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

we probably shouldn't box i i boxed i had my boxing card in boxed pretty consistently various times i'm not very good you don't get a nose like this through a yoga yeah i feel like i could rude wear i know i could be what i want to put it all in it like a days off on a go less travel never looking back andrew lieberman was just on the podcast if you don't know who he is i'm gonna try and grab him very simply he's this guy who works at stanford i believe he's a neuroscience doctor hub is his name and he's got this youtube video series and a podcast called lieberman labs where basically he picks one topic like sleep stress building muscle depression addiction and he'll do like an hour to two hours of just talking into the camera and talking to his mic and explains very easy ways to understand what it means and how you can overcome or like what supplements or what exercises you can do to address he's only been around for ten months and he's already one of the top ten most popular the podcast he's everywhere on youtube this guy is a badass ass we just head on the podcast i i'm kind of like stars trek a little bit because i'm such a fan of his i think you're really gonna dig this it's a little bit health focused towards the end we get into a little bit more business stuff but if you're into business you have to be healthy otherwise you're not gonna be able to perform well and so we talk a lot about that we talk a lot about morning routines and these aren't just like oh i write in my journal it's like well no if you do this based off of science based off peer review research if you do this you're gonna feel this way and that's gonna help with x y z so it's like kind of a evidence research based podcast that that we've just done it's pretty freaking cool so enjoy it ben what do you think he he just sean uses the term shortcuts he's really good for giving little hacks i just feel like i took away like six to ten little hacks i can use in my life that is gonna make it better mostly biologically like it's gonna actually improve my sleep or imp improve my ability to focus and things like that so i think there's a lot of great little nuggets for people in it so check it out and by the way we are giving a thousand dollars to six people what you have to do is you go to rate this podcast dot com slash m f m so that's m m as in my first million so rate this podcast dot com slash m m and leave us a review all you gotta to do is leave us review i don't even care it's a negative review us how you think about anything one star five star i don't care do whatever you want and at the end of the month we're gonna pick like i think six of them and give a thousand dollars away so rate this podcast dot com slash m f m write something cool write something funny maybe if you stick out we'll we'll we'll pick you let us know what you think about podcast podcasts enjoy the episode do you check notifications on youtube i do not okay so let me tell you something really quick so about two weeks ago so i'm a big bay area punk rock fan so i listened to like i used to live in san francisco for years i listened to like old ran old green bay and i was looking at an old interview with tim armstrong from ran and it has like very little views and i was loving this interview and i was gonna comment how much i love it and i scroll down and you were the first comment on there and i replied to you and so i thought that was funny we have similar interest i did not expect to see you there out an old tim i'm armstrong from yeah i'm a huge rant and tim armstrong fan i mean without taking up too much of our time on this i've never i've never met tim personally but yeah growing up i was operation ivy fan a big fan of a band called k shrine solo east bay punk scene and then ran came out and actually tim and matt freeman had a ban called downfall in between you can find some of those tracks and i love those tracks i just love it they cover such a huge range of styles and they've just done amazing things and yeah so if there's any content out there that's you know ran acoustic or downfall rare rants tracks i i'd i scour the internet for them if i don't know about them send them to me i devour that stuff and we'll have sean kinda do like an intro on you but really quick this is one of the reasons why i think people like you and while your podcast has taken off because you're this intellectual powerhouse but you look like an athlete yeah you kinda have this like punk rock side idea like you gotta tell that you have that too you and i think that you're just like a really like ec interesting person and i think that's why so basically sean you can do the intro but you've had this podcast that just launched like a year ago you're already the biggest guy there is or top ten top five it's pretty amazing and i think that's one of the reason why why you're when you're kicking ass is because you are quite ec and very different from what we're used to oh we that go ahead i guess say we can kind of like set the scene so so we have andrew hub here doctor hub and known known for hub lab and you're a neuroscientist professor at stanford as you have a whole bunch that you have an interesting podcast and i'm i've seen you everywhere recently so i don't know if this is like i don't know if you have hired an amazing p person i don't know if i'm just late to the party but you went from i've never heard of you before like three months ago let's say to i only hear about you my youtube feed is basically just giving me more and more of your content every day so is that is that a new thing or or am i just like discovering you now it's a it's a very new thing i mean to just give you the quick arc you know leaving out all the pre academia stuff you know i did my training in neuroscience and in physiology things like temperature regulation and things of that sort and over the years i worked on a number of different problems formally meaning in laboratories as a phd student post doc junior professor tenured professor things like stress and regeneration and what happened was right around twenty fifteen i started getting curious about how scientific information is making it out into the general public but there really wasn't a a cause or a venue for doing that there were these meetings like big summit meetings and things like that that it weren't really my flavor to be honest they're perfectly fine but they would typically go something like you know yoga class group and meditation one talk by my product by my book and then people go and so what happened was in twenty nineteen i have a good friend his name is pat dos he's a wharton grad a former navy seal operator did nine years in the seal teams it's a good friend of mine we swim together he much further ahead than i of course you know those guys definitely have extra gears much you know seen that and and pat also has a called made four which is a behavioral health company who started with blake mic who's a founder of tom shoes so what happened was in twenty nineteen pat asked me a question we're literally getting out of the water we've done it early morning cold water swim and he said you what are gonna do in twenty nineteen to make the world a better place and was like well you know i'm trying to figure out neuro regeneration stress and how to sleep better my lab he said yeah what are you really gonna do he was kinda poking at me and i said well know i think it'd be fun to just teach science on the internet and just put quality information out there because i don't see that so i started doing that in twenty nineteen little short post pretty nerdy stuff mostly on instagram and people seem to like it and then in twenty and i got a book deal and in twenty end of twenty nineteen i thought i would do what most academics do write a book sell a book and then twenty twenty hit and a couple things happened one is i realized there was tremendous need for people to have the tools for managing stress and circadian rhythms and sleep and managing mental workload and etcetera because everyone was locked down and stressed out and confused as was i frankly but i had access to these tools so i started dis decelerating the tools by going on podcasts and on instagram and then eventually the podcast led to a you know the ro appearance certainly had a lot to do with it a rich role appearance that did well it also in le friedman at the end of twenty twenty great podcast and also a great friend of mine now said you should start a podcast so january of twenty twenty one bought the mics set it up i looked to my skateboarding punk rock past i have a friend named mike bla known as blaze photo in the skateboarding and action sports community shoots all the stuff out jin khan and ken park driving rally cars of danny way tony hawk all the there only a few superstars of skateboarding and action sports photography my happens to be one of them and he said let's build an aesthetic that kinda represents you i always wear the same black shirt i own twenty six of these that's not for the podcast you know i i always keep my hair short and just you know this is me on any day it's just that the kind of camera showed up and i started sitting down or what would i do in the classroom if someone was interested in stress and how to manage stress well i would give four lectures on that and so a big feature of the podcast that's a little different is that than most podcast podcasts is that i try and stay on theme and i try and keep it like i would in a classroom but then offer a lot of tools which is a little different and so that's really how it happened and no no p firm no you know big no no contract signed everything we've got with my son how how did you get on rogue page yeah how did you get on rogue because that was a big obviously inflection point and then that leads to tim ferris that leads to more and more so how do you get on rogue yeah and that was all this year so then well two things about that i'll just wanna make sure i closed the hatch on so i haven't written this book i haven't released it for two reasons one is that in twenty twenty i didn't wanna sell anything i was coming to the table as an academic with a tenured position and a salary frankly we don't make big salaries he's even at stanford yes if my dean is listening the salaries at stanford are not in keeping with the cost of living in the bay area which is why most people sit on company boards and things of that sort so you do science for the love of it but i didn't wanna talk about my work and be self promotional i really love learning and teaching and i have one mission in my professional life and that's to share the magic and the utility of biology i i mean that's for me just fills me up and talking about my work is fun we can do that if you want but there's so much terrific work out there so what happened was the second rogue appearances is you know joe said you know humor is doing this podcast podcasting thing and people seem interested in let's get back on to share some of this information and but how did it happen in the first place well i have a good friend and business partner at my podcast his name is rob moore and know he's not taking new clients and so because he no longer does what i'm about to describe which is that rob came from the world of of p r but then he got really interested in podcasts he's in his mid thirties and he started a podcast called the fight with teddy atlas he loves boxing he really yeah yeah yeah i looked to that every week yeah i okay you're work you work with that guy yeah but he's out like the a thick boss accent right that's ken ride out who's a friend who i met through rob rob you're not gonna see you're not gonna find he sits behind an email wall and he's a a close friend of mine that you know october this time last year october november of twenty twenty we went for lunch and i said let's start a podcast le things that we've got traction with a podcast and i think he's right and he said great let's do it let's buy the mic let's you know we built the studio with our own hands mike showed up got the dc team in there because their friends with of mine dc shoes dc skateboarding and they helped me you know create an aesthetic that we thought would would work for make people feel like they were in a classroom and you know rob was the one who connected me to the person who connected me to joe there's a little bit of i since this is a public venue there's a little bit of of a wall they're just because they get flooded with requests and i'll be honest you know i don't know what their process is i think that they have a process and and if i'm not privy to it i think that what's beautiful about the rogue podcast having been a guest on there and obviously a big fan is that they i think what you see is the real deal you know joe sits down with people that he'd like to have a meal with and or conversation with has a conversation and and the human appetite for that is obviously huge people seem to really resonate with that and of course show is a tremendous reason so he's been tremendously helpful tim ferris rich role and le friedman and i will say that le has been my kind of guiding light in this whole process about bringing certain elements of my own person and personality to things you know yeah i am i mean this is gonna sound weird to anyone who's looking to this for science information but and it might not even make sense but sam you'll get it and i don't know other people will too which is like yeah i'm a dyed in the wall punk rocker i grew up in that and if this that scene i think people think of is like loud music loud close loud everything that scene at its at its essence the reason i gravitate towards it early is that it's it very varied it's about showing up like hurtful strong it's not a it's never a victim stance but it's not an aggressive stance but it's not a weak stance either and like for me it just resonated and so it's like let's you know the opening track of my podcast for instance is a song i don't wanna get the copyright people on me so that's familiar from the punk rock culture and i just wanted to bring all that forward and i think le was the one who really said pick two or three things that you really feel represent your relationship to science and that give you energy for that i mean lexus is is a genius i have to say what you see there with the jacket and tie and all the interviews le works so hard he thinks so hard about where he's going with all this and he just interviewed the director of the national institutes of health francis collins that is not an easy grab so in any case that's a long winded i don't tend to be the sync so i'll stop yeah i wanna ask you about i'll ask you about alexa in a second but for those who who are listening and and don't know who you are basically i i have your channel up right now so your first video was launched ten months ago your video is basically you and your this is weird to say to you but you're you're like a good looking dude you've got like a goatee you look at of like a football player you're you're wearing you're wearing a black shirt with a black background you're pretty serious and you're just sitting for like sixty minutes to almost two hours sometimes and you're explaining things that sound complicated like how your nervous system works and changes master your sleep using failures movements and bounce to learn faster so these are like things that are somewhat complicated but you sit down and you look at the camera for one to two hours and you tell you you you explain what what it all means and then you do something that's interesting where it says like alright so how do you take advantage of this and apply this and use this and you're long winded on purpose because you said you're like i'm not gonna i i need you to to know exactly how this works so you can decide what you wanna do versus me just telling you exactly what to right like a balance of you can simplify something so people can understand it without dump remove their own agency to to to to dive in yeah yeah thanks for that description you know my i said that the the goal and and really my purpose in life i i know mission statements and purpose down kinda they're kinda cliche and but it is really is i get i so i have this process that i've used for a long time which is i like to just pay attention to what puts energy into my body the music like i'll hear a song you're you're familiar with this you hear a song like yes you know it just fills you with energy whether or not that's dopamine adrenaline or and a we could dissect that but that's not the point but that energy is a is a neural energy it doesn't have to do with calories it doesn't but that energy is your source right like it in the eastern philosophies they would call it q or whatever it is so i've always sensed what i really enjoy and for me learning cool information and sharing it is what i wanna do so what i try and do is paint a a tapestry at the beginning of here's a topic like stress or sleep or dopamine or adhd or eating disorders or whatever and arm people with the language and and make them realize that the nomenclature is just words we can replace some of those words and let's get a functional definition of things going and then once they understand how things work a little bit some of the the algorithms so to speak then let's talk about what you can do with this and how you can use light to change your circadian rhythms or particular patterns of breathing that are grounded in physiology to des distressed rapidly etcetera and so yeah and can you explain this first video so your first video it's only sean was saying that like you're you came everywhere you you're everywhere very quickly your first one was only ten months ago that first video has six hundred and fifty two thousand views it's a slick look thumbnail can you walk me through how much did you spend to build that studio and like how did the first traction you think come to this video your very first video six hundred and fifty thousand the very next one looks like a month later a million views the next one six hundred and thirty i mean you hit right away you you're you were hitting right away how did that happen yeah that's a good question so a big part of that what i don't think it was the thumbnails because actually we were told by youtube that our thumbnails weren't legible i have these fancy anatomical drawings you know that now we've changed them a bit we've learned some things you know faces do better than images etcetera but if you thumbnails that are really clickbait bait our thumbnails where someone's going like where they said the wider the eyes the more people click and kind of crazy stuff we didn't do that because i want people to know that i'm here with a serious you know serious information because i'm serious about them it's sort of like why always the black shirt these are actually the black i i'm literally on twenty six of these that i like these particular shirts i'm not trying to get picked up by the by the maker so i won't mention it but i've always worn them i like like them but it's also are it me and chan always wear black typically because it's easy to hide if you're fat or wrinkles right or tattoos not that i'm confessing that i have any tattoos but the if i was neck to knuckles tattoos i would just do it but i'm not but the and kids yes you should be able to address however you want and do whatever you want but that's not the way the world works people are always evaluating so you decide it's your gamble i always say authenticity is not the same as over sharing these days i think there's a big ten to think oh because you can dead lift five hundred pounds that you should put that on the internet one so this is part of my answer which is that by the end of twenty twenty the instagram channel had grown to several hundred thousand but that mind you took two years and fifty five zero podcast appearances as a guest so we announced that we were going to launch a youtube channel to get over there and subscribe and then we just started pushing out content frequency is a big deal you know we do one a week we may advance to one in a shorter one each week next time but you know consistency you you know not surprisingly counts and there's consistency of aesthetic too you know this the building the studio is fairly straightforward thank you mike lay my good friend and do you i mean the one thing about skateboard orders that they really really know how to do well is to create original content in a diy format okay so actually mike is out on a shoot right now with spike jones right so i grew up with i don't know spike but i grew up with a lot of the guys who arrived for girl mike a spike jones owns girls a portion of girls skateboard boards so i grew up around people that took video of us playing around on the streets on skateboard boards and made videos that became these iconic things and so well skateboard orders were kinda like the first youtubers you know if you look at old trans world or four one one videos or old dc or like the like like what bam was doing with jackass you know it was the ck videos the we were the skater were the first youtubers that's right though they really were and you mentioned four one one so you definitely you know four one one is like no i still sc i i i was just hanging out with mike taylor this weekend professor skateboard yeah yeah yeah yeah and to be clear because i wanna maintain my integrity with that you i wasn't a great skateboard order i was okay thunder trucks put me on out of sympathy spit fire put me on out of sympathy but i wasn't gonna be one of the big guys it was just a community i really felt a part of and when i went off to college because my high school girlfriend went to college i've tripped and fell into biology i thought i'd be a skateboard order a firefighter or something was more physical but i fell in love with biology and and just that's why i've been doing ever since but i think the aesthetic keeping a a fairly narrow messaging too you know we've turned down every option to make a little bit of extra money doing affiliate codes i mean we do have advertising and affiliate codes but to just pepper things with you know advertising everywhere we just i want people to have a zero cost trusted source for science health and fitness information of course we're not gonna get everything exactly right but to know that if they come to the hub and lab channel that they're going to get information that's vetted that i've i always consult with at least two or three colleagues professional in a given area before i do a a podcast of just me because i don't work on adhd i know the a fair amount about it but i consult with experts and so i have a kind of advisory board i use the scientific community and then it's a kind of a beautiful ecosystem where our advertisers are happy we're happy are but the main thing is the consumers get it at zero cost to consumer and i think that's very different than a book and that's very different than a behind pay wall strategy i've seen a lot of health and science podcast who are quite good move their stuff behind a pay wall because you can make much more money charging you know ten thirty dollars a month or something and i like to think that people would be willing to do that for our content however i feel best about the fact that for some kids sitting in halfway across the world who wants to understand weight training or adhd or dopamine or sleep they as long as they have an internet connection they have to tolerate a few ads but the information is free to them what why don't you just bail as a million dollars a well i i'm i'm i guess academically mas oh because you can well it's and i'm happy to announce this now i actually took an i i love doing research we have a big project on human stress we've that's it's been working on human fear i love doing research and actually a a fairly sizable portion of the hub lab podcast income is going to be donated to research and to scholarships for students i i'm not i'd be very honest i'm not i i'm not extremely wealthy nor do i suffer you know and i i it's money is important i always say money by can't buy happiness but it absolutely can buffer stress no question about that anyone who's ever had significant funds throughout their lifetime that won't truly understand that statement people who haven't will understand exactly what i mean and i i think money is very important but so is the ecosystem between academia public health and science communication and the private sector and for the time being it just makes sense for me to continue to teach at stanford i teach medical students in the winter on neuro anatomy i direct the neuro anatomy course and i really enjoy academic conversations they're slow they it's like laden through steel one thin layer at a time but what you get to often is a kind of granularity where it's a process it's it's not much you get to answers it's it's you get to a process of getting to answers and i don't think i'd be happy without doing that actually show a couple people are fans of the pod and they are i knew they would be excited to have you on because we we mostly this is a business oriented podcast is why kind of we're asking you some things about the business of how you you became a content creator how you got your audience you know why do you sean we've not even we've not even told them what we do i guess i i i i did i i did i did a little bit of research and i i was delighted when you guys asked i mean i'm new to twitter frankly i didn't like twitter when i first got out i was like people are really combative compared to instagram mean and i think it's because you don't have to show your face and i'm a very like i'm not an aggressive person but if somebody i goes wants to go toe to toe i still have that in me i'm not suggesting anyone get violent out there but people would come at me and on instagram and so we'll show yourself let's go you know let's let's have a conversation and you know so i don't get into back and forth in comments i found twitter to be in in incredibly combative neighborhood and then you guys showed up i was like oh wow i guess there's some nice people in the neighborhood so sort of like finding the other punk rocker and skateboard orders it's like you and me we got the same thing and we're good so that's was the feeling i had and then it turns out that's actually the case twitter you get reward every network rewards you for a different wit which is like the put plus side so you know being witty in and hundred forty characters but then on the other side it's basically you know if you have the sharpest insult at somebody you also get rewarded and you don't have to share your face and there's all these other benefits and so so it it brings out a different side it's actually youtube used to be this way too the youtube comments i don't know if you people remember this but youtube comments used to be the running joke as like what is the most ces pool of the toxic commentary that exists it was called the youtube comments and now youtube comments are extreme i don't know what they changed in the algorithm or the the flagging or what whatnot but youtube comments are on the whole you know either funny or supportive or what whatnot they really changed that tiktok doing anyways wanna about comments this before i forget started interrupt but vis a vis business because i know that's your your main audience is one thing that i did on instagram early on and then i do on youtube is comment sections are great but better to make them interactive so i actively request and we read every single comment i say tell me but give me give us feedback but also give us suggestions and give us ideas about future and then i've devoted entire episodes we haven't done one in a while but to what we call office hours which is where i go through the most frequently asked questions and address those so now there's an incentive to ask to put stuff in the comments and i think that's a really good non combative use of the comments section and we of course still get some crazy stuff in the comments and people being combative but they should just know that we don't actually read those no i'm kidding we read them all yeah yeah for sure so i wanted to talk about a couple things one was what we talked about now how how did you where how did you break out what and i think it's great you know i teach science on the internet is such a simple a simple like sort of philosophy a simple you know business statement of what do i do what am i here to do and then the mission i i enjoyed that as well but i wanted to actually go through some of those greatest hits so some of the reasons that you've grown in popularity is that you put out nuggets that are interesting to people and when i was talking to friends saying you were coming on they said you know we ask a lot of that kind of like oh you know we have a billionaire on the podcast hey you're super successful what's your morning routine and they tell us oh you know here's what i do in the morning you know and people sort of equate that to if i do this i will i too will become a billionaire which is obviously not not the right way to think about it but i think if i ask you about your morning routine which i'm guessing is centered around health mental health fitness and and sort of regulating your body that that actually will be applicable to more people so take us through what is the what is the morning i know you've talked about this on the some other pods but i i bet the majority of our audience has not listened to all your stuff so you know these are the greatest hits let's let's do it sure yes so i wake up for me that's usually somewhere around somewhere between five thirty and six thirty depending on how early i went to sleep i wake up and i do an assessment of whether or not i feel rested or not most days the answer is no just because of life staying up too late stressed etcetera so i do a ten to thirty minute yoga session first thing in the morning yoga is a passive listening you can find these yoga links on youtube there's one which is ten minute yoga there's one that actually made for put out for free called ns sdr non sleep deep breaths that's a thirty minute one it's a script where you just listen it brings your brain into a state that's like that's pseudo sleep after that ten or thirty minute yoga i feel like i've slept as much as i need to sleep it's a really remarkable reset and it it avoids your brain going into this state of planning an organization what we call duration path and outcome in the neural circuitry world and keeps it in that kind of lim state of adjusting and there are some interesting data published showing that these yoga meditations if you will are can up regulate some of the neurotransmitters in the brain including dopamine that make you prepared for action and so they're very rest especially in the absence of complete sleep if i feel great i might just get out of bed the first thing is always and i have to be careful because to list every step because sometimes people say wait he doesn't even go to the bathroom in the morning i'm i mean obviously i go right foot left foot to the bathroom then i've used the restroom then i go downstairs i i drink water i hydrate and i go outside and i get some sunlight in my eyes for ten to thirty minutes foundational absolutely critical practice when i don't do it for more than two days in a row i start messing up all sorts of aspects of my life and most people are not doing this even on cloudy days do it don't wear sunglasses unless you have a medical reason why you need to it's fine to wear corrective lenses or contacts you don't need to stare directly at the sun or see the sunrise rise and these are the questions i most often get this is why i'm hitting me bullet points and if you wake up before the sun rises flip on as many lights as you can in your space if you wanna be awake in your artificial light environment and then once the sun is out go outside i don't care if you're in the depths of scandinavian winter the sun comes out at some point some people might need a daylight simulator but the discussion about daylight simulators is usually an excuse to avoid having to just go outside and get sunlight in your eyes for ten to thirty minutes you can check your phone if you want or bring the newspaper if people still read those or a book i usually bring a journal and i write down some things that i wanna do that day and try and make sure that i'm clearing away some of the clutter if you have a dog you could do this while walking etcetera and then i sometimes we'll combine this with a walk optic flow when you're just walking through space not looking at anything like your phone or anything in particular that optic flow is known to suppress a circuit in the limbic system that involves the threat detection centers it is very calming to walk through space and it reduces your overall levels of anxiety many people just being indoors not getting sunlight not getting enough sleep life is stressful they're not doing this so basically all of that can be accomplished in one hour it's wake up yoga for ten to thirty minutes use the bathroom and drink some water of course all the basic biological phones what about the and coffee okay so i don't ingest the during the day i ingested as part of a sleep cocktail before sleep some people will take healthy and with coffee it's now in many energy drinks because it takes away some of the jitter that it's a mild sedative and it it takes away some of the jitter that caffeine can induce i don't drink any caffeine until ninety minutes or ideally a hundred and twenty minutes after i've woken up for the following reason during sleep you well during wake you and the longer you're awake adenosine builds up in your system caffeine is an adenosine antagonist functionally i realize it's a competitive agonist for you a autos but it it basically blocks the adenosine receptor functionality so to speak but when that caffeine wears off you're gonna get a big crash because there's gonna be a surplus of adenosine by waiting ninety minutes to two hours to ingest caffeine ninety minutes to two hours after waking to ingest caffeine it's a little bit of a struggle to learn how to do this but your natural adenosine system that that adenosine taper down very very low as a consequence and you don't get that rebound in the afternoon i drink mat a y mate i love it there's a great i don't like that the really smoky ones i have no business relationship to any year about monte company by the way but the one i love is but i don't know who this person is or if it's even a person anna park it's a really delicious when it comes loose leaf and it's very high caffeine content so you don't need very much of it and it also has a lot of what's called gl one glucagon like peptide one which is actually being used now as an anti diabetes and obesity drug there's all sorts of great things about gl one up regulates dopamine receptors etcetera so i'll drink mate starting about ninety minutes after i'm awake and then that's kind of my morning but after the walk i go inside i i do try to avoid social media at that point maybe a quick check of ten minutes i set i'll even said alarm and then on on a phone or computer typically on a phone i'd like to move more to the computer but i've been transit a lot these days and you have to be thoughtful obviously but i think maybe ten minutes on social media but i want social media to continue to be a pleasure and i've because of the dopamine system and we can talk about that i don't wanna get i don't wanna go down the rabbit hole of someone else's psychology or neurology i wanna stay in my own frame the the orientation i have in the early part of the day with that notebook is i want to be in my own mental frame i've just slept during sleep is when we have neuro the actual re wiring of neural connections occurs during sleep i'm a big believer in the subconscious and you're when you wake up you are now in a position to extract whatever it is that these new neural circuits have have figured out about the previous day and days events and so if i immediately bombard myself with sensory experience or input or distractions i'm not able to ex do that so this morning for instance i'll just give an example i'm preparing an episode of the podcast on time perception i've been reading a lot about this and i woke up this morning outside with the notebook and just sat there and then realize that there's a way to organize this episode that has to do with frame rates and sort of slow motion versus fast motion cognition or hopefully it'll be clear by time the podcast happens it's not fully formed but that can me so i wrote that down thought great and then i'll move into some more typical type work it's great if you can avoid email until after twelve noon but that's very hard for a lot of businesses so i will usually do a brief check in on email critical items but then i like to write so i will i'm working i am working on a book finally i will work on scientific papers on grants on reviewing papers i try and make that pretty heavy intellectual lifting and take that till about noon and then i'll i'll look into and then we could talk about you know food and other things at this point i haven't eaten any do you have a so you're not until noon but i one thing that you met did not bring up and i'm wondering give a family no i have a relationship and i had a dog until recently he away so i i do understand people have different thanks yeah i have different constraints he was a big part of my morning routine i just this big ninety pound bulldog mass tiffany named costello and we would slowly do our walk we'd get the sun together animals are perfectly happy to do these because he's a very innate behaviors but no cats no children and you you know who children in my life i'll say that but but they're don't have any children yeah you remind me of henry rollins yeah his except his jaw goes to about here right you know like henry's head is like this big right sean do you know who henry rollins is no one time i sean okay sean doesn't know who dolly partners is he didn't know who jimmy buffett was sean doesn't know like white people shit it's we're gonna put this at the category of white people shit henry rollins what was he was it black flag that he was the lead singer of yeah so well alright i have to be careful not to go down this path to you i mean i'm a big emi mckay fan so minor threat right then minor threat and then there was black flag so and yes but rollins was part of black flag and he was early in the punk rock scene to get into lifting weights i ian and those guys were straight edge straight means different things in different eras but at that time it meant no alcohol no drugs it's pre firm stance in the eighties compared to the rest of the culture yeah i don't know henry i don't know ian but i listened to minor threat all the time but sean so henry is like this guy he's like this punk rocker he's like he might be in his sixties now but he be he basically like was singing punk rock but he would didn't drink anything and he lifts start lifting wait so he was like kinda like a meat had a little bit and not a bad way but he was like jacked and now at this point his life he's completely single he doesn't have kids or anything and he's a poet and he's an actor and he just kinda like a renaissance man where and if you google them you'll recognize them did you did you google them he's he's like an you'll definitely recognize them he was in he was he he's sometimes in movies suns sons of anarchy things like that and anyway just this like really really interesting and guy and he'll go in like a ted talk or something like that and he'll just talk about his philosophy on anything he's kinda like mike tyson a little bit he just kinda like every time he talks it's just like wisdom anyway humor man has this like this like henry rollins vibe a little bit and that's why i was about kids because you're this interesting guy who's kinda like i in my head i picture you is just like guy who's alone intensely studying and try to figure out like crack a problem and i and i think that that's really in that's just like an interesting part of you or at least yeah in my head and not i'm making you up as sure i mean i i at in the spirit of authenticity but not over sharing what i can say about this is i mean i'm blessed with great friendships i've always i think because of that skateboarding punk rock here because it was mostly guys back then i have a community a lot of friends who you know swim who work out who play music i'm really good friends guy named michael mueller who's a photographers who does all the marvel stuff and i'll train with him my train i'm sometimes up at lair hamilton and gabby reese's pool i like those workouts they're good friends of mine when i'm down there but yes i at this point in my life i live in a somewhat remote area i have a a gym in asana and a cold dunk i spend a lot of time with the books i i dying to get another dog and i do live that kind of monastic lifestyle you know i do have a relationship and that's great and you know the children thing is interesting because i started off studying brain development and neuro and brain development and so let's just say that if i do something i do it a hundred percent so i have no children now but if i do have kids i i genuinely want five of them i want a big family or not or none at all so that's the that's a little plan we we should talk because you're your kinda your specialty is around the eye right and i've heard you say this and i'm gonna eyes is essentially part of the brain that exists outside of the the sort of the the cra where the rest of the brain is stored it's actually like an it's right is it is the same is it what the same tissue or it's like developmental that it like kinda segregated at some point but it's basically it's the only part of your brain that's like facing the world out that's right you got you got several points there right and none of them wrong these two bits are two pieces of your central nervous system they got extruded out of the skull or we should say out of the cra vault because technically they're still in the skull extruded out of the cra wall during development and they are the way that your brain figures out where it is in space and time right you by the rising setting of the sun and the changing of the of the amount of light throughout the year regardless of where you live and they are responsible for delivering forty percent of the let's just say forty percent of the brain's real estate is devoted vision in some way or another we are incredibly visual animals especially even in blind people that real estate for vision that's in the back of the head of the so called difficult cortex is overtake by areas that respond to touch and hearing that's why they're so good at tactile and and hearing but inc individuals vision is the predominant way not just that we represent and see objects around us so blue car tall good looking woman or man whatever it is it's also the way that we orient ourselves in space and time and that we set our frame rate and we can talk about this but essentially you when as you move through life you're either batch in time in big chunks or in small chunks and that has to do with how you're viewing the visual world you're either thinking in slow motion or thinking it fast depending on your visual environment that's probably a little abstract but yes these two bits are brain outside your cra bolt why you say kind of in the morning you wanna go you you know one of the key things of your morning routine was get outside let the sun hit your eyes it's basically alerting the body that hey the sun is up kick start all your start your engines because it's daytime is regulating that way and i think there's different things throughout the day that you've talked about anxiety maybe help you go to sleep and i'll i'll give you kind of two questions i came from the audience that that when i tweeted out there that you were coming on they're both in the same vein and so one question is we talk a lot on this podcast about the eighty twenty right we are fans of the shortcut shortcut get a bag bad wrap around the world you know it's sort of seen as the the lazy i don't care thing to do but in many ways a shortcut is great a shortcut is basically saying how do i identify the highest leverage points that if i did those i would get maybe the biggest impact or how do i get the results i want faster instead of slower and so what would be the eighty twenty meaning if you could change for all the people who are listening to this right so imagine a hundred thousand people listening to this right now if you could implant sort of one or two behavior changes that they could do in the day so maximum of two which two would you pick that you think have the highest roi the highest return for the investment of what it takes to do them what do you think would make people for happy it doesn't matter if anything that's anything that make you feel better have a yeah whether it's improve your health or improve the way you feel throughout the day what would be the one or two that you would point to us is like you're kind of yeah so you know it's a great question i think we need to think about foundational practices and the two things that set the foundation for optimal mental and physical functioning are going to be really good sleep and really good mental frame and mental frame is going to be the ability to toggle between different states of mind and so let let let me give you the practices first so that i don't get accused of being an an intellectual to the point of you know curing insomnia right during this podcast the first one is that morning sunlight in your eyes should be a non negotiable thing three hundred and sixty days out of the year if it's raining stand under and overhang i'm very un to the well i wake up minutes early and then i gotta drive to work stand outside for five minutes i i don't you know i i i've got plenty of rest last night so i'm not honoring about this but i've grown a little bit exhausted of though well you know i can't do that because i've got kids where take them outside with you they need this too that sets a cortisol increase in the morning which is a healthy cortisol increase that provides wake triggers your metabolism in the proper direction if that cortisol spike happens too late because you didn't view light then you step out during noon too often rem one day is no big deal but step out in the sunlight too late off too often late in a day you have a delayed cortisol spike which is associated with insomnia a depression they're good date on this so get that morning sunlight three hundred sixty days out of the year you will thank me i promise everything gets better now it's a slow subtle shift it's not like popping you know thousand milligrams of el tire scene and drinking in a double espresso and going in the gym it it's not a it's not it's a foundational practice so i like to think of it as is it raises the tide so that your boat can leave harbor that's how i think of it rather than oh this is like putting another outward outboard motor on on my vessel okay so that's the first one and the second one is a little bit of a broader category but it's gets sleep right you have if you're until you're sleeping well eighty percent of the time or more get your sleep right and for this i can just defer people we do have newsletter it's completely free but we have our privacy policy we don't share your email it's at humor lab dot com just go to newsletter all the prior newsletters are listed there's the key tips for sleep you can watch the master your sleep episode or you can just download that twelve steps for optimal sleep yes there's is a segment on supplementation with some of the considerations and warnings there's also sections on non sleep deep breast protocols links to those so get your sleep right and get that light or your eyes early in the day if you're a blind person there's another protocol i've done some work with blind people to try and help them with this many blind people still maintain that cells in their eyes that can reset the the can set these mechanisms what what's yeah and what's the mental framework yeah so mental frame is is something that i don't think has been formalized in the kind of health and fitness optimization sean really good at that by the way like sean i sean is very good at that where he he does a really good job of deciding what what frame he's going to be in that's put it differently my my the number one priority my number one mission the thing i work on is not even my being able to being able to be in the state of mind i want said which is basically being able to experience the experiences i want the way i wanna beautiful i i just made it my top priority in life so then i started to get good at it because i realized oh shit this is the chico code this is like you know you've got stressed out billionaire over there and then you've got you know joyful single mom over here and like what's which quality of life do i actually want will i want the one where my state of mind is in these states that i enjoy and not fear anxiety stress depression not these other states that i'm trying to not have as that's my quick quick rant done yeah no it's it's great a mental frame is is is so key and most i will say and i wanna be very respectful of everything all the work that's preceded when i showed up but you know a lot of the stuff that's out there in the self help and business literature it frankly is kind of nip at the margins of some of those stuff like and look i don't wanna throw out names because it it becomes dis discouraging i think the one person who really deserves a nod who's truly a pie there are two people who are incredible pioneers in this space and one is cal newport right so so good they can't ignore you is incredible book everyone should be required to read that book deep work is this i'm essentially para some of the protocols from deep work but cal who i don't know have i've never met but have great respect for it's a computer science professor of back east that it's about setting mental frame and context switching is dangerous what which that book which which book are you so yeah so he has a book so good they can't ignore you which was written some years ago and that was more towards like not trying to find your passion but getting really good at skills but deep work is an excellent book he has he's not on social media but he has given some ted talks and that book is about getting in the right frame it's sort of like it's a lot about flow right it's about not succumb to distraction so you can do work that actually moves the needle but that's the way you're talking about is it i thought that you were talking about no so let yeah then there's a another one which is a world without email that he were recently that here's the key essence of the cal newport work okay the the key essence of it as it relates to to mental frame is that the brain is extremely good at end the body at context switching like i could be doing this podcast right now and a fire alarm goes off where someone comes knocking on the door i can switch up my context and respond to that but ninety percent of the work that we are that moves the needle meaning that we are rewarded for or that enrich professional life and relationships it we used to talk about this about mindfulness and presence but it's really about getting the brain to start doing certain operations more in a more fast style way and this is why habits are important but because going to the gym is different than reviewing a paper writing scientific papers is different than podcasting or being a guest on a podcast for that matter so what happens is early in the day when you get the download from sleep you identify a few things that are key you've already you're starting to funnel your neural networks toward what i'm calling frame setting and what you're not doing is allowing something that came in from the external environment to adjust your frame so you get a depth of connection with the work a depth like i knew i was doing this podcast today at noon and i wasn't walking and thinking about it but i set that as a as a goal post and because i wrote it down my brain is orient toward what i need to do so that when we clip on we're ready to go and so mental frames are very important context switching is deadly i'm stealing cow words so forgive me cal some people will put freedom the the computer program so that they are not able to engage with the internet this device which i've turned off or i guess it is on but it's it's on airplane mode for the podcast i try and keep away from me for the first half of the day very hard very hard especially when you need to post on social media but i try and i want to have here's the goal in the morning to make this simple i wanna have one ninety minute block that i completely conquer that i that is where i experience immense resistance to do something other than what i'm doing but that i stay in in n away or g away would be the better word at writing something or reading something or trying to comprehend something and you have to be very careful the moment you walk to the restroom and then maybe like wash your hands and lick yourself in the mirror and then you're like oh you know i got this weird hair growing on my cheek or something you're you're starting to switch mental frame and so ninety minutes seems like nothing but it is remarkable what you can accomplish with this but the more important aspect is that in that exercise of getting good at what we call no go operations and the brain of go and no go up operations in pushing aside things and reinforcing those blind you're able to bring that same mental frame to other things later in the day and in life and you're able to engage it much quicker sort of like if you're a cart you drive a car and you've never been up to a hundred and ten miles an hour you don't really know how to get around a a a semi in front of you that's breaking fast and you're on a downhill but when if you have to do it you can do it you're comfortable at speed and you're comfortable breaking and so that this mental frame thing is not just about the work you able to do in that ninety minutes it's about getting better at doing deep work even for shorter bout because if the day goes on we all have this experience right things start coming in we start getting bombarded and we're starting to get that that kind of fragmentation of our of our goals and we're kinda getting pulled off and some people the the the peak time is in the afternoon some people it's in the morning some people with late at night but you're getting the yank off center and so you have to be able to recognize just how delicious and effective that state is and then you can apply it later and i'll let people use their imagination but this comes into into use in many aspects of life that have nothing to do with work okay like being able to stay at that at that groove with somebody or in some interaction or you on a run i mean you know use your imagination this is the the the important thing is it's all the same circuit it's this engagement of the prefrontal cortex which is saying duration path outcome meaning what how long is this gonna how long should i do this what path should i take what outcomes am i getting in real time and not getting pulled off center by someone else's dp as i call them dp in incidentally or not so incidentally i i've been fortunate enough to do some work with the special operations community in the canada and the us in addition to those guys being really good at shoot move and communicate the really exceptional ones know how to flip this switch on we think of it as like grit resilience and mental tough and yes they're all gritty but there are a lot of gritty people out there the difference is the ability to take your environment narrow that environment and be effective and cut a fine slice through something and then stop and move to something else that's a mental operation that it involves multiple circuits multiple neurotransmitters we couldn't say just dopamine just epinephrine or something like that it's gonna be that but a bunch of other things too and so ninety minutes like learn that ninety minute battle and it takes time and then you get very very good at so i'll podcast podcasts for two hours i drop into that that's the state i'm in when i podcast two quick questions one what do you suck at because when i talk to you i'm incredibly intimidated because when it comes to mental health and physical health and emotional health i'm like i'm so inadequate because well i like i i read your watch your youtube to see like you know i stink at this therefore i wanna learn what you're saying so i can be better and then in and when i hang out with you now i'm like this guy's got it together know that's not the case you're human you've got issues just like me not the case so i wanna know what do you struggle with and also do you just have loads of people drop it in your dms hitting on you because i hear you talking about like this guy he's probably it was it all just dudes is all just bunch to dudes like so you pictures of like a mall in their back act asking him what they they what you think it is how do you i don't find mole on backs incredibly i'm just kidding people every doctor has that they just my doctor fred it's oh it's just half of us say like hey what do think this lump is exactly so okay so just to make sure i close the hatch on that so you ask for two tools i gave three morning sunlight master your sleep you can see that newsletter offer for the the tools and then this ninety minute and look some days it goes better than others but remember it's not just about what you accomplish it's about getting into those frames and you're controlling it this is i i guess i wish i had said this before is that you are setting the beginning middle and end of that frame that's what's key it's not happening because someone else said game time noon on sunday and you're showing up anyone can do that with some practice what you're learning how to do is is flip the switch you're learning how to engage that but you have to be very judicious in your use of the circuitry you can't do it for twelve hours a day so that's when i do email and all the other stuff okay and like two ninety minute balance maybe one last point about that and then i'll tell you what i suck at but some time in the universe to get out all of it there's a second newsletter there which is about optimizing learning and plastic that touches into some of the details and some free links and protocols related to that also at the newsletter it's the october newsletter okay so what do i suck at oh goodness like what you struggles i mean i imagine now that you're famous your instagram probably in your twitter are like blow up so maybe you're it's hard to keep track of your email and stay on top of that i'm on don't know i'm project so three things that have been helpful for this but okay i'm dreadful poor at communicate at follow communications i'm really bad i i really like comments i try and respond especially on instagram i like to give people if you ask a professor a question they're gonna give you an attempt an answer not it's accurate or not they're gonna try they're gonna try and get it right so i have to control my impulse to respond to everything just for sake of time so i can do the the big important things i'm a terrible cook i'm an absolutely terrible cook i mean i i'm fortunate that that i have someone in my life was an exceptional cook but i am an absolutely dreadful cook i mean i can i could destroy toast i just don't get it right i don't have the patience do you need sugar or do you eat really so my diet is pretty pretty clean it's basically i do low carb at least some i'm nuts and stuff in the morning if i'm hungry i don't make a big deal i put salt in my water which kills your hunger a lot of the time a lot people get shaky they think they need sugar your your electrolytes are low just put some sea salt their little pinch of salt and water drink it like oh and know another two hours and your brain functions great blood volume goes up so well you know i think we're gonna eat i think twenty twenty two is gonna be the year that salt comes back science magazine has done a lot about the hypertension stuff if you have a hypertension checked with your doctor but you know i eat a low carb throughout the day so meat and salad maybe i might have us a little bit of rice or something if i train i do exercise i train in the morning at some point you i prefer to it early but i find sometime where i do one hour of exercise every it's weight train run like one day weight train one day run one day weight train one day run i take one full day off each week i never trained for longer than an hour after warming up i hit as hard as i can because i can't seem to come off the gas pedal and that's my my thing and i've been doing that for thirty five years so forty six now so thirty two years year sorry what is but i was gonna ask you one one one related question which is you talked about health and kinda like you kinda mentioned you intermittent fast basically you don't eat till noon yeah about that you train a certain way and when it comes to health there's like you know the there's a high carb diet there's low carb diet there's meat is good meat is evil there's this is you know weight training is good way training is horrible cardio is good cardio is bad so there's sort of this like bombardment of different side info and i think you know what you're trying to do is is get to the source of i get to the truth of things what is one piece of conventional wisdom that you disagree with or maybe it's hips your wisdom something that's a fat or a trend right now that you you say hey pump the brakes on that that might be able to help some people out so what's something that's you hear a lot but you don't you don't buy it or you don't agree it you think it actually might be harmful sure i hates always back a little bit but i have this thing about thorough answer so forgive me i've got a little bit of a of a ocd on this i'm terrible cook so i suck at cooking and i'm not a good writer i'm not a bad writer but verbal inter exchange is how i do best so i i solve this problem i write into i i dictate into voice voice memos and then i put it on what's at rev dot com they got they all my personal income and then i i sculpt from there and because i'm not i'm not a very good writer so and i'm a terrible musician i love music i'm i can't play a chord to save my life and i that's okay i'll live with that so i'm i'm terrible a lot of things sam and and if you talk to any of my ex girlfriends that they you know they'll give you their take on what i'm good at and what i'm not good at you know but trust me there are plenty of things on i'm like world class failure at and i don't try and hide those but i think i'm glad you asked the question because look i don't have it all figured out i've been greatly in spot i just wanna give a nod to tim ferris who have know only through the podcast interaction that podcast four hour four hour work week four hour body especially had a tremendous impact in accelerating my career in science because i was able to focus on things that really matter maybe not just four hours but just the principles in those books i think we should all be reread those books they're so damn good and yeah so okay the diet thing i do low carb during the day and the i eat carbohydrates at night i like starch i like pasta and salad i try and limit my protein at night because it makes me sleepy and i get into really great sleep by eating my starches later in the day i usually buy eight eight or so i eat dinner and then i go sleep around ten thirty or so i'll have a snack sometimes if i want but generally i don't want one and and that's really really key because if i've trained early in the day and i'm running around like crazy i'm burning up a lot of glycogen and i wanna rep pack my glycogen so i can train in the morning so i tend to like to train early in the day okay so what's out there well first of all the the nutrition space is a disaster it's an absolute disaster so much so that i'm already preparing for the attack about what i'm about to say which is a well accepted truth in science there's a paper from chris garner slab at stanford showing that as long as people ingest fewer calories than they burn you're gonna lose weight regardless of whether or not those calories are a low carb regimen or vegan regimen or pure meat regimen etcetera so calories in calories out is a foundational principle i've been accused of saying different but the fact of the matter is it's true now the calories out portion is gonna be regulated by a number of things based on metabolism how much you exercise are you hormone augmented or you well what's what's the controversy controversial thing that you've you've just said though i i don't even understand so so in the nutrition space there's this other idea the other idea it's grounded in some rationale which is like for instance when you eat animal protein like chicken or beef for fish there's a metabolic cost there's a there's a calories out equation from the digestion and utilization and pro and use of that yep but that seems like a rounding error now it's not huge but it's very different than if that you were talking about equivalent number of calories from from starch so it now there but there are hormonal effects of of biased what i call biased diet so i eat a macron nutrient complete diet includes fats and proteins and and carbohydrates carbohydrates are sort of on an as need basis so if i'm training a little less i might need a few a fewer of them etcetera but the the nutrition space is a mess because everyone has to eat and people have different preferences and so a lot of the stuff that you see out there are really just geared toward finding a match with an audience that prefers plants or prefers meat or prefers to fast you know having explored the fasting science and literature there's nothing wholly about fasting that provides auto fa g the cleaning up of dead cells i mean low calorie diets will do that also even if you're not so called fasting but there are it appears some benefits to having periods of each twenty four hour cycle where you're not ingesting calories independent of the total number of calories so the biggest issue i have the the the the mess that i see out there that i hope will get resolved is that people are using social media and a certain type of he said she said they said we said to amplify controversies that don't really exist right i'm willing to bet for instance i'll just state my stance on this they're eating more plants and less meat forgive me paul sal you know he's a friend of mine and you know he's the carnival md he's got great data to support what he's got but i like plants i'm gonna eat a salad am i gonna die maybe but i'm eating my salad but i'm also gonna eat need a stick and so it's almost like crazy when we start talking about this like are we really talking about this here's what i the con md it's a guy and it's insta instagram so my name do you know who you know the perfect keto guys andrew i know of them yeah you so anthony is lives across the street for me and then justin has been on this podcast a bunch okay and then their anthony and this other guy went to somewhere in africa i forget to see how this tribe lives eating mostly just meat and some honey and that other guy his name is paul he's got this instagram handle shawn called carnival d and basically he pretty much only eats meat organs and like butter just animal do yeah he'll do honey and some some berries and stuff look very smart guy and and people will comp the battles on the internet like does dietary cholesterol it impacts serum cholesterol is serum cholesterol impacting testosterone or we're not i mean it's it's so crazy but the reason it's crazy is not because it isn't a valid conversation i mean all have to eat and people want to live a long time and feel vital it's crazy because there's really no field it's not like vision science or stress science or sleep science or you know cognitive psychology there's no field it's bringing together people with very diverse frameworks trying to resolve the same problem and so it's sort of like if i were to be in a discussion or agreement with someone who's a philosopher i don't do philosophy i don't know the principles of philosophy so i think that the issue on the internet right now is is a big one who are the experts i mean we've seen this with everything related to covid right who are the real experts are they the people with government jobs are they the people who who are you know mds as it phds i think what i would like to see more of what i know i'd like to see more of are more panel discussions this is one thing that isn't happening on podcast podcasts as much as it could panel discussions where people can get to the heart of the matter by combining physicians scientists and practitioners i do understand the frustration and the an to people who devoted a career to being in the trenches of doing stuff and then someone who has an md or writes a book and comes along and says hey i've i solved weight loss or i've solved it by way of eliminating one macron or nutrient which by the way is not what paul sal is saying i just wanna be clear that i that's i'm not pointing anything at him directly when i say that so i think that it's a kind of a a free for all right now nutrition is the worst but in terms of the battles but there are some shining bright lights in that space for instance doctor andy gal is an exercise ph anesthesiologist who's done work with a lot of athletes he's the professor cal state fullerton in terms of training regimen he's just for endurance and for strength for female athletes and for male athletes for the everyday person he's got his content is just so damn solid and grounded in mechanism all the way from muscle sa mirrors to this is how long you should rest between sets if this is your goal and then in the nutrition space i've found what works for me which is this low carb starting around noon and then gradually transitioning into higher carbohydrates because i eat for health but i mainly eat for mental and physical functioning i'm paying attention to how i feel and i want to be able to do my work and so i think that's very important too it's a missing piece of the equation which is it you know i wouldn't survive a day doing a you know six small meals of you know each macron and i'd beat i'd have to cook you know you can break the population up into kind of these six or two you you may this might be the ideal diet or optimal diet for you or do you think it is hey the solution you have actually might work for everybody i like do you think that i know it's not not to the tea of like you know exactly what you eat but in terms of on one side you got completely plant based on another other side you got completely car another side is sort of no carb or low carb a low carb right there's all these different varieties do you think the do you think when it comes to humans knowing what is the optimal is it that there are completely different configurations for different groups of people or that there actually for humans there actually would be one sort of optimal diet and then i have to assume that there's going to be some genetic bias towards certain things working you so for instance i luck out but i also suffer because i don't like alcohol it just makes me go to sleep so i i don't care if there's alcohol or not some people really like a drink that's probably genetic it just doesn't it makes me feel bad it's not just that it doesn't make me feel good it makes me feel bad do you do you do you like to get fucked up at all what do you do have you like drugs you like anything i don't really no i drugs no i we you know what even smoke weed no i i don't smoke weed i never liked i never liked marijuana or i'll alcohol very much i'm my drug is learning an adrenaline i do i've had to work on the adrenaline part i've there's stories for another time i've i put myself into some unhealthy situations and dangerous situations but i i come alive with dopamine and adrenaline my you don't so you don't do any drugs you don't you really don't drink i don't drink and do drugs either but my advice is i'll eat like a whole box of twinkies when i wanna party that's like i'm like yeah like pop playing it like two weeks out i'm like let's go eat a whole berkshire party yeah you know i think no no oh sure i don't you know i would say about eighty five percent the time i eat clean but but i'll eat bread i love bread and i love butter on it you know basically bread is a vehicle for butter in my case you know i and now watch the plant people are gonna come they there's a video they already came after me like humor says butter is look if you increase your fats your saturated fats a bit do the blood work you'll watch your your serum testosterone go up and we could talk about testosterone if you want but it's not necessarily good for your heart i didn't say it was good for your heart i said it's good for your vitality which is the difference in the short run than in the long run but in terms of devices i like caffeine i do use certain stimulants over the counter stimulants like i'll take lt ty these days i take three hundred milligrams of alpha g if i really wanna laser in i i don't do it any more than two three days a week maximum and that's also in that second toolkit newsletter that in ph or ph those two combined and you're you're in a you're in a focused tunnel but i don't touch mud i don't touch stimulants i don't do recreational drugs when i was in college sure i mean i i part a bit but also you know i don't need any chemical to say exactly what's on my mind or to withhold some of the things that are on my mind so i i'm i just not been my thing and but also i'm generally training in the morning and i generally wanna get worked done and you know look i was admired people that could have a couple beers and relax because it's such a big part of our culture but that just didn't that's not the way i went you asked about in terms of a diets and genetic differences as well you know this the same thing with sleep and we have people that prefer to stay and wake up late and people that prefer to wake up early and then it's a fairly normally distributed population what should we do about this well for instance some people probably feel better eating more starches and less protein and maybe more plants and some people look it looks to me like joe rogan is doing just fine on his elk and whatever else he's eating died i don't know i don't trap he seems like he's thriving i will say in full disclosure that the people that i know who are hormone augmented i'm not talking about big body builders i'm talking about people that are taking low dose of of testosterone whether or not to replace something or not they tend to crave or at least eat more proteins because it increases protein synthesis and you know that's me yep yeah so i on yeah i'm on it i'm on it now and and prior to being on it i i worked on it for i did it i tried doing it naturally for like two years to increase it was like two hundred it was so low and well yeah it was shit and it was so low and i was running a company at the time i was so stressed out so i like took time off i ate me i squat and then i started taking t and my life changed and oh yeah that was no crazy that i started eating more me and i didn't do it for body reasons i did it for emotional reasons but my body change i feel like a professional athlete at thirty two it's pretty crazy yeah how much that change but what you said on one of your podcast podcasts is it seems true is that means i'll likely live i there's a likelihood that i will not live as long because there was like i i i know if you said it someone else was sean they did these studies basically for some reason there was this group where they would cast rate you in china i don't know if it was like done out of like being like a monk or something like that yeah yeah and these guys didn't have dicks anymore and they cast rated them and balls they they lost sorry yeah they didn't have anymore yeah yeah and they i mean i didn't do the experiment nor did i check the data but i was they live longer like they they consistently live longer it's and and and like and so like now that i'm on this i'm like probably maybe i'll i'll live to be ninety instead of ninety five i don't know i who knows what it's gonna be but it's a pretty sick life so that's kind of the sacrifice that i'm making yeah well the basically the the idea is that that your story speaks to is is a true one which is that vitality and longevity are on they're sort of ortho to one another they're not counteract one another but they're kind of ortho on to one another and puberty is the most rapid stage of aging in our entire life and it's accelerated aging right i mean puberty is aging it's just that you're not it's across the you know you're thinking about in the context of a portion of the entire life arc so introducing hormones of the sort that we're robust during puberty will accelerate that process you you just said that vitality and longevity or ortho basically meaning the better and more optimized i wanna feel the less i'm gonna live not necessarily that it they're they're sort of off center to one another but the they're not counteract one they're not antagonist so here let me explain and how this would work in the real world so if you well let's use use you as example you decided to go on testosterone replacement your your total testosterone and you said it was in the somewhere in the two hundred milligram per d range which is below the the normal reference range so you go on and you you're saying and quite aptly that maybe that's gonna shorten your life because of the way that it can negatively affect lipid profiles and things the way it affects the liver there's a lot biochemistry chemistry there we don't have time to go into to but that that's true however testosterone will also whether or not it's coming from endogenous sources or from replacement will also increase your energy level and your ability to lean into friction you're going to be running more you're going to be able to exercise more so i have done a number of episodes on hormones but one thing that's really important to understand because i got a lot of questions about this is that well the main effect of testosterone is it makes effort feel good because of the way that it you you're it makes you there's a readiness for challenge of all kinds intellectual challenges the way that i the way that i described to people is i'm like i wanna fight all the time and and not necessarily fist fight but i just wanna be in a battle whether it's a battle myself for sure yeah yeah i want i want fight i wanna go fight friction feels good and so and robert sap the great roberts was on my podcast and he said you they've done these experiments also with in out altruistic acts of of friction where people donating money for instance it's not just beating people up in this kind of thing so but and i'm not suggesting people run out and get on out on tier get on t i wanted to touch on that but basically so you could say well my blood lipid profiles are perhaps a bit worse but that extra energy you can now start exercising four times a week plus you know cardio plus four times a week of weight training and recover with no problem provided you're doing the other things that you need to do whereas if you weren't you would probably be depleted there's a depression component and you know your finances would probably suffer these kinds of things now some people do not need to testosterone wrong place i i'm gonna just because i think i'm i'm kinda walking around the margins and people are probably wondering all you know is hub and on t is that what this is about i'm forty six years old i didn't i didn't touch it until forty five i went forty five years i've talked about some of the supplements that can naturally increase testosterone you're you i you're on t oh so from i'm forty six now i started on my at forty after forty five but let me so but but let me explain because i'm actually coming off so that that so what i did is i'm i'm i'm researching a book so i did forty five years of training and sleep and all the normal things found some supplements that will increase testosterone that's the doj and tonga ali you can see on that joe rogan episode i talk a lot about this on the episode with tim ferris a number of women are taking tonga ali as a way to increase their free testosterone and getting quite good results i don't have any relationship whatsoever to tonga ali or doj company i don't care if you take it definitely check with your doctor there are some kind of spooky reports out there about f doj and toxicity of the cells in the in the test but those seem to be limited to rats studies anyway do your research i'm not telling you what to do and you're responsible for your health not me but those supplements done properly from the right sources can increase us testosterone by about two hundred nano per d leader that most dramatic i've ever seen is a is a shift from about three hundred to or high twos to like you know eights and nines but when i went but i decided to try t in a in a small dose spread throughout the week my testosterone at that time was already sitting in the high eights so i was doing fine and you i did as an experiment for part of this book and it changes your mental frame it makes you more self directed more willing to lean into challenge and counter to the popular belief it makes you calmer this is the thing that people don't realize it gives you more energy but it makes you calmer the in primates non human primates and in humans stressed angry people are the ones that are in the kind of low to mid range of testosterone typically typically there's just averages from a few studies i and i and i always thought i was thought well it just makes me more confident and confident men don't get upset easily you know like if someone's like yelling at me or like there's like i i'm my masculinity is not being challenged right now i'm not i i'm not gonna that's why people are like oh see what fight all the time like well actually know the opposite someone gets to my face i'm i'm confident enough that i could i can i can walk away do you know what i mean in your own you maintain your own frame you're not gonna get pulled off by projection or nowadays the the the buzz word is gas lighting everyone's gas lighting everybody without really under a a a very interesting psycho analysis i've been fascinated by this for years and this whole concept of projection is very interesting how do you actually shift someone's nervous system this is not a good thing but how does one shift their nervous system to change the mental frame of another nervous system it's very interesting and kind of spooky stuff when you start to think about how your nervous system will frame shift your frame someone else's frame now this is vital too when your child or your partner comes to you and says i really i'm really stressed about something it requires of of an adaptive frame shift and you need to do that people who are autistic or have asp burgers don't frame schiff very well they're very much in their own frame and they're very good at certain kinds of things less good at others people who are highly em emphatic are susceptible and passive will know to getting yank down different frame shift pathway such that they can oh my god haven't done anything with my life because been so consumed with someone so thinking or feelings around things so testosterone makes effort feel good i'm talking about the effects on the brain let's leave aside all the effects on the body and yes it might change blood lipid profiles but in general the energy is the component it provides a neural energy and an activation stance where then it's a question of what you do with that so if you use as an excuse to eat a little less well train a little less then you're no better off and you might be worse off if you use as as an opportunity to lean into life that's it's wonderful i i'd work with a number of professionals and athletes in a kind of consulting role to assist with some of this of course with an endo as well new parents for instance who decide they don't want any more kids and they're dealing with lack of sleep and all these things oftentimes benefit from that and the relationship can often benefit for a number of reasons so this is probably a whole other discussion i'd be happy to come on sometime and just talk all about the hormones because it's all estrogen is key a lot of people in particular men are blocking estrogen when they take t which is a terrible idea estrogen promotes brain longevity estrogen is good for connective tissues it's good for lab blocking estrogen is a bad idea in most cases but of course some people are worried about water attention or breast development in males and so they're blocking estrogen you have to work with an endo so it's not testosterone as good estrogen it's bad that is absolutely that's very sophomore thinking you know it's it's it's more complex than that sean did you get your you did you get your no but i hit a bunch of people with that that's how i'm gonna combat people kyle you're gonna get gas light on on their sophomore thinking yeah okay yeah the gas lighting thing is funny because you know gas lighting is with basically people are saying that they're triggering them right gas lighting is something very different and having experience with borderline people that's a very it's a challenge both for the borderline lines and for the peoples and their lives that's a real psychiatric challenge so anytime i see these these valid psychiatric terms being kind of bastard on the internet i get i get a little bit that's one of the challenges right like pop science pop you know this sort of like pop of everything it'll be more viral right like you know it's easy to make something viral when you take away this causes that blank statement you know blanket statement to actually get yeah hearing that it depends is not an answer that goes very far but and here's where i'm hoping there's a a tide change where which is that if people can understand mechanism they can start to understand a little bit of you know we have the stress system and we hear that stress is bad but you know a brief i just did a podcast episode with duncan french from the u performance institute duncan work has shown in peer reviewed studies that short term stress raises testosterone stressed it lasts more than a day or two or training sessions that go more than ninety minutes that deplete testosterone so is stress bad for for reproduction depends so but if people can understand mechanism then they can start to understand hey and an ice bath is stress but it will protect you against illness because in the short term adrenaline buffers you against infection because adrenaline is the signal by which your immune system says oh my goodness i need to combat something so if people can understand mechanism then it doesn't matter if you're talking about ac cold bath sauna lifting weights sprint you know bi yoga people can i believe that people are smart and that if you extend a hand of of that lend some respect to their intelligence that they'll come along for the discussion about mechanism and that even if i were to get hit by a bus tomorrow but then they could digest the next wave of information coming to them in a much more nuanced way of course people still need protocol they need a jumping off point and so that's why my podcast has been mainly about that but i think science and health information on the internet is changing very quickly thanks i here again i just have to say it was seen le friedman podcast i don't know what the equivalent is in the in the finance and entrepreneurial area maybe it's you guys but in the kind of general landscape of podcasting i saw lexus podcast for the first time and i thought this guy is having really intense intellectual conversation yeah he's said good he's so weird in a cool way he's so interesting he's is unique he he is he's kinda punk rock i mean lexus is very punk rock i mean he's his lifestyle if you think my lifestyle is unique i mean le well maybe just get him on of podcast he's a he's a really i'll let him do the speaking for himself but i think that once someone's out there doing that it's very hard for people to follow suit with the kinda of low level version of that so what i love and i have listened to your podcast so i love about your podcast where i love about ferris and rogan and le and a rich role and i'm missing a few alright i'm gonna regret it later i'm not remembering these names but because there are others of course is that if if su and jet news channel for instance so remarkable is that if we all push each other to constantly try and increase the quality and the value per unit time of a podcast even and if it's not just protocols but it's a style of discourse like we've done today that to me is going to elevate the the medium as something that is a serious thing instead of just the you know chatter do you how big your audience right on youtube you've had ten months so you're that's north of a million what about on on podcast yeah so well on in instagram i think we're sitting somewhere around like seven hundred thirty thousand followers or something like that but that's just really i do put out unique content there that's separate from the podcast from time to time but you're you're gonna laugh but i actually and i'm not cloak anything i actually tell don't no i don't know i don't know so that's rob so rob and we have a web a web guy i mean you gotta if i had a guess like five to ten million a month that sounds about right i i think it's on the higher end of that i think i know that's right because if it's about two million per episode in the first couple weeks is that something like i don't know i'm you're should two million you're at two million in episode i i don't know i should ask rob do i otherwise you're kills sorry do you realize later listen do you realize with two surely tim or whoever has talked to you and joe has talked to you with two million downloads an episode dude you you're rich you're you're very you could be very wealthy i've shocked that you're still teaching so i'm still wear the same shirt every day yeah i up before podcast comcast average salary before the podcast and i was like this guy could easily be banking few million dollars a year and doing the exact same thing you're doing now it's not like a difficult shift to do something else yeah and i looked up fine i thought what a professor make here's what i looked up stand for professor this is what's on the internet no idea if this is true or not sam professor will average professor will make somewhere between two hundred to two hundred twenty five thousand dollars per year which is obviously a great living but i thought that's that's high for an academic and doesn't for a non md academic oh the the pay is is it's not just stanford it's ever it's ab visible in in the bay area and i wanna be respectful people have different needs and costs and that but that's a in the bay area that that's a tough tough life for someone with kids you know depends not tough life but anyway i'm gonna get some haters for this but you know what fuck hang out come hang out do you know and have you have you enjoyed being famous well okay so a couple of things one about the the the views i really do need to check with rob on the numbers i don't know i don't track that i know we're doing well one thing in the business side since you have this audience that yeah i only advertise products i actually use i've been using athletic greens for over a decade right so i love that stuff i don't we stay with a limited number of advertisers inside tracker time i bought this tracker i use i use my code hub lieberman yes we work with thorn thank you we work with at greens is is a rip for me was a really good supplement is the only one i set aside money for as a student and post doc or as a post doc professor because it covered a lot of things so expensive though yeah it i i feel better when i take it so that's why i take it but i get it not it's it is it's like a hundred and or sixty called two hundred dollars a month i think there's a cost there it yeah so obviously it has to be within the scope of someone's decisions of around finances but the sleep cocktail so we work with thorn because the the great thing about thorn is the quality of their supplements is so good that you can actually take less of thorn supplements in my experience and get away with it but there are other great supplement companies out there i'd i'm not here to plug the the our sponsors but i do obviously that's the way podcast to make money and i pay my staff which is rob and mike and ian and we have a few others as well i should mention one thing about the the medium and as a business model so i've never talked about this but the human lab podcast is but one of several podcasts under a company that i founded with rob so david sinclair from harvard genetics yeah ten professor drinks at harvard lifespan right lifespan so he's launching the lifespan podcast with david you're and you're owning this yeah i own that really create podcast network yeah so and so we're working on the front end and back end materials of that me mike playback are the creative on that with the aesthetic and the and it'll be very different than mine right because david i mean he you know i wouldn't we're different davis you're gonna you're beating you're you're you're building this media business all thin around longevity and healthy inter a longevity and mental and and physical health i don't know we'll call it mental fitness that's a word that we've used mental fitness that's like you're gonna crush this this is gonna be here thanks well the goal is really that for instance many professors have excellent information they can share on gut microbiome on addiction on adhd that goes well beyond the depth that i can provide in one of my episodes and so they need to do six or seven episodes but they probably don't need to do in a podcast in perpetuity and so the idea is to have a set of podcast that you can come to mind if you like david's if you like maybe you god forbid eva relative dealing with parkinson's and hear from somebody what you can really do about that or alzheimer's or you have a kid and you wanna know what are the science based practices for getting a kid to sleep and for neuro in a child well let's talk to a world expert in that and and so the the the idea is to have an umbrella for multiple podcasts the human and lab podcast is but one of those that i plan to continue david is gonna be the second and we've got a third and a fourth that are revving up now and who knows maybe we should do one on i don't know some something related to crypto or something i don't i only know what i know and i know academics i know science and i know medicine and so that's what i'm going to bring to the table this is awesome this is awesome i had this thank you callback back which was i remember thinking about my favorite science he was great but he would and i just thought about like his kind of like sphere of impact like he could you know he each class about twenty kids he would teach five classes a day so we teach about a hundred kids a day and so you know his reach as like my best teacher growing up was a hundred students a day a hundred students a year essentially and then with the internet i just thought wow this is gonna change the best teachers in the world are gonna have millions of students and they're gonna make millions of dollars as they should for being amazing teachers and i've always been looking out for and i've been investing in every platform i can get in my hands on anywhere i can see that teachers are able to do that where they're able to scale and have millions of students and have because you know if i'm gonna learn math or i'm gonna learn about nutrition i can either learn locally like that's the way the world always worked i just learned from my best local teacher that was available to me or now i can learn globally so i can find actually who is the best at not only being an expert but packaging it and con conveying it in a way that's entertaining that's relatable that's that fits me right and so you know that's what you're doing you're the perfect example of something i've been thinking why isn't the world moving this way and actually it is it's just it wasn't through online school it was through things like podcasting or and and it's more popular in in other countries you know china and does a really good job of this they they've got we've done some chinese teachers who've who make tens of millions of dollars a year they're like musicians or athletes yeah same with india what you know sean we have that you said that you shared with me that really cool photo of a guy in india teaching math and it looked like he was a comedian because there was like a and his name bi no he's a guy in india i'll have to shake it out teacher he would teach them like local villages and people love learning math them so he would go to other cities and they would come find him because it had spread the word mouth eventually he was filling up stadiums free free you know free to attend he was just teaching math on a projector in a twenty thousand person stadium and now he created he created an app it's like a ten billion dollar education app in india but you know like that was his origin store and i thought that was i love it you know and and i love the model around podcasting because yes you have to tolerate some ads but advertisers are happy consumers are happy and it's zero cost to consumer that to me it's like if ever there was order in in a in a universe not the universe but in a universe that's that's it yeah but it it it sucks so do do you know what do you know my company at all or did you know my company i'm afraid i don't all good so it's all good so we own this and then we own this thing called i i started this company called the hustle which was a daily email that reached about two million people a day for business news we just sold it to hubspot for many tens of millions of dollars and we are making you know twenty million dollars on ads so we've made a lot of money and the problem with ads is it's cool when you're doing it now because you can pick and choose thorn athletic greens you can pick and choose cool shit and that's exactly how we started but then you get staff and you're like alright we're gonna try and triple every year and so in order to triple every year like there's not that many thorn and athletic greens then you gotta go look at like some other bullshit and you're like well we gotta hit these growth numbers and so and so it's kinda you i don't think the warships at the altar of year over year maybe you know we know but it you always think about it for example what if i talk shit about athletic rains and let's say they did something kind of wrong and you you you happen well it's that's my point that's exactly my point you will say well i don't know you know you know what i mean wait it's it's even the most honest people and good people you are every we're incentivize something and so maybe like he would be willing to defend them a little bit more because they're giving a money which is a natural thing you know what i mean yeah yeah so that that is an issue i mean i think that and and we do care about growth but and the reason we built out a philanthropic arm of this company is because i really i empathize with the struggle that academic scientists live in day to day which is that they don't have time to do their own research let alone work for the world which is what they're really hired to do their grants come mainly from public sources so we're trying to think about ways that we can start to pump some money back into science through the podcast so money coming into the podcast actually represents some of it money going back into the scientific community to do better work we're starting to explore t's and some of how that might be incorporated twitter's a great place to learn about that i just wanna say that the n nxt landscape and crypto landscape people are so kind it's like they're kinda come it's kinda all in it kinda reminds me the early punk rock movement is like you they know i'm paying attention to their energy i don't understand a darn thing about the it is very high would to sell you their token and their currency and why it's safely tell you about it because they are we're all you know selling our own holdings things basically interesting wait until you say something bad about them though okay well i i tend yeah i i i hope not to do that at least not my accident but i i just noticed that there's a there's a i love the diy spirit look i'm a patriot too i'm sure you have an international audience but look but my dad's a first generation immigrant this this country is amazing from a from argentina so he's not you know he wasn't from some place where he was stricken but he came here on a navy scholarship he's a physicist you know this is a country where you can make lateral moves it's hard to ascend alright and we we should acknowledge that not everyone starts in the same place and and the the the slope is different for different people no question but you can make lateral moves here and the you know think about this the the nobel prizes given each year for instance the world is big the world of science is big most nobel prizes include or are given to people in the us and we have one of the most difficult funding schemes for getting money to do research in this country now compared to third world countries we're very wealthy in the research realm but compared to other countries where they basically stock the laboratories with money it's it's incredible here we have these individual labs like doing little like startup style workshop stuff it's that grind it's that leaning into friction that i really believe is is the hallmark of future development and so science doesn't have that we didn't have a podcast platform or information platform and i'm hoping that my podcast and the others like david's and of the other ones that come out through our company will will soon populate i i'd love to see more of this done out there there's you know there's some smart guy gala is out there thinking like like i'm gonna i'm gonna do the podcast online amphibians because i i love frost and i'm gonna like tell people which terrarium to get and like it's gonna be the terrarium of the podcast and you never know what's gonna what's gonna work but i love that spirit the entrepreneurial spirit so what we're trying to bring well dude thanks for coming on this is badass we we haven't done guys this long in a long time by the way we had i'll tell you really quick we had rob du on recently oh yeah and he is i forget what we're coming about skateboarding and like wealth or something but he's like the wealthiest yeah rob wouldn't know me but he's tight with mike bla because robin big big unfortunately passed away and mike did all the photos for that and that looks skateboard orders if you wanna know what's really cool and how to do deep real diy spirit you just skateboard orders i they just i'm gonna go i'm gonna brag i'm gonna brag after this i'm gonna send you a video of my latest three oh and yeah i can't do i i've got no trade but the i write a pool but i'm i'm not i'm not got good dude you're you're bad ass man i'm i'm so excited i wanna talk to you i feel inspired after having a conversation with you you're you're very you're you're very interested much bigger deal oh well we got to speak oh well i wanna say genuine thanks for having beyond i felt immediate resonance i'm very much like a sense that so i i think it'd be great to get together in person sometime do people still do that i don't know what way we coffee are you in california can you're northern california i split my time now between the bay area and southern california so where are you guys i yeah we both we both lived there i live in san francisco for eight or nine years i just bought a house in texas and so i'm in austin as of now but i'm a little bit nomadic so i'm but well i'm gonna be in austin a bunch because i i hang on out with le there he's gonna take me to ji again last time and he a rear naked a choke he lives in austin i've never done it before he's a black belt i don't know he lift possible dude i i have a i have a gym here at my house like a really nice gym and i i have people come over and we can lift heavy i lift heavy and also we could box i beat people up all the time so if you wanna wait fucking fight right could do that i could we could grow i just this is not this is not a we probably shouldn't box i i boxed i had my boxing card in box pretty consistently various times i'm not very good you don't get a nose like this to a yoga so it let's not box well man i got a roller we could do anything you want i'm fit this this is the this is the t speaking folks yeah yeah it'd be great fun i'll pass you guys my number by via email just let's text the we're we're we're in the room and we'll take it into the real world thank you man ray hawk soon great to have thanks so much i feel like i could rule the world i know i could be what i want to from at all in and like a days on a road less travel never looking back