on there.
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And it was a lot of fun in the old studio in Los Angeles.
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And yeah, Mike makes these beautiful knives.
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And I have this, I just have a great admiration
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for crafts people.
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So, do you use it?
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Do you cut your one meal a day steaks with it?
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Are you taking it with you on your travels?
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I actually used to keep it on the table,
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but I thought it really intimidates guests.
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You can put it on their side.
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It's trust, right?
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But it's, cause it's not,
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it's quite bad ass if I may say.
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So the craftsmanship is obvious, but also it is a knife.
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It's got some like Dexter like qualities to it.
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It looks like it's designed to cleave through a limb.
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If I had like a family or something where people,
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there's nothing about this place that softens your kind
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of sense that this person might not murder me.
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Let's put it differently.
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This place could use a woman's touch.
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That's one way to put it.
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If it's okay, let me,
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because it is a poem I go to often actually.
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You mentioned reciting some lyrics
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and I'm actually gonna go back to that at some point
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to get a few songs that touch you.
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But this is one of the things I go to often.
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I'll read it to remind myself.
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It's advice from a father to son.
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And it's a kind of mantra that it's just nice to live by.
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So if it's okay with me,
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just use this opportunity one more time.
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Read If by Roger Kipling.
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If you can keep your head when all about you
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are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
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if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
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but make allowance for their doubting too,
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if you can wait to not be tired by waiting
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or being lied about don't deal in lies
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or being hated don't give way to hating
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and yet don't look too good nor talk too wise.
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If you can dream and not make dreams your master,
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if you can think and not make thoughts your aim,
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if you can meet with triumph and disaster
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and treat those two imposters just the same,
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if you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
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twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools
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or watch the things you gave your life to broken
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and stoop and build them up with worn out tools,
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if you can make one heap of all your winnings
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and risk it all on one turn of pitch and toss
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and lose and start again at your beginnings
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and never breathe a word about your loss,
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if you can force your heart to nerve and sinew
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to serve your turn long after they're gone
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and so hold on when there's nothing in you
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except the will which says to them, hold on.
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If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
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I like this one, and walk with kings
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nor lose the common touch, if neither foes
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nor loving friends can hurt you,
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if all men count with you but none too much,
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if you can fill the unforgiving minute
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with 60 seconds worth of distance run,
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yours is the earth and everything that's in it
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and which is more, you'll be a man, my son.
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Thank you, Andrew, thank you, thank you, Mike,
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for the knife, it's a, I don't know.
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It's an important poem.
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And engraved in it, yeah, it's yours.
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Yours is the earth and everything that's in it.
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We toiled over what to engrave,
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and then finally I just said, Mike,
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just pick something that speaks to you,
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you're the craftsman, and so he selected that.
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There's certain ways to pull yourself in that book.
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Actually, Karl Deisseroth, he wrote the book Projections.
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One of my favorite, first of all,
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just as you said, incredible writer.
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Just, I mean, if you wrote fiction,
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if you wrote those kinds of things,
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I'm curious to see where he goes with his writing.
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It's very interesting.
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I think that book took him 10 years to write,
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which is vindication for me and for you
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because we're both supposed to write books
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and we haven't done it.
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Yeah, I mean, in some sense,
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your first book will have decades in it, right?
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Even if you just take a half a year to write it.
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It's like the first book, like the first album for a musician,
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I mean, it's a journey.
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But he uses poems and quotes in there really well.
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It's a beautiful book.
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It's a dreamy book.
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I think when people hear that it's a book about neuroscience,
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they think they're gonna get a textbook
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or a protocols book or something, it's nothing like that.
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But it really is a deep dive into the mind
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of the psychiatrist and the researcher
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and so much feeling and compassion.
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I love that you love poetry.
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I mean, I didn't know that until I saw you
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on Rogan Read If and I'm not a very rabid consumer of poetry
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but I'm a big Wendell Berry fan.
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And I try and read a poem once every few days.
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Also, I think if is a tough act to follow.
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I mean, that's the richness and the, I mean,
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you said every third line in there is something
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that you would consider your life well lived
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if you said that, right?
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What about the preparation for the solo podcast?
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You said you listen to certain songs,
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you sing or recite the lyrics to certain songs.
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Is there ones that kind of come to mind
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that are interesting?
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Um, yeah, I've always been very lyrics driven
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and I don't understand music.
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I've talked to Rick about this.
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I think I've talked to you about this a little bit.
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I don't really understand, I mean,
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I can hear music and like it,
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but I don't really understand the structure of it.
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But lyrics make a lot of sense to me.
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But does it touch your soul, music, or is it the lyrics?
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It's the lyrics, it's not the instrumentals.
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So I'm a huge Joe Strummer fan
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and I'm gonna lose punk points for saying this
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but I'm not a Clash fan.
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So he obviously is best known for the Clash.
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Most Clash songs start off great
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and then after about 30 seconds, at least in my mind,
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just kind of disintegrate into a bunch of mush.
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Whereas Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros,
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which is what he did as an adult,
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as a later and some of his solo work,
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he actually, Rick produced some work
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that he did with Johnny Cash.
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Rick pulled Johnny Cash out of,
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essentially out of retirement
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and had him do his albums before he died.
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And so anything that Strummer did,
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there's a favorite song of mine by Strummer,
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it's called Burning Lights.
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You can find it, there is an album now
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where you can find it or Tennessee Rain
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or some of these things that he did,
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which are a little bit more folky, so not really punk.
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So I love that song.
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Bunch of songs by Rancid that I love.
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Yeah, Rancid is great.
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And then if I listen to instrumentals,
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I do, I'll listen to classical piano.
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Some dreams are made for children.
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But it's not gonna sound good as a poem.
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They can play the, people can play the song.
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Play the song, okay.
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Yeah, so I'll, I mean, cause it has to be something,
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Joe's voice is what makes the song.
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Joe's voice is what makes the song.
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But yeah, that song Burning Lights
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from I Hired a Contract Killer.
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I don't know, the licks are pretty good.
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They're pretty good.
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I mean, Joe is an amazing writer, right?
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I'm also a big Bob Dylan fan.
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Glenn Gould for classical piano.
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He was at Asperger's, and actually I think
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you can hear him grunting, he had a Tourette's like tick.
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And I learned about Glenn Gould from Oliver Sacks.
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So I'll listen to any number of things.
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It depends on my mood.
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If I'm feeling a little more tired
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and I need to be amped up,
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I'll listen to something that's a little louder and faster.
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If I'm feeling kind of keyed up
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and I need to bring the cadence down a little bit,
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then I'll listen to something a little mellower, poppier.
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I love bands like, yeah, I'm a big fan
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of this British pop band called James.
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There's like 20 bands named James.
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But this one, you know, and again,
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I lose punk points for saying that, but they're amazing.
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I think you've accumulated enough points
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where you can afford to lose a few.
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But in any case, yeah, music and poetry are,
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they're the subconscious, right?
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I mean, if you think about a Bob Dylan song
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or a really good Strummer song or a poem
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that the words don't mean anything when read linearly,
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but they make you feel something,
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they're tapping into the subconscious.
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That's really what they're doing.
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They're pulling on neural threads of emotion
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based on either timbre or cadence
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or something that's independent of the word structure.
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And that to me is the beauty of music and poetry.
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I often say Johnny Cash's version, Hurt,
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that I say would be my favorite song ever.
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Well, he did a Nine Inch Nails song.
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He did, he covered.
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I think Rick produced that.
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Pretty sure he produced that.
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I mean, he did, like Rick produced the,
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he pulled Johnny Cash out from a dark place
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to produce something that, I mean,
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when you look back as one of the great things ever in music,
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which are these like haunting covers
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of certain songs and originals.
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Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer did a version
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of Redemption song together that Rick produced,
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which is on loop in my house sometimes,
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for hours and hours.
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That song is fascinating.
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Bob Marley's song.
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Song by Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer.
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You know, sometimes I think what it would be
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to be a fly on the wall when these guys were doing this.
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These songs of freedom.
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There's certain songs where you're like,
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it elicits an emotion that's unlike anything else.
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I mean, I was trying to figure that out with Rick, too.
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Like, there's certain songs that make you wanna pull out
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over to the side of the road and just weep
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or just get inspired to just get shit done
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or all of those kinds of things.
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Remember your family, the people you've lost,
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all that kind of stuff.
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When you hurt, I hurt myself today
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to see if I still feel.
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There's certain songs that I've loved so much
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that I actually won't play them during a relationship
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until the relationship passes a certain duration
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because if you start sharing in those experiences
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with somebody and it starts to become associated
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with the relationship, you braiding it in
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with the dopamine of love and that relationship ends,
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the song is forever tainted.
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There are certain songs that I will never play
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in the company of anybody else.
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I just, it's too risky to give those up.
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And you know, and I think that.
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And there's like levels.
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There are levels, right, exactly.
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We'll leave it at that.
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Yeah, and the interesting thing about this kind
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of preparing for the solo episode,
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just interacting with Rick about that process
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of preparation and because you mentioned with interviews.
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By the way, are you do solo, solo?
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Are you the only one in the room or?
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No, well, it used to be Rob, my producer,
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who I should say, you know, he's really the person
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behind the podcast.
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I mean, first of all, we're equal partners.
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You're just a pretty face.
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We're just, and I'm aging, man.
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Not to say I love him.
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I actually really, I like aging.
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I'm like friends with David Sinclair
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and it's all about not aging.
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I don't wanna live past 90, 95.
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I'm just trying to get as much done as I can
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in this short life and do it right
link |
and with integrity and heart and accuracy, you know.
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And you like the stages.
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Oh yeah, if you read Erickson's stages of development,
link |
you realize that every stage of life
link |
is a set of neural circuits trying to resolve a problem.
link |
And if you're gonna try and avoid that progression
link |
sure, you might live longer, but you know,
link |
it's sort of like saying like,
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do you wanna go win the high school jujitsu championship?
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No, you graduated high school a long time ago, right?
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So I actually look forward to the future,
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even if it means that I'm starting to shift.
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I think that my biology will shift.
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Oh, you know, I'll fight that.
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I try and take good care of myself,
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but I don't wanna get sick.
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I don't wanna suffer, who does?
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But I'm embracing this whole developmental arc.
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I mean, we're not children and then adults.
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Our entire life is one long developmental arc.
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And if you fail to embrace that,
link |
you fail to extract the richness
link |
of what it is to be a human being.
link |
So in any event, I record Rob is in the room.
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I'll sometimes stop and ask him for feedback
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if I feel like something's not landing right.
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So he gives, if it's clear, he'll let me know.
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If it's not clear, he'll let me know.
link |
And then, you know, Costello used to be in the room.
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The early days of the podcast, which weren't that long ago,
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he's snoring at my feet and farting
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and smelling up the room.
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And we're all just kind of like gasping for air.
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That's what they do.
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With him gone, it changed.
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You know, the whole thing changed.
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There will be another dog soon.
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And as you know, I've been moving
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through that grief process,
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but having him there gave me a levity that I miss.
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But in my mind, he's still there.
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Yeah, he's still there.
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Yeah, he's still there.
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So, and you know, in time there'll be another dog
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and who knows, you know, maybe there'll be a dog
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and a couple of infants running around,
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but that would be more distracting.
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So, but it's, there's no podcast that exists
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just because of the podcaster.
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This is true for Joe, this is true for your podcast,
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for me, that there's, it's not just a staff
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of people to post stuff.
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That's just the top level contour.
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There's the constant feedback and iteration
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of what you want it to become
link |
and trying to hold on to something
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that's essential along the way.
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Cause everything has to evolve,
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but you can't lose the essence of something.
link |
Anytime a company or brand or a course
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or a scientist has done that, it just ends up terrible.
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It just is a, you know, it becomes
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like a Senator version of itself.
link |
So to Rick is very, the power of the people in the room
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is great to inspire and to destroy.
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So you have to be extremely careful
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with the selection of people that are in the room.
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To me, I never really thought of it that way.
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I thought only positive things can happen.
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Oh, by adding people in the room?
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By adding people in the room.
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Oh, I think if there were an audience in the room for,
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well, you know what, someday I'd love
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to do a live podcast with you.
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I saw you doing like a couple of live things,
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which is great that you're paving the way there to try.
link |
Well, we did one, I went up to University
link |
of British Columbia and did a lecture on a college campus.
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And one of the more gratifying things that happened
link |
is this kid, he's in his early twenties, I think,
link |
stood up and said, you know,
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I've never been on a college campus.
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I didn't think I could go onto a college campus.
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And that still rings in my mind.
link |
Whoever you are out there, that meant so much to me.
link |
Cause I was like, yes, there was something about that to me.
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I was like, okay, this, it made sense to come all the way
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up here and do this in person.
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Cause you can get out to a lot more people online.
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Public speaking events,
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it's not like it's that lucrative or anything.
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I mean, unless you're whatever,
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you're a famous celebrity or politician or something,
link |
I'm sure there are people that do well with it,
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but that's not what it's about for us.
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It's really about being able to connect with people
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in a different venue and for interactions like that.
link |
I don't know how many of them we will do,
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but I'm curious to see how it goes,
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but I'd love to do a podcast with you.
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Is it energizing? My fear is the fear of the introvert
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is that I don't know if I can handle so much love
link |
and fascinating people all around.
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It's like, I don't know.
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Well, we'll invite a few haters too.
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Well, yes, but I love the haters too, but I don't know.
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It makes me nervous.
link |
Cause Jordan Peterson is currently on tour.
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I got a chance to hang out with him.
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Oh right, he does a lot of live speaking.
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Yeah, he's now on tour where he does like every other day.
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But he doesn't have any small kids at home anymore.
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So you can't do that.
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So yeah, you should do it before you have a fan.
link |
It's also exhausting.
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I mean, I'm just speaking from an athlete perspective,
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like if you're Mick Jagger with the Rolling Stones,
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it's just physically, I mean, you have to speak potentially
link |
for two hours, then off stage, like hanging out with people.
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It's a lot of hours.
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It's a lot of hours to stay focused,
link |
to keep finding your place of like calmness and excitement.
link |
Well, and you're staying in hotels,
link |
your circadian rhythm is disrupted.
link |
You're not getting your like cold and sauna
link |
and your workout every day.
link |
Your food isn't optimal.
link |
I think done in patches, I could enjoy it
link |
because it's fun to meet people from different places.
link |
I'm doing a public lecture in Copenhagen
link |
for the Lundbeck Foundation in June, June 3rd.
link |
And that one is particularly gratifying for me
link |
because the Lundbeck Foundation is an academic foundation.
link |
So the fact that, and then so when they invited,
link |
I asked, do you want me to talk about what my lab does
link |
or do you want me to talk about the stuff on the podcast?
link |
They're like, no, no, not your lab.
link |
We want to hear about this, like health stuff
link |
and the stuff that we cover on the podcast.
link |
So that was amusing to me and tells me that things
link |
I think 2020 and 2021 revealed a lot of things
link |
about people to ourselves.
link |
But one thing that it made very clear
link |
is that there's an enormous appetite for tools
link |
for mental and physical health,
link |
but also understanding about science
link |
and how science is done.
link |
So thanks to you, again, I'm not saying this to flatter you.
link |
It's true gratitude.
link |
There's now a runway for scientists to talk to people.
link |
I mean, you had the, I always forget this guy's name,
link |
the virus guy from Columbia.
link |
It's a wrecking yellow.
link |
Yeah, amazing, right?
link |
I mean, forgetting the controversy around all the stuff
link |
I mean, he is an encyclopedia of all things virology.
link |
Yeah, people should listen to his podcast
link |
this week in virology.
link |
He's also an incredible lecturer and educator.
link |
It's fascinating when people take again that leap
link |
of putting all that education online.
link |
That's non controversial at all.
link |
It's like everybody there, people should go listen to him
link |
for the most part in terms of, at his best, at least.
link |
There's no politics in it.
link |
There's none of that.
link |
No, he's a virus jockey.
link |
He likes playing around with bacteria and viruses and.
link |
But that said, molecular biology.
link |
We all say stuff carelessly all the time.
link |
So he gets in a bit of trouble on some of the things
link |
you've said about like dismissing lab leak theory.
link |
Like, there's no way.
link |
He dismisses that.
link |
Yeah, but not, he's not making,
link |
like folks, there's a difference when you say stuff
link |
like off the cuff and when you say stuff
link |
that's like courts your principles
link |
and you've thought about it for a very long time.
link |
You talking for hours, for hundreds of hours
link |
and you can just say stuff.
link |
You could just say your opinions.
link |
Will Smith slapped.
link |
I was wondering, okay, wait,
link |
how long have we been recording?
link |
I was wondering how long it was gonna take us
link |
before someone talked about Ukraine.
link |
No, no, Will Smith.
link |
I was wondering whether or not we'd make it the end.
link |
I was literally in the back of my mind.
link |
I had it planned that at the end,
link |
if we didn't talk about the Will Smith, Chris Rock thing,
link |
that I was gonna say, it's amazing.
link |
This is the first conversation to happen
link |
in a long time where it wasn't mentioned.
link |
No, do not pull it up.
link |
We don't need to see it.
link |
We don't need to see it.
link |
It revealed some interesting things
link |
about human beings, impulse control and lack thereof.
link |
But, you know, oh my goodness.
link |
Chris Rock has a material for the rest of his career.
link |
Yeah, I think he's not short on material.
link |
But I do, see, if I knew what I wanted to tweet,
link |
if I knew you a lot to just slap comedians,
link |
my conversation with Tim Dillon
link |
would have gone very differently.
link |
People just being humans.
link |
There's so much fascinating human nature on display there.
link |
It's also, in terms of it becoming a topic
link |
that a lot of people are talking about
link |
versus the war in Ukraine, for example,
link |
is also fascinating to watch,
link |
like just these kind of news cycles moving through.
link |
I think, if I may, I'm sorry to interrupt,
link |
but, you know, anytime we observe something very limbic,
link |
very emotional, you know,
link |
we generally can empathize somewhat, right?
link |
We all know what it's like to feel angry.
link |
We all know what it's like to feel ashamed.
link |
We all know what it's like to feel shocked.
link |
Images of war are, for most people, very hard to relate to.
link |
We see it, it's, you know, there are these images
link |
and they're very traumatic and challenging
link |
to look at at times,
link |
and yet most people have no idea
link |
what it feels like to be shot at
link |
or what it feels like to have your home destroyed
link |
or what it feels like to be an aggressor in that way.
link |
So it's very, so I think that people naturally orient
link |
towards things that feel familiar to them,
link |
even though the circumstances are different.
link |
And people also forget, they look at these celebrities,
link |
that's just like looking at criticism of Will Smith,
link |
you forget that they're human too.
link |
That's one of the most surprising things for me,
link |
having done this podcast and met celebrities
link |
and stuff like that.
link |
They're human, they're all human.
link |
And that's inspiring to me,
link |
like some of these great folks that have won Nobel Prizes
link |
and built some cool things,
link |
they're just human, like the rest of us.
link |
Well, and if you look at actors and actresses,
link |
I mean, there's some amazing ones, right?
link |
And who also do well in the outside life,
link |
but their careers were built on the business
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of pretending to be other people.
link |
And that's got to distort maybe positively,
link |
but also just let's be honest,
link |
what it is that the neuroplasticity there,
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the changes in the areas of the brain
link |
that represent personality have to be quite different
link |
for somebody who pretends to be
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lots of different personalities and gets paid for it.
link |
You're working the reward system
link |
into the system of self identity.
link |
And you have to imagine that that can really
link |
contort somebody's neurology
link |
in ways that maybe they are not as,
link |
maybe they are not in touch with reality
link |
in the same way that we are.
link |
Remember earlier we were talking about
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neurotic versus psychotic.
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They may be more borderline
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in their kind of ground state than we think.
link |
And so I'm actually impressed anytime there's a celebrity
link |
who doesn't have a messed up life.
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I'm like, oh wow, finally somebody who's managed
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to maintain some semblance,
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at least from the outside, of normalcy.
link |
So first of all, I can empathize
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with the actions that Will Smith did, right?
link |
They're not, I think they're kind of,
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not kind of, they're just shitty.
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You should probably talk privately, man to man,
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not, because otherwise it's like a dramatic display.
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It's almost like you are a fake, you're acting.
link |
Well, there are all these questions, right?
link |
I mean, obviously it was aggressive at some level.
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There's this question of whether or not it was impulsive.
link |
I think most people feel yes.
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There's a question, there was the protective nature of it
link |
because he was doing it to, you know,
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apparently in defense.
link |
But then there's also the context,
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he lost touch with the context, right?
link |
Whereas Chris Rock basically gets,
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there's the possible critique that he went too far.
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That's gonna be in the eye of the beholder.
link |
But then, and depending on how you view comedy and jokes,
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but then there's also the fact that he took that slap
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and then just snapped right back,
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so much so that people thought maybe it was fake.
link |
He also waited with his hands behind his back.
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That's just natural, he likes to stand like that.
link |
I mean, I got to a little bit of a story here
link |
to connect to what Chris Rock did.
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Like I wish, what Chris Rock did in terms of just
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taking the slap and keep going,
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first of all, just props for somebody
link |
that's able to maintain cool in that situation
link |
for the most part.
link |
I think I like watched it once.
link |
You only have to be alive on this planet
link |
to see it, you can't avoid seeing it.
link |
I wish at that afterwards, he would sort of say something
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loving and kind to Will Smith and his wife
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and then hit him real hard, lean into the joke.
link |
But I think in hockey, they call it taking a number.
link |
I have a friend who plays hockey and there's this idea
link |
that if someone checks you really badly in one game,
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you don't go and check them again,
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you don't get into a fight.
link |
But three games later, you blade them in the shin.
link |
The ability to defer and to handle it
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in whatever fashion one feels is appropriate.
link |
They're probably also friends and all those kinds of things
link |
that they respect each other, so he probably didn't,
link |
but there's a comedian instinct.
link |
I saw this, I was at an open mic here in Texas.
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I won't say where, there's many open mics.
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Have you gone to a few of these?
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These are pretty good.
link |
No, so there is more sort of rougher kind of.
link |
Yeah, you've been hanging out in West Texas lately.
link |
Austin's too tame for Lex, so he's headed to West Texas.
link |
Exactly, I put on a cowboy hat
link |
and instantly I became a cowboy.
link |
I've been talking like a cowboy.
link |
I mean, I belong out there in the desert.
link |
He's gone from eating meat and athletic greens
link |
to rattlesnakes, rattlesnake jerky.
link |
No, there was a, open mic is late at night
link |
and I was one of the only people in the audience.
link |
There's a couple of drunk folks, a few drunk folks.
link |
One of them was a couple, like bikers with helmets and so on,
link |
And then the comedian, the open mic comedian,
link |
did a joke about people who wear helmets.
link |
I don't know if it was on purpose or not,
link |
but he did the joke.
link |
And then the guy about women who wear helmets.
link |
And the guy, it's this exact same situation.
link |
The guy stood up, walked up to him.
link |
There was no slap.
link |
It's so interesting,
link |
because this happened before the Will Smith thing.
link |
So he walked up to the comedian
link |
and said, I think he pointed his finger down
link |
and told him to stop or something like that.
link |
And then sat down.
link |
This is an audience of like six people.
link |
And at midnight around then, there's nobody,
link |
no security, nothing.
link |
And then this guy was the energy drunk,
link |
but also a biker and what he felt his lady
link |
was now attacked by the comedian, right?
link |
And the comedian was a kind of out of shape, small guy.
link |
So he's not threatening at all and probably in trouble.
link |
And the comedian, after he sat down,
link |
he looked a little bit scared.
link |
He paced back and forth.
link |
And then he did the joke again.
link |
And I was sitting and I started,
link |
I leaned back and I just did this like,
link |
because that is comedy.
link |
And the guy was getting angrier and angrier.
link |
And he just sat there.
link |
And the comedian went on for a couple more minutes
link |
and then did another bad joke,
link |
but another joke about him.
link |
It's just like, he leaned into it.
link |
If you go to a small comedy club, open mic or otherwise,
link |
you're in the shooting gallery.
link |
Like you're basically there teed up as a pin to get it.
link |
We went and saw Andrew Scholls in San Francisco.
link |
Yeah, it was hilarious.
link |
I mean, he's just masterful in his ability
link |
to command an audience.
link |
But I felt for the people up front,
link |
but no sympathy either because you buy tickets
link |
to sit up front at a Scholls show, you're gonna get it.
link |
But he was very loving.
link |
First of all, funny.
link |
The funniness really helps you.
link |
But the ethic of the comedian is like that fearlessness.
link |
What I really liked is like the danger,
link |
there's risk to comedy and there's also consequences.
link |
Have you watched that show?
link |
The Marvelous Miss Maisel show?
link |
I watched a few of them.
link |
Guilty pleasure there.
link |
She plays a comic in the, I think it's mid 1960s in New York.
link |
And there's a character that somewhat resembles Lenny Bruce.
link |
It's sort of meant to be Lenny Bruce.
link |
And they're always getting arrested and this kind of thing.
link |
I think I learned about it from Joe.
link |
Anyway, the writing is great.
link |
But yeah, comedy is designed to push boundaries, right?
link |
And to say the thing that other people aren't,
link |
feel they can't say.
link |
Not something in science, right?
link |
Science you're supposed to,
link |
etiquette is a big part of how you communicate ideas.
link |
It's about constraining communication.
link |
This is something, I mean, I confess on the podcast,
link |
in the goals of making it clear, interesting,
link |
surprising and actionable,
link |
you have to constrain the amount
link |
and the style of information.
link |
Otherwise it becomes something else altogether, right?
link |
I saw Sandra Perchay, Google CEO,
link |
said that he likes the thing you mentioned,
link |
not the yoga nidra, but the NSDR,
link |
non sleep deep rest podcast over meditation.
link |
I don't know if you saw that.
link |
Yeah, I saw that, yeah.
link |
What do you think that is?
link |
What do you think the difference is?
link |
Yeah, so non sleep deep rest, NSDR is an acronym
link |
that I coined because it encompasses a lot of practices
link |
that are not meditation per se,
link |
but that bring the brain and body
link |
into a state of relaxation and focus.
link |
So hypnosis is one variant of NSDR.
link |
There are other variants of NSDR.
link |
You can just look these up and you'll find them.
link |
And I think that they've caught on
link |
and that the CEO of Google is an avid practitioner of NSDR
link |
because it has this amazing ability
link |
to reset your energy levels and focus.
link |
Whereas with meditation, many people find meditation hard.
link |
And part of the reason they find it hard
link |
is that it requires focus.
link |
NSDR is a state which is very calm and relaxing.
link |
You don't have to work too hard.
link |
You're just listening to a script,
link |
whereas most forms of meditation, not all,
link |
but most forms of meditation involve cranking up
link |
the activity in your prefrontal cortex
link |
and trying to see your thoughts
link |
as opposed to thinking your thoughts
link |
or focus on your breath,
link |
but then third personing yourself in some respect
link |
And so many people who meditate quite intensely
link |
feel more exhausted.
link |
Now that doesn't mean that meditation
link |
doesn't have any utility,
link |
but it's distinctly different than NSDR.
link |
And I think that people are working,
link |
certainly the CEO of Google I have to imagine
link |
is working very hard and using his forebrain.
link |
If he's going to have 20 or 30 minutes to take a break,
link |
he should, and I think this is what he's doing,
link |
he should go out for a jog and not listen to anything
link |
and just kind of let his mind wander
link |
or sit there in a chair and just zone out or do NSDR.
link |
The problem is people are not that good at shifting states.
link |
We are all actually pretty good at,
link |
even people with severe ADHD,
link |
we had an episode about this,
link |
can become hyper focused on things that they actually enjoy
link |
because dope and most of the drugs designed to treat ADHD
link |
are drugs that increase the levels of dopamine.
link |
So when you like something,
link |
there's dopamine release and you can focus.
link |
It's when you don't like something that's hard to focus,
link |
shifting states is hard.
link |
I'm sure you've experienced this.
link |
If you've ever been in deep research or podcasting,
link |
podcasting, and then all of a sudden you go for a run,
link |
you probably spend the first third of that run thinking.
link |
And then in the middle third,
link |
you're kind of that thinking is fractured a bit.
link |
And then in the final third
link |
is where you finally get to relax
link |
because the brain doesn't shift states very quickly.
link |
We can go from sleep to wakefulness quickly.
link |
We can go from wakefulness to sleep quickly,
link |
but we don't shift between different states of consciousness
link |
like a step function, except in rare cases, right?
link |
All of a sudden we hear an explosion right now,
link |
it's a step function.
link |
We're in fear or we're in alertness, right?
link |
A heightened state of alertness.
link |
But NSDR is terrific at allowing people
link |
to learn to shift their state.
link |
And I actually would venture to argue that
link |
part of the value of meditation and exercise
link |
is the actual state that you get into
link |
in deep meditation or exercise,
link |
but just as valuable is the transition
link |
that you have to take yourself through
link |
from one state of mind to the other and then back again.
link |
When I look, David Goggins, he always seems to come up
link |
because he represents so many important things,
link |
drive, determination, override of emotional state,
link |
going from being a 300 pound plus person
link |
to a fit person through,
link |
he's never revealed anything substantial
link |
about what he ate or what he didn't eat.
link |
He basically says like, listen, run a lot, eat less, right?
link |
But what's remarkable is so much of what he says
link |
is about those transitions,
link |
about taking oneself from a state of I don't want to
link |
to scruffing oneself and like you're gonna do it anyway.
link |
And then being able to carry that into regular life,
link |
So I think that NSDR is immensely powerful.
link |
And one of the reasons I'm such a fan of people doing it
link |
is that most people don't stick to a meditation practice.
link |
There are also been a few cases
link |
you might find this interesting.
link |
There's a book by Scott Carney.
link |
I forget what it's called.
link |
I think it's called the transcendence trap or something.
link |
I'm gonna have that title wrong,
link |
but there have been a fair number of cases of people
link |
that go and do very extensive meditation,
link |
silent meditation retreats,
link |
who then return to normal life and end up killing themselves.
link |
There are states of mind inside of extended meditations
link |
or silent meditations that are very beneficial.
link |
And I'm certainly not suggesting people don't meditate,
link |
but I know at least one person who came back
link |
from one of these long extended meditation retreats
link |
and wasn't able to shift their state back
link |
into one that was functional in regular life.
link |
And that book includes a very dramatic story.
link |
I don't wanna give it away in case people
link |
check out the book,
link |
but Scott told the story to me directly once,
link |
where someone feels they've reached enlightenment
link |
and then commit suicide.
link |
So these very unusual brain states
link |
are potentially hazardous if people can't return from them.
link |
So it's nice to focus not on those brain states,
link |
but instead on the shifting.
link |
Right, this morning I woke up a little bit earlier
link |
than I would have liked.
link |
I use this reverie app that's research backed,
link |
There's a free version of it or you can try it for free.
link |
So I feel comfortable.
link |
That's for hypnosis?
link |
And I do a self hypnosis to put me back into sleep.
link |
And if I can't sleep,
link |
you just put me into a state of deep relaxation.
link |
I would put hypnosis under the category of NSDR,
link |
yoga nidra under the category of NSDR.
link |
There are now some NSDR scripts online
link |
if you just go to YouTube that you can just listen to.
link |
Do you like those?
link |
I think the one from made for is quite good.
link |
I have an affiliation with them, but it's free.