Dr. Andrew Huberman’s Path to Fame, Money, and Total Human Optimization

we probably shouldn't box. So I, I boxed. I had my boxing card and boxed pretty consistently, uh, various times. I'm not very good. You don't get a nose like this doing yoga. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.

Andrew Huberman was just on the podcast. If you don't know who he is, I'm going to try and describe him very simply. He's this guy who works at Stanford. I believe he's a neuroscience— Dr. Huberman is his name. And he's got this YouTube video series and a podcast called Huberman Labs where basically he picks one topic like sleep, stress, building muscle, depression, addiction, and he'll do like an hour to 2 hours of just talking into the camera and talking into his mic and explains very easy ways to understand what it means and how you can overcome or like what supplements or what exercises you can do to address. He's only been around for 10 months and he's already one of the top 10 one of the most popular podcasts. He's everywhere on YouTube. This guy is a badass. We just had him on the podcast. I'm kind of like starstruck a little bit 'cause I'm such a fan of his. I think you're really gonna dig this. It's a little bit health-focused. Towards the end, we get into a little bit more business stuff, but if you're into business, you have to be healthy, otherwise you're not gonna be able to perform well. And so we talk a lot about that. We talk a lot about morning routines, and these aren't just like, "Oh, I write in my journal." It's like, "Well, no, if you do this," Based off of science, based off peer review research. If you do this, you're gonna feel this way and that's gonna help with X, Y, and Z. So it's like kind of an evidence research-based podcast that, that we've just done. It's pretty freaking cool. So enjoy it. Ben, what do you think? He, he just— Sean used the term shortcuts. He's really good for giving little hacks. I just feel like I took away like 6 to 10 little hacks I can use in my life that are gonna make it better. Mostly biologically, like it's gonna actually improve my sleep or, uh, improve, improve, uh, my ability to focus and things like that. So, uh, I think there's a lot of great little nuggets for people in it. So check it out. And by the way, we are giving $1,000 to 6 people. What you have to do is you go to ratethispodcast.com/mfm. So that's MFM as in my first million. So ratethispodcast.com/mfm and leave us a review. All you gotta do is leave, leave us a review. I don't even care if it's a negative review. Tell us how you think about anything, 1 star, 5 star, I don't care, do whatever you want. And, uh, at the end of the month, we're gonna pick like, I think, 6 of them and give $1,000 away. So ratethispodcast.com/mfm, write something cool, write something funny. Maybe if you stick out, we'll, uh, we'll pick you. Um, let us know what you think about the podcast. Enjoy the episode. Do you check notifications on YouTube?

Uh, I do not.

Okay, so let me tell you something really quick. So about 2 weeks ago, so I'm a big, uh, Bay Area punk rock fan, so I listen to like I used to live in San Francisco for years. I listened to like old Rancid, old Green Day, and I was looking at an old interview with Tim Armstrong from Rancid and it has like very little views. And I was loving this interview and I was going to comment how much I love it. And I scroll down and you were the first comment on there and I replied to you. Uh, and so I thought that was funny. We have similar interests. I did not expect to see you there on an old Tim Armstrong from Rancid.

Yeah, I'm a huge, uh, Rancid and Tim Armstrong fan. I mean, without taking up too much of our time on this. I've never, I've never met Tim personally, um, but, uh, yeah, growing up I was an Operation Ivy fan, big fan of a band called Crimpshrine, this whole East Bay punk scene. And then, um, Rancid came out, and actually Tim and Matt Freeman had a band called Downfall in between. Um, you can find some of those tracks, and I love those tracks. I just love it. Um, they cover such a huge range styles, and they've just done amazing things. And yeah, so if there's any content out there that's, you know, Rancid acoustic or Downfall rare Rancid tracks, I scour the internet for them. If I don't know about them, send them to me and I devour that stuff.

And we'll have Sean kind of do like an intro on you. But really quick, this is one of the reasons why I think people like you and why your podcast has taken off, because you're this intellectual powerhouse But you look like an athlete, yet you kind of have this like punk rock side to you. Like you've got to tell that you have that to you. And I think that you're just like a really like eclectic, interesting person. And I think that's why— so basically, Sean, you can do the intro, but you've had this podcast that just launched like a year ago. You're already the biggest guy there is, uh, or top 10, top 5. It's pretty amazing. Um, and I think that's one of the reasons why, why you're, you're kicking ass is because you are quite eclectic and very different from what we're used to.

Oh, go ahead.

I guess to say we can kind of like set the scene. So, uh, so we have Andrew Huberman here, Dr. Huberman, and, uh, known, known for Huberman Lab. And you're a neuroscientist, uh, professor at Stanford, and you have a whole bunch of— you have an interesting podcast, and I've seen you everywhere recently. So I don't know if this is like— I don't know if you have hired an amazing PR person. I don't know if I'm just late to the party, but you went from I never heard of you before, like 3 months ago, let's say, to I only hear about you. My YouTube feed is basically just giving me more and more of your content every day. So is that, is that a new thing or, or am I just like discovering you now?

Oh, it's a, it's a very new thing. I mean, to just give you the quick arc, um, you know, leaving out all the pre-academia stuff, you know, I did my training in neuroscience and in physiology, things like temperature regulation and things of that sort. And over the years, I worked on a number of different problems formally, meaning in laboratories as a PhD student, postdoc, junior professor, and tenured professor, things like stress and regeneration. And what happened was right around 2015, I started getting curious about how scientific information is making it out into the general public. But there really wasn't a cause or a venue for doing that. There were these meetings, like big summit meetings and things like that, that weren't really my flavor, to be honest. They were perfectly fine, but they would typically go something like, you know, yoga class, group meditation, one talk, buy my product, buy my book, and then people would go. And so what happened was in 2019, I have a good friend, his name is Pat Dossett. He's a Wharton grad, former Navy SEAL. Operator, um, did 9 years in the SEAL Teams, is a good friend of mine. We swim together. Um, he much further ahead than I, of course. Um, you know, those guys definitely have extra gears. Um, I've, you know, seen that. And, and Pat, uh, also has a company called Made For, which is a behavioral health company who started with Blake Mycoskie, who's a founder of TOMS Shoes. So what happened was in 2019, uh, Pat asked me a question. We were literally getting out of the water. We'd done an early morning cold water swim. And he said, you know, what are you going to do in 2019 to make the world a better place? And I was like, well, you know, I'm trying to figure out neural regeneration, stress, and how to sleep better in my lab. And he said, yeah, what are you really going to do? He was kind of poking at me. And I said, well, you know, I think, um, it'd be fun to just teach science on the internet and just put quality information out there because I don't see that. So I started doing that in 2019, little short posts, pretty nerdy stuff, mostly on Instagram. and people seem to like it. And then in 20— and I got a book deal, um, in 20— end of 2019. I thought I would do what most academics do, write a book, sell a book. And then 2020 hit and a couple things happened. One is I realized there was a tremendous need for people to have the tools for managing stress and circadian rhythms and sleep and managing mental workload and et cetera, because everyone was locked down and stressed out. And confused, as was I, frankly. But I had access to these tools, so I started disseminating the tools by going on podcasts and on Instagram. And then eventually the podcast led to a, you know, the Rogan appearance certainly had a lot to do with it. A Rich Roll appearance that did well also. And Lex Fridman at the end of 2020, great podcaster and also a great friend of mine now, said you should start a podcast. So January of 2021, bought the mics, set it up. I looked to my skateboarding punk rock past. I have a friend named Mike Blayback, known as Blayback Photo in the skateboard and action sports community. He shoots all the stuff of Jim Connor and Ken Park driving rally cars, of Danny Way, Tony Hawk, all the— there are only a few superstars of skateboarding and action sports photography. Mike happens to be one of them, and he said, let's build an aesthetic that kind of represents you. I always wear the same black shirt. I own 26 of these. That's not for the podcast. You know, I always keep my hair short and just, you know, this is me on any day. It's just that the kind of camera showed up and I started sitting down and thinking, well, what would I do in a classroom if someone was interested in stress and how to manage stress? Well, I would give 4 lectures on that. And so a big feature of the podcast that's a little different is that than most podcasts is that I try and stay on theme and I try and keep it like I would in a classroom. But then offer a lot of tools, which is a little different. And so that's really how it happened. And no, no PR firm, no, you know, big— no, no contract signed. Everything we've got with my team.

How did you get on?

It's just a one page. Yeah.

How did you get on Rogan? Because that was a big, obviously, inflection point. And then that leads to Tim Ferriss, that leads to more and more. So how did you get on Rogan?

Yeah, and that was all this year. So then, well, two things about that. I'll just want to make sure I close the hatch on. So I haven't written this book. I haven't released it for two reasons. One is that in 2020, I didn't want to sell anything. I was coming to the table as an academic with a tenured position and a salary. Frankly, we don't make big salaries even at Stanford. Yes, if my dean is listening, the salaries at Stanford are not in keeping with the cost of living in the Bay Area, which is why most people sit on company boards and things of that sort. So you do science for the love of it. Um, but I didn't want to talk about my work, um, and be self-promotional. I really love learning and teaching, and I have one mission in my professional life, and that's to share the magic and the utility of biology. I, I mean, that's for me, just fills me up. And talking about my work is fun, we can do that if you want, but there's so much terrific work out there. So what happened was the second Rogan appearance is Joe said, you know, Huberman's doing this podcast thing and people seem interested in it. Let's get him back on to share some of this information. And, but how did it happen in the first place? Well, I have a good friend and business partner at my podcast. His name is Rob Moore, and no, he's not taking new clients. So, because he no longer does what I'm about to describe, which is that Rob came from the world of PR, but then he got really interested in podcasts. He's in his mid-30s and he started a podcast called The Fight with Teddy Atlas. He loves boxing. He really liked Teddy.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I listen to that every week. Yeah. So you work, you work with that guy?

Yeah.

I mean, he's got like the, a thick Boston accent, right?

That's Ken Rideout, who's a friend who I met through Rob. Rob, you're not gonna see, you're not gonna find. He sits behind an email wall and he's a close friend of mine that, October, this time last year, October, November of 2020, we went for lunch and I said, let's start a podcast. Lex thinks that we've got traction with a podcast and I think he's right. And he said, great, let's do it. Let's buy the mics. Let's, you know, we built the studio with our own hands. Mike showed up, got the DC team in there because they're friends of mine, DC Shoes, DC Skateboarding. And they helped me create an aesthetic that we thought would work for, make people feel like they were in a classroom. And, you know, Rob was the one who connected me to the person who connected me to Joe. There's a little bit of— since this is a public venue, there's a little bit of a wall there just because they get flooded with requests. And I'll be honest, you know, I don't know what their process is. I think that they have a process, and I'm not privy to it. I think that what's beautiful about the Rogan podcast having been a guest on there and obviously a big fan, is that they— I think what you see is the real deal. Uh, you know, Joe sits down with people that he'd like to have a meal with and/or conversation with and has a conversation. And, um, and the human appetite for that is obviously huge. Uh, people seem to really resonate with that. And of course, Joe is a tremendous reason. Um, so he's been tremendously helpful. Tim Ferriss, uh, Rich Roll, and Lex Fridman. And I will say that Lex has been my kind of guiding light in this whole process about bringing certain elements of my own person and personality to things. You know, yeah, I am. I mean, this is going to sound weird to anyone who's looking to this for science information, but— and it might not even make sense, but Sam, you'll get it. And I don't know, other people will too, which is like, yeah, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool punk rocker. I grew up in that. And if that scene I think people think of is like loud music, loud clothes, loud everything. That scene, at its essence, the reason I gravitated towards it early is that it's very varied. It's about showing up like heartful, strong. It's never a victim stance, but it's not an aggressive stance, but it's not a weak stance either. And for me, it just resonated. And so, it was like, let's— the opening track of my podcast, for instance, is a song. I don't want to get the copyright people on me. So, that's familiar from the punk rock culture. And I just wanted to bring all that forward. And I think Lex was the one who really said, pick 2 or 3 things that you really feel represent your relationship to science and that give you energy for that. I mean, Lex is a genius. I have to say, what you see there with the jacket and tie and all the interviews, Lex works so hard. He thinks so hard about where he's going with all this. And he just interviewed the director of the National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins. That is not an easy grab. Um, so in any case, that's a long-winded— I don't tend to be succinct, so I'll stop.

Yeah. I want to ask you about— I'll ask you about Lex in a second, but for those who are listening and don't know who you are, basically I have your channel up right now. So your first video was launched 10 months ago. Your video is basically you and your— this is weird to say to you, but you're a, you're like a good-looking dude. You've got like a goatee. You look kind of like a football player. You're wearing, you're wearing a black shirt with a black background. You're pretty serious. Um, and you're just sitting for like 60 minutes to almost 2 hours sometimes. And you're explaining things that sound complicated, like how your nervous system works and changes, master your sleep, um, using failures, movements, and balance to learn faster. So these are like things that are somewhat complicated, but you sit down and you look at the camera for 1 to 2 hours and you tell, you, you, you explain what, what it all means. And then you do something that's interesting where it says like, all right, so how do you take advantage of this and apply this and use this? Um, and you're long-winded on purpose because you said, you're like, I'm not gonna, I need you to know exactly how this works so you can decide what you want to do versus me just telling you exactly what to do. Yeah.

There's like a balance of, uh, you can simplify something so people can understand it without dumping, remove their own agency to, to, to, to dive in.

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for that description. You know, my, um, like I said, that the, The goal and really my purpose in life, I know mission statements and purpose sound kind of— they're kind of cliché, but it is really is I get— so, I have this process that I've used for a long time, which is I like to just pay attention to what puts energy into my body. The music, like I'll hear a song, you're familiar with this, you hear a song, you're like, "Yes!" It just fills you with energy, whether or not that's dopamine or adrenaline or whatever, we could dissect that, but that's not the point. But that energy is a neural energy. It doesn't have to do with calories. It doesn't— but that energy is your source, right? Like in the Eastern philosophies, they would call it chi or whatever it is. So I've always sensed what I really enjoy. And for me, learning cool information and sharing it is what I want to do. So what I try and do is paint a tapestry at the beginning of here's a topic like stress or sleep or dopamine or ADHD or eating disorders or whatever. Whatever, and arm people with the language and make them realize that the nomenclature is just words. We can replace some of those words, and let's get a functional definition of things going. And then once they understand how things work a little bit, some of the, the algorithms, so to speak, then let's talk about what you can do with this and how you can use light to change your circadian rhythms, or particular patterns of breathing that are grounded in physiology to de-stressed rapidly, et cetera. And so, yeah.

And can you explain this first video? So your first video is only— Sean was saying that like, you're, you came everywhere, you're everywhere very quickly. Your first one was only 10 months ago. That first video has 652,000 views. It's a slick looking thumbnail. Can you walk me through how much did you spend to build that studio? And like, how did the first traction do you think come to this video? Your very first video, 650,000. The very next one looks like a month later, a million views. The next one, 630. I mean, you hit right away. You were hitting right away. How did that happen?

Yeah, that's a good question. So a big part of that was, I don't think it was the thumbnails because actually we were told by YouTube that our thumbnails weren't legible. I had these fancy anatomical drawings.

Bullshit.

You know that now we've changed them a bit. We've learned some things, you know, faces do better than images, et cetera. But if The thumbnails that are really clickbaity are thumbnails where someone's going like— where they said the wider the eyes, the more people click, and kind of crazy stuff. We didn't do that because I want people to know that I'm here with serious information because I'm serious about them. It's sort of like, why always the black shirt? These are actually the black— I literally own 26 of these. I like these particular shirts. I'm not trying to get picked up by the maker, so I won't mention it, but I've always worn them. Like them. But it's also—

there is— me and Sean always wear black typically because it's easy to hide if you're fat or wrinkles, right?

Or tattoos. Not that I'm confessing that I have any tattoos, but the, uh, if I was neck to knuckles tattoos, I would just do it, but I'm not. But the, um, and kids, uh, yes, you should be able to dress however you want and do whatever you want, but that's not the way the world works. People are always evaluating. So you decide It's your gamble. I always say authenticity is not the same as oversharing. These days, I think there's a big tendency to think, oh, because you can deadlift 500 pounds that you should put that on the internet. So this is part of my answer, which is that by the end of 2020, the Instagram channel had grown to several hundred thousand. But that, mind you, took 2 years and 50— 5-0— podcast appearances as a guest. So we announced that we were going to launch a YouTube channel to get over there and subscribe. And then we just started pushing out content. Frequency is a big deal. You know, we do one a week. We may advance to one and a shorter one each week next time. But, you know, consistency, you know, not surprisingly counts. And there's consistency of aesthetic too. You know, the building the studio was fairly straightforward. Thank you, Mike Blayback, my good friend, and DC. I mean, the one thing about skateboarders that they really, really know how to do well is to create original content in a DIY format. Okay, so actually Mike is out on a shoot right now, uh, with Spike Jones, right? So I grew up with— I don't know Spike, but I grew up with a lot of the guys who ride for Girl. Mike— Spike Jones owns Girl, a portion of Girl Skateboards. So I grew up around people that took video of us playing around in the streets on skateboards and made videos that became these iconic things.

And so, well, skateboarders were kind of like the first YouTubers, uh, you know, if you look at old Transworld or 411 videos or old DC or, um, like the, like, like what Bam was doing with Jackass, you know, it was the CKY videos. We were the skaters for the first YouTubers.

That's right though, they really were. And, um, you mentioned 411, so you definitely, you know, 411 is like No, I still skate.

I was just hanging out with Mikey Taylor this weekend, professional skateboarder.

Oh yeah, he's a good skateboarder. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And to be clear, because I want to maintain my integrity with that community, I wasn't a great skateboarder. I was okay. Thunder Trucks put me on out of sympathy. Spitfire put me on out of sympathy, but I wasn't going to be one of the big guys. It was just a community I really felt a part of. And when I went off to college, because my high school girlfriend went to college, I've tripped and fell into biology. I thought I'd be a skateboarder or a firefighter or something that was more physical, but I fell in love with biology and just that's what I've been doing ever since. But I think the aesthetic, keeping a fairly narrow messaging too. We've turned down every option to make a little bit of extra money doing affiliate codes. I mean, we do have advertising and affiliate codes, but to just pepper things with advertising everywhere, we just— I want people to have a zero-cost trusted source for science, health, and fitness information. Of course, we're not going to get everything exactly right, but to know that if they come to the Huberman Lab channel, um, that they're going to get information that's vetted, that I've— I always consult with at least 2 or 3 colleagues, professional in a given area, before I do a podcast of just me, because I don't work on ADHD. I know the a fair amount about it, but I consult with experts. And so I have a kind of advisory board. So I use the scientific community, and it's a kind of a beautiful, um, ecosystem where our advertisers are happy, we're happy, our— but the main thing is the consumers get it at zero cost to consumer. And I think that's very different than a book, uh, and that's very different than a behind-paywall strategy. I've seen a lot of health and science, uh, podcasters who are quite good move their stuff behind a paywall because you can make much more money charging, you know, $10, $30 a month or something. And I like to think that people would be willing to do that for our content. However, I feel best about the fact that for some kids sitting in halfway across the world who wants to understand weight training or ADHD or dopamine or sleep, they just— as long as they have an internet connection, they have to tolerate a few ads, but the information is free to them.

Why don't you just bail as a $1 million a year?

Uh, well, I, I'm, I'm, I guess, academically masochistic because, um, well, it's, it's interesting, and I'm happy to announce this now. I actually took, um, I'm not— I, I love doing research. Uh, we have a big project on human stress. Um, we've been working on human fear. I love doing research, and actually, a fairly sizable portion of the Huberman Lab podcast income is going to be donated to research and to scholarships for students. I'd be very honest, I'm not extremely wealthy, nor do I suffer. Money is important. I always say money can't buy happiness, but it absolutely can buffer stress. No question about that. Anyone who's ever had significant funds throughout their lifetime won't truly understand that statement. People who haven't will understand exactly what I mean. And I, I think money is very important, but so is the ecosystem between academia, public health and science communication, and the private sector. And for the time being, it just makes sense for me to continue to teach at Stanford. I teach medical students in the winter on neuroanatomy. I direct the neuroanatomy course, and I really enjoy academic conversations. They're slow. It's like lading through steel one thin layer at a time. But what you get too often is a kind of granularity where it's a process. It's not so much you get to answers, it's you get to a process of getting to answers. And I don't think I'd be happy without doing that.

Actually, a couple people are fans of the pod and I knew they would be excited to have you on because we mostly, this is a business-oriented podcast is why kind of we're asking you some things about the business of how you create, you became a content creator, how you got your audience, you know, why do you choose to—

Sean, we've not even, we've not even told them what we do. I guess I, I didn't even—

well, I, I did, I did a little bit of research, um, and I, I was delighted when you guys asked. I mean, I'm new to Twitter, uh, frankly, I didn't like Twitter when I first got on. I was like, wow, people are really combative compared to Instagram. And I think it's because you don't have to show your face. And I'm a very like, I'm not an aggressive person, but if somebody wants to go toe to toe, I still have that in me. I'm not suggesting anyone get violent out there, but people would come at me and on Instagram and sort of, well, show yourself, let's go, you know, let's have a conversation. And, you know, so I don't get into back and forth in comments. I found Twitter to be an incredibly combative neighborhood. And then you guys showed up. I was like, oh wow, I guess there's some nice people in the neighborhood. So sort of like finding the other punk rockers and skateboarders. It's like you and me, we got the same thing. And we're good. So that's, that was the feeling I had. And then it turns out that's actually the case.

Twitter, you get rewarded. Every network rewards you for a different behavior, for wit, which is like the plus side. So, you know, being witty in 140 characters, but then on the other side, it's basically, uh, you know, if you have the sharpest insult at somebody, you also get rewarded and you don't have to show your face and there's all these other benefits. And so, so it, it brings out a different side. It's actually, YouTube used to be this way too. The YouTube comments, I don't know if people remember this, but YouTube comments used to be the running joke as like, what is the most cesspool of the toxic commentary that exists? It was called the YouTube comments. And now YouTube comments are extremely, I don't know what they changed in the algorithm or the, the flagging or what, whatnot, but YouTube comments are on the whole, you know, either funny or supportive or whatnot. They really changed that. TikTok's doing a good job.

Um, anyways, I wanna say one thing about comments, uh, before I forget, sorry to interrupt, but vis-à-vis business. Because I know that's your, your main audience is one thing that I did on Instagram early on and that I do on YouTube is comment sections are great, but better to make them interactive. So I actively request, and we read every single comment. I say, tell me, like, give me, give us feedback, but also give us suggestions and give us ideas about future podcasts. And then I've devoted entire episodes, we haven't done one in a while, but to what we call office hours. Which is where I go through the most frequently asked questions and address those. So now there's an incentive to ask, to put stuff in the comments. And I think that's a really good non-combative use of the comment section. And we of course still get some crazy stuff in the comments and people being combative, but they should just know that we don't actually read those. No, I'm kidding. We read them all.

Yeah, for sure. So I wanted to talk about a couple of things. One was what we talked about now. How did you break out what And I think it's great. You know, I teach science on the internet is such a simple, a simple like sort of philosophy, a simple, you know, business statement of what do I do? What am I here to do? And then the mission, I, I enjoyed that as well, but I wanted to actually go through some of those greatest hits. So some of the reasons that you've grown in popularity is that you put out nuggets that are interesting to people. And when I was talking to friends saying you were coming on, they said, you know, we ask a lot of the kind of like, oh, you know, we have a billionaire on the podcast. Hey, you're super successful. What's your morning routine? And they tell us, oh, you know, here's what I do in the morning, you know, and people sort of equate that to, if I do this, I will— I too will become a billionaire, which is obviously not, not the right way to think about it. But I think if I ask you about your morning routine, which I'm guessing is centered around health, mental health, uh, fitness, um, and sort of regulating your body, that that actually will be applicable to more people. So take us through what is the, uh, what is the morning routine? I know you've talked about this on some other pods, but I bet the majority of our audience has not listened to all your stuff. So, you know, these are the greatest hits. Let's, let's do them.

Sure. Yes. So, uh, I wake up. Uh, for me, that's usually somewhere around, somewhere between 5:30 and 6:30, depending on how early I went to sleep. Uh, I wake up and I do an assessment of whether or not I feel rested or not. Most days the answer is no, uh, just because of life, staying up too late, stress, etc. So I do a 10 to 30 minute Yoga Nidra session first thing in the morning. Yoga Nidra is a passive listening. You can find these Yoga Nidra links on YouTube. There's one which is 10 Minute Yoga Nidra. There's one that actually Made For put out for free called NSDR, non-sleep deep rest. That's a 30-minute one. It's a script where you just listen. It brings your brain into a state that's like that's pseudo-sleep. After that 10 or 30-minute Yoga Nidra, I feel like I've slept as much as I need to sleep. It's a really remarkable reset, and it, it avoids your brain going into this state of planning and organization, what we call duration, path, and outcome in the neural circuitry world, and keeps it in that kind of liminal state of adjusting. And there are some interesting data published showing that these Yoga Nidra Meditations, if you will, can upregulate some of the neurotransmitters in the brain, including dopamine, that make you prepared for action. And so they're very restorative, especially in the absence of complete sleep. If I feel great, I might just get out of bed. The first thing is always— and I have to be careful because to list every step, because sometimes people say, wait, he doesn't even go to the bathroom in the morning. I mean, obviously I go right foot, left foot to the bathroom. Then I use the restroom. Then I go downstairs. I drink water. I hydrate and I go outside and I get some sunlight in my eyes for 10 to 30 minutes. Foundational, absolutely critical practice. When I don't do it for more than 2 days in a row, I start messing up all sorts of aspects of my life. And most people are not doing this. Even on cloudy days, do it. Don't wear sunglasses unless you have a medical reason why you need to. It's fine to wear corrective lenses or contacts, You don't need to stare directly at the sun or see the sunrise. And these are the questions I most often get. This is why I'm hitting these as bullet points. And if you wake up before the sun rises, flip on as many lights as you can in your space if you want to be awake in your artificial light environment. And then once the sun is out, go outside. I don't care if you're in the depths of Scandinavian winter, the sun comes out at some point. Some people might need a daylight simulator, but The discussion about daylight simulators is usually an excuse to avoid having to just go outside and get sunlight in your eyes for 10 to 30 minutes. You can check your phone if you want, or bring the newspaper if people still read those, or a book. I usually bring a journal and I write down some things that I want to do that day and try and make sure that I'm clearing away some of the clutter. Um, if you have a dog, you could do this while walking, etc. And then I sometimes will combine this with a walk. Optic flow, when you're just walking through space, not looking at anything like your phone or anything in particular, that optic flow is known to suppress a circuit in the limbic system that involves the threat detection centers. It is very calming to walk through space, and it reduces your overall levels of anxiety. Many people, just being indoors, not getting sunlight, uh, not getting enough sleep, life is stressful, they're not doing this. So basically, all of that can be accomplished in 1 hour. It's wake up, Yoga Nidra for 10 to 30 minutes, Use the bathroom, drink some water, of course, all the basic biological functions.

What about, um, L-theanine and coffee?

Okay, so I don't ingest theanine during the day. I ingest it as part of a sleep cocktail before sleep. Some people will take L-theanine with coffee. It's now in many energy drinks because it takes away some of the jitters that— it's a mild sedative and it takes away some of the jitters that caffeine can induce. I don't drink any caffeine until 90 minutes, or ideally 120 minutes, after I've woken up for the following reason. Uh, during sleep, uh, you— well, during wakefulness, you— and the longer you're awake, adenosine builds up in your system. Caffeine is an adenosine antagonist functionally. I realize it's a competitive agonist for you aficionados, but it basically blocks the adenosine receptor functionality, so to speak. But when that caffeine wears off, you're going to get a big crash because there's going to be a surplus of adenosine. By waiting 90 minutes to 2 hours to ingest caffeine— 90 minutes to 2 hours after waking to ingest caffeine— it's a little bit of a struggle to learn how to do this, but your natural adenosine system— that, that adenosine tapers down very, very low as a consequence, and you don't get that rebound in the afternoon. I drink mate, a yerba mate tea. I love it. Um, there's a great— I don't like that the, uh, really smoky ones. I have no business relationship to any yerba mate company, by the way, but the one I love is by— I don't know who this person is or if it's even a person— is Anna Park. It's a really delicious one. It comes loose leaf and, um, it's very high caffeine content, so you don't need very much of it. And it also has a lot of what's called GLP-1, glucagon-like peptide 1, which is actually being used now as an anti- diabetes and obesity drug. There's all sorts of great things about GLP-1, upregulates dopamine receptors, et cetera. So I'll drink maté starting about 90 minutes after I'm awake, and then that's kind of my morning. But after the walk, I go inside. I do try to avoid social media at that point. Maybe a quick check of 10 minutes. I'll even set an alarm and then on a phone or computer. Typically on a phone. I'd like to move more to the computer, but I'm in transit a lot these days, and, um, you have to, uh, be thoughtful, obviously. But I think maybe 10 minutes on social media. But I want social media to continue to be a pleasure, and because of the dopamine system— and we can talk about that— I don't want to get— I don't want to go down the rabbit hole of someone else's, um, psychology or neurology. Um, I want to stay in my own frame. The, the orientation I have in the early part of the day with that notebook is I want to be in my own mental frame. I've just slept. During sleep is when we have neuroplasticity. The actual rewiring of neural connections occurs during sleep. I'm a big believer in the subconscious. And when you wake up, you are now in a position to extract whatever it is that these new neural circuits have figured out about the previous day and day's events. And so if I immediately bombard myself with sensory experience, or input or distractions, I'm not able to, uh, do that. So this morning, for instance, I'll just give an example. I'm preparing an episode of the podcast on time perception. I've been reading a lot about this and I woke up this morning, went outside with the notebook and just sat there and then realized that there's a way to organize this episode that has to do with frame rates and sort of slow motion versus fast motion. Cognition. Or hopefully it'll be clear by the time the podcast happens. It's not fully formed, but that came to me. So I wrote that down, thought, great. And then I'll move into some more typical type work. It's great if you can avoid email until after 12 noon, but that's very hard for a lot of businesses. So I will usually do a brief check-in on email, critical items, but then I like to write. So I will— I'm working— I am working on a book finally. I will work on scientific papers, on grants, on reviewing papers. I try and make that pretty heavy intellectual lifting and take that till about noon. And then I'll look into— and then we can talk about food and other things. At this point, I haven't eaten anything.

Do you have a— so you have not eaten till noon. But one thing that you did not bring up, and I'm wondering, do you have a family?

No, I have a relationship and I had a dog until recently. He passed away. So I do understand people have different things. Yeah, I have different constraints. He was a big part of my morning routine. I had this big 90-pound bulldog mastiff named Costello, and we would slowly do our walk. We'd get the sun together. Animals are perfectly happy to do these because these are very innate behaviors.

But no kids?

No children.

You know who you are?

There are children in my life, I'll say that. But I don't have any children. Yeah.

You remind me of Henry Rollins.

Yeah, except his jaw goes to about here. Right. You know, like Henry's head is like this big, right?

So do you know who Henry Rollins is?

No.

One time I shot— OK, Sean doesn't know who Dolly Parton is. He didn't know who Jimmy Buffett was. Sean doesn't know, like, white people shit. And so we're going to put this in the category of white people shit. Henry Rollins, was he— was it Black Flag that he was the lead singer of?

Yeah. So, well, all right. I have to be careful not to go down this path, too. I mean, I'm a big Ian McKaye fan, so Minor Threat. right? Then Minor Threat, and then there was Black Flag. So, and yes, but Rollins was part of Black Flag and he was early in the punk rock scene to get into lifting weights. Ian and those guys were straight edge. Straight edge means different things in different eras, but at that time it meant no alcohol, no drugs. It's a pretty firm stance in the '80s compared to the rest of the culture. But yeah, I don't know Henry, I don't know Ian, but I listen to Minor Threat all the time.

But Sean, so Henry is like this guy, he's like this punk rocker. He's like, he might be in his 60s now, but he basically like was singing punk rock, but he didn't drink or anything and he started lifting weights. So he was like kind of like a meathead a little bit and not in a bad way, but he was like jacked. And now at this point in his life, he's completely single. He doesn't have kids or anything, and he's a poet. And he's an actor and he's just kind of like a Renaissance man where— and if you Google him, you'll recognize him. Did you Google him? He's, uh, he's like an— you'll definitely recognize him. He was, um, in— he was— he's sometimes in movies, Sons of Anarchy, things like that. And anyway, just this like really, really interesting guy, and he'll go into like a TED Talk or something like that and he'll just talk about his philosophy on anything. He's kind of like Mike Tyson a little bit. He just kind of like every time he talks, it's just like wisdom. Um, anyway, uh, Huberman has this like, uh, this like Henry Rollins vibe a little bit. And that's why I was asking about kids because you're this interesting guy who's kind of like, I, in my head, I picture you as this like guy who's alone intensely studying and trying to figure out like crack a problem. And I, and I think that that's really in, that's just like an interesting part of you, or at least in my head, that's what I'm making you up as.

Sure. I mean, I, I, at, in the spirit of, um, authenticity but not oversharing. What I can say about this is, I mean, I'm blessed with great friendships. I think because of that skateboarding punk rock era and because it was mostly guys back then, I have a community, a lot of friends who swim, who work out, who play music. I'm really good friends with a guy named Michael Muller who's a photographer who does all the Marvel stuff. And I'll train with him. I train sometimes up at Laird Hamilton and Gabby Reese's Pool. I like those workouts. They're good friends of mine when I'm down there. But yes, I, at this point in my life, I live in a somewhat remote area. I have a gym and a sauna and a cold dunk. I spend a lot of time with the books. I, I'm dying to get another dog. And I do live that kind of monastic lifestyle. Um, you know, I do have a relationship, and that's great. And, uh, you know, the children thing is interesting because I started off studying brain development and neuroplasticity and brain development. And so let's just say that if I do something, I do it 100%. So I have no children now, but if I do have kids, I genuinely want 5 of them. I want a big family or none at all. So that's the plan.

We should talk because your kind of— your specialty is around the eye, right? And I've heard you say this before, and I'm going to Eye is essentially part of the brain that exists outside of the, the sort of the cranium where the rest of the brain is stored. It's actually like— that's right, it is the same. Is it what, the same tissue, or it's like developmentally that it like kind of segregated at some point? But it's basically, it's the only part of your brain that's like facing the world.

That's right, uh, you got, you got several points there right and none of them wrong. These two bits are two pieces of your central nervous system. They got extruded out of the skull, or we should say out of the cranial vault, because technically they're still in the skull, um, extruded out of the cranial vault during development. And they are the way that your brain figures out where it is in space and time, right? Um, by the rising and setting of the sun and the changing of the, of the amount of light throughout the year, regardless of where you live. And, uh, they are responsible for delivering 40% of the— let's just say 40% of the brain's real estate is devoted to vision in some way or another. We are incredibly visual animals, especially even in blind people. That real estate for vision that's in the back of the head, the so-called occipital cortex, is overtaken by areas that respond to touch and hearing. That's why they're so good at tactile and hearing. But, um, in sighted individuals, vision is the predominant way, not just that we represent and see objects around us— oh, blue car, tall, uh, good-looking woman or man, whatever it is. It's also the way that we orient ourselves in space and time and that we set our frame rate. And we can talk about this, but essentially, you— when, as you move through life, you're either batching time in big chunks or in small chunks, and that has to do with how you're viewing the visual world. So you're either thinking in slow motion or thinking it fast, um, depending on your visual environment. That's probably a little abstract, but Yes, these two bits are brain outside your cranial vault.

Why you say kind of in the morning you want to go, you know, one of the key things of your morning routine was get outside, let the sun hit your eyes. It's basically alerting the body that, hey, the sun is up, kickstart all your— start your engines because it's daytime, is regulating that way. And I think there's different things throughout the day that you've talked about. Anxiety, maybe help you go to sleep. And I'll give you kind of two questions that came from the audience that when I tweeted out that you were coming on, they're both in the same vein. And so one question is, we talk a lot on this podcast about the 80/20, right? We are fans of the shortcut. Shortcuts get a bad, bad rap around the world. You know, it's sort of seen as the, the lazy, I don't care thing to do. But in many ways, a shortcut is great. A shortcut is basically saying, How do I identify the highest leverage points, uh, that if I did those, I would get maybe the biggest impact? Or how do I get the results I want faster instead of slower? And so what would be the 80/20, meaning if you could change for all the people who are listening to this, right? So imagine 100,000 people listening to this right now. If you could implant sort of 1 or 2 behavior changes that they could do in the day, so maximum of 2, which 2 would you pick that you think have the highest ROI, the highest return for the investment of what it takes to do them? What do you think would make people happy? It doesn't matter. Anything that's— anything to make you feel better. Have a— yeah, whether it's improve your health or improve the way you feel throughout the day, uh, what would be the one or two that you would point to as like your kind of—

yeah, so, you know, it's a great question. I think we need to think about foundational practices, um, and the two things that set the foundation for optimal mental and physical functioning are going to be really good sleep and really good mental frame. And mental frame is going to be the ability to toggle between different states of mind. And so let me give you the practices first so that I don't get accused of being an intellectual to the point of curing insomnia right during this podcast. The first one is That morning sunlight in your eyes should be a non-negotiable thing 360 days out of the year. If it's raining, stand under an overhang. I'm very unsympathetic to the, well, I wake up and it's early and then I got to drive to work. Stand outside for 5 minutes. I got plenty of rest last night, so I'm not ornery about this, but I've grown a little bit exhausted of the, well, I can't do that because I've got kids. Take them outside with you. They need this too. That sets a cortisol increase in the morning, which is a healthy cortisol increase that provides wakefulness, triggers your metabolism in the proper direction. If that cortisol spike happens too late because you didn't view light, then you step out during noon too often. Remember, one day is no big deal, but step out in the sunlight too late, off too often late in the day, you have a delayed cortisol spike, which is associated with insomnia, depression. There are good data on this. So get that morning sunlight. 365 days out of the year. You will thank me, I promise. Everything gets better. Now, it's a slow, subtle shift. It's not like popping, you know, 1000mg of L-tyrosine and drinking a double espresso and going to the gym. It's not a— it's not, um, it's a foundational practice. So I like to think of it as it raises the tide so that your boat can leave harbor. That's how I think of it, rather than, oh, this is like putting another outboard motor on, on my vessel. Okay, so that's the first one. And the second one is a little bit of a broader category, but it's get sleep right. You have— if you're— until you're sleeping well 80% of the time or more, get your sleep right. And for this, I can just defer people— we do have a newsletter, it's completely free, but we have our privacy policy. We don't share your email. It's at hubermanlab.com. Just go to newsletter, all the prior newsletters are listed. There's, um, the key tips for sleep. You can watch the Master Your Sleep episode, or you can just download that 12 Steps for Optimal Sleep. Yes, there is a segment on supplementation with some of the considerations and warnings. There's also sections on non-sleep deep rest protocols, links to those. So get your sleep right and get that light early in your eyes early in the day. If you're a blind person, there's another protocol. I've done some work with blind people to try and help them with this. Many blind people still maintain that cells in their eyes that can reset the— that can set these mechanisms.

What's the mental framework?

Yeah, so mental frame is, is something that I don't think has been formalized in the kind of health and fitness, uh, optimization.

Sean's really good at that, by the way. Like, Sean— Sean is very good at that, where he, he does a really good job of deciding what, what frame he's going to be in.

Uh, I'll put it differently. My but the number one priority, my number one mission, the thing I work on is not even my business. Being able to cut, being able to be in the state of mind I want. So, which is basically being able to experience the experiences I want the way I want to.

Beautiful.

I, I just made it my top priority in life. So then I started to get good at it because I realized, oh shit, this is the cheat code. This is like, you know, you've got stressed out, billionaire over there, and then you've got, you know, joyful single mom over here. And like, what's— which quality of life do I actually want? Well, I want the one where my state of mind is in these states that I enjoy, and not fear, anxiety, stress, depression, not these other states that I'm trying to not have. As that's my quick, quick rant on—

yeah, no, it's, it's great. Mental frame is, is, is so key. And most I will say, and I want to be very respectful of everything, all the work that's preceded when I showed up, but you know, a lot of the stuff that's out there in the self-help and business literature, it frankly is kind of nipping at the margins of some of this stuff. Like, and look, I don't want to throw out names because it becomes disparaging. I think the one person who really deserves a nod, who's truly a pioneer— there are two people who are incredible pioneers in this space, and one is Cal Newport.

Right.

So, So Good They Can't Ignore You is an incredible book. Everyone should be required to read that book. Deep Work is— I'm essentially paraphrasing some of the protocols from Deep Work, but Cal, who I don't know, have never met, but have great respect for— it's a computer science professor back East— that it's about setting mental frame and context switching is dangerous.

Which book?

Which book are you saying? So he has a book, So Good They Can't Ignore You, which was written some years ago. And that was more towards like not trying to find your passion but getting really good at skills. Um, but Deep Work is an excellent book. Um, he has— he's not on social media, but he has given some TED Talks.

Um, and that book is about, uh, getting in the right frame.

It's sort of like— it's a lot about flow, right?

It's about not succumbing to distraction so you can do work that actually moves the needle.

But that's not what you're talking about, is it? I thought that you were talking— no.

So yeah, then there's another one which is A World Without Email. That he wrote recently. Here's the key essence of the Cal Newport work. Okay? The key essence of it as it relates to mental frame is that the brain is extremely good and the body at context switching. Like, I could be doing this podcast right now, and if a fire alarm goes off or someone comes knocking on the door, I can switch up my context and respond to that. But 90% of the work that we are— that moves the needle, meaning that we are rewarded for, or that enriches professional life and relationships. We used to talk about this, about mindfulness and presence, but it's really about getting the brain to start doing certain operations more in a more facile way. And this is why habits are important, because going to the gym is different than reviewing a paper or writing a scientific paper is different than podcasting or being a guest on a podcast, for that matter. So what happens is early in the day, when you get the download from sleep, you identify a few things that are key. You've already— you're starting to funnel your neural networks toward what I'm calling frame setting. And what you're not doing is allowing something that came in from the external environment to adjust your frame. So you get a depth of connection with the work, a depth— like, I knew I was doing this podcast today at noon, and I wasn't walking and thinking about it, but I set that as a, as a goalpost, and because I wrote it down, my brain is orienting toward what I need to do so that when we clip on, we're ready to go. And so mental frames are very important. Context switching is deadly. I'm stealing Cal's word, so forgive me, Cal. Some people will put Freedom, the computer program, so that they are not able to engage with the internet. This device, which I've turned off, or I guess it is on, but it's on airplane mode for the podcast. I try and keep away from me for the first half of the day. Very hard, very hard, especially when you need to post on social media. But I try and I want to have— here's the goal in the morning to make this simple. I want to have one 90-minute block that I completely conquer, that is where I experience immense resistance to do something other than what I'm doing, but that I stay in noodling away, or gnawing away would be the better word, at writing something or reading something or trying to comprehend in something. And you have to be very careful. The moment you walk to the restroom and then maybe, like, wash your hands and look yourself in the mirror, and then you're like, oh, you know, I got this weird hair growing out of my cheek or something, you're starting to switch mental frame. And so 90 minutes seems like nothing, but it is remarkable what you can accomplish with this. But the more important aspect is that in that exercise of getting good at what we call no-go operations— in the brain you have go and no-go operations— in pushing aside things and enforcing those blinders, you're able to bring that same mental frame to other things later in the day and in life, and you're able to engage it much quicker. It's sort of like if you're a car— you drive a car and you've never been up to 110 miles an hour, you don't really know how to get around a semi in front of you that's braking fast and you're on a downhill. But when— if you have to do it, you can do it. You're comfortable at speed. And you're comfortable breaking. And so, this mental frame thing is not just about the work you are able to do in that 90 minutes. It's about getting better at doing deep work even for shorter bouts because as the day goes on, we all have this experience, right? Things start coming in, we start getting bombarded, and we're starting to get that kind of fragmentation of our goals and we're kind of getting pulled off. And some people, the peak time is in the afternoon. Some people, it's in the morning. Some people, it's late at night. But you're getting yanked off center. And so, you have to be able to recognize just how delicious and effective that state is, and then you can apply it later. And I'll let people use their imagination, but this comes into use in many aspects of life that have nothing to do with work. Okay? Like being able to stay at that groove with somebody or in some interaction or on a run. I mean, use your imagination. This is the, the important thing is it's all the same circuit. It's this engagement of the prefrontal cortex, which is saying duration, path, outcome, meaning what, how long is this gonna, how long should I do this, what path should I take, what outcomes am I getting in real time, and not getting pulled off center by someone else's DPO, as I call them, DPOs. Incidentally, or not so incidentally, I, I've been fortunate enough to do some work with the special operations community in the Canada and the US In addition to those guys being really good at shoot, move, and communicate, the really exceptional ones know how to flip this switch on. We think of it as like grit, resilience, and mental toughness. And yes, they're all gritty, but there are a lot of gritty people out there. The difference is the ability to take your environment, narrow that environment, and be effective and cut a fine slice through something and then stop and move to something else. That's a mental operation that involves multiple circuits, multiple neurotransmitters. We couldn't say just dopamine, just epinephrine or something like that. It's going to be that, but a bunch of other things too. And so 90 minutes, like, learn that 90-minute battle, and it takes time, and then you get very, very good at it. So I'll podcast for 2 hours. I drop into that. That's the state I'm in when I podcast.

Two quick questions. One, what do you suck at? Because when I talk to you, I'm incredibly intimidated because Uh, when it comes to mental health and physical health and emotional health, I'm like, I'm so inadequate because, well, I like, I, I read your, watch your YouTube to see like, you know, I stink at this, therefore I want to learn what you're saying so I can be better. And then, and when I hang out with you now, I'm like, this guy's got it together. I know that's not the case. You're human. You've got issues. Just like me.

Definitely not the case.

So I want to know what do you struggle with and also Do you just have loads of people dropping in your DMs hitting on you? Because I hear you talking, I'm like, this guy, he's probably— or is it all just dudes? Is it all just a bunch of dudes like sending you pictures of like a mole on their back, ask him what they— what you think it is?

Um, how do you know I don't find moles on backs? Incredibly— I'm just kidding, people.

Every doctor has that. They just— all my doctor friends, it's all just half of us saying like, hey, what do you think this lump is?

Exactly. Um, so, okay, so, um, just to make sure I close the hatch on that, so you asked for 2 tools, I gave 3. Morning sunlight, master your sleep— you can see that newsletter for the, the tools— and then this 90-minute bet. And look, some days it goes better than others, but remember, it's not just about what you accomplish, it's about getting into those frames and you're controlling it. This is— I guess I wish I had said this before— is that You are setting the beginning, middle, and end of that frame. That's what's key. It's not happening because someone else said, "Game time, noon on Sunday," and you're showing up. Anyone can do that with some practice. What you're learning how to do is flip the switch. You're learning how to engage that, but you have to be very judicious in your use of this circuitry. You can't do it for 12 hours a day. So, that's when I do email and all the other stuff, okay? And I— 2 90-minute bouts, maybe. One last point about that, and then I'll tell you what I suck at, but there isn't time in the universe to get all of it. There's a second newsletter there which is about optimizing learning and plasticity that touches into some of the details and some free links and protocols related to that. Also at the newsletter, it's the October newsletter. Okay, so what do I suck at? Oh goodness.

Like, what's your struggles? I mean, I imagine now that you're famous, your Instagram probably and your Twitter are like blowing up. So maybe you're— it's hard to keep track of your email and stay on top of that. I don't know, I'm projecting.

Yeah.

So, um, 3 things, um, that have been helpful for, uh, this. But okay, I'm dreadfully poor at communicate— at, um, follow-up communications. I'm really bad. I, I really like comments. I try and respond, especially on Instagram. I, I like to give people— if you ask a professor a question, they're going to give you an attempt at an answer. Whether or not it's accurate or not, they're going to try. They're going to try and get it right. So I have to control my impulse to respond to everything just for sake of time so I can do the big important things. I'm a terrible cook. I'm an absolutely terrible cook. I mean, I'm fortunate that I have someone in my life who's an exceptional cook, but I am an absolutely dreadful cook. I mean, I could destroy toast. I just don't get it right. I don't have the patience.

Do you eat sugar or do you eat really clean? No.

So my diet's pretty clean. It's basically I do low carb. I'll eat some nuts and stuff in the morning if I'm hungry. I don't make a big deal out of it. I put salt in my water, which kills your hunger a lot of the time. A lot of people get shaky. They think they need sugar. Your electrolytes are low. Just put some sea salt or a little pinch of salt in water, drink it like, oh, I can go another 2 hours and your brain functions great. Blood volume goes up. Well, you know, I think we're gonna— I think 2022 is gonna be the year that salt comes back. Science magazine has done a lot about the hypertension stuff. If you have hypertension, check with your doctor. But, you know, um, I eat a low carb throughout the day, um, so meat and salad. Maybe I might have a little bit of rice or something if I train. I do exercise. I train in the morning at some point. I prefer to do it early, but I find some time where I do 1 hour of exercise every— it's weight train, run, like one day weight training, one day run, one day weight training, one day run. I take one full day off each week. I never train for longer than an hour after warming up. I hit it as hard as I can because I can't seem to come off the gas pedal. And, uh, that's my, my thing. And I've been doing that for 35 years, so I'm 46 now, so 32 years, sorry.

What is, um, but I was going to ask you one, one related question, which is you talked about health and kind of like you kind of mentioned you intermittent fast, basically you don't eat till noon Yeah, about that. And you train a certain way. And when it comes to health, there's like, you know, there's a high-carb diet, there's a low-carb diet, there's, there's meat is good, meat is evil, there's this is, you know, uh, weight training is good, weight training is horrible, cardio is good, cardio is bad. Uh, so there's sort of this like bombardment of different side info. And I think, you know, what you're trying to do is, is get to the source of it, get to the truth of things. What is one piece of conventional wisdom that you disagree with, or maybe it's hipster wisdom, something that's a fad or a trend right now that you, you say, hey, pump the brakes on that, that might be able to help some people out. So what's something that you hear a lot but you don't, you don't buy it or you don't agree with or you think it actually might be harmful?

Sure. Um, I hate to always backpedal a little bit, but I have this thing about thoroughness of answers, so forgive me. I've got a little bit of a, of a OCD on this. Um, uh, I, I'm terrible at cooking, so I suck at cooking. Um, and I'm not a good writer. I'm not a bad writer, but verbal exchange is how I do best. So I, I solve this problem. I write into— I, I dictate into voice memos, and then I put it on— what's it, Rev.com? They got— they have a lot of my personal income, and then I, I sculpt from there. And, um, because I'm not, I'm not a very good writer. So— and I'm a terrible musician. I love music, I'm— I can't play a chord to save my life, um, and I— that's okay, I'll live with that. So I'm terrible at a lot of things, Sam, um, and, um, and if you talk to any of my ex-girlfriends, that they, you know, they'll give you their take on what I'm good at and what I'm not good at, you know. Um, but trust me, there are plenty of things I'm like world-class failure at, and, um, I don't try and hide those. But I think I'm glad you asked the question because, um, look, I don't have it all figured out. I've been greatly inspired. I just want to give a nod to Tim Ferriss, who I know only through the podcast interaction. That podcast, 4-Hour Workweek, 4-Hour Body, especially had a tremendous impact in accelerating my career in science because I was able to focus on things that really matter. Maybe not just 4 hours, but just the principles in those books. I think we should all be rereading those. Books. They're so damn good. And, um, yeah, so, okay, um, the diet thing, I do low carb during the day and then I eat carbohydrates at night. I like starch, I like pasta and salad. I try and limit my protein at night because it makes me sleepy, and I get into really great sleep, uh, by eating my starches later in the day. Usually around 8 or so I eat dinner, and then I go to sleep around 10:30 or so. I'll have a snack sometimes if I want one, but generally I don't want one. Um, and that's really, really key because if I've trained early in the day and I'm running around like crazy, I'm also burning up a lot of glycogen. I want to repack my glycogen so I can train in the morning. So I tend to like to train, uh, early in the day. Okay, so what's out there? Well, first of all, the, um, the nutrition space is a disaster. It's an absolute disaster. Um, so much so that I'm already preparing for the attack about what I'm about to say, which is a well-accepted truth in science. Uh, there's a paper from Chris Garner, um, lab at Stanford showing that as long as people ingest fewer calories than they burn, you're gonna lose weight regardless of whether or not those calories are in a low-carb regimen or vegan regimen or pure meat regimen, et cetera. So calories in, calories out is a foundational principle. Uh, I've been accused of saying different, but the fact of the matter is it's true. Now, the calories out portion is gonna be regulated by a number of things. Basal metabolism, how much you exercise, are you hormone augmented? Are you—

well, what's, what's the controversial thing that you've, you've just said though? I, I don't even understand.

Well, so, so in the nutrition space, there's this other idea. The other idea, it's grounded in some rationale, which is like, for instance, when you eat animal protein like chicken or beef or fish, there's a metabolic cost. There's a, there's a calories out equation from the digestion and utilization and pro— and use of that.

Yeah, but that seems like a rounding error, no?

It's not huge, but it's very different than if you were talking about, um, equivalent number of calories from, from starch. Um, so it— now there— but there are hormonal effects of, of biased, what I call biased diet. So I eat a macronutrient complete diet, includes fats and proteins and, and carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are sort of on an as-need basis, so if I'm training a little less, I might eat a few fewer of them, etc. But the nutrition space is a mess because everyone has to eat and people have different preferences. And so a lot of the stuff that you see out there are really just geared toward finding a match with an audience that prefers plants or prefers meat or prefers to fast. You know, having explored the fasting science and literature, there's nothing holy about fasting that provides autophagy, the cleaning up of dead cells. I mean, low-calorie diets will do that also. Even if you're not so-called fasting. But there are, it appears, some benefits to having periods of each 24-hour cycle where you're not ingesting calories, um, independent of the total number of calories. So the biggest issue I have, the, the, the mess that I see out there that I hope will get resolved, is that people are using social media and, uh, a certain type of, uh, he said, she said, they said, we said, to amplify controversies that don't really exist, right? I'm willing to bet, for instance, I'll just state my stance on this, that eating more plants and less meat— forgive me, Paul Saladino, he's a friend of mine and, you know, he's the Carnivore MD, he's got great data to support what he's got— but I like plants. I'm gonna eat a salad. Am I gonna die? Maybe. But I'm eating my salad. But I'm also gonna eat a steak. And so it's almost like crazy when we start talking about this, like, are we really talking about this?

Here's what I'd like to see. The Carnivore MD, it's this guy on Instagram. So my neighbor, do you know who, uh, you know, the Perfect Keto guys, Andrew?

I know of them. Yeah.

So Anthony lives across the street from me and then Justin has been on this podcast a bunch.

Okay.

Um, and then they're Anthony and this other guy went to somewhere in Africa. I forget to see how this tribe lives eating mostly just meat and some honey. And that other guy, his name is Paul, he's got this Instagram handle, Sean, called Carnivore MD. And basically he pretty much only eats meat, organs, and like butter, just animals.

Yeah, he'll do honey and some, some berries and stuff. Look, very smart guy. And, and people will come— the battles on the internet, like, does dietary cholesterol impact serum cholesterol? Is serum cholesterol impacting testosterone or not. I mean, it's, it's so crazy. But the reason it's crazy is not because it isn't a valid conversation. I mean, we all have to eat, and people want to live a long time and feel vital. It's crazy because there's really no field. It's not like vision science or stress science or sleep science or, um, you know, cognitive psychology. There's no field. It's bringing together people with very diverse frameworks trying to resolve the same problem. And so It's sort of like if I were to be in a discussion or agreement with someone who's a philosopher, I don't do philosophy. I don't know the principles of philosophy. So I think that the issue on the internet right now is a big one. Who are the experts? I mean, we've seen this with everything related to COVID, right? Who are the real experts? Are they the people with government jobs? Are they the people who are MDs? Is it PhDs? I think what I would like to see more of— what I know I'd like to see more of— are more panel discussions. This is one thing that isn't happening on podcasts as much as it could. Panel discussions where people can get to the heart of the matter, um, by combining physicians, scientists, and practitioners. I do understand the frustration and the angst of people who devoted a career to being in the trenches of doing stuff, and then someone who has an MD or writes a book and comes along and says, hey, I've solved weight loss, or I've solved it by way of eliminating one macronutrient, which by the way is not what Paul Saladino is saying. I just want to be clear that I, that's, I'm not pointing anything at him directly when I say that. So I think that it's a kind of a free-for-all right now. Nutrition is the worst, but in terms of the battles, but there are some shining bright lights in that space. Um, for instance, Dr. Andy Galpin is an exercise physiologist who's done work with a lot of athletes. He's a professor, Cal State Fullerton, in terms of training regimens. He's just— for endurance and for strength, for female athletes and for male athletes, for the everyday person, he's got— his content is just so damn solid, um, and grounded in mechanism, all the way from muscle sarcomeres to this is how long you should rest between sets if this is is your goal. Um, and then in the nutrition space, I've found what works for me, which is this low carb starting around noon and then gradually transitioning into, uh, higher carbohydrates. Because I eat for health, but I mainly eat for mental and physical functioning. I'm paying attention to how I feel, and I want to be able to do my work. And so I think that's very important too, and it's a missing piece of the equation, which is that You know, I wouldn't survive a day doing, uh, you know, 6 small meals of, you know, each macronutrient. I'd be— I'd have to cook.

Uh, you know, you can break the population up into kind of these 6 or 10. You may— this might be the ideal diet or optimal diet for you, or do you think it is, hey, the solution you have actually might work for everybody I like, do you think that, I know it's not, not to the T of like, you know, exactly what you eat, but in terms of on one side you got completely plant-based, on another side you got completely carnivore, another side is just sort of no carb or low carb or slow carb, right? There's all these different varieties. Do you think the, do you think when it comes to humans knowing what is the optimal, is it that there are completely different configurations for different groups of people or that they're actually, for humans there actually would be one sort of optimal diet, and then—

I have to assume that there's going to be some genetic bias towards certain things working. So for instance, I lucked out, but I also suffer because I don't like alcohol. It just makes me go to sleep. So I don't care if there's alcohol or not. Some people really like a drink. Um, that's probably genetic. Um, it just doesn't— it makes me feel bad. It's not just that it doesn't make me feel good, it makes me feel bad.

Do you like to get fucked up at all? What do you— do you have— you like drugs? Do you like anything?

I don't really know. Drugs? No.

I mean, you don't even smoke weed?

No, I don't smoke weed. I never liked— I never liked marijuana or alcohol very much. I'm— my drug is learning and adrenaline. I do— I've had to work on the adrenaline part. I've, uh, there's stories for another time. I put myself into some, um, unhealthy situations and dangerous situations, but I I come alive with dopamine and adrenaline in myself.

So you don't do any drugs? You don't— you really don't drink? I don't drink or do drugs either, but my advice is I'll eat like a whole box of Twinkies when I want to party. That's like— I'm like, yeah, like I'll plan it like 2 weeks out. I'm like, let's go eat a whole birthday party.

Yeah, you don't do anything? No, no. Oh sure, I don't eat— you know, I would say about 85% of the time I eat clean, but, um, but I'll eat bread. I love bread and I love butter on it. You know, basically bread is a vehicle for butter in my case, you know. Um, and I— now watch, the plant people are going to come out. There's a video— they already came after me. They're like, Huberman says butter is— look, if you increase your fats, your saturated fats a bit, do the blood work, you'll watch your, your serum testosterone go up. And we could talk about testosterone if you want. Um, but it's not necessarily good for your heart. I didn't say it was good for your heart. I said it's good for your vitality, which is different in the short run than in the long run. But in terms of vices, I like caffeine. I do use certain stimulants, over-the-counter stimulants, like I'll take L-tyrosine. These days I take 300mg of Alpha GPC if I really want to laser in. I don't do it any more than 2, 3 days a week maximum. And that's also in that second toolkit newsletter. That and phenylethylamine or phenylalanine, those two combined, and you're in a focus tunnel. But I don't touch modafinil. I don't touch stimulants. I don't do recreational drugs. Um, when I was in college, sure, I mean, I, I partied a bit, but also, you know, I don't need any chemical to say exactly what's on my mind, um, or to withhold, uh, some of the things that are on my mind. So I, I'm— it's just not been my thing. And, uh, but also I'm generally training in the morning and I generally want to get work done and You know, look, I always admired people that could have a couple beers and relax because it's such a big part of our culture, um, but that just didn't— that's not the way I went. Um, you asked about, uh, in terms of diets and genetic differences. Well, you know, this is the same thing with sleep and chronotypes. We have people that prefer to stay up late and wake up late, and people that prefer to wake up early, and then it's a fairly normally distributed population. Uh, what should we do about this? Well, for instance, Um, some people probably feel better eating more starches and less protein and maybe more plants. And some people— look, it looks to me like Joe Rogan's doing just fine on his elk meat and whatever else he's eating diet. I don't know, I don't track. He seems like he's thriving. I will say, um, in full disclosure, that the people that I know who are hormone augmented— I'm not talking about big bodybuilders, I'm talking about people that are taking low dose of of testosterone, whether or not it's to replace something or not. They tend to crave or at least eat more proteins because it increases protein synthesis. And, you know, that's me. Yeah. So I'm on it.

I'm on it now. And prior to being on it, I worked on it for— I did it. I tried doing it naturally for like 2 years to increase. It was like 200. It was so low. And that's low. Yeah, it was shit, and it was so low. And I was running a company at the time. I was so stressed out, so I like took time off. I ate meat, I squatted, and then I started taking TRT, and my life changed. And oh yeah, it was crazy. And then I started eating more meat, and I didn't do it for body reasons, I did it for emotional reasons, but my body changed. I feel like a professional athlete at 32. It's pretty crazy how much that changed. But what you said on one of your podcasts is it seems true is that means I'll likely live— there's a likelihood that I will not live as long because there was like some— I, I don't know if you said it or someone else, Sean. They did these studies basically, or for some reason there was this group where they would castrate you in China. Um, I don't know if it was like done out of like being like a monk or something like that. Yeah.

Yeah.

And these guys didn't have dicks anymore and they castrated them and balls.

They, they—

sorry.

Yeah.

They didn't have balls anymore.

Yeah.

And they, I mean, I didn't do the experiment nor did I check the data, but I'm assuming they live longer.

Like they consistently live longer. It's sure. And, and like, and so like now that I'm on this, I'm like, I'm probably, maybe I'll, I'll live to be 90 instead of 95. I don't know. Who knows what it's going to be, but it's a pretty sick life. So that's kind of the sacrifice that I'm making.

Yeah. Well, basically the, the idea is that, um, that your story speaks to is, is a true one, which is that Vitality and longevity are on— they're sort of orthogonal to one another. They're not counteracting one another, but they're kind of orthogonal to one another. And puberty is the most rapid stage of aging in our entire life, and it's accelerated aging, right? I mean, puberty is aging. It's just that you're not— it's across the, you know, you think about it in the context of a portion of the entire life arc. So introducing hormones of the sort that were robust during puberty, um, will accelerate that process.

You just said that vitality and longevity are orthogonal, basically meaning the better and more optimized I want to feel, the less I'm going to live?

Not necessarily that. They're, they're sort of off-center to one another, but the— they're not counteracting one, they're not antagonistic. So here, let me explain, and, um, how this would work in the real world. So, um, if you— well, let's use you as an example. You decided to go on testosterone replacement Um, your, your total testosterone, you said, was in the somewhere in the 200 nanogram per deciliter range, which is below the normal reference range. So you go on and you, you're saying, uh, and quite aptly, that maybe that's going to shorten your life because of the way that it can negatively affect lipid profiles and things, the way it affects the liver. There's a lot of biochemistry there we don't have time to go into, but that's true. However, testosterone will also whether or not it's coming from endogenous sources or from replacement, will also increase your energy level and your ability to lean into friction. You're going to be running more, you're going to be able to exercise more. So I have done a number of episodes on hormones, but one thing that's really important to understand, because I get a lot of questions about this, is that, well, the main effect of testosterone is it makes effort feel good because of the way that it— you, you— it makes you—

there's a readiness for challenge of all kinds, intellectual challenges, The way that I describe it to people is I'm like, I want to fight all the time and not necessarily fist fight, but I just want to be in a battle, whether it's a battle with myself or—

Friction.

Yeah, I want fight. I want to go fight.

Friction feels good. And Robert Sapolsky, the great Robert Sapolsky, was on my podcast. He said they've done these experiments also with altruistic acts of friction where people donating money, for instance, it's not just beating people up and this kind of thing. So, um, but— and I'm not suggesting people run out and get on— out on— get on TRT. I want to touch on that. But basically, so you could say, well, my blood lipid profiles are perhaps a bit worse, but with that extra energy, you can now start exercising 4 times a week, plus, you know, cardio, plus 4 times a week of weight training, and recover with no problem, provided you're doing the other things that you need to do. Whereas if you weren't, you would probably be depleted. There's a depression component and your finances would probably suffer, these kinds of things. Now, some people do not need testosterone replacement. I'm going to just— because I think I'm kind of walking around the margins and people are probably wondering, well, is Huberman on TRT? Is that what this is about? I'm 46 years old. I didn't touch it until 45. I went 45 years. I've talked about some of the supplements that can naturally increase testosterone.

You're on TRT?

Oh, so from— I'm 46 now. I started on my, uh, at 40, after 45. But let me, um, so, but, but let me explain because I'm actually coming off. So that, um, that— so what I did is I'm, I'm researching a book. So I did 45 years of training and sleep and all the normal things, found some supplements that will increase testosterone. Um, that's the Fadogia and Tongkat Ali. You can see that on the Joe Rogan episode. I talk a lot about this on the episode with Tim Ferriss. A number of women are taking tongkat ali as a way to increase their free testosterone and getting quite good results. I don't have any relationship whatsoever to tongkat ali or Fadogia company. I don't care if you take it, definitely check with your doctor. Um, there are some kind of spooky reports out there about Fadogia and toxicity of the cells in the, in the testes, but those seem to be limited to rat studies. Anyway, do your research. I'm not telling you what to do. Um, and you're responsible for your health, not me. But those supplements done properly from the right sources can increase testosterone by about 200 nanograms per deciliter. The most dramatic I've ever seen is a shift from about 300 to— or high 2s to like, you know, 8s and 9s. But when I went— but I decided to try TRT in a small dose spread throughout the week, um, my testosterone at that time was already sitting in the high 8s, so I was doing fine. And you— I did as an experiment for part of this book And it changes your mental frame. It makes you more self-directed, more willing to lean into challenge. And counter to the popular belief, it makes you calmer. This is the thing that people don't realize. It gives you more energy, but it makes you calmer. The— in primates, non-human primates, and in humans, stressed, angry people are the ones that are in the kind of low to mid-range of testosterone. Typically, typically, there's— there averages from a few studies.

And I always thought, I always thought, well, it just makes me more confident, and confident men don't get upset easily, you know? Like, if someone's like yelling at me or like, there's like, I'm— my masculinity is not being challenged right now. I'm not like, I'm not good. That's why people are like, oh, so you want to fight all the time? Like, well, actually, no, the opposite. If someone gets in my face, I'm confident enough that I could— I can, I can walk away. You know what I mean?

You're in your own— you maintain your own frame. You're not going to get, um, pulled off by projection. Or nowadays the, the buzzword is gaslighting. Everyone's gaslighting everybody without really under— I, I'm very interested in psychoanalysis. I've been fascinated by this for years, and this whole concept of projection is very interesting. How do you actually shift someone's nervous system? This is not a good thing, but how does one shift their nervous system to change the mental frame of another nervous system? It's very interesting and kind of spooky stuff when you start to think about how your nervous system will frame shift your frame, someone else's frame. Now this is vital too. When your child or your partner comes to you and says, I really, I'm really stressed about something, it requires an adaptive frame shift, and you need to do that. People who are autistic or have Asperger's don't frame shift very well. They're very much in their own frame, and they're very good at certain kinds of things and less good at others. Um, people who are highly empathic are susceptible— empaths will know— to getting yanked down different frame shift pathways such that they can— oh my God, I haven't done anything with my life because I've been so consumed with so-and-so's thinking or feelings around things. So testosterone makes effort feel good. I'm talking about the effects on the brain. Let's leave aside all the effects on the body. And yes, it might change blood lipid profiles, but in general, the energy is the component. It provides a neural energy and an activation stance where Then it's a question of what you do with that. So if you use that as an excuse to eat a little less well, train a little less, then you're no better off and you might be worse off. If you use that as an opportunity to lean into life, that's wonderful. I, I work with a number of professionals and athletes in a kind of consulting, um, uh, role to assist with some of this, uh, of course with an endocrinologist as well. New parents, for instance, who decide they don't want any more kids and they're dealing with lack of sleep and all these things oftentimes benefit from that. And the relationship can often benefit, um, for a number of reasons. So this is probably a whole other discussion. I'd be happy to come on sometime and just talk all about the hormones because it's all— estrogen is key. A lot of people, in particular men, are blocking estrogen when they take TRT, which is a terrible idea. Estrogen promotes brain longevity. Estrogen is good for connective tissues. It's good for libido. Blocking estrogen is a bad idea in most cases. But of course, some people are worried about water retention or breast development in males, and so they're blocking estrogen. You have to work with an endocrinologist. So it's not testosterone is good, estrogen is bad. That is absolutely, um, uh, that's very sophomore thinking, you know. It's, it's more complex than that.

Sean, did you get your—

you—

did you get your—

no, but I hit a bunch of people with that. Uh, that's how I'm gonna combat people So you're going to gaslight on their sophomore thinking? Yeah, I will.

Yeah, the gaslighting thing is funny because, you know, gaslighting is— basically people are saying that they're triggering them, right? Gaslighting is something very different. And, uh, having, um, experience with borderline people, that's a very— it's a challenge both for the borderlines and for the people in their lives. That's a real psychiatric challenge. So anytime I see these, these valid psychiatric terms being kind of bastardized on the internet, I get, I get a little bit, um Uh, well, that's, that's one of the challenges, right?

Like pop science, pop, you know, this sort of like popifying of everything. It'll be more viral, right? Like, you know, it's easy to make something viral when you take away all this causes that blank statement, you know, blanket statement to actually get.

Yeah. Hearing that, um, it depends is not an answer that goes very far. But, and here's where I'm hoping there's a, a tide change where, um, which is that if people can understand mechanism, they can start to understand a little bit of, you know, we have this stress system and we hear that stress is bad, but you know, uh, a brief, I just did a podcast episode with Duncan French from the UFC Performance Institute. Duncan's work has shown in peer-reviewed studies that short-term stress raises testosterone. Stress that lasts more than a day or two, or training sessions that go more than 90 minutes, that depletes testosterone. So is stress bad for, for reproduction? Depends. So, but if people can understand mechanism, then they can start to understand, hey, an ice bath is stress, but it will protect you against illness because in the short term, adrenaline buffers you against infection because adrenaline is the signal by which your immune system says, oh my goodness, I need to combat something. So if people can understand mechanism, then it doesn't matter if you're talking about acupuncture, cold bath, sauna, lifting weights, sprinting, Bikram yoga. People can— I believe that people are smart and that if you extend a hand that lends some respect to their intelligence, that they'll come along for the discussion about mechanism. And that even if I were to get hit by a bus tomorrow, that then they could digest the next wave of information coming to them in a much more nuanced way. Of course, people still need protocol. They need a jumping-off point. And so that's why my podcast has been mainly about that. But I think science and health information on the internet is changing very quickly, um, thanks— here again, I just have to say it was seeing Lex Fridman's podcast. I don't know what the equivalent is in the, in the finance and entrepreneurial area. Maybe it's you guys. But in the kind of general landscape of podcasting, I saw Lex's podcast for the first time and I thought, this guy is having really intense intellectual conversation.

Yeah, he's such a good— he's so weird in a cool way. He's so interesting. He's unique. He is. He's kind of punk rock. I mean, Lex is very punk rock.

Um, I mean, his, his lifestyle— if you think my lifestyle is unique, I mean, Lex— well, maybe just get him on the podcast. He's a, he's a really— I'll let him do the speaking, uh, for himself. But I think that once someone's out there doing that, it's very hard for people to follow suit with, um, the kind of low-level version of that. So what I love— and I have listened to your podcast— so I love about your podcast, what I love about Ferriss and Rogan and Lex and Rich Roll, and I'm missing a few, all right, I'm going to regret it later that I'm not remembering these names, but, um, because there are others of course, is that if, if Sagar and Jetty's news channel, for instance, remarkable, is that if we all push each other to constantly try and increase the quality and the value per unit time of a podcast, even if it's not just protocols, but it's a style of discourse like we've done today, that to me is going to elevate the medium as something that is a serious thing instead of just the chatter.

How big is your audience right now on YouTube? You've had 10 months, so that's north of a million What about on, uh, on podcast?

Uh, yeah, so on Instagram I think we're sitting somewhere around like 730,000 followers or something like that. Um, uh, but that's just really— I do put out unique content there that's separate from the podcast from time to time. But, um, you're gonna laugh, but I actually— and I'm not cloaking anything—

I actually don't tell me you don't know.

I don't know, I don't know. So that's Rob. So Rob and we have a web a web guy.

I mean, you gotta— if I had to guess, like $5 to $10 million a month.

That sounds about right. I think it's on the higher end of that. Um, I think— I know that's right, because if it's about $2 million per episode in the first couple weeks, is that something— I don't know.

I'm— you're at $2 million? You're at $2 million an episode?

I, I don't know. I should ask Rob. Otherwise you're killing me.

Do you realize that? Like, listen, do you realize what 2 I'm sure like Tim or whoever has talked to you and Joe has talked to you with 2 million downloads an episode, dude, you, you're rich. You're, you're very, you can be very wealthy. I'm shocked that you're still, uh, teaching.

I'm still wearing the same shirt every day.

Yeah.

I know that before the podcast, average salary, uh, before the podcast, I was like, this guy could easily be banking a few million dollars a year and doing the exact same thing you're doing now. It's not like you'd have to go shift to doing something else. Um, and I looked at—

we're doing fine.

I thought, what do professors make? Here's what I looked up. Stanford professor— this is what's on the internet, no idea if this is true or not— Stanford professor will, uh, average professor will make somewhere between $200,000 to $225,000, uh, per year, which is obviously a great living, uh, but I thought, wow, that's high for an academic.

Um, it doesn't— for a non-MD academic, oh, the pay is— is— it's not just Stanford, it's ever— it's abysmal. In the Bay Area. And I want to be respectful. People have different needs and costs. And that— but that's in the Bay Area. That's a tough, tough life for someone with kids, you know, depends on— not tough life. But anyway, I'm going to get some haters for this. But you know what?

I'm fucking hanging out.

Come hang out. Do you know?

And have you— have you enjoyed being famous?

Well, okay, so a couple of things. One about the views. I really do need to check with Rob on the numbers. I don't know. I don't track that. I know we're doing well. One thing in the business side, since you have this audience, I only advertise products I actually use. I've been using Athletic Greens for over a decade, right? So I love that stuff. I don't— we stay with a limited number of advertisers.

Insight Tracker. I bought them.

Insight Tracker.

I use my code Huberman. Huberman.

Yes, we work with Thornt. Thank you. We work with Athletic Greens is a real— for me was a really good supplement. It's the only one I set aside money for as a student and postdoc, or as a postdoc and professor, because it covered a lot of things.

So expensive though.

Yeah, it— I feel better when I take it, so that's why I take it. But I get it, not— it's— it is—

it's like $150, $200 a month, I think.

There's a cost there. It— yeah, so obviously it has to be within the scope of someone's decisions of around finances. But the, um, Sleep Cocktail— so we work with Thorn because the great thing about Thorne is the quality of their supplements is so good that you can actually take less of Thorne supplements, in my experience, and get away with it. But there are other great supplement companies out there. I'm not here to plug the, the, our sponsors, but I do, um, obviously that's the way podcasts make money and I pay my staff, um, which is Rob and Mike and Ian, and we have a few others as well. I should mention one thing about the, the medium, um, and as a business model. So I have never, uh, talked about this, but the Huberman Lab podcast is but one of several podcasts, um, under a company that I founded, um, with Rob. So David Sinclair from Harvard Genetics, um, yeah, tenure professor of genetics at Harvard.

Lifespan, right?

Lifespan. So he's launching the Lifespan podcast with David Sinclair.

And you're owning this?

Yeah, I own that. Brilliant.

Yeah, podcast network.

Yeah, so, um, and so we're working on the front end and back end materials of that. Me and Mike Blayback are the creatives on that with the aesthetic, and the— and it'll be very different than mine, right? Because David, um, I mean, he's, you know, I wouldn't— we're different. David, you're gonna—

you're beating— you're, you're building this media business all centered around longevity and healthy— longevity and mental and and physical health. I don't know, we'll call it mental fitness. That's a word that we've used, mental fitness.

That's—

you're going to crush this. This is going to be huge.

Thanks. Well, the goal is really that, um, for instance, many professors have excellent information they can share on gut microbiome, on addiction, on ADHD that goes well beyond the depth that I can provide in one of my episodes. And so they need to do 6 or 7 episodes, but they probably don't need to do a podcast in perpetuity. And so the idea is to have a set of podcasts that you can come to mine if you like, David's if you like. Maybe you— God forbid— you have a relative dealing with Parkinson's and hear from somebody what you can really do about that, or Alzheimer's. Or you have a kid and you want to know what are the science-based practices for getting a kid to sleep and for neuroplasticity in a child. Well, let's talk to a world expert in that. Um, and, and so the, the idea is to have an umbrella for multiple podcasts. The Huberman Lab podcast is but one of those that I plan to continue. David's is going to be the second, and we've got a third and a fourth that are revving up now. And who knows, maybe we should do one on, um, I don't know, some— something related to crypto or something. I don't— I only know what I know, and I know academics, I know science, and I know medicine. And so that's what I'm going to bring to the table.

This is awesome. This is awesome.

I had this—

thank you—

all back, which was, I remember thinking about my favorite science He was great, but he would, and I just thought about like his kind of like sphere of impact. Like he could, you know, he, each class had about 20 kids. He would teach 5 classes a day. So he'd teach about 100 kids a day. And so, you know, his reach as like my best teacher growing up was 100 students a day, uh, 100 students a year essentially. And then with the internet, I just thought, wow, this is gonna change. The best teachers in the world are gonna have millions of students. And they're gonna make millions of dollars as they should, for being amazing teachers. And I've always been looking out for, and I've been investing in every platform I can get my hands on, anywhere I can see that teachers are able to do that where they're able to scale and have millions of students and have, 'cause you know, if I'm gonna learn math or I'm gonna learn about nutrition, I can either learn locally, like that's the way the world always worked. I just learned from my best local teacher that was available to me, or now I can learn globally. So I can find actually who is the best at not only being an expert, but packaging it and conveying it in a way that's entertaining, that's relatable, that's— that fits me, right? And so, you know, that's what you're doing. You're the perfect example of something I've been thinking. Why isn't the world moving this way? And actually it is. It's just, it wasn't through an online school. It was through things like podcasting or—

And, and it's more popular in other countries. You know, China does a really good job of this. They, they've got, uh, uh, we've done some Chinese teachers who make tens of millions of dollars a year.

Superstar.

They're like musicians and athletes.

Yeah.

Same with India. You know, Sean, we have that, uh, you sent that, you shared with me that really cool photo of a guy in India teaching math and it looked like he was a comedian because there was like a stadium.

You heard of this guy? His name's Biju. No, he's a guy in India.

I'll have to check it out.

Teacher, he would teach in like local villages and people love learning math from him. So he would go to other cities and they would come find him because it had spread through word of mouth. Eventually he was filling up stadiums free, free, you know, free to attend. He was just teaching math on a projector in a 20,000-person stadium. And now he created it. He created an app. It's like a $10 billion education app in India. But, you know, like that was his origin story. And I thought that was—

I love it, you know, and I love the model around podcasting because, yes, you have to tolerate some ads, but advertisers are happy, consumers are happy. And it's zero cost to consumer. That to me is like, if ever there was order in a universe, not the universe, but in a universe, that's it.

Yes, but it sucks. So do you know what? Do you know my company at all? Or did you know my company?

I'm afraid I don't.

It's all good. So it's all good. So we own this and then we own this thing called— I started this company called The Hustle, which was a daily email that reached about 2 million people a day for business news. We just sold it to HubSpot for many tens of millions of dollars. And, um, we are making, you know, $20 million on ads. Um, so we've made a lot of money. And the problem with ads is it's cool when you're doing it now because you can pick and choose Thorn, Athletic Greens. You can pick and choose cool shit. And that's exactly how we started. But then you get staff and you're like, all right, we're gonna try and triple every year. And so in order to triple every year, like there's not that many Thorns and Athletic Greens. Then you gotta go look at like some other bullshit and you're like, well, we got to hit these growth numbers. And so, and so it kind of— you—

I don't think he worships at the altar of year-over-year.

Well, you know, we will— no, but you always think about it. For example, what if I talked shit about Athletic Greens and let's say they did something kind of wrong? And you, you, you know what happened. Well, that's my point. That's exactly my point. You will say, well, I don't know, you know what I mean? It's, it's Even the most honest people and good people, you are everyone, we're all incentivized something. And so maybe like he would be willing to defend them a little bit more because they're giving him money, which is a natural thing, you know what I mean?

Yeah. Yeah. So that is an issue. I mean, I think that, and we do care about growth, but, and the reason we built out a philanthropic arm of this company is because I really, I empathize with the struggle that academic scientists live in day to day, which is that, uh, they don't have time to do their own research, let alone work for the world, which is what they're really hired to do. Their grants come mainly from public sources. So we're trying to think about ways that we can start to pump some money back into science through the podcast. So money coming into the podcast actually represents some of it, uh, money going back into the scientific community to do better work. We're starting to explore NFTs and some of, uh, how that might be incorporated. Um, Twitter is a great place to learn about that. I just want to say that the NFT landscape and crypto landscape, people are so kind. It's like they're trying to come— it's kind of all in. It kind of reminds me of the early punk rock movement. It's like you— they know I'm paying attention to their energy. I don't understand a darn thing about it.

It is punk rock. It is very punk rock.

Everybody would love to sell you their token and their currency and why it's—

yeah, just wait until you say something.

Tell you about it because they are— we're all, you know, selling our own holdings basically.

Interesting.

Wait until you say something bad about them though.

Okay, well, I, I tend— yeah, I, I hope not to do that, at least not by accident. But I, I just noticed that, um, there's a— there's a— I love the DIY spirit. Look, I'm a patriot too. I'm sure you have an international audience, but look, my dad's a first-generation immigrant. This, this country is amazing.

From where?

From Argentina. So he's not, you know, he wasn't from someplace where he was stricken, but he came here on a Navy scholarship. He's a physicist. Um, you know, this is a country where you can make lateral moves. It's hard to ascend, all right? And we, we should acknowledge that not everyone starts in the same place, and, and the, the slope is different for different people, no question. But you can make lateral moves here. And the, you know, think about this, the Nobel Prize is given each year. For instance. The world is big. The world of science is big. Most Nobel Prizes include or are given to people in the US, and we have one of the most difficult funding schemes for getting money to do research in this country. Now, compared to third world countries, we're very wealthy in the research realm, but compared to other countries where they basically stock the laboratories with money, it's, it's incredible. Here we have these individual labs, like, doing little, like, startup-style workshop stuff, it's that grind, it's that leaning into friction that I really believe is the hallmark of future development. And so science doesn't have that. We didn't have a podcast platform or information platform. And I'm hoping that my podcast and the others like David's and the other ones that come out through our company will soon populate. I'd love to see more of this done out there. There's, you know, there's some smart guy or gal that is out there thinking like, hmm, like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do the podcast on amphibians because I love frogs, and I'm gonna like tell people which terrarium to get, and like it's gonna be the terrarium of the podcast. And you never know what's gonna, what's gonna work, but I love that spirit, the entrepreneurial spirit. So that's what we're trying to bring.

Well, dude, thanks for coming on. This is badass. We, um, we haven't done a podcast this long in a long time. By the way, we had— I'll tell you really quick, we had Rob Dyrdek on recently.

Oh yeah.

And he is— I forget what we were talking about, skateboarding and like wealth or something, but he's like the wealthiest.

Yeah. Rob wouldn't know me, but he's tight with Mike Blayback because Rob and Big— Big unfortunately passed away and Mike did all the photos for that. And yeah, look, skateboarders, if you want to know what's really cool and how to do real DIY spirit, you just— skateboarders. They just—

I'm gonna, I'm gonna brag. I'm gonna brag after this. I'm gonna send you a video of my latest 3.

Oh, yeah, I can't do— I've got no tray flip. But the— I ride a pool, but I'm not that good.

Dude, you're badass, man. I'm so excited to talk to you. I feel inspired after having a conversation with you. You're very, you're very interested, much bigger deal. Oh well, we got to speak.

Oh well, I want to say genuine thanks for having me on. I felt immediate resonance. I'm very much like a— can sense that. So I, I think it'd be great to get together in person sometime. Do people still do that? I don't know. Coffee?

Uh, are you in California? Can you—

Northern California? I split my time now between the Bay Area and Southern California. So where are you guys?

I'm in the Bay Area.

Yeah, we both, we both lived there. I lived in San Francisco for 8 or 9 years. I just bought a house in Texas. And so I'm in Austin as of now, but I'm a little bit nomadic. So I'm—

but well, I'm going to be in Austin a bunch because I hang out with Lex there. He's going to take me to jiu-jitsu again. Last time it ended in a rear naked choke.

He lives in Austin.

I've never done it before. He's a black belt.

So I didn't know he lived in Austin. But dude, I have a, I have a gym here at my house, like a really nice gym and I have people come over and we can lift heavy. I lift heavy and also we could box. I beat people up all the time. So if you want to fucking fight, we could do that. We could, we could bro.

I do everything. This is not, this is not a, we probably shouldn't box. I boxed, I had my boxing card and boxed pretty consistently various times. I'm not very good. You don't get a nose like this doing yoga. So let's not box.

Well, come on, man. I got a rower. We could do anything you want. I'm fit.

This is the TRT speaking, folks.

Yes.

It would be great fun. I'll pass you guys my number via email. Just let's text that we're in the room and we'll take it into the real world.

Thank you, man. Talk soon.

Great to have you.

Thank you. Thanks so much. Travel never looking back.