Andrew Huberman: Sleep, Dreams, Creativity, Fasting, and Neuroplasticity | Lex Fridman Podcast #164

the following is a conversation with. andrew huberman his second time in the. podcast. he's a neuroscientist at stanford a. world-class researcher and educator. and now he has a new podcast on youtube. and all the usual places called. hubermann lab. that i can't recommend highly enough. quick mention. of our sponsors master class online. courses. four sigmatic mushroom coffee magic. spoon low carb cereal. and better help online therapy click the. sponsor links to get a discount.

by the way masterclass is testing to see. if they want to support this podcast. long term. so if you're on the fence now is the. time to sign up. and i'm pretty sure andrew will have a. neuroscience master class on there soon. enough. though his podcast is basically a weekly. master class in itself. as a side note let me say that andrew is. a friend. and a new collaborator we're working on. a paper together. about a topic we're both really. passionate about at the intersection of. neuroscience and machine learning.

but that's probably many months away. from being published. still i'm really excited about this work. he's one of the smartest and kindest. people i have the pleasure of talking to. on this podcast. so i hope we'll talk many more times in. the future. if you enjoy this thing subscribe on. youtube review and have a podcast. follow on spotify support it on patreon. or connect with me on twitter at lex. friedman. and now here's my conversation with. andrew huberman. why do humans need sleep let's let's go.

with a big. first question okay well the answer i'll. start with. is the one that i always default to when. there's a why. question which is uh i wasn't consulted. at the design. phase so so i wriggle my way out of. giving a. absolute answer right but. there's one mechanism that's very clear. that's super important which is that the. longer we are awake. the more adenosine accumulates.

in our brain and adenosine binds to. adenosine receptors no surprise there. and it creates the feeling of sleepiness. independent of time of day or night. so there are two mechanisms one is we. get sleepy. as adenosine accumulates the longer. we've been awake the more adenosine is. accumulated in our system. but how sleepy we get. for a given amount of adenosine depends.

on where we are in this so-called. circadian cycle. and the circadian cycle is just this. very very well conserved oscillation. it's a temperature oscillation where you. go from a low point. typically if you're awake during the day. and you're asleep at night you'll. your lowest temperature point will be. like three a.m four a.m and then your. temperature will start to creep. up as you wake up in the morning and. then it'll peak in the late afternoon. and then it'll start to drop again. toward the evening and then you get. sleepy again that. oscillation in temperature takes 24.

hours temperature. yeah plus or minus an hour and i. don't even though i wasn't consulted at. the design phase i do not think it's a. coincidence. that it's aligned to the 24-hour spin of. the earth on its axis. and the fact that we tend to be bathed. in sunlight. for a portion of that spin and in. darkness for the other portion that's. been so there are two mechanisms the. adenosine accumulation and the circadian. time point that we happen to be at and. those converge.

to create a sense of sleepiness or. wakefulness the simple way. to reveal these two mechanisms to. uncouple them is stay up for 24 hours. and you will find that even though. you've been let's say you stay up. midnight. 2 a.m 3 a.m provided you're on a regular. schedule. like that i follow not like the kind. that you follow uh. you get i will get very sleepy around 3. 4 a.m. but then around 5 or 6 or 7 a.m which is. my normal wake-up time. i'll start to feel more alert even.

though adenosine has been accumulating. further so adenosine is higher for me. the longer i stay up and yet i feel more. alert than i did a few hours ago and. that's because these are. two interacting forces so adenosine. makes you sleepy. and then just how sleepy or how awake. you feel also depends on where you are. in this temperature oscillation that. takes 24 hours okay so that's. fascinating so there's a bunch of. oscillations going on. and then it kind of through the. evolutionary process. have evolved to all be aligned somewhat.

and they interplay so it's. you said your your body temperature goes. up and down. there's chemicals in your brain that. uh oscillate and then there's the actual. oscillation. of the the sun in the. in the sky so all of that together. has some impact on each other and. somehow that all. results in us wanting to go to sleep. every night. right so um and we can get right into. the meat of this so i guess we just dove.

right in but the. so the the temperature oscillation. is the effector of the circadian clock. so every cell in our body has a 24-hour. rhythm that's dictated by. genes like clock per bee male this is. one of the great successes of biology. they give a nobel prize to the record. i don't know if rapper got it forgive me. but sorry if you got it steve. congratulations if you didn't i'm sorry. i wasn't on the committee um. nonetheless did beautiful work steve. reporter and others. um but mike roshbosh and like other.

people worked out these mechanisms in. flies and bacteria and mammals there are. these genes. that create 24-hour oscillations in gene. expression etc in every cell of our body. but what aligns those is a signal from. the master circadian clock which sits. right above the roof of the mouth. called the suprachiasmatic nucleus and. that clock. synchronizes all the clocks of the body. to this. general temperature rhythm by way of. controlling. systemic temperature which makes perfect. sense if you want to create a general.

oscillation in all the tissues and. organs in the body. use temperature and so that work on. temperature if people want to explore it. further was joe takahashi who was at. northwestern now at ut. southwestern in dallas and it is. absolutely clear that humans do better. on a diurnal schedule. sorry lex than a nocturnal schedule. because. you could say well provided i sleep and. push adenosine back downhill which is. what happens when we sleep adenosine. is then reduced and provided i am on.

more or less a 24 hour schedule why. should it matter that i'm awake when the. sun's out. and um and i'm asleep when the sun is. down but. it turns out that if you look at health. metrics people that are. strictly nocturnal do far worse. on immune function or metabolic function. etc. than people who are diurnal who are. awake during the daytime and animals. that are nocturnal. it's the opposite and animals that are. so-called crepuscular which. tend to be active at dawn and at dusk. this is a beautiful system i won't go.

down that rabbit hole but these are. animals whose visual systems. operate best they tend to be predators. like mountain lions. they have optimized their waking times. for the times when the animals they eat. can't see well in those light conditions. but given the rod cone ratios in their. eyes. the the mountain lion is picking off. it's like when you see uh special forces. and they're looking through. night vision goggles and they have a. clear advantage. right they're seeing in the dark that's. basically what it's like to be a. mountain lion.

as opposed to a bunny rabbit would you. say that a lot of these. cycles evolved in the predator-prey. relationships of the different. throughout the food chain so it's. basically all somehow has to do with. survival. in the in this complicated web of. predators and prey. almost certainly there had to have been. a time in which humans being. awake and active at night as opposed to. during the day. uh led to high level higher levels of. lethality. and probably particularly in kids you.

imagine kids running around in the dark. and getting. that where there are a lot of animals. that can see really well under those. conditions and humans can't. and this would be all pre-electricity. even if you're carrying a torch. i mean the range of illumination on a. torch is nothing. compared to what um a a nighttime. predator like a large cat or something. can can do that i mean they basically. they can see everything they need to in. order to eat us. and not the other way around so one. fascinating thing you said. is uh that blew my mind and we went. right past.

it uh which is the temperature is a. really powerful like if you were to. think about the ways that different. parts of the body. different systems the body would. communicate with each other. temperature would be a really good one. and that just i mean maybe it's obvious. but it kind of blew my mind just now. that yeah these systems are all. distributed. right and they have to kind of they're. not actually sending signals but they're.

coordinating they need. some sort of universal thing to look at. in order to coordinate and temperature. is a nice one to. to uh to build around and that way. you can control the behavior of all. these different systems by controlling. the temperature right it's attractive to. think of a mechanism where this. master circadian clock secretes a. peptide or something that goes and. locks to receptors in all the cells and. gets it just right but that leaves far. too much room for. variability binding affinities cells in.

a lot of. parts of our body are at different. stages of maturation they're turning. over. liver cells and so forth and for. instance our we have a clock in our gut. and in our liver. such that if we were just take out your. liver and put it on a table. and just look at the expression of these. genes it would be in a 24 hour. oscillation on its own it's independent. but something has to entrain them and. keep them all synchronized and so it's. not obvious that it would be temperature. takahashi's great gift to biology was to. show that. all the stuff coming out of this master.

circadian clock. at the end of the day that's a weird. statement no pun intended. at the end at the end of the day end the. night at the um. at the end of the story it all boils. down to making sure that the temperature. of tissues. oscillates in the same fashion that's. blowing my mind and thinking. like what other mechanism could possibly. exist. to create that kind of oscillation well. you're. you're russian it's cold in russia for a. lot of the year the hibernation signal. in certain animals is a remarkable.

signal there are peptides secreted from. this very same clock. that in animals like ground squirrels or. bears. they go into a kind of a torpor where. everything reproduction. metabolism everything is reduced while. they're in their cave they don't. actually stay asleep. all of winter that's a myth um and they. actually do these very. um dramatic and periodic arousals from. hibernation where they just shake and. shake and shake it looks like a seizure. and then they go back under into the. torpor. that's from a peptide that's released.

but that's different because that's. about. shutting down the whole system it's. clear that having these very regular. oscillations every 24 hours is essential. for everything from. metabolism to reproduction is there uh. an optimal temperature for sleep that. i i should mention i think your latest. episode. uh you uh and people should go check out. helixsleep.com huberman to support. andrew uh thanks for the plug.

i mean that's the amazing thing about. the stuff that you're creating oh. and yes you have a new podcast that's. amazing and this past month he did a. whole series on sleep. which people should definitely check out. there's some podcasts that come out. that just make me want to be a better. human being. by just the quality uh three blue one. brown grant. sanderson is like that for me just like. wow. this is uh education is best so andrew.

uh symbolizes that captures that. brilliantly so go support the sponsor so. he doesn't stop doing the thing. uh so they i think they have a cooling. pad too. so i uh uh eight sleep mattress sponsors. me. uh they've been uh they sent me a. mattress. and it's been i've never listened i used. to sleep. on the floor sleeping where you fall you. sleep for a fall i don't give a shit. it doesn't doesn't really matter but so. like i would have never. bought a nice mattress because it's like.

why. i'm fine this is a floor it's fine but. it was a game changer to uh be able to. control temperature like for me it's. cooling. to cool i don't know what the hell it is. well you want the brain and nervous. system. and the rest of the body needs to drop. by about anywhere from two to three. degrees in order to get into your. deepest sleep and transition to sleep. that's really going to help you don't. want to be cold that you're. bothered and can't fall asleep but. that's why some people like it really.

cold in the room and under a warm. blanket or with socks on for some people. that can that can be good because this. temperature oscillation. is such that as your temperature is. dropping that correlates with the. generally with the most sleepy phase of. your circadian cycle. so cool is better for falling and. staying asleep and sleeping deeply. and then i i guess like that's what ate. sleep showed they have like an app. is uh it warms back up uh to wake you up. the idea that. i haven't actually used it i'm like this.

is stupid uh. people say it works but i just keep it. the same temperature throughout the. night. but uh warming it up i guess wakes you. up which is. it was just fascinating yeah because. you're the wake up signal. is it's interesting to think about it's. not just correlated with an increase in. body temperature the increase in body. temperature. is triggering the release of cortisol. from your adrenals and that's the wake. up signal. do you think it's absolute temperatures. we're talking about is just even. relative. just even just a decrease well.

everyone's going to have slightly. different basal temperature the idea. that everybody should be 98.6 i mean. that's a myth. and there are theories that body. temperature overall has been dropping in. the last 50 years or so i i doubt that's. true for somebody who's athletic like. you and is. you know young and healthy but basically. the the coldest period of that 24-hour. cycle. is when you are going to be sleepiest. there's actually a period within that. 24-hour cycle. it's a it's a time point called your. temperature minimum and your temperature.

minimum tends to be. about two hours before your typical. wake-up time. i'm not talking about the wake-up time. in the middle of the night where you go. use the bathroom or where you set an. alarm to go catch a flight i mean. if you were to just allow yourself to. sleep without a clock for a few days. measure when you typically wake up two. hours before then is your temperature. minimum. and that temperature minimum turns out. to be a very important. landmark in your circadian cycle because. it turns out that if you get bright. light in your eyes.

in the hours immediately before your. temperature minimum. so two to four hours or any time within. the two or four hour window before that. temperature minimum. you are going to what's called delay. your circadian clock the next day. that whole oscillation is going to move. forward it will make you want to go to. sleep later. and wake up later whereas if you get. bright light in your eyes in the. hours after that temperature minimum so. let's say for me. typical wake up time is 6 a.m my. temperature minimum somewhere around 4.

a.m if i get bright light in my eyes. 5 a.m 6 a.m 7 a.m it's going to advance. that oscillation so that i want to go to. bed earlier. and wake up earlier the subsequent. nights so you might say. wait but most nights i go to sleep and. wake up at more or less the same time. why is that. and that's because the same thing is. happening on both sides you are both. advancing your clock a little bit. and assuming that you're looking at. light in the evening you're also. delaying your clock a little bit so you. get kind of captured in between and then. your rhythm more or less oscillates.

at the at the same period as we say as. the. spin of the earth unless you're like you. where you're i get text messages from. you sometimes at. odd hours and i'm i if you're on the. east coast then i know that you had to. have been. pulling basically and all night yeah. yeah that's the interesting. uh point about the messiness of. sleep so most people seem to up perform. the best when they have like a regular. sleep schedule. i perhaps am the same.

but i don't know that and i tend to. believe that. you can also perform relatively. optimally with. chaos of sleep of uh. like a weird soup of like power naps. and all-nighters and all of that as long. as you're. like happy doing what you love. and maybe you can um.

tell me what you think about this i i. tend to for myself. try to minimize stress in life so. what i found for myself with diet. with sleep is that if i obsess about it. being perfect. then i'll actually stress quite a bit. when it's not. like i'll feel shitty. uh when i don't get enough sleep because. i know i should be getting more sleep as. opposed to. the actual physiological effects of not.

getting enough sleep. i find if i just accept whatever the. hell happens. happens and smile and just you know take. it all in. like david goggins style like if it. sucks. it's even better or what is it jocko's. like good. or whatever he says right i think there. several things that you said that are. important but i. i agree that one can have a dysregulated. sleep schedule and still. be a happy person and productive in much. of my life i've pulled all-nighters and.

slept weird schedules you know i think. many people. can probably relate to going to sleep. waking up four hours later being up for. an hour or two on your computer then. going back to sleep and getting amazing. sleep the next day functioning. i think we've i think it's important. that people have highlighted the. importance. of sleep and getting enough rest i do. think it's gone too far. and now i'm editorializing a little bit. but i think that. we've created this anxiety about sleep. that it's get if we don't sleep enough. we're gonna get dementia if we don't get.

sleep then. uh you know the reproductive axis is. gonna you know completely crash. um you know there's a lot of evidence to. the contrary. and as well just based on personal. experience and based on the fact that. sure that it may be that a solid eight. hours with no. in uh interruptions in there or nine or. ten. could do great benefit but you can do. really well. if you do what you say which is you wake. up you don't want to start stressing. about it creating this meta stress about. sleep.

being happy it is actually one of the. most powerful. things that you can do not allowing. yourself to go down that rabbit hole of. stress. for the following reason a lot of our. fatigue. is not due just to the build-up of. adenosine or time of day the circadian. thing we were talking about earlier an. additional factor. is that effort is in related to the. release of epinephrine of adrenaline in. our brain and body. at some point those levels get so high. that we get stressed mentally.

we get stressed physically and we want. to give up there are good data published. in cell. showing that that signal the epinephrine. signal is eventually accumulates and. there's a quit. point dopamine the molecule of pursuit. and reward and feeling good. resets our ability to be an effort in. fact. a lot of people don't know this but. dopamine is actually what. epinephrine is made from if you look at. the biochemical cascade it starts with. tyrosine which is rich in found in red.

meats and things of that sort. and tyrosine is eventually converted. through things like altopa into dopamine. dopamine is made into epinephrine so i. mean this sounds kind of new ag but. happiness joy and pleasure in what. you're doing. creates a chemical milieu that. provides more of the chemicals that. allow for effort. and there's nothing new ag about that. it's in every biochemistry textbook. it's in every decent neuroscience. textbook they just don't talk about the. happiness part they just talk about the.

dopamine part. so i think that limiting your stress and. at least recognizing. okay if you're pulling an all-nighter or. you're somehow on messed up sleep. that there is going to be a point in. that 24-hour cycle where your brain is. not. trustworthy where your mental state is. not. worth placing too much weight on because. you are near that temperature minimum. and near that temperature minimum which. is correlates that two hour. about two hours before you would. normally wake up.

the brain is is hobbling along. and anything you feel or think at that. time. should not be given too much value but. if you can trick. yourself into thinking that's the. pleasure point you afford yourself a. huge advantage. there's a study done by a colleague of. mine at stanford that showed. that positive anticipation about the. next day events. actually is a powerful metric. for creating quality sleep even if the. sleep is very reduced.

and and you'll love this one and i i a. lot of people are gonna. you know might be critical of this so i. just want to make sure that so this was. work done. out of harvard medical it was um. bob stickgold's lab and emily hoagland. did this study that showed. looking at ochem performance on ochem. scores okay so organic chemistry. harvard's pretty tough subject highly. motivated. a number of very good control groups in. this study. what she showed was that consistency of. total sleep duration. was far more important for performance.

on these. exams than total sleep duration itself. so it's not that just getting more sleep. allows you to perform better. consistently getting about the same. amount of sleep. is more is better for performance at. least in on okim. yeah than just getting more that's. interesting so that's. referring to more that there should be a. consistent habit. versus the total amount to me like the. entirety of the picture of sleep.

is uh it's similar to nutrition in that. it feels like it's. there's so many variables involved and. it's so person specific. so you know a lot of studies i mean this. is the way of science. has to look and aggregate the effects on. sleep. it doesn't focus on high performers and. which are. individuals ultimately like the question. isn't. uh so it's a very important question. it's like what kind of diet.

fights obesity reduces obesity. it's another question what kind of diet. allows david goggins to be the best. version of himself so. these high performers in different. avenues and the same thing with sleep. like people that tell me that i should. get eight hours of sleep. it's like it's i i. mean i i get it and they may be right. but they may be very wrong. and there's no evidence that eight is. better than six. that you could very well do better on.

six than on eight. there are a few other things that um. turn out to be strong parameters for. success in this domain for instance. your entire life waking or asleep is. broken up into these 90-minute altradian. cycles if you look at ability to attend. or do math problems or do anything. drive drive performance tends to. ramp up slowly within a 90-minute cycle. peak and then come down. at the end of that 90-minute cycle and. in sleep we go through these. stage one two three four rem etc we'll.

talk more about that if you like those. on 90-minute ultradian cycles as well. ending your sleep after a 90-minute. cycle at the. at the near the end of a 90-minute cycle. say at the end of six hours. in many cases is better for you than. sleeping an additional hour seven hours. and waking up in the middle of an. altradian cycle. and there are a few apps that can. measure this based on body movements and. things like that that. have you your alarm go off at the end of. an ultraviolet cycle. and if you wake up in the middle of an. altradian cycle sometimes not always you.

can be very. groggy for a long period of time i. certainly do better on six hours than i. do on seven. i happen to like an eight hour sleep it. feels great but i. haven't slept an entire eight hours. without waking up in the middle of the. night at some point. in i don't know forever i can't remember. it's probably some point in. infancy but and i function well during. the day i think that. that's a big that's an important. parameter is how do you feel during the. day. almost everybody experiences some sort.

of dip in energy in the late afternoon. or what would correlate to their. temperature peak. and that's a good time of day to get. either a 90. 90 minute or less nap or if you're not a. napper. or you can't nap feet elevated. has been shown to be good for clear out. of some of this. the glymphatic system is this kind of. like sewer system of the brain you can. clear stuff out. so legs elevated or one thing that i've. um i'm a big proponent of and that my. lab has been studying is what i.

i now call nsdr non-sleep deep breast. and this is just lying down there are. some scripts that we're going to put out. there soon as. a free resource there's some hypnosis. scripts that my colleague david spiegel. has put out there as a free resource. but non-sleep deep rest is allowing your. system to drop into states of. of real calm that allow you to get. better at falling asleep later. and they can be very restorative for. cognitive and motor function. there's at least one study out of. denmark that shows that. the basal ganglia which is an area of.

the brain that's involved in motor. planning and action. one of these 20-minute non-sleep deep. breast protocols. resets levels of neuromodulators like. dopamine in the basal ganglia to. the same levels that they were right. after a long night's sleep. so i also respectfully. uh or semi-respectfully disagree with. the idea that you can't recover lost. sleep. what does that mean i mean that there's. no irs for sleep. so what does it mean to be in debt for. sleep. if you're falling asleep during the day.

and you're sleepy like you're falling. asleep that's. a good sign of insomnia means you're not. sleeping enough at night. if you're fatigued during the day but. you're not falling asleep so you're just. exhausted but you're not finding. yourself falling asleep in meetings and. in conversation. then chances are you're fatiguing your. system through something else. like a long run in the middle of the. night. boston or whatever it is that you're up. to lately at uh 3 a.m. yes there is a magic to the nap and. maybe you could speak to the because you.

mentioned these protocols. that don't necessarily so they're. non-sleep. but to me the nap. one or two a day can. almost irrespective of how much sleep i. get the night before. i have a fundamental change in my mood. and my. performance for the better for the. better for the better yeah likewise. so uh i do tend to kind of experiment. with durations. it's it's consistently surprising to me.

how like a nap of like 10 minutes i. don't know maybe you can speak to the. perfect duration of a nap. but i find that it's like magic. that a short nap does as much good. and often better than a longer one for. me for me subjective what would be a. longer one. longer than 90 minutes no no like 90. minutes or but longer than 90. like two hours yeah that's dropping you. starting to drop you into rem sleep and.

even if it's a tiny amount of rem sleep. people can come out of those naps kind. of disoriented. i mean remember in sleep space and time. are are totally uncoupled and so. they that's an odd state to re-enter the. world in if you're not going to stay. there for a while like for a good. night's sleep. i think a 20-minute nap is pretty. fantastic. would you say that's the op if you were. to recommend to the general and. it's very weird to recommend anything to. the general populace because. obviously it's very person specific but. what's a good one we say to friends is.

20 minutes ago. 30 minutes 20 or 30 minutes because. you're going unless you're sleep. deprived. you're going to stay out of rem sleep. rapid eye movement sleep if you're sleep. deprived you'll drop right into it if. you've ever traveled and you're really. jet lagged you go to the hotel you lay. down for one second all of a sudden. you're just like. you're you're in a psychedelic dream um. which can be pretty great too but i. think that. uh 20 30 minutes and if you can't sleep. some people have.

trouble napping then learning to relax. the body as much as possible like trying. to remove. all expression from your face completely. letting your body kind of float. if people have a hard time relaxing when. they're awake. there's some terrific clinically and. research tested hypnosis protocols. that we could provide links to that are. cost-free and that teach you how to just. completely. release the alertness button and you. just start drifting now the problem is. if you don't have an alarm or something.

to go off you. the other day i did one and i'm almost. embarrassed to say this but there's a. component of it where you actually are. supposed to let your hand float up. because it's a. hypnosis script so they it's my. colleague david spiegel in the script he. says. um let your hand float up i woke up an. hour later my hand was still floating. wow yeah and i was and i was completely. relaxed. so hypnosis is hypnosis is just a matter. of going deep relaxation narrowing of. context. and it's all self-imposed a lot of. people think that hypnosis is like the.

stage thing with the pendant and the. chicken. you know people fucking like chickens. but real hypnosis. is self-hypnosis you're learning to it. involves. some shifts in the way that you the the. hypnotic induction involves looking up. closing your eyes slowly deep breath and. then imagine yourself floating. and people vary on a scale of about one. to four. for being the most easily hypnotized. there are a few people who it's very. hard for them to allow themselves to to. go into these states but for most people.

they just they're gone and it's nice if. if you can have access to those states. because when you come out of it. you feel amazing you feel like you slept. the whole night at least. most people report that so refresh alert. ready to go i mean basically. you're ready yeah i know you have this. um interesting challenge coming up and. i'm curious what you're gonna do to. reset in the hours. it that the frequency of running is um. every four hours it's not going to allow. you to get any more than. a couple hours sleep in between flowers. so we should we should tell to people.

i'd be curious. to get your thoughts and advice on it. i'm uh. on march 5th running 48 miles with mr. david goggins. so four miles every four hours and. people should join us. he's uh that madman is going to be live. on instagram. starting at 8 p.m pacific on march 5th. so you're gonna join him in person in. person undisclosed location. undisclosed location and i was i was. trying to clarify like okay so we're.

gonna. like there'll be like friendly people. around or something no it's just me and. him friendly people i don't know. like i just feel it's very difficult to. be. with david alone in the room i imagine. his i mean i've done some work with. david his energy is infectious. yeah that's an intense schedule um. and the the periodicity of that those. four hour. every four hours four miles means that. there's no chance of catching an. extended.

block of sleep so it's about three hours. that you have. non-exercising every time and of course. it takes time to try to fall asleep and. there's an intensity to the whole thing. i mean it's probably impossible to get. anything more. than uh two hours of sleep if you wanted. to so the optimal thing is probably. from the sound of it i'd be curious to. see what you think. but like it's getting a few 90 90-minute. naps okay well i thought about this a.

bit. before we met up today so i think there. are two general approaches. that could work neither one necessarily. better than the other. one would be just to hammer through the. whole thing. just to get your level of alertness and. adrenaline. ramped up so that you don't expect. yourself to sleep. there are certain advantages there one. is a subjective kind of emotional. advantage. which is if you can't sleep you're not. gonna be stressed about that yes. and if you do fall asleep it's a bonus.

provided you wake up and you don't look. up and you realize david's been out. running for. half an hour and you're behind right but. chances are that's not the way it'll go. you set an alarm so that's one approach. yeah and and i grabbed that from you. know a. couple friends who were um who are in. the seal teams and they'll say that you. know during buds there's this. infamous hell week and there's this five. hour five days excuse me definitely five. days. of no sleep although there is a. component where they offer a nap at one. particular point. and a lot of people will say that it's.

worse to go down for that nap. and then be woken up 20 minutes later. than to just stay up. so so that's one option let's call it. the um full blitz hammer through. option and if you happen to fall asleep. you do bonus yeah the bonus. the other one would be to really anchor. in these ultradian cycles so coming back. from a run. you pr unless you're thoroughly. exhausted you're probably going to have. a few minutes where you're. going to want to stay awake it's going. to be hard to just immediately fall.

asleep. and getting as much sleep as you can in. the intervening. periods provided that you guys aren't. posting constantly or doing something. else you also. there's a question whether or not you. want to nourish whether or not you want. to eat or not in that time. anytime we put food in our gut i don't. care if it's meat. or oatmeal or. broccoli or cardboard you're drawing. blood into the gut. and so you are going to divert some. energy towards digestion and it's going. to make you sleepy there's a reason why. the rest and digest the parasympathetic.

nervous system is called that. so you could decide that you were only. going to sleep in certain. in between certain blocks that would be. another way to think about that. that because i did this last year. uh i ran very slow some of it was. walking i was listening audiobooks and. one of the biggest mistakes i did is to. overeat during that time right it was uh. made the experience very unpleasant so i. have been considering basically eating. almost nothing.

throughout the day being fasted will. increase alertness because. high levels of epinephrine in your. system from fasting you just think about. fasting or being thirsty. before you get exhausted people always. think if i don't eat i'm going to be. tired. no the the energy that you derive from. food is going to be. uh used from glycogen and after a long. storage and conversion process so. the food that you eat is going to. consume energy to digest. and so a lot of people feel better. fasted and. presumably throughout history people. have fasted for long periods of time and.

had to stay up for two or three days and. you know god forbid if a family member. is sick you can stay awake in the. hospital. without any trouble so that alertness. system and you know it's all mental. um actually and then there's a third. so you could try and sleep or or take. care in between yes. yeah and then there's a third approach. oh yeah but i didn't come up with it. but david did so i actually texted him. earlier because i had a feeling that i. heard that you were going to do this. challenge.

so i asked david um. so these are david goggins words not. mine okay. one okay being organized is super. important. two you want to waste as little time as. possible. three you need to eat sleep and rehab. in as little time as possible so you can. sleep as much as possible oh interesting. by the way this is the first time i'm. reading this. yeah um four meal prep.

and gear prep etc are very important. that's um. that's consistent with everything i know. about military they they don't. they don't leave too much to chance five. again these are david's words all that. said he's fucked on most all that. because he'll be interviewing me before. or after i will also be interviewing him. oh shit five long story short the only. thing that might help. is a very special pill this is. interesting. they're called s-i-u pills hard to get.

but i believe he can get them s-i-u. stands for suck it up. tell him to grab his balls he'll find. those pills there. that's number six all right and then the. last one yeah stay hard brother. stay hard brother amen i. you know that was one of the other. things that i think makes. this challenging is that it'll be doing. a podcast throughout. so first of all i'll do a long one. before and after but also.

i'll have to come up with things to talk. to him about. so like it's a different thing to do. something. privately and then publicly i know it. doesn't. seem that way but like one of the. hardest. the hardest thing i had to do last time. was to turn. on the camera and talk to the camera. because i. uh last time i did it i recorded um. every single time i did a leg. i recorded something i'm grateful for.

it's just kind of unrelated i'm not a. fan of like. talking about like how i'm feeling or. how they're on is going. i want to do something totally unrelated. to the run. and with the run as the background you. know sort of something i'm grateful for. just any kind of uh interesting. discussion gratitude. i mean i hate the word hack like oh it's. a dopamine hack or it's a serotonin i i. don't like the word hack because. it's disrespectful to hackers who do a. real thing and. b a hack implies that it's some sort of.

trick that you're. you're you're kind of gaming the system. you know what. what works is mechanism right biological. mechanisms. were designed to work and they were. selected for. to work under variable conditions and as. you know and i know and. we have great appreciation for the fact. that the nervous system was designed to. be an adaptive machine. so that you don't have to sleep eight. hours every night. you can do this thing and things like. gratitude allow you to tap into chemical.

resources. and that's not a hack the fact that. being grateful for something external to. the event. happens to release serotonin and have a. certain soothing effect or. dopamine and give you more epinephrine. and let you go further. that's not a hack that's actually what. allowed the human machine. to evolve to the point that it is now. every time. you know an inventor eventually created. something that worked and felt great. about it you can imagine that the. the first you know air flight felt.

pretty awesome. and motivated those people to go on and. do more they they didn't just go uh you. know yawn and go have a beer. so being able to access the genuine in. internal states of gratitude and reward. works. you can't trick the system you can't. pretend that you're grateful for. something but if you can identify or. attach yourself to some larger. goal or something that's deeply. gratifying to you or place it in service. to. a relative that passed away that you.

care a lot about. that's not a hack that's accessing the. deepest components of your nervous. system and um to steal your kind of. lingo you know there's real beauty there. right yeah but for an introvert like. myself and i think david i don't know if. he's an introvert but like. he's not despite the fact that he has. written a great book. and he communicates he puts himself out. there he's not really. a fan of communication he's not i don't. know if he's energized by.

speaking his mind i don't know well. enough to know i mean. we've done a little bit of work together. and um you know we're in communication. now and again he's obviously super. impressive. um i don't know it seems that he's a pr. seems like he's a pretty private guy. yeah you know so i don't have access to. that so for me. i'll just speak to myself and i think. david is the same but i'll speak to. myself that. it was a hugely draining thing not. to experience the gratitude experiencing. the gratitude just like you're saying.

is really energizing and it's it's a. powerful thing it's a. it's a it can lift up your mood. but to turn on the camera and have to. use words which is very difficult to do. to explain. like what you're feeling and do it in. the way that you know a bunch of people. will be watching. is really draining and one of the things. i'm concerned about. that in this whole process how do i.

keep my mind sharp while also. keeping the performance the physical. performance shop and that's a little bit. scary because. talking to david like actual. intellectually sharp like. thinking being charismatic and as much. as i can be. and like being still maintaining a sense. of humor too. because i can be i i become with sleep. deprivation. with exhaustion you start being the. russian bear comes out you start being. such a d like you i become a david.

goggins essentially like. oh it makes you irritable sleep. deprivation makes us irritable. yeah there's it's clear so that in the. early part of the night we get a higher. percentage of those old trading cycles. are. occupied by slow wave sleep sometimes. just called non-rem sleep. and those early night sleep bouts. are great for muscular repair and for. certain forms of learning. but rem sleep the rapid eye movement. sleep which it starts to accumulate. and occupy more of those 90-minute.

ultradian cycles. toward the late part of a sleep bout so. toward. typically toward morning but toward. after you've been asleep a while. that's when you do the emotional. processing that's when. we recover the ability to feel refreshed. and not irritated by things and. if you deprive people of rem sleep they. become selectively. uh bad at uncoupling the emotion from. things that happened in the previous. days so the little things start to seem. like big things.

i always know i'm rem sleep deprived. when um. i'm irritable and when um i look at like. the word. the and it doesn't look like it's. spelled right and i'm kind of pissed off. about it like something's off and. we actually are becoming slightly um. psychotic when we're rem sleep deprived. you're not going to get a lot of rem. sleep in this thing except as you. fatigue more if you do fall asleep. you're going to drop more and more into. rem so that. those 90-minute cycles you won't have to. go through stage one stage two stage. three and then rem. you're just gonna drop right into ram so.

you can count on your system to. compensate for you. but i think that just the knowledge that. you tend to get irritable as the time. goes on. just that third personing of yourself. that awareness the observer. that can be very beneficial because. there may be bouts during this event. when you just should probably say. nothing and maybe you just. um i don't know smile and record or not. smile or do. do whatever it is because you're gonna. be conserving energy if it feels like a. grind. that's epinephrine being released that's.

epinephrine that you could devote to the. physical. effort but humor is an amazing anecdote. for this because. it resets that it's that dopamine. release. that gives us that fresh perspective and. it's a it's a real chemical thing. it's not a it's not a hack it's not a. it's not a trick. it's not a visualization it's biology in. action. well but i think the act. of uh interviewing of conversation in. these processes. even if you don't want to do it the.

right thing to do. even when you're feeling irritable is to. to do the third person view and be able. to express with words that you're. feeling irritable. like express what you're going through. ex you know. use words which i hate doing i honestly. i think my. ultimate thing would be just to never. say a single word to david gagas and. just go through hell. it doesn't matter what we do but to do. it quietly to also express it.

that's my ultimate hell and he's. definitely gonna be. if i know david at all he's he's going. to try and find your buttons like he's. gonna. he i mean he even though he knows he can. complete this. and i i believe that he trusts that you. can complete too i. i believe you can you will complete it. you know you will complete it right. there's no question about. that but he's not gonna make it easier. for you he's gonna make it harder. well i'm afraid so i'm like you know. it's very difficult for me so 48 miles. is not. easy i have not been trading that much. so i'm not ramping up.

but it's not like going to kill me. we'll see what happens of course for him. he might almost get bored because i. think the 48 miles for him. is easy i think i don't know. that i don't know that ever gets easy i. have a friend. casey corgill who works with david he's. a does some. um physical uh rehab type stuff with him. and he. took casey on a 50 miler and he said. it's like 16 miles into it he was just. like. he had hit his wall yeah but they he.

found it they. they find it to get you know you find. that portal. there is one thing i want to mention. there's some very good physiology. that can perhaps support the actual. running effort part these are very new. data. and we have a study going on with david. spiegel at stanford looking at how. different patterns of breathing. can affect heart rate variability heart. rate variability is good. there's this interesting mechanism i. think most people might. not realize but that medical students. learned that your breathing and your. heart rate and your brain are in this.

really remarkable interplay it goes like. this. when you inhale this isn't breath work. we're not going to do breath work. but when you inhale the diaphragm moves. down. the heart gets a little bigger because. there's a little more space in the. thoracic cavity. and as a consequence blood flows a. little bit more slowly through that. larger volume. there's a category of neurons the. sinoatrial node. that sees that that recognizes that that. slower. rate through that larger volume sends a. signal to the brain stem and the brain.

stem sends a signal back to the heart to. speed the heart up. so every time you inhale you're speeding. the heart up when you exhale. the diaphragm moves up the heart gets a. little smaller the volume is smaller. blood flows more quickly through the. heart a signal sent up to the brain and. the brain sends a signal back. to slow the heart down this is the basis. of heart rate variability. so at any point if you feel like your. heart is racing and you feel like you're. working too hard per unit of effort. focus on making your exhales longer or.

more intense than your inhales. if ever you feel like you're truly. flagging you do not have the energy to. get up it's like okay it's time to go. and you're exhausted. you want to draw more oxygen into the. system get your heart rate going faster. now some people when they hear this. probably thinking well this is really. obvious but there's so much out there. about breath work and how to breathe and. all this stuff but no one talks about. how to do it in. real time while you're exerting effort. so this is something like almost like. second by second you can adjust things. to just. in real time based on how you're feeling.

but based on the heart rate that's right. the experience of the heart rate. that's right so one thing that could. could be very efficient and we're doing. some work with athletes now. these are unpublished data but if you. while you're running. if you want to get into a nice cadence. of heart rate variability. do double inhales. while you're running what this will do. is when you do the double inhale has the. effect of. of reopening the avioli of the lungs. your lungs are filled with tons of.

little sacs. when you they tend to collapse as you. fatigue when you. and carbon dioxide builds up in the. bloodstream and that's when we start. getting stress if you've ever been. sprinting you start getting beat and. you're going as hard as you can what. what you really need to do is double. inhale and reinflate these sacs in the. lungs and then offload a lot of carbon. dioxide. so when you're at a steady cadence and. you're feeling good double inhale. exhale double inhale exhale is a. terrific. way to breathe while you're in ongoing. effort by the way. any recommendations or differences in.

nose or mouth breathing so nasal. breathing there's. a lot of excitement now obviously about. nasal breathing because of james. nestor's book breath. um there was also if people are gonna. know about that book that i do feel like. out of respect for my colleagues there. was a book by. sandra um khan and paul ehrlich at. stanford both professors at stanford. with a. forward by um jared diamond and robert. zapalski so. some heavy hitters in this book and the. book is called jaws. a hidden epidemic and it's all about how. nasal breathing is better for.

us especially kids than being mouth. breathers under most conditions. for sake of improving immunity it turns. out there's a microbiome in the nose. like all sorts of good stuff about nasal. breathing preferentially. but when we exercise you can. you can do pure nasal breathing but the. problem is once you get up to kind of. third and fourth and fifth gear effort. you can't nasal breathe and be at. maximum capacity unless you've been. training it for a very long time. so i would say double inhale through the. nose offload through the mouth so double.

inhale. exhale while you're in steady effort and. then if you really feel like you need to. gas it and you're pushing. the data show that then just use. whatever's there. right just go into kind of default mode. because. bringing too much concentration to. something is also going to spend. epinephrine. the goal is to get into that i don't. like the word but the flow state. where you're not thinking too much. you're just in exertion. so these are so these are things that. can help in the transitions. um but i don't think there's any secret.

breathing technique you know anyone. who's been in the seal teams will kind. of. you know they'll tell you like there's. no breathing technique right. there's a there's tools that you can. look to from time to time. and these double inhale exhales can be. great for setting heart rate variability. in. very quickly and getting into a steady. cadence while you're exercising but if. there's a sprint like if suddenly you. guys are sprinting. ditch the ditch the double inhale exhale. and just sprint. one thing you mentioned he's probably. gonna push my buttons. it's a good place to ask a question. about anger so i'll probably get pissed.

off at him at some point. i'm guessing and. do you have thoughts from a scientific. perspective. or also just the personal philosophical. perspective about the role of anger and. all of this in. in managing alertness performance. i think about this a lot because there's. so much out there about how important it. is to do things from a place of love. you know i tweet about it all the time.

and i think and. love is powerful right you know it is. interesting that autonomic arousal. alertness let's just make use simple. language. alertness physiologically looks. identical. for love and excitement as it does for. anger and frustration and wanting to. defeat your opponent. or whoever that opponent happens to be. they're identical. except that the love component does tend. to. be associated with the release of. neurochemicals of the serotonin and. dopamine type.

that do have this replenishment. component i don't think one wants to be. in. constant anger and friction but. i mean i'll come clean a bit there have. been portions of my career where some of. my best work. my extra two hours my ability to nail a. really hard deadline or problem has come. from not wanting to get out competed or. from. wanting to prove something these days i. i don't i'm not oriented from that place. toward my work quite as often but i.

think we should be really honest. anger is powerful provided it's. channeled. it's very very powerful and it can give. you a ton of fuel. and gas to push when otherwise you'd. tap yeah joe rogan has. aside from being a fan of his has been. an inspiration to sort of be. to have a kind of loving view on the. world. in the way you approach the world to me. so i've. tended to want to approach the world.

that way but in the same way. david goggins has been an inspiration to. like. uh yeah be angry at stuff and. uh use it as fuel like he almost. uh conjures up artificial demons in his. mind just so he can fight them. i you know but at the same time i tried. that because i did a challenge in the. summer. of for 30 days i was doing a lot of. push-ups and. it was uh over time it was.

counterproductive for me. like i found that it was easier to just. like the roller coaster that the. emotional. like being angry at stuff takes you can. also be exhausting. oh absolutely and it can take you down. like the. the ups of it are good but the downs are. bad. and what i found is better to get to use. it as a boost every once in a while but. mostly to get lost. in the you're talking about the breath.

work that. like getting lost in the ritual of it. like that the be. like that as opposed to going on the big. roller coasters of emotion. yet this brings us into the realm of. neuroendocrinology. is that there's a fascinating. relationship between the hormone system. and the nervous system. and yeah hormones work in general on. slower time scales the definition of a. hormone is something the chemical. released at one location in the body. goes and acts at multiple locations. far away and within the body pheromone. would be between two bodies.

neurochemicals like dopamine serotonin. tend to work a little more quickly there. are hormones like adrenaline. and cortisol that can work very fast but. here i'm referring mainly to. testosterone prolactin prolactin tends. to be in men and women tends to make. people kind of. lazy and want to take care of young it. tends to throw down body fat so we can. stay up late. it's secreted in response to having. children these are all. in humans and in animals there's a very. interesting relationship between.

testosterone and dopamine. [Music]. that speaks directly to what we're. talking about now. so dopamine and testosterone are closely. related in the pituitary system. and obviously testosterone comes from. the adrenals and from the testes. but the the major effect of testosterone. is to make effort feel good that's what. testosterone does it has other effects. too. right reproductive effects androgenizing. parts of the body etc.

but it makes effort feel good the. testosterone molecule is synthesized. from cholesterol. cholesterol can either be made into. cortisol a stress hormone or. testosterone. but not both so you have a limited. amount of cholesterol. and it gets diverted towards stress or. towards tests. or this pathway where effort feels good. that's the pathway you want to get into. the anger pathway if we were to just. kind of. play a mind experiment here the anger.

eventually is going to divert more of. that cholesterol molecule to cortisol. and stress and you will be slowly. depleting testosterone now going into. this. you'll have plenty of testosterone but. after a couple days there have been very. interesting studies showing that. testosterone. doesn't necessarily drop with sleep. deprivation that's a bit of a myth. you need it to replenish to stop you. need sleep to replenish testosterone. eventually. but the real question is are you. enjoying what you're doing. and here that the work was uh some of.

the major work on this was done. by duncan french who runs the ufc. training center he did his phd. at uconn um stores did a really. beautiful. phd thesis looking at the relationship. between stress hormones testosterone. and dopamine really interesting work and. the the takeaway from all of this is if. you can just convince yourself or. ideally if you can just enjoy yourself. you are going to maintain or maybe even. increase testosterone stores. which will make effort feel good and to.

me. aside from neuroplasticity where. everything becomes automatic after this. experience. to me that's the holy grail when effort. feels good. life just gets way better and we're not. talking about achieving the reward i'm. not talking about the end of this thing. i'm talking about the process of it. feeling really good yeah the you know. there is a magic to uh. i don't know if you can comment on this. but i find myself. being able to if i just say i'm feeling. good like this.

this old hack of like smiling while. you're running. if i just tell myself i'm feeling really. good right now. no matter how i'm actually feeling i'll. start feeling way better and the whole. thing. there's the cascading effect that uh. allows me to maximize the effort it's. it's quite fascinating. it's weird hormones are powerful the. relationship between thoughts and. hormones and these physiological things. is enormous. i had a colleague that a few years ago. he was dying of.

pancreatic cancer and i was interviewing. him just because i. he's an important figure in our. community and i was a friend. and there was one day where he he told. me he said you know i don't want to. make it past the new year i just and it. was it was crushing for me to hear. and i knew that he had been on some. androgen therapy. for for a whole set of other things and. i i said you know. um have you taken your andro androgen. cream and he was like no i haven't done. it go get it for me. i have this on film he takes it he puts. the andrew cream on i'm not suggesting.

people take. androgens by the way ten minutes later. he says. you know what i think i want to live. into the new year and i'm going to write. 12 letters of recommendation he went to. mit by the way. he said i'm going to write 12 letters of. recommendation and he did. and so there's something about these. molecules that in an. ancient way in all organisms all mammals. as far as we know. are linked to the will to live they're. linked to effort and making effort feel. good which has been fundamental to the. evolution of our species.

i always say people think that the. opposite of testosterone is estrogen but. it's not. the opposite of testosterone is. prolactin which makes us feel quiescent. and not in pursuit of things etc. testosterone makes effort feel good. estrogen makes. emotions feel okay. and and and they are in mixed amounts in. um. in all people as i say of all. chromosomal backgrounds yeah. yeah i mean you also mentioned fasting. potentially through this uh two day.

thing. it'd be cool to get your thoughts about. fasting in general do you think. uh on a personal level and at a higher. sort of. level of studies that you're aware of. and physiology. and so on what do you think about. intermittent fasting of like. not eating for 16 hours and then having. an eight-hour window. or something i've been doing a lot. recently which is. eating only once a day so that's 24-hour. fast i guess. one meal a day or something i've um.

been thinking about doing haven't done. yet or doing like 72 hours or some. people do like. five day fasts in general so this would. be. for this particular run will be at a 48. hour fast. if i don't need it at all what do you. think about that for performance from. mood for all those kinds of things i can. speak a little bit to the science. and a little bit of my own experience. and then some anecdotes of people that. have done. very hard very long duration things and. what they've told me so i just want to.

make sure i'm separating those out so. people know my sourcing. i think now none of this is about the. actual. long-term nutritional benefits of one. thing or the other. but if you look at the science on. intermittent fasting it's pretty. remarkable. before i was at stanford my lab was in. san diego one of my colleagues was. sachin panda. at the salk this phenomenal biologist. and researcher wrote a book called the. circadian code it's very very good and. and. kind of popularized intermittent fasting. although there were others that had.

um talked about this before ori. hofmeckler talked about the warrior diet. people probably might not know who or he. is but he's he's sort of the originator. of the. this business of intermittent fasting. even once a day are limited. anyway sachin has published papers. peer-reviewed papers and very good. journals. like cell and elsewhere showing that. limiting the. consumption of calories to eight. you know four six or eight or even ten. hours of every 24 hour cycle. and keeping that more or less correlated.

with the. light with when the sun is out leads to. less liver disease improved metabolic. markers. less body fat etc in the mouse studies. they even gave the mice the choice to. eat whatever they wanted as much as they. wanted as long as they restricted it to. a certain period. within the 24 hour cycle they they did. great they. they maintained a healthy weight or even. lost weight when they took the same. amount of food and they stretched it out. across the 24 the entire 24 hour cycle. so this is eating every hour or two. hours.

the animals got fat and sick so it's. pretty remarkable data. how much of that translates to humans. isn't clear but one thing that's really. clear with humans is adherence. right we could talk a lot about. nutrition and some of the problems with. the studies on nutrition is that what. people will do in a laboratory. is often hard to do in the real world. low carbohydrate diets. just they tend because they tend to. focus on foods that have. high amino acid content like meats. generally people. are less hungry on their those than they.

are on calorie matched. diets of fruits and vegetables and. carbohydrates because. when the insulin goes up you get hungry. and you want to eat more. so this is not a push for carnivore or a. push against one thing or the other. it's just there are a lot of factors but. we know for sure that when you're fasted. or when you have low amounts of. carbohydrate in your system complex. carbohydrate. your alertness is going to go up fast. increases. increases alertness and epinephrine. for the sole purpose of getting you to.

go out and find food can you imagine if. our ancestors. got hungry and they were like oh i'm too. tired to go find food we wouldn't be. here you'd be like robots or some. one of your alien one of your alien. buddies will be like. running so i think that if you want to. be alert. fasting or keeping complex carbohydrates. to a minimum. is very valuable if you want to sleep. and you want to be sleepy. ingesting foods that have a lot of. tryptophan which is the precursor to. serotonin so complex carbohydrates.

like rice and grains turkey white meats. those things do create a sense of. sleepiness however there is a caveat and. this is. one problem with the once a meal once a. day meal. is that anytime you have a lot of food. in the gut you're increasing sleepiness. because you're diverting blood to the. gut it's going to trigger the vagus to. signal to the brain to shut down your. system and utilize those nutrients can. you. digest and utilize those nutrients so. i've done the once. a day eating thing the problem is i eat. so much in that meal that i'm exhausted.

and so it doesn't always lend itself. well to the schedule. but so in a six or eight hour eating. block for me is a little bit better. i do eat carbohydrates i'm probably one. of the few people left on the west coast. that actually consumes carbohydrates and. will. say that out loud people eat carbs. anymore that's weird they don't where do. you even find carbs what do you buy. i like oatmeal i like rice the other. time is if people are doing very high. intensity weight training they need to. replenish glycogen. on the alertness side i do feel like. it's probably person independent for me.

alertness being alert makes my life. better. in a lot of ways more than just the. alertness itself. like for example one of the things that. discovered with fasting. is that when i was training twice a day. in jiu jitsu for example and competing. and so on. i performed way better at things that. you traditionally would say you need. carbs for which. is explosive movements and all that i. don't. know if i actually perform better in.

terms of like. the the force of the explosion. the explosiveness what i do know is the. alertness resulted in me. uh doing the technique more precisely. that's the dopamine and epinephrine. system in action. and there's a you know there are some. other just. purely uh physical aspects to one diet. versus the other that. can be complicated if you're ingesting. carbohydrates complex carbohydrates. you're going to replenish glycogen which.

is great. but they also tend to be bulky and. fibrous and i've never rolled jiu jitsu. but running when you have a lot of bulky. fibrous food in your in your gut or in. your intestine. it can be a barrier it can be. uncomfortable and so some people do. really well on low carbohydrate meat. rich diets because they're just not. as bloated they're not carrying as much. water and other stuff. carbohydrate carries a lot of water. molecules with it so there are aspects. to being able to train and being really. explosive because you feel light. one anecdote that really again i'm not.

encouraging any one particular kind of. diet but i have a friend who is in the. uh in the seal teams um i happen to know. a number of people in that community and. he told me that he did this. very long fast it was so fast that i. think they you get to eat a little bit. of soup and or broth and there's like a. bar or something but it's like a. nine-day thing and he's. he's a very strong athlete and he said. that. on day six or seven he was running up. some. hills or something while he was on. deployment and he.

felt amazing he kind of hit this other. level he was somebody who had boxed in. the naval academy. he was somebody who was had he knew. knows a new. high output and he felt like he. discovered the. the 13th floor that there was another. floor to this. performance space that he hadn't. experienced. except while he had fasted and he said. that that was a remarkable. clarity of mind energy it's a little bit. of what you described. he described a kind of suppleness and. explosiveness so there's probably. something there on which day.

uh at once he was in the fifth or sixth. day of the february see this is the. thing is i've never been there. uh on the second third fourth fifth day. that kind of thing. but when i just don't eat for 20 hours. many times through my training the. clarity. it's like you feel like everyone is. moving super slowly. and you're able to like dominate people. you weren't able to before it's like. well you might have slipped into or. switched over rather into full ketosis.

and ketogenic diets done properly can be. great for people. the problem is if you do it wrong you. can really mess it up i tried it once. and i basically got psoriasis i thought. my scalp was going to fall off i was. like slothing off all this. and i stopped and i was taking the. liquid ketones and then all of a sudden. i felt better again. but i was told that i just did it wrong. yes um that's so i think there's a right. way and a wrong way and you have to get. it right. definitely and so i've experimented. quite a bit with keto too. to see how my body feels and doing it.

the right way and following all the. instructions. there's definitely a huge difference. that. like for example one of the things i. discovered everyone always said this. and but i tried this uh recently. over the past year as i started drinking. when i don't feel great if i'm fasting. uh bone broth. chicken bone broth oh yeah and for some. reason like magically it could be. this is the other thing the mind i don't. know but it makes me feel. really good well it could be the salt.

so i mean neurons the action potential. neurons as you know is sodium's rushing. into the cell you need enough. extracellular sodium. in order for your brain and nervous. system to function and so salt i mean. unless people have hypertension salt is. great there was an article in science. magazine about a decade ago about how. salt had been demonized unless people. have hypertension provided you drink. enough water. salt is great you need sodium magnesium. and potassium to function. and for your nerve cells to work i mean. people who over drink water and don't.

consume enough electrolytes die. now hydration is really important i know. david's really into hydration. he's mentioned that a few times i mean. hydrating. properly is key and so you definitely. want to make sure that you're. drinking enough water and getting enough. electrolytes that i mean we should have. actually talked about that at the. beginning because. that's going to keep your nervous system. functioning well and a lot of people. they'll get shaky or jittery. and when they're fasting and they'll. think they need sugar. and if they just put some salt in some. water they feel fine and like the other.

stuff from. potassium magnesium whatever the other. electrolytes are but yeah. the yeah those three so i mean salt yeah. before sleep um salt. i mean this is a vast space and we're. kind of talking about the overlap. between. neurochemicals hormones and nutrition. and it's a fascinating space and it's. one that. the academic community has gems up. within the textbooks. it hasn't really made it into the public. sphere yet. and i think that's because people get so. caught up in the you know.

being are you vegan or are you carnivore. and there's a vast space in between too. that people can explore like i'm not a. competitive athlete so. i eat meat and i also eat vegetables and. i eat. fruits and it's just about timing them. but i tend to eat carbohydrates when i. want to be sleepy i eat them at night. and everyone said that's the worst thing. you can't do that you sleep great after. eating a big bowl of pasta i'll tell you. and by the way i should i should give. you a big thank you for connecting me. with. belcampo farms they send me some meat.

i think because of you and it's. delicious. so i i really i really appreciate that i. mean it also connected me with this. whole. world of people who are doing farming in. this ethical way and like really love. the whole process and like and as uh. from a both like a human level but also. scientific. level and the result is um. it's like ethical but also it's. delicious. and it makes you think about your diet.

in a whole new kind of way. yeah i've known um i don't have any. commercial relationship to bill campbell. so i can be very clear i've known. anya fernald who who's one of the found. is the founder and ceo of el campo i've. known her since the ninth grade. it is true that her parents are faculty. members at stanford they're colleagues. of mine. but she's just a serious academic of. nutrition but also. of sustainable agriculture of you know. all sorts of things and also the meat. just. it's awesome it tastes really good and. no i'm not getting paid to say that no. they're not a. sponsoring my podcast it's just if you i. feel like if you're gonna eat animals.

if that's in your framework and you're. gonna eat animals knowing that the. animals were. raised as happy as could be until you. know. time of slaughter is is at least. important to me and. and actually uh talk to her so i i will. talk to her on this podcast actually and. she. invited me uh like a week ago out to. to visit the farm in may or june or. whatever yeah they have the farm up at. the oregon board i haven't been there. yet but i've seen the pictures and it. just looks. awesome and i was like yes it looks. beautiful let me know when you're going.

yeah let's go together you'll probably. run there but i'll drive there. yeah but that all that said i do want to. because. a lot of people who are vegan write to. me. and i do want to seriously in the same. seriousness that i approached keto. i do want to go like on a few months to. switch to a vegan diet at some point to. really try it. yeah i haven't done it yet because i'm. afraid i'm gonna function better. i'm argentine by my dad's side and i i i.

don't. eat i don't eat meat super often but. well. for most people would it would seem. often but um but i. i do love steak i do um so i'm afraid. i'm gonna feel better there's a social. element to stake you're right because. coming from a russian background like i. can't imagine going to visit my folks. like my parents for thanksgiving or. something to say mom and dad i'm. uh you know i don't eat meat so is that. you know well i think if you're gonna. eat meat. getting it from sources that are.

compatible with. um you know continuation of the planet. is. good i mean there are some some real. problems with the. factory farm meat you know you drive up. and down the five and you pass that. point where other all those cows. i mean as somebody who loves animals. um it's it's clear that it's. you know you want to limit the amount of. suffering of those animals. whenever i hear about um you know we. have we know people that hunt and that. go and get their own meat i. i really admire that i admire that. people do that we don't we don't tend to.

do that in the. hills around stanford you know there are. mountain lions back there but that's. about it and i'm. i'm certainly i admire the vegan mindset. of being of just making that decision. you're just not going to consume other. beings but you know i haven't gone that. way but performance-wise i'm just. curious because. i was surprised i was certain that. eating five. six seven meals a day is the right thing. to do for all. if you want to be perform your best when. i was like 20 or whatever.

and i would eat oatmeal like i thought. it's obvious i have to have a really. a lot of carbs in the breakfast i had a. lot of preconceived notions and then. when i started eating like once a day. this was at the peak of my competing jiu. jitsu. it was like everything i know about. nutrition is wrong. yeah you realize that like you have to. become a scientist first of all you have. to read literature you have to learn you. experiment but you also have to. become a scientist of your own body and. in the same way.

i have a lot of preconceived notions of. what performance is like. under vegan diet and i want to do it. right like seriously not not. necessarily for the ethical reasons but. to see if it's performance wise. like can i remember there's like a. fruitarian diet where you eat fruit only. you know these extremes are like they're. pretty they're interesting because. people have. this need the extremes are informative. though right i mean. well-controlled experiments you. eliminate as many variables as you can.

except the one you're interested in so. people are running these experiments i i. think that. it's hard to imagine getting i know. people say you can get enough amino. acids. from plant-based sources and i believe. that i. think it probably takes a little more. work one thing that's really clear is. that the benefit of these. omega-3 omega-6 ratios like fish oils. and things like that there are some data. that showed that the. getting at least a thousand milligrams. of the epa. which is in high in fish oils but other.

things too even some meats. and other plants it in. double you know in matched uh placebo. double blind controlled studies. placebo-controlled double-blind studies. have shown that. those can offset anti-depressive. symptoms as much as some of the. selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. like prolactins the prozac and zoloft so. that's pretty impressive and in. scandinavia people know. especially in winter to consume a lot of. those omega-3s.

because they're good for you they're. good for the brain that's the other. question. wise what kind of stuff have you come. across that's. useful like i basically only take fish. oil. like you said electrolytes electrolytes. with water. the david goggins diet fish oil plus. fish oil and then uh. again the sponsor they made it so easier. the the sponsor your podcast and and. mine. athleticgreens.com slash huberman. support it i don't i don't know like.

it's it's great stuff. for sure but also just takes away the. headache of like i don't have to think. about like yeah you're gonna get a bunch. of vitamins and minerals. it'll co it does that sounds like a plug. but i have genuinely been buying it. you know no discount no affiliation or. anything since 2012. i think i heard about it on the tim. ferriss podcast was like oh i'm going to. try that stuff. and i liked it i mean when i was. starting my lab i was working insane. hours. i still work very long hours and getting. sick.

limits productivity and i also wanted to. train and i wasn't. doing much training back then um. now i try and get you know three four. sessions in a week i'm not doing nothing. like what you and david are doing or. what you know. joe does or like you guys are way more. regimented and consistent than i am. um but i think that being healthy and. feeling good. is one of the great benefits to a career. is. having energy and just being not sick. can we take a step back to uh uh sleep.

for. sure yeah so people should definitely. uh look through your podcast the first. five episodes were on sleep or. no i guess the first opening episode. wasn't uh first one was sort of how the. brain works generally is to give people. some background. and then we did four episodes on sleep. including some stuff about food. temperature exercise jet lag shift work. for the jet lag. folks and shift workers yeah it's like a. master class on sleep and then you're go. you're going on to a next uh.

topic in the next few episodes which is. incredible well. neuroplasticity we'll talk about it but. on sleep. one of the cool things about the human. mind when it sleeps is dreaming. uh what do you think we understand about. the contents of dreams like what do. dreams mean all the stuff we see when we. dream. is there something that we understand. about. uh the contents of dreams some of it is.

very concrete so. matt wilson who mit um. showed in rodents and it's been shown in. non-human primates and now it's been. shown in humans that. there is replay of spatial information. during sleep. so initially what matt showed was that. as. these little rodents navigate through a. maze they're the cells in the. hippocampus called place cells that fire. when the. animal encounters a turn or a corridor. and. that same exact same sequence is replay.

during sleep. and it turns out this is true in. london taxi cab drivers before phones. and gps were what they are today. the london taxi cab drivers were famous. for knowing the routes through the city. through these mental maps and their. analysis of their place cell firing. during sleep and during wakefulness and. so we are essentially. taking spatial information about the. location of things and replaying it. during sleep however. it's not replayed so that you remember.

it all it's replayed so that if. there's a reason to remember it the. links to the emotional system to the. components of the limbic system and. hypothalamus that are. relevant like you got into a car crash. or a particular location or you lost a. bunch of money because you were. a cab driver uber driver we'd say. nowadays and you were stuck at one. particular avenue all day and frustrated. and you're getting yelled at by your. spouse that information gets encoded. so that you never forget that at that. particular time of day in that.

particular time of year. and this thing happened so context. starts getting linked to experience so. there's spatial information. that's absolutely replayed during sleep. and we experience this sometimes as. dreams the dreams that happen early in. the night when slow wave sleep or. non-rem sleep dominates. tends to be sleep of very kind of. general themes and kind of um. location it's a it can feel a little bit. eerie and kind of strange ins. not so incidentally the early phase of. the night is when growth hormone is.

released. in the 80s and 90s there was a drug that. was very popular it's very illegal now. called ghb. you could actually buy it at gnc or. store then i never took it but it was a. popular party drug and some people. some famous celebrities died while on. ghb. they were also on a bunch of other. things so it's not clear what killed. them but ghb. was very big in certain communities. because it promoted a massive release. of growth hormone and gave people these. very hypnotic states so people go to.

clubs and they were in these very. hypnotic states it was part of a whole. culture. that's early night and those dreams. tend to not have a lot of emotional. content or load. that phase of dreaming is associated. with. the occasional jolting yourself out of. sleep because somewhat lighter sleep. this the dreams that occur during rem. during rapid eye movement sleeping that. dominate towards mourning. are very different they tend to have. very little epinephrine is available in.

the brain at that time. epinephrine again being this molecule. stress fear and excitement. you are paralyzed during these rem. dreams you're you cannot move. there's intense emotion at the level of. what you're feeling and their so-called. theory of mind. theory of mind is an idea that was put. forward by simon baron cohen sasha baron. cohen's cousin. i think on the podcast i mistakenly said. that he was at oxford it's like the. cardinal sin he's at cambridge forgive. me i'm not british but. so the dreams in rem have are heavily.

emotionally laden. and it's very clear that those dreams. and rem sleep if you deprive yourself of. them. for too long you become irritable and. you start. linking generally negative emotions to. almost. everything rem the dreams that occur in. rem sleep are when we divorce emotion. from our prior experiences. and it's when we extract general rules. and themes. uh mit seems to come up a lot today but. it's. it's highly relevant susumu tonagawa.

nobel prize for. immunoglobulin but obviously fantastic. neuroscientists as well. has shown that the replay of neurons in. the hippocampus and elsewhere in the. brain. is kind of an approximation of the. previous episode. and a lot of fear unlearning of. uncoupling. emotion from hard or traumatic events. that happened previously occurs. in rem sleep so you don't want to. deprive yourself of rem sleep for too. long. and those dreams tend to be very intense. now epinephrine is low. so that you can't suddenly act out your.

dreams. but what's interesting is sometimes. people will wake up suddenly. while in a rem dream and their heart. will be beating really really fast. that's a surge of epinephrine that. occurs as you exit. rem sleep so you were having this. intense emotional experience without the. fear. you were essentially going through. therapy in your sleep self-induced. therapy. it's like trauma therapy where you try. and divorce the emotion from the. experience. and then you wake up and some people. also have the other component of rem.

which is atonia which is paralysis pot. smokers. experience this a lot more than non-pot. smokers there's an invasion of paralysis. into the waking state. i'm not a pot smoker but i have. experienced this and when you wake up. and you're paralyzed for a second it's. terrifying but then you jolt yourself. alert. so the rem sleep is important for. kind of the self-induced therapy and. forgetting the bad stuff. it's good for uncoupling the emotions. from bad experiences.

and just there are two therapies i move. into sensitization reprocessing. which is a eye movement thing that shuts. down the amygdala. during therapy not during sleep and. ketamine which is a dissociative. analgesic it's actually very similar to. pcp and ketamine is now being used as a. trauma therapy when someone comes into. the er for instance and they were in a. terrible car accident these are horrible. things to describe but you know. they saw a relative impaled on the. driving steering column or something. and they will give this drug to try and. shut off the emotion system.

so that because they're not going to. forget let's be honest you don't forget. the bad stuff but. it is possible to uncouple the bad. events. from the emotional system and there's. all sorts of ethical issues about. whether or not that's good or bad to do. but. ptsd is a failure to uncouple the. emotion. from these intense experiences so the. goal of this kind of therapy. is in the uncoupling for that to be. permanent. yeah to uh to separate so they can. recount the event. and they can describe it without it.

triggering the same somatic experience. of terror and dread. um because terror those feelings can be. debilitating obviously you're saying. physiologically in uh rem sleep a. similar process is happening that's. right. the thematically rem sleep is about. experiencing. or replaying intense emotions without. experience the. somatic the physical component of the. emotion either the acting out. or the accelerated heart rate and. agitation. likewise with things like ketamine.

therapies that's the idea is you're. uncoupling the physical sensation from. the mental events what is rem sleep and. why is it. so special maybe we can comment on that. rabbit eye movement sleep. yeah discovered in the 50s at the. university of chicago it's. intense brain activity high levels of. metabolic activity. dreams in which people report a lot of. the theory of mind we were talking about. uh simon baron cohen theory of mind is. was actually something that he developed. for the diagnosis of. autism if you take kids most.

kids of age five six seven you put them. in front of a tv screen. in the laboratory and you have them. watch a video where a kid is playing. with a ball or a doll. and then the kid puts it into a drawer. shuts the drawer and walks away and. another kid comes in and you ask the. child who's observing this. little movie you say what does this. second child think and they. a typical kid would say uh they want to. play and they don't know where the ball. or doll is or they. they they're upset or they're sad they. want the doll. autistic children tend to say the doll's.

in the drawer. the the toys in the drawer they tend to. fixate. they can't get in on the event they. can't get into the mind of that they. don't have a theory of mind. dreams in rem have a heavy theory of. mind component people are after me. trying to get. me you can assign motive to other people. i'm afraid. but it's because there's an expectation. that doesn't tend to happen in slow wave. sleep dreams now all this of course is. by waking people up and asking them what. they were dreaming about which. from a standpoint of a ai guy or a.

machine learning. or a is kind of like but it's the best. we've got. yes but brain imaging what in waking. states while people view a movie. and then brain imaging while people are. sleeping supports the idea that that's. basically what's going on. so rem sleep is amazing and you're not. going to get much of it during your. about with uh goggins but you will. afterward. why so to comment why won't i. so is it not possible to get into it. real quick.

only if you're very very sleep deprived. but because you're going to be at. high muscular output that's going to. bias you towards more slow wave sleep. overall and your body. and brain are smart they it will know. they will know. that your main goal is to recover. so you can keep going so you can keep. firing neuromuscular contractions and. you can keep running so that you can. i mean it's amazing to think like why do. we ever stop. unlike weight training where i can't do.

a 500 pound deadlift i just can't. i could train for it but i certainly. can't do a 600 pound i can't do that. what causes us to stop an endurance. event. is usually not a physical barrier it's. almost always a purely mental. barrier and that's a very interesting. problem i mean neuroscientists don't. tend to think about those sorts of. problems because it sounds so. non-neuroscientific but that's. fundamentally. related to the question of you know what. is pursuit. why what is the the desire to push and.

to and to. carry on is there a neuroscientific. answer for that question you think. i think the closest thing is this um. paper from uh. from genealia farms the howard hughes. campus showing that if you put. uh animals into a simulated environment. where. you can measure their effort and the. forces on while they're running and you. can look at them and you can control the. visual environment and you can create a. scenario where the animal thinks that. it's. output is futile it thinks it knows it's. running and it's actually running.

but you change the frequency of the. stripes going by in their visual world. such that they think they're not getting. anywhere and eventually they. quit and the thing that determines. whether or not they quit. is a threshold level of epinephrine in. the brain stem if you drop that level. back down or you. or you give the animals dopamine. essentially they keep going. if you take dopamine down they. they're like this isn't worth it it's. helpless they're just this isn't worth. my time and energy but this is where the. difference between humans. and non-human animals is interesting.

because. it does feel like humans have an extra. level of cognitive. ability that might. be relevant here well you can pull from. different time references. so if you're in that moment you're gonna. need a kit of things to. pull from so you can think this is in. honor of someone else that passed away. right and you will find a gas reserve. that's amazing. right now whether or not mice are like i.

remember my brother back in the other. cage when i was a little mouse. you know we don't know but it's. very likely that they don't do that that. they're so present they're in the. experience of. there and then and now that they aren't. able to extract. from the past and they're not able to. project into the future like how great. it's going to feel when i get to the end. of this really lame vr corridor i don't. think they think about that. and and think about like if i quit now. how would i have what kind of effect.

will have on the rest of my life in the. future difficult times. like if you allow yourself to quit in. this particular moment you'll become a. quitter more and more in life and then. you're going to not get the the other. nice uh. the opposite sex mammals that's pretty. severe. you went there the whole way to. evolution and back again i mean but. that's that's really it i mean our. ability. to time reference in the past present or. future i do believe that we can be in. the present and the past or the present. and the future.

or only in the present or only in the. future only in the past but i don't. think that we can really think about. past present and future all at once. and this has a similarity to covert. attention like we can split our visual. attention into two things. we really can duo task even though we. can't multitask. or we can bring those two spotlights of. attention to the same location. but it's very hard to split our. attention and really well into. three domains excuse me into three. domains. i think that that's very very. challenging and time.

our time referencing scheme tends to be. just. one or two time references. so lisa feldman barrett i'm not sure if. you've done work together but at least. you're. i found out about her because of you. your podcast with her and i brought her. onto instagram doing an instagram live. about emotion. and it was fascinating and she's a very. spirited and very very smart. woman and uh fearless yeah and uh. brilliant. so i love her she's amazing uh she kind. of. sh she's not a scholar of hallucigens.

hallucinogens or dreams but. she had this intuition that there may be. a connection. between the kind of dissociation that. happens in dreaming. and that happens in um. like psychedelics i because of my. previous conversation with you uh on. on this podcast uh matthew johnson from. johns hopkins reached out and he said. but. he he commented i think on something.

that we commented i don't even remember. exactly what but that there's not. many studies it's not being. psychedelics and not being rigorously. studied in academic setting like with. the. full rigor of science and he said well. actually. uh that's exactly what we're doing and. they're extremely well funded now. and it was been a long battle to get it. accepted as a serious. uh scientific pursuit so um. but and i'd like to ask you a little bit. about that but.

do you have a sense about. connection between dreams and. psychedelics or these uh. different explorations of mind studies. that are outside of the standard normal. one that's. the wake mindset yeah i loved your. discussion with matthew i. knew of the hopkins group and the stuff. they were doing but i didn't know. much about it at all and i learned a ton. from that podcast i reached out to him. just to say. i love what you're doing i think it's. incredible so yeah your podcast has been. a great source of.

serious academic and intellectual um. conversation for me. i think what they're doing at hopkins is. amazing. um he has a collaborator there actually. they had a very popular paper i just. throw out there for fun. who was a postdoc at stanford her name. is ghoul um. she's turkish i believe um and. her and i i apologize her last name. escapes me at the moment but that's just. a function of my brain. um she had a paper showing that uh she. put octopi.

on mdma on ecstasy and found out this. was published in. in a in current biology showing it was a. great journal showing that the octopi. then. wanted to spend more time with other. octopi they started cuddling. yeah so their colleagues out there but. um. the hopkins project is super interesting. because. i think they were initially supported. mainly through private philanthropy. and now you're starting to see some more. interest at the level of nih. about psychedelics it's a complicated. space because.

the psychedelics are always looked at. through the lens of the 60s and people. losing their mind and. there's a you know in i always say you. know you don't want to ken keezy out of. the game you know ken kizu was amazing. right about the whole beat generation. thing and he was actually at the va. near stanford that's where he eventually. in menlo park he wrote one flew over the. cuckoo's nest or. maybe that was about him anyway the. comments will tell me how wrong i am. but it's i think i'm tossing these words. in the general in the right general. direction. but you know huxley.

keyse they did a lot of lsd and they. all lost their jobs right they lost. their jobs at big institutions like. harvard and stanford and elsewhere. or they left because they. they made themselves the experiments yes. hopkins as far as i know. is when the first place is not the first. place where. whatever matt may or may not be doing in. his own life i don't know. it's really about the patients and. whether or not the patients in these. um institutional review board approved.

studies whether or not they're getting. better. in situations like depression i think. it's clear that there's a very close. relationship. between hallucinogenic states and. dreaming of the sort that would describe. for rem dreaming. and there's a a terrific set of books. and body of scientific literature from a. guy named alan hobson. who was an md is it harvard med and he. wrote books like dream drug store. one of the first neuroscience books i. ever read was about hallucinations and. how.

psychedelics and dreaming are very. similar that was way back when i was in. high school i was just curious. and he really understood the. relationship between lsd and rem dreams. and how similar they. are i think psychedelics and matt knows. way more about this than i do of course. but. psychedelics have some very interesting. properties. they are certainly not for everybody. right and kids it's a problem you know. i think the major issues right now. around the psychedelic. conversation is that it's clear that. they can.

unveil certain elements of. neuroplasticity they make the brain. amenable to change changing up. space-time relationships changing up the. emotional load of an event and being. able to reframe that. it's clear that happens but there's two. major issues. one is that people talk about plasticity. as if plasticity is the goal. but plasticity is a state within which. you can direct neurology and the. question is. what changes are you trying to get to so. people are just taking psychedelics to. unveil plasticity.

without thinking about what circuits. they want to modify and how. i think that's a problem i think there's. great potential however for people. opening up these states of plasticity. with psychedelics or otherwise. and directing the plastic changes toward. a particular endpoint and there's an. absolutely spectacular paper out of uc. davis. published as a full article in nature. just a couple months ago. showing that there are psychedelics that. are now can be modified so chemists have.

gotten into the game now and modifying. to take away the hallucinogenic. component. where you still get the neural. plasticity components wow. and for a lot of people to be like oh. that's no fun that's not giving you the. the wild experience but i do think that. that holds great potential for people. that wouldn't otherwise. orient towards some of these drugs so i. think it's really marvelous what's. happening and what's about to happen and. i think there. there is one drug in that kit of drugs. that's. very unusual like psilocybin lsd those.

promote heavy heavy serotonin release. and lateralized connections ramp up etc. matt talked about all that. but mdma ecstasy. is a very unusual situation where. dopamine is. very very high because of the the way. the drug is designed. dopamine release it goes through the. roof so people feel. great and they want to move and they. have a lot of energy. but serotonin levels are also high and. that's a very unnatural state.

and why mdma may may and i want to. highlight may have particularly. high potential for the treatment of. certain forms of depression. is an interesting question because never. before in. as far as we know in human history has. there been. a possibility of opening up dopaminergic. and serotonergic states at the same time. dopamine being the molecule pursuit and. reward and more and more. and serotonin being one of bliss and. being content right where you're at so.

it's almost like those two things wrap. back on themselves and create this very. unusual state. and i think the bigger conversation is. what to do with a state like that. like do you is it about self-love. is it about developing love for another. person is it about forgetting hate. like these are powerful molecules and i. think if the academic community. and the clinical community is going to. move forward with them in any serious. way. i think there needs to be a conversation. about what. they're being used for right and and. coupled with that i think similar to.

what you're saying. like matt has talked about is others. have talked about. some of the biggest benefits of like. progress whether it's like quitting. smoking and all those kind of stuff. is in the is in the days after it's the. integration of the experience. so maybe you open up the brain to the. neuroplasticity but then there's like. work to be done. it's not you're like you shake up. something in it. in the biology of the brain but you have. to do then. it's work absolutely now a friend of.

mine who's a. physician he says um who's quite open to. this idea that psychedelics could play a. real role in in real medicine says. better living through chemistry still. requires better living. and and i think it's it's a beautiful. statement i wish i had said it. be um but he gets the credit but. the plasticity window opens and then as. you said what are you gonna do in the. two weeks three weeks four weeks. afterward because that's the real. opportunity. but those psychedelic experiences are.

really a case of an amplified experience. inside of an amplified experience so. much so that. everything seems relevant and it's um. it's it's fascinating i mean i my hope. is that. the ai and machine learning and the. brain machine interface and all that. will eventually be. merged with the psychedelic treatments. so that you. an individual can go in take whatever. amount of whatever's safe for them. working with a clinician. and really direct the plasticity while. maybe stimulating. the orbital frontal medial orbital.

frontal cortex or increasing the. observer or decreasing the observer in. the brain or. decreasing the amygdala i mean it's. doable it's doable with. transcranial magnetic stimulation and. it's for shutting down activity and it's. doable with ultrasound ultrasound now. allows very focal. activation of particular brain regions. through the skull. non-invasively so it's approaching the. same kind of uh. therapy from different angles one ai is. the computational side so. injecting like the robotics injecting.

like. maybe you can even think about it as. like electricity the electrical approach. versus then like the the chemical. approach absolutely and then the psycho. and then the psychology is. is subjective right so it's going to. take some real. um understanding of what that person's. um. lexicon is like you know that wasn't a. pun. i'm sorry it's terrible that's the one. thing i know from the feedback on my. podcast. my jokes are terrible but i never. claimed to be funny the.

the uh but somebody who they really. trust. and understands when somebody says you. know. for a very stoic person like i'm. imagining you interviewed the great dan. gable. right i don't know anything about dan. but can you imagine like you asked dan. like you know how you feel about. something while on one of these drugs. and like. i mean his languaging might if he says. that was troubling it might mean that it. was very troubling or not troubling at. all. so people are language is a poor.

guide because if i say i'm upset how. upset is that well that's very. subjective. so you need we need can you build a tool. for that can you build a ai tool for. that yeah deeper. yeah maybe that's the eye maybe that's. our that's what the eyes could reveal. so language is not just words it's. everything together and that's. one of the fascinating things about the. eyes in the window to the soul i mean. they express so much the face the eyes. the body. uh i mean lisa talks about that the. communication of emotions. it's a super complex perhaps it's a bit.

of a. side fun tangent but matt. matthew johnson brings up dmt. and the experience of dmt is a as a. as from a scientific perspective just. just a mystery in itself. over its intensity what happens to the. brain and of course. joe rogan and others bring it up as a. very different special kind of. experience.

uh and elves seem to come up often. i've never tried dmt what allows for a. hallucinogenic states. yes and it i mean dmt is a really. interesting molecule. there there are a lot of people. experimenting now. with um dmt um and. they just the way they've described it. is. as a kind of a freight train through. space and time. very different than the way people. describe lsd type experiences or. psilocybin where.

time and space are very fluid but it. tends to be a kind of a slower. role if you will um so it's clear that. dmt. is tapping into a brain state that's. distinctly different. than the other psychedelics and. and you mentioned jiu jitsu and these. other communities i mean it's. i think it's interesting because jiu. jitsu is a non-verbal. activity and people get together and. talk about this non-verbal activity. and they show great love for it in the. same way that surfers you know i.

known some surfers in my time and they. will get up at the crack of dawn. and drive really really far to sit in. the water and wait for this wave to come. i have to imagine it's pretty fantastic. i think that human beings now. some of whom are in the scientific. community are starting to feel. comfortable enough. to talk about some of these other loves. and other endeavors because. they do reveal a certain component about. our underlying neurology. i'm fascinated by the concept of. wordlessness.

activities in which language is just not. sufficient to capture. and in which feel so vital as a reset as. important as sleep you know i think. that's one of the dangers of the phone. is not that you're going to get into. some online battle or that you're always. staring at the phone is that it's a word. so as we read things we're. hearing the script in our head and i. think getting into. states where we are in a state of. wordlessness. is is very renewing and replenishing and. just.

can feel amazing for and i believe also. can help us tap into. creative states and allow our neurology. to access creative states. and sleep is one such wordlessness. period so one of the most interesting. things to me are states that one can. approach in waking non-sleep depressed. wordlessness. through maybe it's jujitsu maybe it's. for some people surfing maybe it's. dancing maybe it's just i don't know. staring at a wall who knows. but where the language components of the.

brain are completely shut down. and it has to be the case that drugs are. no drugs. that the brain is entering and starting. to. states and starting to use algorithms. that are distinctly different than when. we're trying to. compose things in any kind of coherent. way for someone else to understand. there's no interest in anyone else. understanding what you're experiencing. in that moment. and that's beautiful and i think uh i. think it's not just beautiful because it. feels good. i think it's beautiful because it's. important and it's clearly fundamental.

to our neurology. and your sense is there's a connection. between dreams and dmt and like. psychedelic like all of the. uh you can you can understand one by. studying the other so for example dreams. are also very difficult to study right. but they're. more accessible it's safer to study and. we're told we need to get more of it. whereas with psychedelics there's this. big question mark is it going to make. everyone crazy. is it is it going to be legal i mean. it's kind of interesting how.

if one looks on instagram one could. almost think that these drugs are. already legal based on the way that. people commute but they're not yet. they're still a lot of them are. scheduled there's a lot of questions. yeah uh. i mean and but nevertheless it's like. uh my my hope is that uh science. opens up to these uh drugs a little bit. more it's just i have this intuition. that. like a lot of people share that they. would be able to. uh unlock a deeper understanding of our.

own mind it's it's any kind of. same as studying dreams absolutely well. creativity is in the non-linearities. right but productivity is in the. implementation of linearities i mean. that's. that's what is absolutely clear this is. why i think we were talking earlier. about. why a formal rigorous training in. something where other people are looking. at you and telling you no not good. enough go back and do it again. there's real value to that because. otherwise it's just ideas. it's just vapors you know one thing that.

matt mentioned. as the study that they're working on. is as opposed to i think most of the. psychedelic studies. they've done is on how to treat. different conditions. and one of the things they're working on. now is to try to do a study where. uh for creatives for people that don't. have a. condition to try and treat but instead. see how. this how psychedelics can help you. create so like. goodness if you take creatives and you. give them more psychedelics they're not. gonna be able to get out of their room.

i don't know well but this is the i. maybe you can speak to that. psychedelics or not or dreams or tools. in general how to be better creatives. that's an interesting i don't often see. studies of this nature of like. how to take high performance in the. mental. creative space and get them to perform. even. uh better so it's not average people. it's like. masters of their craft like taking i. mean his examples was taking an elon.

musk which is in the engineering space. and maybe musicians and all that kind of. stuff. and studying that that's a i mean that's. weird i usually the science. the scientific exploration there has. been done in. uh by the musicians themselves as has. been documented like jazz is like. all non-linearities yeah right but if. it's. but the people still have to know how to. play their instruments right right. there's some early. early skill building that's critical i. mean.

when you mention someone like elon i. mean virtual i mean he's already a. virtuoso right because he and in so many. different domains. i've never met him but it's it's clear. right he. it's not just that he's ambitious and. bold and brave and all that it's all. that. and there's there's clearly. a different way of looking at the same. problems that everyone else is looking. at. and people are probably banging their. head against the refrigerator thinking. like think differently things. it doesn't work that way it involved. there's a certain anxiety in. for the i'm not talking about for elon.

but i don't have no idea. but i think for somebody who's very. structured very regimented very linear. the anxiety comes from letting go of. those linearities. and for the person that's very creative. the anxiety comes from. trying to impose linearities right the. the. really creative artist or musician. they're they seem. nuts they seem like they can't get their. life together because they can't. and they you know we look at people who. are kind of pseudo aspergers or. aspergers or some forms of autism and.

they are. so hyper linear but you take away those. linearities and they freak out. and that's kind of the essence of some. of those syndromes so i think that. the ability to toggle back and forth. between those states is what's. remarkable i mean. because we're here and we're having this. discussion i mean steve jobs is a good. example he. probably the best example somebody who. actually talked about his own process. about the merging of art and science art. and engineering. humanities and science very few people. can do that. well i you seem to have a capacity to do.

that. like you you know poetry and you are a.i. guy like you. there's nothing linear about poetry as. far as i can tell i mean i. i do wonder just like we've been talking. about if there's any ways to push that. to its limits to. explore further i don't like leaning. this. this is why i'm bothered there's not. more science and psychedelics is. i haven't done almost so i've. eaten mushrooms a few times uh allegedly. but that's it you know and i the reason.

i don't do more the reason i haven't. done dmt. is because it's illegal and it's like. not. well studied and it you know i. i'm in those things i'm not usually at. the cutting edge but i'm very curious. and it feels like. there could be tools to be discovered. there. not for fun not for recreation but for. like encouraging whether you're a linear. thinking to go non-linear or it's.

non-linear to go linear. like to to shake things up you mentioned. dan gable. the idea of dan gable on psychedelics is. fascinating to me because. he's such a control freak i mean. that i would show up for that that would. not show up for but like so much of. these psychedelic experiences it feels. like. is for letting go that's right you don't. want to resist but that's. supposedly where the growth is in in. giving. oneself over to the process and that's. for people who are. like master controllers he's one of the.

greatest coaches of all time it's. fascinating to see what that battle. looks like. of resistance and then of letting go uh. yeah i mean. i i can't wait to uh to to see where. these studies takes us what's clearly. happening. you know i've asked there i have a. couple colleagues at stanford who are. doing animal studies. i've asked around you know it's there's. a lot of discussion. in the neuroscience community about what. the perception of a laboratory is. if they work on psychedelics i mean. i i have to tip my hat to the folks at.

hopkins they are pioneers. and as um terry signowski he's a. computational neuroscientist down at. salk says i don't think he was the first. person to say he says uh. you know how to spot the pioneers. they're the ones with the arrows in. their backs. yeah and you know it's it's an unkind. world. to a scientist that's trying to do. really cutting-edge stuff my colleague. david spiegel who studies medical. hypnosis it's he's got. dozens of studies now showing that. hypnosis can be beneficial for pain. management anxiety management cancer.

outcomes. it's finally you know at the point where. there's so much data. but people hear hypnosis and they think. of stage hypnosis which is like the. furthest thing from what he's doing. and i think mind body. type stuff hypnosis respiration and. breathing i think the hard science. walk into the problem is always going to. be best to get the community on board. and then it's up to people like matt and. to really you know take it to the next.

level and as i say not. keysi out of the game because keysi. basically was taking. too much of his own stuff and he started. dressing crazy at banana hats and like. you see him he had. the magic bus so you know the day so. like the day i start driving to work in. the magic bus. that's the day i lose my job i'm not. into buses or. or wearing fruit but you're going to get. a phone call from me and i hope you do. the same for me it's like. like dude what are you doing well what's. interesting earlier we're talking about. the challenge with david that you're. about to do.

i mean that is a psychedelic experience. of sorts because you're biasing your. mind. towards a pretty extreme neurochemical. state and you don't know what you're. going to find there. and that's kind of the excitement at. least for me as an observer it's like i. want to know. what what the experience is like. afterward i want to know like how was it. i mean i'm sure you're going to get. something like you said you're going to. grow the question is how and not. resisting i mean it's the same as with a. psychedelic experience it's like. not like giving yourself over completely.

to the experience and. not resisting and going through the. whole mental journey of whether it's. anger or excitement or exhaustion the. whole thing. it's uh i mean uh. that's in the entirety of the process. that david goes through when he does his. own. challenges and so on is that whole. journey he finds. purposely like missile seeks. the limits of the mind that whenever. the resistance is felt runs up against.

it and then goes to the full journey of. going beyond it and seeing what's there. on the other side. well stress has these two sides the. limbic friction of being. tired and needing to get more energized. that's one form of stress. and then there's the feeling too amped. up and needing to calm down. the the typical discussion around. stresses is one thing. but it's all limbic friction it's just. that when i say lymbic friction. that's not a real scientific term i just. mean the limbic system wanting to pull. you down into sleep or wanting to put. you into panic. and you using top-down processing using.

that. evolved forebrain to say. i'm not going to go to sleep and i'm not. going to freak out. and those top-down control mechanisms. are i mean when those get honed. that's beautiful because then you real. you're increasing capacity for. everything. you uh this month on the podcast you're. talking about neuroplasticity you. mentioned a bunch already. is there something you're looking. forward to. specifically like something maybe you're.

fascinated. by that jumps to mind about. neuroplasticity. this fascinating property of the brain. yeah i think that. it's clear there's one facet of. neuroplasticity that. is very well supported by the research. data. that hardly anyone has implemented in. the real world. and that's the release of acetylcholine. from these neurons in the forebrain. called nucleus basalis. this is mainly the work of mike murzenik. who used to be at ucsf. and some of his scientific offspring. greg reckenzone and michael kilgaard and.

others what they showed was. increases in acetylcholine this molecule. associated with focus. in concert meaning at the same time as. some. event motor event or music event or. any kind of sensory event immediately. reorganizes the neocortex so that. there's a permanent map representation. of that event and i. i absolutely believe that this can be. channeled toward. accelerated skill learning and my friend.

and colleague eddie chang is. now the chair of neurosurgery at ucsf. but also a fine scientist in his own. right. not just a clinician he's doing studies. looking at rapid acquisition of language. using these principles he trained with. mersnick. it's clear we have these gates on. plasticity in the forebrain. and they are gated by nicotinic. acetylcholine. transmission and why that hasn't made it. into. protocols for motor learning sport. learning language learning music. learning.

emotional learning i don't know i think. part of the reason has been. kind of cultural is that scientists. publish their paper and they move on. merzianic. talked a lot and still can be found from. time to time talking about. how these plasticine mechanisms can be. leveraged. but uh he had a commercial company and. so then people kind of backed away from. it a little bit i think he was. to be honest i think merzenik was ahead. of his time. and i think the timing is right now for. people to understand these mechanisms of. plasticity and start to implement them.

also you know it all sounds like. becoming superhuman or optimizing or. whatever. all that yes but also what about kids. with language learning deficits or with. dyslexia. or just performance in school in general. you know i have a deep. interesting concern for the future of. science and mathematics and. in not just in this country but all over. the world and. more plasticity equals faster better. deeper learning. and if we don't do this i don't think. we're going to get the full.

reach out of all the machine learning. tools either. because everyone talks about these huge. data sets and but those huge data sets. funnel into human interpretation i mean. we don't just like stare at the numbers. and bask right. so some the human brain i think needs to. leverage these plasticity mechanisms to. keep up with the thing that's happening. very very fast which is technology. development. so that's a long-winded way of saying. basal forebrain cholinergic transmission. and plasticity. it allows for plasticine adulthood and. allows for it in.

single trial learning which is. incredible. but how do we leverage that like in the. physical space taking actions or is. there some chemicals that can stimulate. stimulate neuroplasticity like what i. think it's the intersection of the two. i think it's being engaged in a physical. practice while enhancing pharmacology. it has to be done safely and this is. full of open questions this is the very. beginning. of it like you're saying yeah a pill. that's safe. that increases nicotinic transmission i.

mean i know a number of people that. chew nicorette actually they have an i. have a nobel prize winning colleague. at columbia not to be named um who. choose like six pieces of nicaragua in a. half hour conversation with him. and he started doing that as a. replacement for smoking because smoking. is nicotine nicotinic stimulation of the. cholinergic system so smokers have long. known that increases focus and attention. and learning. it's just that the lung cancer thing is. a barrier. now i'm not suggesting people take. nicorette but it's clear that we need.

better directed pharmacology but you can. imagine next time you go in for a. learning bout. if it's really essential you might want. to stimulate the nicotinic system. if that's safe for you again i'm a. doctor so again i'm not telling people. to do this but that's where it's going. until we start merging machines with. pharmacology and behavior. it's it we're just kind of walking. around in the circle over and over again. and it's going to happen do you find. computer vision machine learning.

from the perspective of tooling as an. interesting tool for. analyzing for processing all the data. from the neuroscience world from the. neurobiology biology the camera ever all. the different data sets that you can. have about the mind the eye. the everything that's neck and above. and also the central nervous system. absolutely i mean. i think that computer science and. engineering and chemistry. bioengineering is that's what's creating.

the. acceleration and progress in. neuroscience right now i think. it's actually one place where science. i'm very reassured. science has invited in psychologists. computational biologists at least at. stanford mit and. other places too of course it's clear. that it's a everyone's invited kind of. party. right now the the major issue in the. field of neuroscience at least. through my view is that there's no. conceptual leadership no one is saying. we need to work on and solve this.

problem or that problem. it's very fragmented right now now the. good news is people are communicating so. computer scientists and people who work. on ai machine vision are talking to. biologists and vice versa. but it's very dispersed is there a lot. of different data sets like. in your work that you've just come. across is a huge. number of disparate data sets around. neuroscience and so on or. well there's a lot of cell sequencing. stuff so the broad over it you know.

on in boston and then on this coast the. chen zuckerberg initiative. um what you know um they did you know. three billion dollars to. sequence every cell type in humans and. in animals and try and. i think their goal is to cure every. disease by. some date i don't know in the in the. future. huge data sets of gene expression and. protein expression. that's valuable i think no one really. knows how to think about neural circuits. and what what is a neural circuit um.

is it one structure is it two structures. communicating. i think this is where i actually think. that the robotics. is going to tell us how the brain works. because it it's tempting to think that. the brain has all these cell types. and circuits in order to solve specific. problems but. it might be that the fundamental. algorithm is to create cells and. circuits that can solve. variable problems we know in the retina. just a very simple example is that.

we've always heard about like cones are. for color vision and high acuity and. rods are for night vision and. and non-color vision but at the dusk. dawn. transition certain cell types switch to. do completely different have a. completely different function for. viewing starry night versus. what they do during the daytime so. neurons multiplex. and i think building machines that can. multiplex. and can evolve themselves is going to. help us really understand what the brain. is doing. we need to tease out the fundamental.

algorithms we know they're like motion. detection and. spatial vision and things like that i. think machines are going to be much. faster at that than. our understanding of biology and how the. brain does that. basically i'll be out of a job and. people like you will have a job no well. no though. i think the main idea is that uh there. won't be a job. that's machine learning or computer. vision it's just. it's a it's a tool that neuroscientists. will. use more and more and more and uh.

biologists would use i mean this whole. idea that it will just be a. a tool that allows you to start. expanding the kind of things you can. study. and well the next generation coming up i. can say this because i now i'm. blessed to have a bioengineering student. they think about problems so differently. than biologists do we realized the other. day we both came up with a set of ideas. around a certain project and we realized. that. her version of it was the exact opposite. of mine you know and hers was far. far more rational it's just an.

engineering perspective like why would. we. do that last we should do that first i. think that the next generation is. really interested in solving practical. problems so a lot like computer science. and engineering was in the late 90s it. was like. you can go do a phd in computer science. and engineering maybe. or you go work for a company and. actually build stuff that's useful. i think neuroscientists and people. interested in neuroscience are starting. to think. how can i build stuff that's useful and. this statement is supported by the fact. that many. people in my business leave their.

academic labs. fortunately not all of them but they. leave their academic labs and they go. work for companies. like neural link like neural link this. is something i think with. we've spoken a few times offline about. as speaking of computer vision i'm. fascinated. by the eye i did a bunch of work on the. eye so from. there's the neuroscientist there's a. neurobiology way of studying the eye. and there's the computer vision way of. studying the eye and the computer vision. way of studying the eye of just like.

observing non-contact sensing of humans. is really fascinating to me in studying. human behavior in different contexts. like. in semi-autonomous vehicles it seemed. like there is a lot of signal that comes. from the eye that comes from blinking. that's not fully understood yet it's. been in the lab it's been used quite a. bit. to study like the dilation of the pupil. all those kinds of things are used. for to uh to infer workload. cognitive load all those kinds of things. but the pictures.

is murky it's not completely well. understood especially in the wild. how much signal you can get from the eye. from the human face. i've downloaded joe rogan's all the. podcasts he's ever done. video you have the youtube bank. i have the youtube bank for for a reason. that. this was before he went with spotify. it you own the archive there's pubmed. and then there's the joe rogan.

experience owned by. or maintained by lex yeah privately for. my private. collection no the reason i did it uh and. i did the. really like rigorous processing of it. which is like. the i extracted all of the faces i did. the really good. blink track of the pupil tracking and. the blink. detection for the entirety that are oh i. should say it's. from episode like i forget what it is. but it's like episode 900 when. they switched to 1080p video but it was.

like much crappier videos so. it's still kind of long when there was. marijuana consumption or when they were. drinking. when they're i mean there's like. just it won't throw off the data but. it's relevant to the. the relatively competitive data. so let's just put it uh this way there's. a lot of fascinating computer vision. problems involved but. i only kept long sequences of data. where the eyes detected exceptionally. well.

and uh i also removed people that were. wearing glasses. i removed there are certain people that. have a way. of uh moving their eyes. and squinting where it's harder to infer. uh like concrete blinks. you know they'll kind of have a squint. the whole time. and their blink is very light it's very. tough to know what's uh uh what's an.

actual bling so. you got those baseball cap wearing guys. yeah there are certain people that go on. podcasts and wear baseball caps and. and don't reveal their i don't know if. they realize it or not until. it comes out but their face is. completely obscured from. vision and from a computer vision. perspective people that wear. makeup and usually women on their eyes. it complicates things. like eyelashes all complicated things so. i. you know you can clean stuff up just so. you have really crisp signal. you don't have to you can you can deal.

with issues but. you know there's so many hours of joe. rogan video anyway i say all that. because i was. searching for an interesting personal. experiment for me because. uh i saw in drivers when i was looking. at. eye movement and drivers it seemed to. indicate. there seemed to be quite a lot of signal. there that indicates. amount of cognitive load but it's not. clear if there's something conclusive. but if there is some signal that's a.

really powerful one because eye movement. can be detected. in the wild like you and i sitting here. i can detect eye movement really well. pupil dilation is a really crappy. indicator and it's luminance dependent. like if i turn toward a light it's. it's a route it people change size. depending on level of alertness arouse. autonomic browser but also overall. levels of luminance. it's very very hard but there are. i mean you're sitting on a on a gold. mine um because. the there is a lot of interest right now.

in. measuring state through non-contact. sensing yes uh heart rate variability. through changes in skin tone. but just off a camera can you imagine. that at the point where you just look at. some video and you're like oh they're. they're getting more stressed or worked. up and they're not based on a heat map. of some little patch on their face. because everyone's gonna. have this slight you know sort of um. compartmentalize it slightly differently. but you can learn it pretty quickly. we know this when someone's like giving. a talk and we see them starting it. blotching. on their on their neck you know this is. the like uh. the thesis defense response right we.

know it and we're. it's a stressful situation because if. not passing your thesis defense is rough. and you can see that but cameras can. pick that up really easily. at much lower levels than the the. blatant blotching kind of effect. and eye movements certainly are powerful. indications of the state of the. autonomic. system so what do you do you think there. are things. from a high level that you can pick up. from eye movement and and. blinking well blink frequency is gonna.

increase. as people get tired right um i i've. actually been teased a lot online. because i don't blink much when i'll do. a post. and i and so i did a whole post about. blinking about the science of blinking. there's some. data very strong data not from my lab. that showed that. every time you blink it resets your. perception of time they have people. do these kind of track uh kind of a. doppler like thing and. anyway blinking resets your perception. of time and there's a dopaminergic. mechanism in a. in the blink-related circuitry of the. brain uh.

when people are very alert they tend to. not blink very much when we're sleepy we. tend to blink more and our eyes. tend to close now some people are more. hooded in there the way their eyes. sit some people are like this all the. time there are some very famous people. i'm not going to name them because i. might run into them at some point who. are like accused of being sociopaths. because they don't blink very often. but they might just have high levels of. autonomic arousal they just don't blink. very much. yeah also depends on how lubricated the. eyes are so i think within. individual yes you can get a lot of. information i don't think we can say.

this person's blinking a lot they're. lying this person or they're tired this. person doesn't blink. they're they're stressed i think if you. understand that person's baseline you. can get it and presumably. uh well having been on the joe rogan. experience i can say when you first sit. down there if you've never been in there. before. you're in my data set by the way oh my. well i bet you i i. i will admit to being you know first. time being sitting down there i mean joe. was. incredibly gracious made me feel very. comfortable there but yeah it's a. it's an intense experience um it's a.

small space too anytime you enter a. small space from a big space. in this old studio you're familiar with. there's a breaking in period where. you're getting to know somebody and so. i'm sure my levels of autonomic arousal. front of the podcast were higher than. later so but once you have a baseline. established you can get a lot of data on. somebody. simply from blinks um some people. averting gays too. if you have both people that's really. powerful this is the holy grail. another holy grail of neuroscience we've.

mainly looked at subjects. in isolation absolutely there hasn't. been much brain imaging of two people in. interacting or even in animal models of. two mice or two monkeys interacting it's. all like. a person scanner bite bar i mean if. you've ever been in one of these. scanners like in a bite bar. it's very medieval and so you think in. the interaction there's actually. you can almost study them as a single. brain or as a single system the two. brains are a single system. i think with ai highly correlated yeah. maybe are your blinks triggering my. blinks like.

you know or your non-blink epochs you. know extending my non-blink epochs. there's a fascinating space to explore. there and no one's done it. and because everyone let the joe rogan. experience archive disappear. except for you you've grabbed did you. get the comments too because i think the. comments were. almost as entertaining as the. conversation you know what you just made. me realize with the couplings i have a. better data set than the joe rogan. podcast with high resolution video which. is the raw video for this podcast. so for example both cameras right now.

are recording you and i. full full feed the final result will. switch cameras back and forth but i have. the full feed. right so i can have the blinking for. both you and i the whole time. i bet you people trigger blanks and in. one another. you know and there's also like the the. simplest way to think about the blinks. and the attentional thing and the. alertness is two fighters in the in the. standoff. there's this whole lore around who. blinks first yeah it's like they blink. first well. what are what are we really asking.

they're asking whether or not one person. can maintain. focus longer than the other person. which is an important parameter it's not. the only parameter but. it's an important parameter and so that. blinking contest even though they don't. square off as a blinking contest. it's well known that the first to blink. is revealing. something about their capacity to hold. attention. you've started an amazing podcast that. we mentioned a few times. uh people should definitely check it out. it's called the human.

lab podcast it uh it does your. it's basically you it embodies. the personality of andrew huberman which. is like. makes science accessible um. but also uh fascinating. and giving it like what do you call it. you give tools for everyday life meaning. it kind of grounds in like what the hell. does this mean for my life.

but then also does the beauty of science. at the same time so i. love i love both the the rigor and the. openness of the whole thing plus the. whole corrections things that we. mentioned. anyway what's uh been the hardest part. of this whole process. you're one of already one of. the only and one of the best. science podcasters out there so in that. process. what's been the hardest what's been the.

most exciting part. well well first of all thanks for the. kind words about the podcast it was. inspired by you. i i absolutely it's um. that's no bs i the last time we met to. do an interview for your podcast we. talked a little bit about it and you. gave me the. um subtle nudge that maybe there was a. there was a podcast there and i thought. about it and i left and i was just like. i gotta do this thing and. you really gave me the encouragement to. do it now your podcast this podcast has. really forged the way.

you've been tip of the spear on serious. scientific intellectual yet fun. accessible conversation and so. i as your colleague and. friend and but i just even if those. things weren't true like. this this podcast was and is the. inspiration there's no question so much. yeah i really like 100 percent and. when i decided to do the podcast the. huberman lab podcast i thought really. long and hard about what. would work best and would be most. beneficial turned out to be the hardest.

thing. which is to stay on a single topic for. three or four or more episodes before. switching to a new topic. because i know from the experience of. university and teaching in university as. you know. as well that there's always the. temptation to pivot to something else. but the drilling into something really. deeply is where the. where the gems reside and the the. challenge has been. how to make it interesting how to keep. people on board how to give people tools.

along the way. but also stay close to the scientific. data um. i like to think that we're headed in the. right direction it still needs to evolve. but that's been a challenge. i think i also am challenged by the fact. that there's a tremendous range of. backgrounds of listeners. so some people have asked for more names. like. more bits and parts of the nervous. system and cellular molecular mechanisms. and all that kind of thing. and other people said i don't understand.

any of that stuff but i think i'm. keeping up and so. unlike a university course where there. are prerequisites and everyone's coming. to the table with more or less the same. knowledge. i have a very limited sense of what the. audience knows and doesn't know. so that's why i incorporated the feature. of the comment section on youtube. being a source of feedback and i. do a kind of an office hours like. episode every third or fourth episode. where i address. common questions and i think that the. podcast space. in my mind um at least for the sort of. podcast i'm doing.

needed a venue for the listeners to be a. more integral part of the experience as. opposed to just commenting on what they. liked or didn't like. so while i like to hear what people. liked and didn't like i also really like. to hear about. hey tell me more about temperature. minimums and how they can be used to. phase shift circadian rhythms or. whatever it is. and i realized that i'm probably losing. some people along the way but hopefully. at the end of each month and because of. the way that the. episodes are archived people will come. away feeling.

as if they've learned a ton and they. have tools that they can implement. and perhaps most importantly that. they're starting to think scientifically. about the tons of other stuff that's out. there. so that's been the challenge and it's. still really early days. but um and and of course there's also an. intentional challenge i realize that. people are busy. not everyone has two hours to listen to. a podcast about jet lag and shift work. and raising kids and sleep and that kind. of thing i'm not raising kids but i did. a whole thing about babies and sleep. with.

you know and how parents can manage. their sleep when kids aren't sleeping. so it's been um i'm hacking through the. jungle of. all this stuff but and i'll come right. back to i. my inspiration and my my my uh. north star on this is. getting to a point where the audience. that listens to this feels the same way. that i do when i listen to your podcast. thank you so much like when i tune into. your podcast i'm gonna embarrass you a. little bit more by complimenting you a.

little bit more um. but not out of a sadistic thing but just. because. when i tune into your podcast or joe's. podcast. i have the same sensation that other. people have like i feel like. i'm home of sorts i'm like i'm familiar. with the space. and i'd like people to feel comfortable. in the space that is the hubert lab. podcast whatever that ends up being. yeah that's the magic of podcasting it's. like i feel like i'm part of your life. now in a way that as a fan.

that i wouldn't be otherwise and you. know like. i never was able to have that with carl. sagan for example. you know uh and that's a whole nother. level. of connection with a human being that. gets you excited. and then i share your excitement about. uh different topics in neuroscience or. just uh biology in general. and then i don't have to actually. understand everything you're saying. to uh to really enjoy it so.

that that's the magic of podcasting is. like you can go through like 10 minutes. not understanding what the hell a person. is saying. and then you uh enjoy the excitement. and then you reconnect to a thing that. you do understand what they're saying. and you know that's uh that personal. coupled with the scientific rigor is. magic and finding the right. it's exploration like joe found. something that works for comedians which. is like. you know having a good laugh but also.

every once in a while. talking seriously about difficult topics. the scientific space it was unclear i. you haven't had guests on not yet but uh. maybe you'll come on as a that's right. i'm just gonna invite my i was gonna try. to follow myself. i am i'm officially inviting you now. will you come on the podcast. fantastic but it was it was hard. it's still a little bit difficult to. tell people. that no you don't get it we're not going.

to talk for 10 minutes. we're going to talk for three or four. hours. it's a different for scientists for like. they're like what i. don't what are we going to talk about. they think it's like the npr interview. yes and they don't realize first of all. i think at his best if you're like at. the level of joe rogan. who i think is an excellent. conversationalist. it you just lose track of time it can be. three four five hours and you lose track. of time.

i'm still not there i find that it's. still painful. like the conversation is still. challenging sometimes you don't lose. quite as much of track of time it's. still an intellectual effort and i think. it might always be. as it would be with you because you're. talking about difficult topics. maybe that require more brand you're not. just. shooting the shit with like a brian red. band or somebody like comedians or just. joking. what's like uh remember those shows um. like where. those shows where someone would come out. and like spin plates and they're running.

back and forth. really good scientific discussion is. like that. you have to be maintaining three or four. different logical arguments and jumping. back and forth. it's occasionally getting to like a real. streak of linearity. but as we found today that typically. there's three or four different things. that we're bouncing back and forth. and that requires a lot of updating of. these you know forebrain circuits it's. not. it's not a passive listening experience. but i like to think that the brain likes. that. i i do want to ask just because we all i.

don't want to forget. the the question came up to me is your. podcast has the same kind of rigor that. i. think like a dan carlin podcast has a. history podcaster well that's a. definitely a compliment thank you it's a. handstand way. you know he's something for me to aspire. to so he goes through. hell to prepare he spends months. preparing it feels like. you've had to really prepare for your.

podcast i definitely. prepare hard how does that are you okay. yeah i mean how much effort does that. take. it feels like a conference presentation. yeah so we record once a week and in the. intervening time. i listen to. many university level lectures so nih. has a. a bank of lectures i have some sources. of recorded university seminars. i'm trying to find the the points of.

intersection so like for four episodes. on sleep it's not like i'm gonna. just regurgitate a popular book or take. one lecture and just. you know poach the content i'm gonna. find the overlap. in the different elements i also so what. i'll do is. i'll generally read 10 or 15. papers and generally those are good. reviews annual reviews. interview of neuroscience annual review. of physiology those kinds of things. i'll chase a few references i'll listen. to some youtube videos but of university. level lectures.

and then i throw all that on a. whiteboard usually while i work out in. the morning. i'll just be working out i have a gym in. my house and i'll just put up. all these random ideas i want to cover. that dreams hallucination. and then i take that and i start. eliminating i draw lines between the. common points of intersection. and then from that i i distill out an. outline. and then i basically think about what i. want to say. on my walks with my dog and i bother a. couple people and blabbed to them so i. would say each podcast.

yeah i put in 10 to 15 hours at least of. passive listening preparation and maybe. five or six of. active preparation so i do prepare quite. a lot. but it has a certain reward component. for me. i to come up at the end with something. that's somewhat crystallized. for me is just so satisfying it feels. like there's something about my dopamine. circuits that just love that. and uh the the only pain is that a year. later after i've talked about the stuff. a bunch of times it's so much more.

succinct. but that's life you you know at some. point you got to pull the trigger well. i don't know what you think but for me. youtube. is uh that's why i'm sad that joe left. youtube there's a. archival nature to youtube that's kind. of magical so i'm really glad you're now. you're you you're uh. doing a lot of educational content on. instagram before. but now on doing this podcast thing on. youtube. i it's like a you know it's like feynman.

lectures. like well that's very no i'm not saying. every podcast right. but there will be there you will have. some i could already tell there will be. some. lectures which are like. definitive like really special ones. that's the hope and the there's some. aspect that's archival to youtube where. at least i hope like 20 years from now. some kid is going to watch. uh watch a lecture yours and um. you know it'll it'll create the next.

nobel prize right it'll create. it'll create another uh you know a dream. that then becomes a reality and that. that's a that's a special thing. that um that youtube provides i'm really. excited that you're on youtube. and at the same time i'm excited to see. where this thing goes. because um it seems like change is the. uh the cliche thing the change is the. only constant in these times because. you're paving uh with this podcast with. this.

creativity what you were doing on. instagram as well you're paving the new. era. of what it means to do science so. actively doing research. and actively explaining that research in. new media it's it's very interesting. inspired and genuinely inspired by you. we we had this discussion last time. after the podcast recording and it was. it's clear that communication of science. cannot be left. to the the existing institutions and i'm. gonna talk about universities i just. mean that the.

science section of newspapers is. sometimes there's some gems there but. generally it goes you know and yeah i. think you really have to know a field. in order to extract the best things from. that field and my hope is that other. practicing scientists and people. finishing their phd in postdoc and. people who are running labs or working. at companies will start to do this. i mean how amazing would it be for. instance if if someone. at neural link was. giving us hints about not necessarily.

what they're developing because that's. complicated for all sorts of reasons but. would. talk to us about what the real. challenges of. building futuristic brain machine. interface are like and. and what the what it means to understand. a clinical problem and address it i mean. i. my hope is somebody there might. eventually do that that somebody in the. world of. um chemistry or synthetic materials or. whatever it is we'll do this in a way. that i could understand because i don't. have. expertise in those i think it would be.

marvelous. and um your tip of the spear you were. out first and. i'm just uh happily trying to. to move along in the direction i'm going. but i i think the future of science. education is online. and i think that's going to be scary to. a lot of existing institutions but it's. not about. disrupting anything it's just about. trying to do things better yeah. you know some of the best interviews. uh some of the best investigative.

journalism is done by people inside the. field. uh comes to mind a guy by the name of. elon musk who. who uh i love the the possibility that. he gets the pulitzer for that interview. but uh he grilled the crap out of vlad. the uh ceo of. uh robin hood i'm not sure if you know. on um. on the clubhouse clubhouse the other. night yeah i saw you guys in there. i was kept out i wasn't quick enough my. thumbs don't go fast enough so i was and. i wasn't about to sit in the waiting. room. have you tried that social network by. the way the clubhouse i've gone in there.

a few times and checked some things out. i'm there i have a few questions about. it that um like if i'm in there. how one can participate or not. participate i. i like being a fly on the wall for those. conversations i've been very curious as. to what's going on in there oh. it's quite i mean i have a lot of. thoughts i've maybe it's useful to. comment. i also have a discord server uh that uh. you know has a few tens of thousands of. people on it and then. they have also a voice chat capability.

so they have these get-togethers and i i. was using in. in the spring and summer like actively. uh on those voice discussions and it's. anywhere from 10 to like a thousand. people. all together in voice like you you. anyone can speak. anytime right but there's this weird. dynamic that people stay quiet. only one person speaks at a time because. they're all like respectful and it's the. community of like. uh like fundamentally respectful people.

even though they're all anonymous. so like except like me and a few others. it's all anonymous people so interesting. and it works it's. but the the magical thing to me about. that community was how intimate. voice only communication can be it felt. as intimate as like a. like a small get-together at a home with. close friends. it felt like there's a calmness to it. and you're revealing.

things about you know somebody suffering. from depression. or being suicidal so those are the dark. things or being super excited getting a. new girlfriend or. boyfriend like just the the depth of. human experience shared on voice without. video. is uh i was really surprised how. intimate that is for human connection. especially in this time of kobe to. replace that so that. so that so just to give you some context. there's something there. there there's definitely something there.

one thing that comes to mind is. when like in clubhouse you have your. little icon so they don't actually you. don't see your face moving. i think when people see their own image. it puts them in a state of. self-consciousness that. is eliminated by just having an icon or. an avatar yes. right so like zoom is dreadful. because if i'm not used to talking to. people and seeing a little image of. myself staring back at me in the mirror. and it's just i know there are ways that. you can adjust that but it's. really awful yeah and i think that when.

i get on zooms now i say hello and then. i shut down. the video component and then i just talk. in the end i come back on just to show. that. it's still there it's still me but i. think that. voice only is really interesting eddie. chang would be an interesting person to. talk to about this because he. understands so much about how inflection. communicates. emotionality and deeper state but. there's a balance between. i think just like you said this the. privacy. uh somehow uh allows for the intimacy so. like being able to.

uh as opposed to put on putting on an. act which i realize we do when we're. visually presenting ourselves. right in remote communication but i. think that there's so few places where. people can. actually communicate without the fear of. penalty. yes those that's you know woefully. absent these days and so maybe people. are just relieved to be in a place where. they feel like. i can say what i want or not say. anything and it's okay. and so so clubhouse as you answer your. kind of uh question is.

uh it was a big improvement to me over. discord which is. it has tears is it has a stage. where people the person that created the. room can invite people up. that would like to speak potentially. have the opportunity to speak and then. there's a bigger audience. that don't get a chance to speak unless. they click raise their hand and they get. called on so there's like a tier system. that allows. for there to be a group of like 5. 10 20 30 people talking and a lot larger.

amount in the audience which in discord. was the problems that everybody could. talk. and the other thing about clubhouse is. everybody. is strongly encouraged to represent. themselves so you're using your real. name it's not anonymous. and how many people were in that um. gamestop discussion. they currently uh limit. rooms to five thousand so i'm sure we. maxed out at five thousand there's a lot. of overflow rooms. this is the cool thing about clubhouse. really big people were on there.

all tuned in and having a conversation. having all. from all you know all these different uh. worlds. being able to connect even though. without the niceties of like arranging. the meeting you could just show up and. leave which is. nice but uh the reason i'm. for my lessons from discord i'm. going to mostly stay away from cole. house and i think. we're going there under another name. right uh. uh i'll pretend i know the actual your.

actual name. yeah it's i've learned it's quite. addicting. it's uh it's a time sink it's so the. intimacy of it. is you find yourself wasting quite a bit. of time on there. it pulls you in well it's interesting. they. would in sort of going back to the. podcast or earlier we're talking about. books. or creating a technology one thing. that's absolutely clear is that anything. that's easy to reproduce is probably not.

worth. much effort and time yes right i mean. most posts could be easily reproduced. you just repost them. yeah so um now there are some original. posts that for which the attribution. goes to the original person it's clear. it came from you. but anything that can be easily. reproduced is doesn't really expand us. very much as individuals or or as groups. and most of what i see on social media. is stuff that. is is purely reproduced yes right.

but i think clubhouse i mean. it could be that some real magic emerges. on there so. in moderation it could be good the magic. is this is another thing that i've. found through kovid that maybe you can. think about. is uh live i used to be. not understand the appeal of live video. or live connection or like in this. clubhouse live events because clubhouse.

is technically for the most part it's. not supposed to be recorded. most people don't record most. conversations it's a one-time live event. and there's a magic to that there is. that's not. captured by a like your podcast or. my podcast produced video that's like. recorded. like packaged up well anything can. happen. it's that anything can happen and those. though that's the kind of thing like. live concerts right i definitely i love. live music.

and it's the idea that because you can. always listen to the album actually the. album usually sounds cleaner and better. but it's just this idea that anything. can happen and then you listen to like. the parts. i don't know you uh like costello did. something weird uh your dog does. something weird and then you have to go. god damn it you have to go to the. kitchen or something to get something. and then you come back. and it's funny i watch a live video like. that of people. and i'll be there for the whole time. i'll wait for them to go to the kitchen. and come back. it's not like i tune out right and that.

makes it like a richer experience for. some reason it's weird well it humanizes. it yeah. and i think there is this weird effect. of whether or not it's a podcast. instagram or twitter or anything else. there is. kind of like two people shouting into a. tunnel and then a bunch of people with. ears at the other end of those tunnels. and shouting some things back. you know that's that's kind of the. format we're in i think. i'll check out clubhouse again i've gone. in there a few times during the day and. i was surprised to see how many people. were in there in the middle of the day. i was like don't aren't these people. supposed to be working exactly but maybe.

that is their work well be very careful. about the. um the time sync of it but yeah if you. want to you and i go together we have a. conversation on there. but one of the things you have to figure. out i don't still know. how to do it but how to exit which is. you just do the. isn't there the leave quietly button. yeah no but like when you and i are on. stage having a conversation. uh like and okay uni is harder but. like uh you really if it's just you and.

i. then it's the usual human communication. of like all right i gotta go. like but when it's like four people. you you don't want to interrupt everyone. announce you're leaving you just have to. i mean. there's a weird dynamic that i haven't. quite figured out. of the etiquette isn't clear the. etiquette is not clear well. the etiquette on different platforms and. how that changes is really interesting. you know how youtube has one etiquette. which is kind of. it's a lot of harshness is tolerated on. youtube video comments.

um twitter seems a bit harsher than. instagram. instagram there's kind of it seems to be. a little nice really nice. people are really nice on instagram for. the most part. um except for those uh phishing things i. actually know someone who had their. quite sizable account poached by those. copyright they come in with those like. you violated copyright things there's. all sorts of harshness in there. that if you think about it in the real. world i like to think about instagram as. if it was the real world. someone that comes over is basically. saying like hey can i hold your wallet.

and go into the bank and i'll get some. money out for you and like. but there's this trust based on the. format it comes in. that it can almost get past your radar. unless you're suspicious. if if you took comments like you know. your. posts get a lot of comments and use it. you just walk past. 500 random people on the street and just. listen to what they say. it something like that's ridiculous i. don't have time for that yeah but the. comments somehow take on this importance. and this relevance yes. and you feel we we feel obligated to. give them. value right and so the online.

communities. the the rules really are different yeah. um. and they evolve with tom which is. fascinating with clubhouse it's a new. social network so it's evolving. and people are figuring out as you go. and the same thing with podcasting. on video and like scientific podcasting. this is the cool thing when i. look at what you've created i'm learning. i'm thinking like hmm that's interesting. to do it this way. because like nobody i have nobody to. copy. not many people to copy you know what i.

mean if you threw out an idea i'm not. going to put it out here now because i. i don't want to because knowing you. you'll hold yourself to it no matter. what but when we talked about. um this issue of the challenge of. staying on a particular topic for a. while. i mean you do have some cool stuff. brewing in there oh no no not separate. from this format and i love your. interview format. but um when you told me about that i got. really excited that you might go forward. i'm not going to tell your audience what. it is it but i will say this it is. super cool i would have never thought. about it it's distinctly different than.

what i'm doing or what lex is currently. doing. and if you decide to do that podcast. i will be your first and your number one. fan and i know there are going to be. millions of other. people interested that would be amazing. so if you decide to go forward with the. idea. no um that would be awesome i was gonna. say what it is but now i'm not going to. because. because that's even more interesting uh. i i brought up the. the clubhouse thing actually in elon um. because i just wanted to.

uh get your thoughts about something. he's said a few times to me. and to me and in general is that he's. under a huge amount of stress. and i'm thinking of doing a startup. now and kind of thinking about all of. this. because i you know i enjoy podcast i. enjoy science. but he says that his life is basically. hell. very difficult he looks happy but he's. probably very good at. he's fulfilled he's fulfilled but the.

stress levels. the constant fires that he has to put. out. and he says that most people wouldn't. want to be me. and that basically the reason he does. what he does is because. there's probably something wrong with. him like it's not. uh he can't help it but do that. it's kind of beautiful in a kind of. russian. masochistic way well i i just wonder.

the stress i mean i'm sure you can. you can imagine the kind of stress he's. under because so. it's running three plus companies and. there's constant. like he he says that you know every. single meeting is a is not about like. should we install a coffee maker in the. in the. in the kitchen it's like. you know this rocket is going to blow up. and i don't we're all fucked. i don't know what to do and we have to. you have to fix.

you have to fix the real like big. problems that are and like how do you. uh oh yeah how do you deal with that. what do you think about that kind of. life one. one is there a way to go you know walk. through that fire. and two should you. should you walk through that fire well i. mean without knowing i've never met elon. but certainly we have common friends in. you and in other people that uh he. worked with long ago. in the paypal days um all of whom speak.

very highly of him. and show express immense admiration for. the number of things that he can. maintain. i think it's fair to say that he. accomplishes more. before 9 a.m than most people do in in. a decade it's clear and that what he. does would. dissolve most people into a puddle of. tears mostly because of this whole thing. about the brain working hard equates to.

thinking about duration path and outcome. and anticipating outcomes given a b. c or d a lot of very scripted linear. thinking. and prediction and that is hard it's. stressful it requires intense. neurochemical output. and he's doing that for multiple. projects so presumably he's buffered. himself. from the coffee maker issues and the. little tiny issues but he is. himself unless there's something i don't. know he's walking around in a biological. system. he is that's uh allegedly yes yeah. allegedly so.

um and i don't want to reveal too much. here but i have. a common um. a co-worker and colleague through some. contract work i do. that what i can tell you is that he's. accessing the best resources in terms of. how. to optimize his biology and. he's thinking about that not just for. himself but for all of neural link. because i think i'm not trying to dodge. the question but i think. there's the there's the scale of the. individual but then there's the.

companies that. he's creating and you've got people. there that. you could imagine if they're working at. ten percent better capacity or can focus. five percent better for twenty percent. of the day. you're looking at a enormous increase in. productivity and. a reduction in the time to reach goals. which will reduce the amount of stress. presumably on elon unless he goes and. starts another endeavor. right so i think it's certainly not. healthy for most people. it seems to be where he gets his.

dopamine hits i'm also. really struck by the fact that he has a. family and he has. you know he maintains he's got kids. growing up in a relationship and all. that so. it's super impressive i think that. um i don't know how old is elon yes 40. i'm pushing 50 i think 48. so even more impressive 29 because you. know. many people who've been at exceedingly. high output for a decade. or more don't do well their system. breaks down. well this is what he was saying he.

uh actually the i mean i don't listen to. all of his interviews but. on that live on the clubhouse he. mentioned that. he was kind of worried it's interesting. he was worried that like sometimes. what i think he said is i'm worried that. some. at some point my brain is just going to. fail. because of the amount of load it's under. like. how much i have to think through.

throughout the day like how many like. problems you have to think through like. you know it's like. puzzles it's constant puzzle solving i. would be concerned about. taking somebody who's in that regime and. suddenly putting them into a regime. where they don't have enough to bite. down into it's like my bulldog costello. he's happiest when chewing and tugging. with a big whole neck of his. and he is just not going to become a. retriever he's not going to. he does well and gets his dopamine hits. from. chewing and pulling and it it seems like.

elon has. ended up where he is by way of his. natural leanings. i unless there's a backstory that's um. trauma-based or something and i don't. even begin to think that there is. it seems that he has he's one of those. rare individuals in history that has an. immense drive. to create in all these different domains. i'm just saying the obvious here. yeah but it seems like that's what makes. him tick. i mean you're doing an awful lot too. well the problem is.

not really uh the the problem is um. about i've been on the verge of pulling. the trigger on on. on starting a company which will. increase the workload. significantly and uh i'm attracted to. that. because of a dream i have but it's a. little bit scary. because it can destroy you in in a lot. of ways. there's two there's two sources of. destruction so. one source is uh.

i've for the first time in my life a few. um months ago i think. have gotten this feels like such a noob. thing to say but i've gotten some hate. on the internet. no i know right no but like i am such an. idiot i'm so naive to. it was supr you i i had the question. that i guess a lot of people. uh have when they get hate on the. internet it's like.

like it's like mom why are these people. making up stuff about me. you know that kind of feeling of like. why why are you saying that. and and the the the the reason i mention. that is like. well if you go if you want to go and. start a business and. do as i think people should when they. start. a big ambitious business really try to. go big. like what does success look like in. terms of your emotional journey.

you're going to have a lot of people who. make up stuff about you. who say negative thing i mean majority. hopefully if you do a good job. will be supportive and but there's still. going to be this army of people there. and like that that was scary to me. because. of how much emotional impact they had on. me. well and i also know a little bit i have. some glimpse into the fact that you put. your heart and soul into. everything you do you're not a you're. light-hearted about. certain things but you're even.

light-hearted about being. full gas pedal 24 7. there's kind of. this. you know uh was it um. laird hamilton always says you know the. big wave surfers uh. he always says you know um bright light. dark shadow. you know and uh i think it's that. intensity. and when you do that and then suddenly. people are starting to. like throw some paint on your picture. you're like wait hold. you know you're going max capacity yeah. but i think the company.

is an interesting one because you've. talked about doing this company before. i've been afraid i've just not been. pulling trigger uh. out of fear because i enjoy this life. this is this and starting to interrupt. but. it's ultimately this question of taking. a leap. is like uh say you're in academia. like you're at mit you're i really love. doing research at mit. i really love that life why take a leap. out. you know but i did because it's been a. dream.

but now accidentally along the way i. found this. podcasting thing which is also really. fulfilling. and you know it's like why take a leap. because you have a huge lust for life. yeah i mean that's you i mean sometimes. when i'm on the internet and i think is. this. you hear about it like oh it's addicting. you know youtube's addicting all that. actually sometimes i think maybe that's. true but a lot of times i just think. there's so much here there's a lot of. garbage. but there's so many gems out there in.

the world now it's almost. like sure how you allocate time is key. but. i i think you can do it all. yeah maybe not five more things yeah yes. but all yes. and one thing i just had this idea and. this is not grounded in any scientific. paper but i think the answer might come. to you during this um. this torture that you're about yourself. through with david because in those. mental states you're really asking the. question. right you're asking the question where.

is my capacity. and am i even close to my capacity and. if i. am what's what's of the most value i. think we find the answers to those. things. in those non-verbal non-analytic states. it just comes to us i hope you're right. and i hope it's a profoundly fulfilling. experience as opposed to one that leads. to my demise. but yeah right. [Music]. it goes it all goes to the to the yeah. exactly to the hedgehog.

uh now it all makes sense andrew uh. like we talked about offline on this. podcast i do hope we. write some stuff together do some. research together you're. you're you're one of the most inspiring. scientists. and speaking of communicating to the. world. uh so i can't wait to see what you do. with the podcast i'm already a huge fan. i've been telling everybody about it. i can't wait to see you talk to joe uh. as well soon. and i can't wait to see what kind of.

people we write together thanks so much. for talking today. thank you that project's gonna be a lot. of fun can't wait and thanks again for. having me on appreciate you brother. thanks for listening to this. conversation with andrew huberman and. thank you to our sponsors. master class online courses four. sigmatic mushroom coffee. magic spoon low carb cereal and better. help online therapy. click the sponsor links to get a. discount and remember. now is the time to sign up to. masterclass if that's something you've.

been on the fence about. and now let me leave you with some words. from woodrow wilson. we should not only use the brains we. have but all that we can borrow. thank you for listening and hope to see. you next time.