Club Random with Bill Maher - Dr. Daniel Amen | Club Random with Bill Maher

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

Dr. Daniel Amen joins Bill Maher to talk brains—what they reveal about us, how badly we may be treating them, and why psychiatry is the only medical field that rarely looks at the organ it’s treating. Amen shares what he learned from treating Muhammad Ali and hundreds of NFL players, why he believes damaged brains can get better, and the everyday things we do that can either strengthen or shrink them. He and Bill go back and forth on marijuana, alcohol, meditation, Alzheimer’s, and the eternal question: how healthy do you really want to be if it means giving up everything fun? They also get into what’s happening to young people, from social media and pornography to anxiety and depression—and why learning not to believe every thought that pops into your head might be one of the most useful skills nobody teaches us. And somehow, by the end of it, Bill agrees to let Amen scan his brain. Now the question is: does he actually want to know what’s in there? #billmaher #danielamen #clubrandom Subscribe to the Club Random YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/clubrandompodcast?sub_confirmation=1 Watch episodes ad-free – subscribe to Bill Maher’s Substack: https://billmaher.substack.com Subscribe to the podcast for free wherever you listen: ⁠https://bit.ly/ClubRandom Support our Advertisers: Go to https://120Life.com and use my code [RANDOM] for 20% off. Try it risk-free for two weeks. Head to https://superpower.com/random for $50 off your membership. Get 150+ biomarkers tested every year plus a personalized health plan and on-demand care team. Detect early signs of 1,000+ conditions. #superpowerpod Visit https://hims.com/clubrandom to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you. Buy Club Random Merch: https://clubrandom.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices ABOUT CLUB RANDOM In Club Random, Bill Maher unleashes his comedic wit on an unpredictable lineup – from Bill Burr and Jerry Seinfeld to Quentin Tarantino and Neil deGrasse Tyson – digging into everything but politics. It’s Maher in his familiar element: one-on-one vibes, unfiltered laughs, and the kind of freewheeling banter only he can deliver. ABOUT BILL MAHER Bill Maher was the host of “Politically Incorrect” (Comedy Central, ABC) from 1993-2002, and for the last 23 years on HBO’s “Real Time,” Maher’s combination of unflinching honesty and big laughs have garnered him 41 Emmy nominations. Maher won his first Emmy in 2014 as executive producer for the HBO series, “VICE.” In October of 2008, this same combination was on display in Maher’s uproarious and unprecedented swipe at organized religion, “Religulous.” Maher has written six bestsellers: “True Story,” “Does Anybody Have a Problem with That? Politically Incorrect’s Greatest Hits,” “When You Ride Alone, You Ride with Bin Laden,” “New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer,” “The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass", and most recently "What This Comedian Said Will Shock You". FOLLOW CLUB RANDOM https://www.clubrandom.com https://www.facebook.com/Club-Random-101776489118185 https://twitter.com/clubrandom_ https://www.instagram.com/clubrandompodcast https://www.tiktok.com/@clubrandompodcast FOLLOW BILL MAHER https://www.billmaher.com https://twitter.com/billmaher https://www.instagram.com/billmaher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I noticed you're avoiding that question. I'm so excited to see your brain. Muhammad Ali was one of my patients. You had Muhammad Ali as a patient? I have his brain. What was he like? Awesome. How are you, sir?

So nice to see you. Ah, thanks for coming. What do you think of the place? Spectacular. Really? This is your kind of place? I love it. Really?

Good. Well, listen, I've been dying to meet you. You're very popular. The chicks dig you, Doc. You knew that, I guess. The women really, very excited. Holy, that Doc's on. They're into that medical stuff, much more than the guys.

I think of all my followers, 80% are women. 80%? Yeah. No wonder why you're such a Mac. Okay, so. My wife said I came housebroken and well-trained. I have five sisters. Really?

Now, somebody told me you give your daughter's boyfriend's brain scans? Absolutely. You got the machine right in the dining room, Doc? No, but they go to the clinic. When I met my wife, it's our anniversary on Sunday. How many years? 18. I'm sorry. People on TV, they always clap when people are married more than like two years.

And I was married once before and it wasn't good. And so she said... She's going to hear that and be offended. She said when I asked her, we're dating three weeks and I'm like, you haven't seen the clinics. It's time to see the clinic. And she said it was the most unusual line that you wanted to see my naked. brain. I mean, when I see brains in like, I've only seen it in movies and stuff, but it is one of the more unattractive-looking organs in the body, don't you think? No, I love brains.

The brain. Because it makes you who you are. How do you think and feel and act. I got to tell you, I'm not one of those people who believes in the universe. I mean, I believe in the universe. Just don't believe it's speaking to me like people think. However, this is, I think this is just not a, it's a coincidence, but the sign of where medicine is moving.

Not because you're coming, but two other people, one person I read about and one person I had lunch with, Ariana Huffington, just two days ago, was all about the brain, and she's writing about it, and, you know, she must be a big fan of yours. And then I was reading about someone who, had no problems, but had a brain scan at like 40, and they found what she wouldn't have known

unless she died from it. So like your basic message about, because I've never been a big fan of psychiatry, I know it works for some people, but your thing about like, look at the physical organ, I'm much more down on that page. I mean, I'm sure it's both, but I'm gonna get the brain scan,

because my brain's been through a lot of talk. I'm not gonna lie to you. Do you drink? No. Oh, me neither. Because I look at the brain. Well, come on. And when it comes to the brain.

Yeah, yeah. It's the only organ in your body where size matters. Oh, what? Now, Doc, don't give me a set-up line like that where I can drive right down Broadway with the punchline. The only organ that matters? Boy, your wife's a forgiving woman. Good night, everybody.

Size matters. So I never wanted to. do anything to have a smaller brain. I never wanted to do anything to have a smaller dick. That's so funny. I've done so much shit to my brain. My dick, I've treated like gold. So there's the big brain and the little brain,

and which one's in charge, and I want to have a big brain in charge. In every way, Doc, I had it in reverse. But I'm 70 now, and I'm much more mature. and I've taken care of myself very well. Like when it got serious, I smoked stupidly for 20 years, but I quit at 40. Let me ask you that, you would know this.

Like, how much poison you think I could put in my body without it like actually killing me? Not that I do it anymore very much, but I did. I feel like I did, you know, I still smoked pot. I still smoke pot, and I only have a few drinks a week, but I did drink, let's say, like an Irishman for years, smoked for 20 years. You think your body repairs completely? Sometimes.

Yeah, really? Sometimes. It depends on how much reserve you have. So there's a term I coin called brain reserve. It's the extra tissue you have to deal with whatever stress comes your way. So take two soldiers, put them in the same. same tank, same blast. One of them walks away unharmed,

and one of them's permanently disabled. Why? It's the brain they brought into the accident. And so some people can smoke a lot of pot, can drink a lot of alcohol, and they still have their faculties. Right. A lot more people, it really has a negative impact

on their brain. Well, not to invite ridicule here by my haters, but you can hate me and I have many enemies who do, but nobody says I've lost my faculty. You know, like, and they could. That would be a very easy one. Well, it must be the pot talking. No, they'll say, oh, he's old.

Like, that's an argument. It's not an argument. Am I right? That's an argument or wrong about anything. But, you know, but I never hear, oh, he's lost his marbles. And so. But you also don't want to lose them. I know.

And one and two people. Yes. 72. So one in two people who are 85 or older have Alzheimer's disease or another form of dementia. So you have a 50% risk. So if you're 70 and healthy, odds are you're going to live to 90. Really? And don't you want to go knowing everything that's going on? And, you know, I have six kids. I love them all. I never want to live with them. But don't you think by the time we're 90 AI will have made it so that our brain lives on and we're in a completely, you know, I think they're just going to transplant the brain into a body. And we're going to get, because the brain could live more than the human life center, or is it the brain that conks out? No, your brain could go on. But if it's mothied. But if it's mothied.

Right. You're not going to be thinking. Right. So when I first started doing scans, it was 1991. I was the director of a substance abuse treatment center in a psychiatric hospital. And their brains were so bad compared to the other ones I scanned. I'm like, no, I'm going to stay away with this. Once you kill a brain cell, you can never bring it back to life?

That's not true. Great. That's not true. Oh, good. There's an area of your brain called the hippocampus. It's involved in mood and memory, and every day it produces about 700 new stem cells. Hippocampus is Greek for seahorse, so I often think of them baby sea horses, making 700 new ones every day. It's your behavior that kills them or grows them.

So what you eat, what you drink, the level of stress you're under, the toxins in your own environment, all of that matters. So if you come and get scanned, you'll learn to love your brain and then you'll treat it better. I love my brain. I do. It's done me very well. With all the flaws it has, I have never argued that I'm some sort of super high IQ person or, you know, could do things that people I admire greatly, sometimes who I don't agree with, do

like write long, researched, deeply researched books. I don't have that concentration. I did when I was in high school and college. I loved doing papers and I was a great student, but I probably blew my mind out in a car, too much pot and liquor and partying. And I just, that just wasn't the direction I was gonna go in with a serious scholar.

So I fully acknowledge I'm not on that level. But those people usually, I mean, they just lack this common sense gene, I feel like I have. I feel like that's my strong point of intellect. And it's amazing the way there's a whole category called stupid smart people, I think, or smart, stupid people, like people who are brilliant in one area, and then, you know, I mean, to use an obvious example, I remember interviewing for religious Dr. Francis Collins, I think, and, you know, one of the most brilliant scientists, but also very, you know, orthodox believer in Christianity.

A myth, to my view. Look, folks, we've all done the annual physical. Look, three months out, half a day off work, an hour in the waiting room, and, of course, labs at a second location. Also, a doctor can spend 10 minutes telling you everything looks normal and show you the door. Three months of anticipation for a shrug.

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I know you're Lebanese Catholic. But, you know, as a scientist, you must realize it is a little hokey, the whole thing, the whole story, Jesus and all that stuff, no? So you think we're here by random chance? I think we don't know, and the difference between a religious person and me is a religious person says, I don't know the answer, I'm going to make up a story about it, and then believe that. And I go, well, I don't know, and I just, I'm not going to know probably while I'm alive.

but I'm not going to make up a story. And I was raised Catholic. Loved every minute of it, Doc. Let me tell you, those Catholics. So I went to medical school at Orwell Roberts University. So I learned medicine in the context of my faith. And we were taught to pray with patients. I've never not believed.

Nothing that I've learned has decreased my faith. in a creator, in a benevolent God. Even when he allows so much horrible shit to happen here on earth? Well, it's because the idea of free will is that if he controlled everything. A baby gets cancer. That's not free will. The baby didn't like make, that's not the... No, it's, but it's the condition of humans. And there's amazing people and there's evil. I mean, there's clear evil. I have a new book coming in December you might not like, but it's called the neuroscience of the Lord's Prayer, you know,

being raised Catholic. I was an altar boy, said it thousands of times, but I never really studied what's underneath it. And when Jesus talks about deliver us from the evil one, Yeah, there is evil in this room. Well, of course there's evil. But you do, I'm sure you realize, as a scientist, you are in a distinct minority as far as religiosity. Most scientists, a very high number are atheists. That is true. Like Francis Collins, who was the head of the NIH, the National Institute of Health.

I'm not judging it. I'm just saying as a fact. It is a fact, I believe, that most scientists are atheists. Well, I suppose it's not the ones I hang out with. You're right. Right. But that's what's so interesting about human. Anyway, get back to the point.

I am with you. Again, I don't think this is cosmic that this, like, three things about the brain happened all within like a week. But I just think this is bubbling up. And I think you are right. I think we don't look at the physical part of it. Psychiatry, I know it has its place. I also think a lot of it is just utter bullshit.

And this comes from having gone, I can't even describe this. Very briefly and with another person. Okay, so, but it just struck me as preposterous. I mean, that this could ever help me. But I know it does help people. But I think you are got the right theme that we're ignoring. I'm not going to defend it.

We're not concentrating on the physical part of the, brain enough. Right. Psychiatrists are the only medical doctors who never look at the organ they treat. Think about that. Cardiologists look, your orthopedic doctor looks, your GI doctor looks, gynaecologist, every medical specialist look. Psychiatrists make diagnoses like they did in 1840 when Lincoln was depressed. So Lincoln was suicidal twice in his life. Really? In the winter of 1840 goes to his doctor and Henry. And how did Dr. Henry diagnose Lincoln with melancholia or what is now major depression? He talked to him. He looked at him. He looked for symptom clusters. Then diagnosed and treated him. That's exactly what happens today. And that's insane. Well, and that's 60 years before Freud.

And Freud tried. In 1895, Freud said, the brain science of my time, is not sophisticated enough to explain patient's symptoms. So he then went and developed psychoanalysis. But 35 years ago, when I started to do brain-spect imaging, that's the imaging study I do, it changed absolutely everything I do as a psychiatrist, as a father, as a human. With a better brain comes a better life.

But if you never look, you never know. Look, the reason why I've followed mostly, although I certainly have Western MD doctors, but the ideas of holistic medicine is because I do think the body is holistic. I think Western medicine makes the mistake of treating it like a clock that you can take the parts. And, you know, they're very big unspecialists, this guy for the kidneys, this guy for the heart. And holistic medicine believes much more that, no, everything is connected. So we don't do that. That's why we treat things instead of heal things.

I'm looking to heal, not treat, you know. Because you want to know what's the cause. The root cause and heal it, not just treat it. And in four circles. So when I went to medical school, the dean of our medical school first week comes into the classroom. And he goes, never think of your patient as their diagnosis. Always think of them in these four circles. So what's the biology, you know, that's where you're in medical.

medical school. What's the psychology, how they think? What's their past level of trauma? What's the social circle? So how's their life, their relationship, their job, their money? And what's the spiritual circle? Which is why the heck do they care? What is their deepest sense of meaning and purpose? And so from that moment on, I always think of my patience. in these four big circles. I have a new program. We just piloted in a hundred organizations, churches, businesses,

the Orange County Rescue Mission. It's called the whole four because we help people get better in all those at all time. Can you hook me up with the brain scan like yesterday now? Seriously. Can you? Absolutely.

Okay, great. Where's the machine? I have one in Encino. They're not very far from there. I'm not going to Encinano. I don't care how much it's going to help mine. Well, the other one is in Costa Mason. I love you, Encinio. No, and Cito's perfect.

It's right over, it's the valley, please. The valley, nothing wrong. Bob Hope lived there for years. There's nothing wrong with it. I'll go to the valley. You never thought of like moving down to Beverly Hills? You seem like you must, you're so successful. Seems like the, by the way, will this bother you if I...

It won't? Great, Doc. I appreciate that. But even a little bit. Say no. I'm fine. Okay. I won't tempt you with it.

I probably won't just one puff or two. It's just, what do you think about the efficacy of something like marijuana? Do you think it's, I mean, to me it's always been benign and not just benign, but super beneficial. I mean, without this, trust me, we wouldn't be sitting here. I'd be living in a two-bedroom apartment in Van Nuys. It gave me every good idea I ever had.

I know it sounds terrible to tell that to kids, but it's kind of true. But what kind of, and I was never an everyday smoker. I'm not like Snoop, you know. I don't get up and just light the blunt and have it going all day. But do you think it's, you think I'm underestimating the toll? Already, I see I don't like this answer. I published a study on a thousand marijuana users. Every area of their brain is more.

I know them all. And activity. And I get so much engagement when I boast about marijuana. And people go, oh, you just need to get high. An independent group on another thousand marijuana users that learning and memory centers lower an activity. The what? The learning and memory centers.

And I'm very concerned. Memory, yes. Memory, yes. 21 million people in America now smoke pot every day. And if a teenager, and this is my big worry with it, because as we go, oh, this is good medicine, because it's medically legal in 40 states, if this is good medicine,

then the use in teenagers goes up. And if you smoke as a teenager, or you use marijuana as a teenager, in your 20s, increased risk of engagement. anxiety, depression, suicide, and psychosis. I did not smoke in my 20s. Bitch. Which could be really helpful for you.

Yes. Because your brain really isn't finished. It is not. Until you're 25, 26. No, I was 19 when I started. So I feel pretty good about that. And I feel like other stuff I did was much worse. And I think you always have to sort of balance, yes, physical harm.

I'm not some hippie who's like, oh, Oh, no, it's good for you. It's not health food. I get it. But would I be happier if it hadn't brought me the things it has brought me? No. And if you're not happy, if you don't really want to live, I think that's a big factor. Getting back to holistic medicine and why you have to account for not just the physical,

but the brain too, and what the brain is putting out and mood. I mean, 200 years ago, the only way they really cured. people was by, you know, just convincing, they didn't know what they were doing. They were just convince them. Somebody did something and they would believe it worked. They would put fucking dirt in your wound or something and because you believed that. Now we call that, you know, what is it, when, see, I have a phasia, doc, you're going to have to work. What's it when you, when you have a pill in there. Plasebo. The placebo system was like the main way of treating somebody. In many ways, it still is.

Really? I mean, when they do big studies on SSR. And you think it really is a thing? Oh, it's absolutely a thing. Okay. That if you're... Being happy, wanting to live. Yes, but I think part of it is no one teaches you to manage your mind.

And I was 28 years old, my psychiatric residency, which I did at Walter Reed in Washington, D.C., One of my professors said, you have to teach your patience not to believe every stupid thing they think. And I'm like, really? You can do that? Because I'd believed every stupid thing I thought. And I'm like, I teach all of my patients to kill the ants, the automatic negative thoughts that steal your happiness just because you have a thought. It has nothing to do with whether or not it's true, whether or not it's helpful. and learning to manage your mind is a skill.

We should start teaching in second grade, but we never do. And so I'm friends with Paul Simon. You probably loved Paul Simon. I love Paul Simon. Second to no man, my love for Paul Simon's music. And he has this song, Kodachrome, which starts with when I think back on all the crap I learned in high school,

it's a one where I can think at all. And it's like why we have a high school program. I'm called Brain Thrive by 25. We teach kids to love and care for their brain, but also to manage their mind. Well, manage your mind is a great title. You should remember that. It should be your next book.

It's an automatic seller with your success already. But also, I just want to say, as true as that is, that we don't teach it, A, maybe you can't teach it. And B, nobody taught it to me except me. by stumbling my way forward, which is the condition of life, stumbling our way forward. The behind us is lit up quite well because we already lived it. But what's ahead of us, we're just bumping into shit and making mistakes.

And when I was, you know, college age when I, my mind was just, you know, you just have too much energy. I remember spending a lot of time, like writing down, you know, besides jokes and stuff, which was my career, but like lessons, you know, trying to like learn every, be able to like, and think, oh, if I could just write them all down and then memorize the list and like, I'll never make a mistake again, you know. And, of course, that doesn't work.

But I just saw from an early time that I was very invested in, as someone once said, I never make the same mistake once. That's what was my goal. I want to like, and of course that will never happen except by the way it happened, which is the years go by. And you just naturally, as much as I wrote it down, it wasn't going to get me there until things actually happened.

And something happens, and it's shocking, the first time you get dumped or something. And the second time, it's like, oh, I have seen this before. I still wasn't ready for it because I'm stupid. And then like the third, the fourth, I'm like, okay, I've seen this movie enough, and now I'm going to make the right choice, because that's I saw the pattern. I feel like I know if you can teach that to a second grader.

I think that has to come. Like I say, I think you can teach it. I think I have an exercise to do with my patients. And I first came up with it in 1986, and I'm so happy I did. It's called the one-page miracle. On one piece of paper, write down what you want. Relationships, work, money, physical, emotional, spiritual health. What do you want?

And then every day you just ask the question, does it fit? Does my behavior fit what I want? Or, you know, if you're a Christian, what has God want for me? What do I want? What does God want for me? And does my behavior fit? So, for example, I want a kind, caring, loving, supportive, passionate relationship with Tanna, my wife. always want that 100% of the time but I don't always feel like that I get rude

God I bet you don't always get it after 18 years but I know I am so it's it's managing my mind what do I want great time and is my behavior get me what what I want so it's not you should do this you should do that now none of that it's does it fit like I I don't have any tattoos, but if I did, that would be one of the first ones. Does it fit? Does my behavior fit the goals I had? And nobody ever said that to me when I was growing up. It's like you sort of should do this, you should do that.

I have this little card. It's the size of a card that people used to remember hand of my card. And it has 10 things written on the front and 10 on the back. It fits 20 little questions. I don't remember where I got it. I mean, I don't remember a lot of stuff, Doc. We've gone over that depressing part of it. But somewhere along the way, I would guess when I was out a lot in bars and stuff

and people give you shit, and it has like just these 20 questions, and it's like I've never seen them more, all these self-help books. It's just like on this little card, it's like all these questions you should ask yourself. Like, am I catastrophizing? I had never heard that word, and I immediately knew what it meant. Am I making this a bigger thing than it is? Which is an ant. The automatic negative thoughts.

There are nine different types of them, from mind reading, fortune-telling, catastrophizing, guilt-beating, blaming. It's just learning to manage your mind. It was all just so practical and, like, the things you should be arguing with yourself about, You know, the problem with the mind, it's awfully great, Doc, but like, there's three forms of communication, basically. You can write it. That's very formal in the settings we're talking about of communication, because you're actually, no matter how much you think you're not editing, because you are writing something. You're not writing every thought that comes into your head.

You are put, and you're usually a little more nervous. Okay, because this is to be read by another person. Then there's talking. We added ourselves to a degree, you know, except Trump, he will just go, you're a terrible person. But like he's got Tourette's, I don't. But, okay, so there's some, like, guardrails, I feel like on writing and talking. What goes on in your mind is just like no one really wants to go there.

You really don't want AI to, like, just get into your head. Even yours, Doc. You've got some really fucked up shit going on there. I know you do. Jerry Seinfeld said the brain is a sneaky organ. We all have weird, crazy, stupid, sexual, violent thoughts that nobody should ever hear. Every year, when the weather turns warm, America decides to punish itself. We drink green juice that looks like pond runoff, eat raw leaves and pretend we're full while staring at somebody else's fries.

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I feel like my brain does it just because it's like fucking with me. It's like, you know, you say you don't want to think about a pink elephant, and then that's all you can think about. And it's like my brain will be like dog shit. Well, you know I hate dog shit. You know I hate thinking about dog shit. I have a thing about shit, Doc. I just hate it. I don't know what happened in the anal stage.

It must not have been good. And like my brain, it's like, shut up. Why are you doing it? So give your mind a name. Then you can get distance. from the chatter in your head. So when I was 16, I had a pet raccoon, really. And I loved her.

But she was a troublemaker. She T-Ped my mother's bathroom. That's a fucking raccoon. She ate all the fish out of my sister's aquarium. How do you make a raccoon a pet? She would, they had them in pet stores back in 1968 when I got her. And she'd leave raccoon poo in my shoes. Right.

But that's my mind. So I named my mind after my pet raccoon. So when I get a storm, like all of us have these mind storms. I'm like, Hermie, you're going in the cage. It's just learning to separate from the noise. This is not what meditation's goal is because some of my best friends, including Sam Harris, who seems to be the ultimate guru of meditation, certainly the most popular talking about it.

And there's nobody I respect as much as Sam. We think so much alike. I feel he's the clearest thinker. And so, like, he's... But as far as meditation goes, like, I know he's right, and yet, like, I've tried it many, many times. And, you know, I think there's great value

in turning your mind off for 30 minutes or what we used to call a nap. And, like, every time I do it, Doc, it's like, sometimes I feel like, okay, did I meditate, or did I just... bore the fuck out of myself so bad I fell asleep for 20 minutes. And I honestly don't know.

But whenever I start to meditate, here's my method. It's like I picture what you call the ants, the thoughts that are coming at you. And then I spend one or two minutes saying to myself one basic thing. These thoughts that are coming at you, in a day, will they be on your mind in a week, in a month, in a year? Probably not. So just picture yourself alone in a white room, your hands out. No, not now, fellas. You know, you come back in a half hour, but just nobody, I just won't be alone now.

And that's, and then I can kind of, you know, get to that place. Do you meditate every day? You do. For how long? 20 minutes. And you can go into it relatively quickly? I do it with breathing. I focus on diaphragmatic breathing.

And then the Lord's Prayer. And I like, because I'll go through each phrase of the Lord's Prayer, what it means to me. So that's like you're a mantra. And so, I'm sorry. That's like a mantra, but you're using the prayer as the mantra. So when you go, our father, it's like, oh, I'm part of a community. I'm part of the family.

It's about belonging. It makes you feel good. Attachment. It gives me direction. But I also like loving kindness. Meditation. Have you heard of that? It's very popular. Loving kindness. Meditation. It's super simple. May I be happy? May I be healthy? May I be strong. Whenever you like all of this is on that little card. But then it's to someone you love. May Tanna be healthy. healthy and strong to someone you're neutral on and then to someone you don't like someone you're struggling with may they be happy healthy and strong that's what

this country needs this country so much I mean my theme more than any I would say in the last five years has been I just I'm just over the hate not that I didn't participate in it myself along the way a lot and sometimes some people I'm sure would say I still do I you so tough on, I'm just being honest, I think, but the country just hates each other, the two halves, hate each other so much that nothing really can get done

when you're in that place. I mean, what you just asked is something like a lot of people on the left would never do for the people on the right and vice versa. Like, say, AOC, what do you think, like a super hard right-wing Republican guy? Do you wish her health?

Fuck, no. I mean, that's where we kind of are. But if we did. We would start listening to each other and stop labeling each other. So one of the nine ants is labeling. Because when you label someone as a conservative, as a liberal, you now lump them with all of those people that have irritated you, and you can't deal with them.

You can't talk to them. So when your mind is going like this, all I want you to do. Where's my mind going? I'm just talking to you. It's, no, the thoughts that you don't want. What I like to do is take each thought captive. And if you ever interviewed Byron Katie? No.

She's one of my favorite spiritual teachers. I love her. And whenever you feel sad or mad or nervous or out of control, it's right down what you're thinking. And then go, is it true? I don't feel any of those things anymore, which is why it's great to be 70. There's some shitty things about it, as we know. But that's why, list those things again?

Sad, mad, what? Nervous or out of control? What were the four things you just said that you... Yeah, if you're sad, mad, nervous, or out of control. I am not sad. I am not mad, I am not nervous, and I'm not out of control. And there have been many times in my life when I have been all the sad, mad, nervous, and fucking out of control.

That the marijuana stop the bad thoughts. No, no. The marijuana exacerbates whatever mood you're in. It's not something I would ever want to do before I go to sleep because it keeps me up. It's also something I would never want to do if I was feeling shitty to begin with because it would only make me feel shittier. Interesting. Like today, I was excited to talk and meet with you.

And then when I got high, I was like even more excited to meet and talk with you. And you haven't disappointed. So there. But, yeah, I mean, drugs affect everybody in such a unique way. I feel like we don't physically appreciate how different we are. Yes, we're all the same molecules and carbon-based and blah, blah, blah. But the spectrum of people always amazes me, like the sexual spectrum. Some people are so fucking horny.

They do it just all day. You know, nymphomaniacs. And some people are not horny at all. They're, they're asexual. They're not, they're just like, I'd rather be reading. Right? They have different things turn them on. Yes.

It's like, yeah. I mean, I know people who are that or talk to them. And it's like, you know, they're usually a little. little older and they're like, yeah, I had some good times having sex, but you know, it was a little like that girly ride at Disneyland. It was a roller coaster, but not really that exciting. And, you know, they just was like, no, but this book, I really, that night I felt great. Okay, so I'm just going to read books. You know, and that's, that kind of spectrum, I think, is analogous everywhere across humans physiology.

We just are so different. Some people love to get high and can handle it, and some people totally can't. And yet we always base the laws on what the fuck up to do. I'm never the problem with the law. I'm not. Do I have a troublemaker or like I'm not? I'm healing.

I'm all for healing. So growing up, you weren't a troublemaker? No, I was a shy kid, very shy, too shy, and scared. Ostracized sometimes. I always say every decade you're a different person with different goals. Well, zero to ten, my goal was don't be bullied. No, 10 to 20 more. Zero to 10 was like, stay home with mommy.

10 to 20 was like, don't be bullied, school. And, like, you know, because kids are just feral. And when they want to be mean, you know, they have to be taught to be civilized. Kids themselves, Lord of the Flies, we all read that one, right? They're not good people, children. I'm sure. How old are your kids now, Doc? Are they grown up?

Forty. 48 to 16. To 16, you dog. Adopted our two nieces because their parents were people. drug addicts and the 16-year-old just got her license and I'm so proud of her. Well, that's noble. You're a noble guy. I guess you're... It lets me know, because I'm also a child psychiatrist. It also lets me know what toys are in and what groups are in and... I mean, again, back to the brain, I'm sure what your brain has when you put

your head on the pillow at night is healthier in a way. than what I have, because you have the assurance that if you die in your sleep, you'd be going to a better place. People have said that to me many times. I'll go to a better place. And I always say, then why don't you hang yourself tomorrow? But leaving that aside, you have something that quiets your brain that I do not. And that must be like a, you know, in a way an advantage in life.

I think so, because I don't think I'm here by random chance. I think the consequences for our behavior. I think I'm here for a purpose, and I'm expected to do something useful. You know, Carl. But I also do an exercise at night, every night, and it's so helpful. Pull up? It's what went well today. So when I go to bed at night, I say a prayer, and then I go, what went well today?

And I start at the beginning of my day, and I go hour by hour looking for what I loved about the day. And it just sets your dreams up to be more positive. They actually did research on this, that three weeks later, you're happier. You said you want to be happy. And I remember even six years ago, the night my dad died, it was the worst day of my adult life. I hit the pillow and I went what went well today. And I'm like, Hermie shows up, my, you know, the voice. It's like, really, we're doing this tonight?

But because it's my habit, right? You don't do what you want to do. You do your habits. Because it's my habit, I'm like, there's an interaction. between my mom and the police officer that was hysterical. She's because my dad died at home and she goes, do you think I had him killed? My mom's 89 at the time.

She goes, do you think I have a boyfriend? I mean, it's just hysterical. And then I think of all the people who texted me that day who loved my dad. That is great. And then I just imagine holding this hand before the mortuary took him away and it was so soft and then I went to sleep.

We have to develop habits that serve us. You just said we have our habits and then it's not what we want to do. No, we do our habits. Okay, but why don't you make your habits what you want to do? That's the point. Yeah, that's the journey, right? Right.

Do your habits. So there's a question. I'm working on the decade of brain health. So Ariana Huffington actually wrote about this in Time magazine. I think I read this. And I'd love it. She gave it to me the other day at once. And the question, it's great.

Foundational question behind the decade of brain. brain health is what I'm doing now talking to you good for my brain or bad for it and if I can answer that with information and love love of myself love of my family I'm going to live longer I'm going to live better is what I'm doing now that's your method I cut off the end of the joint with a scissor that's my method I feel like it's clean cleaner that way okay look we all have methods just because you have a doctor's degree or some shit like that doesn't mean by the way one of my favorite books um oh i forgot his name because um which i'm at francis raman i think like never be sick do you ever hear about that book it's like it has all the basics it just lays out the

basics of holistic health so well uh it begins with the idea that there's one disease which is cellular degeneration, either from two causes, two main causes, toxins coming in or not the right nutrients coming in. And I think that's true. I mean, that's holistic medicine. And then it manifests itself in a million different ways, which we call different diseases and we have specialists. But really, it's always about repairing cells.

Makes sense to me. I mean, I have an acronym I like called Bright Minds. You want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it. You have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors. Now, ultimately, it comes down to mitochondrial health, cellular health, but it's like B is for blood flow. O is retirement and aging. I is inflammation. G is genetics.

You know, what runs in your family, like my kids who we adopted, both their parents are drug addicts. You need to be on an addiction prevention program your whole life. H is head trauma, which I think is a major cause of psychiatric illness that nobody knows. Of course. Because nobody looks at the brain. Of course they do. It's a big story about the NFL. It's CTE.

It's all over the news. It was had front page news a week ago that a quarter of the players, that's just the ones they've studied, it's probably higher, have it. And we've seen too many of them who just went. they killed themselves or, you know, they just are leading a life that's just not worth living because their brain is messed up from, you know, Muhammad Ali. I have Muhammad Ali. What? Muhammad Ali was one of my patients.

You had Muhammad Ali as a patient? I have his brain. What was he like? Awesome. I met him once and he was awesome. You want to hear this story? Listen to this. It was like the 90s.

I was dating this hot black girl and I took her to this event. And he was like, he was sitting in the chair like this, you know, like it just head down. And I, and I took one over to him. And I said, hey, champ, how you doing? I'm a big fan, Bill, blah, blah, blah. And I said, I want you to meet somebody. And he kind of looked up and he saw her. And it was like, it's like one of those cartoons where they put the water the plant and it just suddenly comes to life.

And he just kind of like, and in his mind, it was 1970 and he was the champ and he was going to steal my girl. It was like one of the greatest memories I have of any celebrity I've ever met was at that moment. Like the eye of the tiger still in that man. And yeah. And his brain was hurt. Yes. And I did the big NFL study when the NFL was. was sort of not telling the truth about traumatic brain injury in football.

I've scanned and treated 400. NFL players, cool players like Terry Bradshaw and Dick Buccas. He's on my show next week, Terry Bradshaw. Love him. But you can tell that he took a few too many hits. I mean, now they protect the quarterback. Like, oh my God. It's like Taylor Swift is playing quarterback.

But it's still, even with the helmets, it's impossible to stop the rattles. his day. It was worse. There was no protection of the quarterback, especially. He's one of the football players. And of course,

how do you win the game? You knock out the, you know, this is checkmate. You take the king, the queen, whatever it just does. And so they were, the hits were outrageous. And of course,

the macho ethic, you know, you're not going back in the game. You know, I remember talking to guys who play football and they said, you know,

you'd be on the sideline and it'd be like, you'd just being like, you knew your head wasn't right. You were like having like this and, but you knew enough that you were in a football game, but not much more. And then you just. Well, and then the drugs they gave them. Yes. The alcohol they would drink. It was not the best brain healthy culture. But 80% of our players got better when we put them on a rehabilitation plan.

So I hate the messaging around CTE. It's chronic, progressive, and untreatable. I don't think that's true at all. I think you should be scanning them and then rehabilitating them all the way along. So if you allow your child to play in high school, nobody should look at their brain. And you should probably put them in a hyperbaric chamber whenever there's a concussion. There's a study from Iraq that's fast. A hyperbaric chamber.

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Michael Jackson was. Justin Beaver slept in his. If anyone was the picture of health. Justin slept in his. I think it was that noseless skeleton, Michael Jackson. But I think LeBron James also. Well, Michael, I think, slept in it. What I've heard is Brian Johnson told me this, I think.

I like Brian, and I think he's struggling now, but I wish him well. I told him that. And he really is trying to find the outer limits of the human bodies something. I don't know. But I'm glad guys are trying. But, you know, he said the hyperbaric chamber, unless you need it, like, to recover from injury, ages you. No, absolutely false. Absolutely false.

Really? I have. It's always good at any level? Well, nothing's always good. But I have before and after scan. So I do a show on Instagram called Scan My Brain, where I take influential people, scan them, and I don't know if you know who Tark El Mous is.

He's an HG TV star, and he flips houses. And when I first saw his scan, his first scan, is like one of the cockroach-infested, hoarder, moldy houses that he flips. It was awful. And then he did 89 hyperbaric sessions, and a year later, his brain's dramatically better. And so I called the episode Extreme Makeover Brain Edition,

and you're not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better. I feel like this is my future in the next two years. I'm so looking forward to it. Really? Because with a better brain. Would you look after me personally? Doc? With a better brain. I noticed you're avoiding that question. Well, we'll talk about it. But with

a better brain, everything in your life is better. And I don't think people love and care for their brain. 1991, I scanned myself. I didn't really care about my brain. And I was the top neuroscience student in medical school. I'm a double board certified psychiatrists. And I didn't really care about it. The week before, I scanned my mom's stunningly beautiful brain. Really? And then I scanned myself. And it was awful because I was a I played football in high school. Really? I had meningitis twice as a young soldier,

and I had bad habits. Like, I was sleeping four hours a night. I was chronically stressed. I was chubby. I was eating bad food. I just didn't care. And then I developed a term called brain envy. I always say Freud was wrong.

Penis envy. I've never seen it in 40 years as a psychiatrist. Brain envy. You want a better brain. You want a better brain. Your life gets better. You've never seen penis envy in 40 years. I feel like in my life I've seen it.

It's just not a thing for me as a psychiatrist. Maybe I have a defined wrong. Penis envy. You go first. What is it? What is it? It's you're living your life from a deficiency of how larger penis is. I'm like that's ridiculous.

You don't think there's guys who are... Yeah, no, I think guys are unhappy about it, but that's not what caused you. is suffering. I don't think that's true. I think guys know that you need a certain, it doesn't have to be humongous, but you need a certain size dick to really make a girl like you.

I do. That's my theory of humanity. You have Catholicism. Yeah, it's just not a big part of my practice. Maybe they're just not admitting it, talk. Maybe they're just not admitting it. Well, from my perspective, you get a bigger brain,

you get a lot, I think the patients you see are not the average patient because I don't think most men care if they have a bigger brain. I think they care if they have a bigger dick. I do. I do. I'm not joking here. I think that's what they care about. So, I don't know. But maybe- Yeah, not the ones I see. Look, the knock on you is that your treatment is so expensive. Look, to me, it's a silly thing to say. It's just like everybody wants to get somebody who's successful. Yes, everything at first is more expensive. Yes, rich people will get better everything. They'll get better health care. They get better travel.

That's just, that's capitalism. I'm sorry, it's a game of musical chairs. And we should try to make it better, but it's better than the alternative. So yeah, your thing is expensive, but, you know, is there a way to like, what is your answer to that critique, by the way? Having a brain that doesn't work right is expensive.

What we do is not expensive. It's not expensive. It's often not covered by insurance because it's not standard, right? The standard is, just like 1840, you go and tell your doctor what your symptoms are. He goes, oh, you fit this category in the DSM. And so I'm going to give you this medicine, and I think that's nuts. And so I think, oh, we have to look. But because it's not covered by insurance or often not, you know, are.

Our whole evaluation is about $5,000, but it's two scans, cognitive testing, our history. I think it's pretty reasonable. And 73% of our patients at six months are significantly better. If you actually do what we say, that number goes to 85. And so it's going to change. The only question, I'm right. And I just met with the leaders in psychiatry. I'm very excited about this because for 35 years I've sort of been at war with them.

And I met Dr. Marquita Will, she's the CEO of the American Psychiatric Association when I gave a presentation at HHS, about the decade of brain health. And she goes, let's talk. And after we talked, she goes, oh, I know the problem with you. You were just early. And I'm like, I'm putting those four words in my obituary. You were just early. I'm like 35 years, really.

We have a database now of 300,000 scans on people from 155 countries. Early is very rarely reported. But it's going to change because they just wrote a position paper, the American Psychiatric Association. We need biomarkers, including imaging. So the field is going to be radically different, and I'm so excited about it. Now, whether that's a couple of years or two or three more decades, we're going to start become a medical specialty. Like, when I told my dad in 1979 I wanted to be a psychiatrist, he asked me why I didn't

want to be a real doctor, why I wanted to be a nut doctor and hang out with nuts all day long. And that hurt my feelings. But I really understand where he was coming from, just like you started. It's like, you know, psychiatry, it's nuts. He's not totally wrong. He's not totally wrong. He really isn't.

And we have to do better. We have to do better because depression isn't one thing. It's seven different things. ADHD, not one thing. It's seven different things. When you look at the brain, there are different patterns. If you just give everybody the same medicine. And, you know, I was on TV the other day for this Lindsay Clancy case,

which is so sad. This mom who killed... Oh, I know it well. It's so sad. And all our supporters of prenatal abortion. That's really what it is. I mean, postnatal abortion. It's so sad.

And nobody looked at her brain. I mean, she's going to help me. Yes, you're right. Help me. And they're like, take this, take that. Throwing darts in the dark at her. And I'm like, why is it? There's no neuroscience testimony in this trial.

Isn't that crazy? No, I mean, I could see in the way AI is and how fast the future moves. I could see in five years a brain scan being like, you know, part of the checkup, just the way they ask you to turn your head and cough and grab your balls. You know, just a basic thing. Or the prostate text. I mean, I've had a few doctors in my life with their fingers up my ass. And it's always, you know, uncomfortable,

and they always do the joke about buying your dinner first. And I'm like, just shut up and stick you if we have to do this. But that's how they feel the prostate, right? Right. That's what they've been telling me all these years. It's the only organ. We're not screening. We screen our hearts and our bones and our breasts.

why not the brain? When I turn 50, my doctor wanted me to have a colonoscopy. I'm like, well, why don't you want to look at my brain? Isn't the other end just as important? Well, again, I could do the obvious joke about some people's heads are in the rest, and it's true. But, no, I, well, both. Obviously, you want to check out your colon and you want to check out your brain. I mean, it's actually amazing considering how many parts of the body have to be functioning well for you to be healthy.

Because there's so many different ones that could go wrong. It all works together. Yeah. I mean, not coming over to your God argument, but because, and by the way, if you want to go the God argument with, like, you know, immaculate design, there are things about the human body that aren't designed perfectly. So if it is a god, he fucked up a few places. Anyway, but it is an amazing mechanism, much more amazing that anything man has ever created, including AI up till now.

But you do have to treat it well. And if you abuse it, it's funny, it can take a lot of abuse. One thing that dude says in the book is that food is very hardy, and our digestive system is very, hearty. What's not hardy is nutrients. So you the food will last. You can eat it. And your stomach will fucking take anything. I mean, what our ancestors must have eaten? You know, in sapiens,

he says the reason why the human brain got bigger is because we figured out fire. And once they had fire, it killed the parasites. So we could eat food that didn't require this enormous digestive system and it migrated we got bigger brains that's why humans outlasted the fucking you know leopards or whatever they didn't have that issue we we figured out fire I don't know why it came to us but but yeah our brains got bigger I mean you know I don't know size matters do you have pet Do you have animals? I have two dogs and a cat.

Okay, but like their brains. So the human brain, 30% is your prefrontal cortex. The front third of your brain is largest in humans in any other animal. Right. 11% of the chimpanzee brains by dog, 7%. Is that where like decision making comes in? It's the executive part of your brain. It's the executive part of your brain.

Focus, forethought, judgment, impulse control, organization, plan. planning, empathy, learning from the mistakes. So when you were talking earlier about the mistakes you made, that's the prefrontal. There are no mistakes. It's just every day you win or you learn. Right, you learn. You learn.

That's the prefrontal. Prefrontal cortex, which is why letting kids hit soccer balls with their forehead is very stupid. Because your brain is soft about the consistency of soft butter. Your skull is really hard and has sharp bony ridges. We want to protect it. Wow. Okay, so the pre-final lobe. And then what's the, I mean, Freud had the id, the ego, and the super ego.

Which, you know, back in the Renaissance and Middle Ages, they used to call it like, you know, the humors of the body. But it was really the same things. Just like wine, women, and song became, you know, separate. drugs and rock and roll. There's nothing new. So Hippocrity was with the humors and different humors. Yes, the different humors, bile. When we still have the words, bilious, phlegm is from phlegmatic.

Right? Right? Sanguine? Sanguine, yes. You know, so they knew it, they just didn't know how to like analyze it. But they sensed back in the day that those same things were within us. Now we can quantify it. Now we can quantify it.

Now we know, I mean, so much. I mean, I wear this ring. Maybe it's bullshit, but it tells me. It's not. Like I say, not bullshit. My trainer says, because of rings, like the oral ring or the Apple Watch or whatever, that he says, so many people stop drinking because they see their sleep

on the nights they don't drink, and then there's sleep on the nights they do drink. And they're like, I hate to burst your bubble, but mine, I watch the same thing. Mine is better. When you drink? This is the day I drink. Tape day for Club Random.

That's why I look forward to it, like a dog smelling and steak. Yeah, I sleep better tonight. Anytime I, like, get fucked up, like, in the day and then it's worn off, and I'm not really high anymore, but then I sleep well. That's how I sleep the best. Well, and that's biofeedback. It's your getting feedback on your body whenever you do something. And early in my career, I was trained as a biofeedback person. I love that.

And I would hook people up, their hand temperature, their heart rate, their sweat gland activity, and then I would ask them questions. Like, think about your dad. And like with my dad, because he was stressful, everything would go awry. And then, like, think about your mom. And everything would sort of balance out. And so our thoughts affect our physiology, but certainly what you smoke, what you drink, who you hang out with. All of it impacts your body.

I was sitting in my reading chair the other night, and, I mean, I am not a crier. Nobody's ever made me cry on TV, and they've tried for 35 years. And I just started to, I don't know why, but I started to think about this person who I had just spoken on a memorial service that day. I guess that's what triggered it. And I wasn't thinking about the person who I loved him, but, you know, it wasn't having this effect on me. For some reason, I started to think about this person who I know, and I thought if they died. And I thought, you know, I imagined myself speaking at that memorial service. and made myself cry in the chair, just sitting at home,

thinking about something that hadn't happened. This person is fine. But I remember saying to myself in my reverie, you know, I've seen a lot of people go, and a lot of them were comedian friends, and people would text me and email me and say, God, you must be just beside yourself. And truth is, it's sad, and I love them, but no.

But this person? very different. Yeah. And just thinking that to myself made me cry in my chair. But my chair is all you're going to get. Never on TV, bitches. That's because you're attached.

To what? To be other person. Great friend. Very important. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So that's human. Yeah, I know. Trust me, I'm glad I have it.

I'm glad I could, you know, something like that can happen. because you don't want to be unfeeling, and the world is moving. I'm hardly the first to point this out with first the smartphone and now AI, moving toward a very unfeeling place, a very detached place.

We have to be so careful because the incidence of depression in young people has skyrocketed. How could it not? The study from the CDC, 37% of teenage girls report being persistently sad. And 32% of thought of killing themselves, 24% have planned to kill themselves. We don't have any statistics like that when we were growing up.

Things are changed. We have more followers and less friends. 58% of young people report being persistently lonely. That's why this sort of whole person education needs to be... You and I are about the same age. We grew up on Pluto. On what?

Pluto. We grew up on a completely different planet. It's true. In my town, first of all, no racial issues, because it was an all-white town, in New Jersey, not Alabama, New Jersey. Drugs, you know, there's a few degenerates that we might have...

They smoke cigarettes. That was like the... There was no divorce. There was no fentanyl. There was no fentanyl. But there weren't broken homes. Maybe they were like crazy at home, but they, you know, stayed together.

And we grew up in a completely different planet. Most kids now, all those things are present and plenty more. But, you know, you rarely find someone who... the parents are together, you know, drug addiction, parents who were fucked up, or parents who stayed together, but they hated each other. And, you know, just not the stable,

leave it to beaver upbringing we had. World War II generation people who had been through the Depression and the war. Yeah, but the 60s were messed up. From the assassinations, the... Not for us. Were you assassinated? No.

No, but I remember being in church when JFK was killed and the stress around that. We had the riots here in Watts. For who? For you? And my dad had a grocery store in Watts during... In Watts? In Watts? When I was growing up. And Vietnam, I had friends who had siblings come home in boxes, body bags.

So when everybody's complaining about... now. I'm like, the 60s were a shit show. Let me ask you, your father, white guy owned a store in a black neighborhood. Lebanese. Popular? So, Lebanese merchant, my dad, you know, like many Lebanese immigrants, merchant, he ended up being the chairman of the board of Unified Grocers, which is a $4 billion company. I'm very proud of him. This is what is awesome about America that we are flirting with ruining. We attract the best, smartest, most ambitious people from everywhere.

This was always our secret sauce. It's true. And you know who is messing with this. You know, we did need to close the border. You don't think he's messing with it in a reaction to the insanity of open borders? Totally. He did closing the border to something we needed to do. I totally give him credit for that.

Then they went, okay, we don't have to get into that. What I'm saying is like, people like, I'm not helpful. People like your father always, you know, that is why I still believe in this country so much. It's because the people who, it's, and I've heard the foreigners who I know here when I say foreigners, people who are like French, Canadian, not exactly, you know, like the world. rolled away and they say yeah because I've asked them like France is a pretty modern country why'd you come here Canada it's kind of like America and they say not really you know what they cut down the tall trees there's just a sense here that you can reinvent yourself and go as

high as you want yes there's a little more inequality but this just this sky's the limit you can be the grocer and then be the whatever this fucking thing your father was Something big. I heard that. What was he the head of what? Chairman of the Board of Unified Grocers. Yeah, that's... But that's an immigrant story in one lifetime.

It's awesome. In one lifetime. That's America. I don't know if that happens in countries where it's more stilted. I think the opportunity is still great. Just shame what happened to Lebanon. Beirut used to be called the Paris of the Middle East.

It's so beautiful. I was actually there in April 19th. 75 right before Civil War broke out. And it was so beautiful. You could be in the mountains, skiing, and then an hour later be on the beach. I mean, it's a beautiful... And you know who else was there at that time?

Osama bin Laden. Before, like when he was a teenager, and his rich-ass family brought their little Nepo baby to Beirut, because that's what people did. Like, before the Islamic world went nuts. you know and before jihadists sort of like took the reins in too many important places I'm very worried about the generational trauma that is happening with the kids in Syria and Gaza and Israel and all of Iran the generational trauma is real well you're the man to scan their brains

do you have a business overseas I do not. Do you want one? My books are translated in 50 languages for now. But do you imagine a, I mean, you have more than one location for what you do. I have 11. We have 11. That sounds like the beginning of a franchise to me.

Mick Brainskin, what do you think? No? I just want to give people the opportunity to learn from the work I've done. Okay, Senator, but I'm just asking you a real question. Do you want to have branches in more places, including overseas? I think 11 is good. I'm very happy with that. Really?

And what I really want is to teach people to do what we do so that it becomes standard 10 years from now, 20 years from now. That you're depressed, you're angry, you're anxious, you can't stop. thinking about bad things as somebody looks at your brain as part of the assessment all right you should hire me as your a and R man because we're not thinking big here doc I'm thinking strip malls I'm thinking every strip mole in American I'm talking about small and medium-sized cities and there is a mick brain scan there and you can get your nails done by the Korean girls

if you can go right next door and get your brain scanned that's how I I'm thinking, I'm thinking big. That's America. Okay, so I'll let you go soon, but I just have to ask you one more thing. Porn, bad for the brain, because you hear a lot of bad things about it. And people do get addicted. And it is different than when we were kids. The problem with it is six-year-old boys are being exposed.

Eight-year-old. Exposed to porn? Oh, you mean exposed to it? because parents are not doing a good job of supervising the devices. But I wouldn't be interested in it at six. Six? I was not interested in it. But that's you.

There are a lot of boys who are very curious early on. At six? Yes. Six is what Freud called the latent stage. Latent, yes, an infant like gets a heart on or like rubs his dick. But then it like latent until puberty. So when was your first sexual? I feel like I was early from my age group 11.

I feel like when I first started to rub that part of my body and it was, oh, this feels good, and it changes shape. And, okay. And now, imagine you have a smartphone and your parents didn't do a good job or your friend's parents didn't do a good job of putting parental controls on it. You're interested in rubbing yourself, and now all of a sudden you have a huge menu of things to look at. That is a disaster. So ultimately, obviously you know about dopamine.

Dopamines, the pleasure, chemical. If I looked at, I get what you're saying, there was no opportunity for me at six to look at naked women. But now there is. And if you do, it will activate the people. cubic side of a brain at six? For some people. Right. And if you're vulnerable, say you come from a family of addicts, you know, your grandpa was an alcoholic

and you have more genetic vulnerability, all of a sudden that's going to hijack you. I think we have to do a very, we have to do a better job of controlling what young people can see. I mean, I was a huge fan of Australia and Great Britain banning social media for kids under 16. And it's spreading in other places. And then the recent meta deal, $17 billion. I mean, it just highlights this is dangerous. Very.

We're seeing that. We're paying for it as a society with when we were gone up. Did anybody ever killed themselves in your school? No. You know who killed themselves? The husbands. The ones who, because there was no divorce, but the husband would wind up face down in the swimming pool.

That happened more than once, and it was a small town. Yeah. Because that's what happened. When you can't get divorced, you'll kill yourself in the swimming pool. You're like, okay, I cannot live one more day with this woman. But it's something that I never was in, that I never saw. And now almost half the children in America, they have a school may kill themselves.

It's ridiculous, the number of the increase in suicide in young people. But also, if you look at the number of ailments that weren't common when we were kids, that became very common. Things like diabetes, adult acne, asthma, obesity, you know. Peanut allergies. Peanut allergies, yeah, in general. Colitis, you know, irritable bowel syndrome, whatever they call,

all those gut disease. What? They didn't think... And why the spike in autism? Autism again, yes. From 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 34? Some of that is because they measure it differently. Some of that is because they measure it differently. Yeah, and some of it's because there's a gene and environmental toxin interaction.

Right. And, you know, whether it's BPAs or other environmental toxins. But not the vaccine, you're saying. Probably not. Probably not. But probably it's not useful to give all the ones they did. Right. And it's not useful to have mercury in vaccines.

And also, apropos to what I was saying before about, we're so different, we're on such a large spectrum of different characteristics. as a human and everything, it could be that it's one in 500,000, that the vaccine somehow triggers something that causes autism. It's just super, super rare. But who wants to be that person who wants to risk even? Well, and I have vaccine damaged brains that I have scanned of kids who the parents say are normal.

They got the vaccine and their brain looks terrible. Yes. But it's not the norm. For sure, it's not the norm. No. It's amazing the way we have to politicize or people politicize this issue so much that we can't come to what I think, again, because on Mr. Common Sense, is the reasonable middle, which is that vaccines are generally safe, but like all drugs, like all medical interventions, they have side effects. And on the whole, are they worth doing? Yes.

But there also is a downside. Well, you know, AI is doing therapy now. You can turn it on and go. It's doing everything. Pretend like you're Carl Young and do a session with me. I think I'm better. My mother, I remember when she was reading Carl Jung, my mother was always like, you know, into something. Like, for a while it was mythology, Greek mythology.

We heard about all that. Then she got very into psychiatry reading all. And Carl Jung, what was his basic thesis? What distinct, why do we know that name, Jungian? Well, he was one of Freud's counterparts. And rather than psychoanalysis, he talked about personality theory. He was deeply spiritual. He's the one that came up with the idea for the Myers-Briggs.

What's that? It's a personality inventory, introverted, extroverted thinking, feeling. And he talked a lot about dreams and the collective unconsciousness. He is very influential. I know. It's very influential. I know Jungian thought is. None of that rings a bell.

But, I mean, those old-school first-generation, psychiatrist like like and who was he adler was he another one of those guys are they like the modern crew did they think of them as kind of like oh old school yeah I mean in their time of course it was considered you know Freud was all about the dick because wasn't he Freud kind of all about sexuality I mean wasn't you know a lot of it I feel like I was also using cocaine yeah a lot a lot of the time yes he had 33 I mean he was he was he was he was This is brilliant. He had 33 operations on his jaw.

And he was in chronic pain. Chronic pain. So many of these thinkers were. You wonder, how did that affect the thinking? You know, Proust wrote Remembrance of Things Past, one of the greatest works we've ever had in Western literature. But he wrote it the last 30 of his life in a cork-lined room in Paris because he had horrible I think asthma I don't know what the cork was there for but I do know it was

there and it was something to like help him with whatever and then Thomas Mann who wrote you know what did he wrote I'm too stoned to remember but that was all about being what they called consumption back then which really what now we would call is what like chronic fatigue no what's the pulmonary disease that you know is not to It's a... C-O-P-D? No, it's back and... I think it's back...

The major thing that people got, like, 100 years ago... Tuberculosis. Tuberculosis, yes. And they would send them to sanitariums. It takes place... Magic Mountain, the Magic Mountain. One of the seminal novels of the last century. And, you know, they're in this sanitarium in the Alps.

And they, you know, it was like people go to Arizona because the weather is better and it helps with certain things. I think that's more grounded in reality. I don't know if the sanitariums ever really helped, but, you know, this is only a hundred. No, I think mostly they separated you from getting other people infected. You think that was the purpose?

You don't think they thought they were curing you there in the sanitarium? No. Because there wasn't a cure. Until we had drugs to kill the beast. They would literally say, take the cure. That was the saying. That was the phrase.

Take the cure at bottom, bottom, you know, hot springs, places with the air was clear, but you think it was all the scam. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I don't remember hearing that someone was cured by doing that. No, I mean, weather clearly matters, right? If you're in a highly allergenic place. We must be here in LA. Well, it's smart. I mean, it's actually better than when I was growing up.

Way better. That doesn't mean it's good. But it's not good. And I live in Orange County and I can see LA off and you see this brown haze. You go, not good to breathe. And people who live in places of high pollution have a higher incidence of Alzheimer's disease. So the air you breathe, the water you drink, the noise. the noise, the lights, all of it matters.

You know where I notice my brain is when I do crossword puzzles? Because I'll get stuck and I'll put it down and I'll come back maybe later that day or a day later and I'll finish it. It's like plainly I was using the same brain 12 or 24 hours ago and it couldn't do this task and now it can. Something, that tells me this is not bullshit, this is something I can measure,

this is scientific. This is a test where I got rid of the variables. It's the same clues in the coursework that I couldn't do. What was different about my brain 12 or 24 hours ago? You know, I love that you're doing that. Because that's good for your brain. But then you have to go,

so what was to sleep, what was the consumption of substance, of substances, what was your diet like, all of that matters. And the problem with being 70 or 72 in my case is if we're not serious about it, it just goes lower and lower and lower. I hate looking at older brains. I'm sure. But I have this whole group of 90-year-old people have stunningly beautiful brains.

And I'm like, I want that. That's brain envy. I want that. And it's like, okay, how do you get that? But what that crossword puzzle test tells me is this is not about opinion, this is about conjecture. This is scientific. What it tells me, for sure, I have definitive proof that my brain is in a different condition, a different state at different times. It may not be huge.

I'm not a crazy person. It doesn't like, I'm like I'm going nuts, you know, and ranting and raving or like completely, you know, out of my mind. But my brain, if we put a number on it, you know, when I put the puzzle down, when I couldn't do it, was at 85. And then I got back to 92. I mean, you could quantify it if you could. Can you? Are there brainwave studies like that? Can you hook some?

Yes, I think you could do quantitative EEG. at certain times to go, when am I most imbalance? Or when do my gamma rays, my really fast learning waves, happen? And some of it's circadian rhythm, that all of us have rhythms. Some people are morning people, some people, or night people, some people.

You think it matters? This is something holistic medicine is very big on, that it doesn't just matter. that you sleep, but when you sleep. I think it's bullshit. I think some of their shit is bullshit. Everybody's shit is bullshit. Because I'm, maybe I'm just prejudiced because I am a late riser. Always have been, my family was, my father worked nights, he got up late. I was like getting up late. I liked the night better. I like watching Johnny Carson. He was on at 1130. That was to me much better than watching something that was on at 8 o'clock, although at McHale's Navy.

I'll make an exception. But so I'm always, and then I became a comic, we're out late at night. Just everything is late, late, late. I don't think it matters. I think it matters that you sleep, but they think the healing takes place like between 2 a.m. and 6. You've heard that. Tell me, Doc, what's your theory? I think you need seven to eight good hours of sleep, and it doesn't make that much difference.

When? I agree. Yeah. Because like the ring, it tells me, but it's like, yeah, I know. And by the way, Ring, you know, I don't need a little, like, pat on the back that you write out for me every day. Hey, you know, did you have a tough night's sleep? Shut the fuck up. I don't want to hear a pep talk.

I'm not of this generation. I don't need it. Just give me the facts. And it does. Like it will tell you how much REM sleep, how much deep sleep. And, no, Andrew Huberman tells me it's the REM sleep that matters, because sometimes the deep sleep is only like 12 minutes. You agree? I think both of them are important.

I think REM is really important, and both alcohol and marijuana decrease REM. So I'm so excited to see your brain. That's what the devoted viewers of real time say every week when they tune in. Yeah, I mean, it's like, you know, I never watch my own show or this show or any show because it's like I had fun doing it. It seemed like the people liked it. I don't want to. And I kind of feel the same way about my brain. It seems to be working.

Do I really want to stir up trouble? You know, like. Well, it's only good news. It's totally not perfect. I definitely have a little more aphasia than I used to. You know? But is that 70? Is that pot?

Is that just, you know... But if we find out, who cares? Then we do something about it. Now, you want to care. Because if you're having a little bit now, a little. A little. Odds are five years from now, you're going to have a little more. And 10 years from now, you may have a little more.

And I don't want it. I just, I'm here. Even if I forget the word, which is what ephasia is, can't I just define it? Can't I just go to the, what's that place where the sick people are, where all the sick people go? What does that? I forget. What is that called sick people? They go.

In the hospital? Yes. Okay. Allentalephaia. Can't I just do that? Doc. I mean, but that's not, I'm joking. You don't want hospital food. Do I seem like I'm really mentally inept, Doc? Honestly. Absolutely not. Thank you. Okay. That's, and that's from folks, that's from the world's leading expert. But I'm not. I would know when I, when I go,

I will know, and I'll go. When I go, I will know and I will go. That should be my book. Really, I will. Because what I do is, is not something you can do out a diminished capacity. It just isn't. If I'm not at the top of my game, I have no game. I don't want to be a sheep among goats. I mean a goat among sheep's. All right, I'm a little stone.

But yeah, I mean, so I will know. But again, getting back to my original thing, I think mood, it's a trade-off as everything in life is. It's a trade-off with the drugs and having fun. With, yes, health and the actual physical perfection of the brain. Yes, I am diminishing that. But I think for me, I've learned it is a trade-off worth making. I think it actually is the smart trade-off because I'd rather live, you know, Sammy Davis once I'd rather live 64 Sammy years.

He had a great time when he stopped drinking. He said, the worst thing about this is knowing that when I wake up in the morning, that's the best I'm going to feel all day. I know that feeling. I'm not like that. I'm not a drunk like that, but I know that feeling. Like, I would rather die at 85 that 95 and not have a good time on the way. What's the point of...

You know, when we do our high school program. And week four, we talk about what to avoid. to have a healthy brain. A 14-year-old boy, never a girl. This is really a never a girl. A 14-year-old boy raises his hand and goes, how can you have any fun? And so we play a game with them called Who Has More Fun?

The kid with the good brain or the kid with the bad brain who gets the girl and gets to keep her because he's not an ass, the kid with the good brain or the kid with the bad brain. It's like, it's the lie people say. It's like, well, how can you have any fun? And I have a whole bunch of fun. But the...

It's like to have to suppress your brain so you can manage your mind to have fun, that just seems like a lot of work, as opposed to learning how to manage your mind. If I may, the flaw in your theory is we don't care about keeping her. We care about getting her. That's what you said about the 14-year-old. Keep the girl. We don't necessarily want to be.

want to keep her. Look, I made him laugh. I mean, maybe we do. Well, we lose her because we generally our behavior is not right, or we can't sit still. I've made crazy decisions in my life and done crazy things because I was obsessed with the idea of keeping a girl, like crazy to things, like proposing marriage.

That crazy. I mean, really crazy. I mean, like beyond Catholic crazy. I proposed marriage. That was a long time ago. But, like, I was willing to put that on the table in the poker game. When she said, I will raise you and see you, I was like, okay, yeah, you're right. I'm too scared to lose you.

I will put that ring on the table. Of course, I backed out in the end. I just think it's the little lie of people. say, Drew Carey, Drew Carey, got really healthy. And he said something, I'll never forget. Because I knew then you're going to stay healthy. I love him.

He's a friend of mine. He said, eating crappy food isn't a reward. It's a punishment. And I'm like, oh, he gets it. Because, you know, what do I really want at my age? Energy, memory,

passion, purpose. Yeah, but... I want. that and so if you know what you want it's like does your behavior get you what you want well I mean but that's just obviously the trade-off of present for future which is every decision in life and you know to say that it's not a reward it's exactly a reward that's why people eat like that look people say to me you know you eat so well you know like I love food I get it I get

Food is delicious. You think I don't like cake? I like cake. I just make the choice not to eat it. Because I know about what it does in my future. I'm making a decision based on the future. That's what's hard to get your brain to do sometimes. You have to train it that way.

To make decisions in the future. To love food that loves you back. I am making a decision about the future and the present right now when I like this. joint. The future, this might be a very bad decision. This might be the one toke that really, it's not health food. But in the present, I'm having a good time. Consider you one nail in my coffin, Doc. But it's worth it. You got to live in the world you're living in. I don't want to, I'm not the kind of person who can live

if I can't really live. I never got married, you know, so I don't know what it's like to be a slave. I have to be a free man. And if health makes me not a free man, I can't live. But, of course, when I get sick,

I'll totally pussy out on that and be like, because I've learned this just getting up to 70. The things you say you won't do, and then when you get a medical expert saying, well, we have to put this camera up your dick, you go, okay, if that's what you have to do, I know I said I'd never do this, but yeah, go ahead,

put a camera up my dick. I know it's going to hurt, even with the volume, it's going to hurt. But I'd rather have a camera. You never had a camera up your dick? No. You're lucky. I'm not looking forward to it. You'll love it, Doc.

I don't like the fingers up my ass, but you know what? I'd rather know. Again, this is a future, present decision. I could be in that office going, you know what, I feel fine. You don't need to stick your fingers up my ass. I feel fine. But that's not a smart decision. It's not a decision that the frontal lobe, right?

The executive, you told me, the executive is saying, yeah, you don't want a man's fingers up your ass or a woman. I don't want anybody's fingers up my ass, but I'm going to do it for the future. Because you know what? I'm living in the future. I'm going to be living in the future. I want to. So let's not have present me, fuck Future Me.

Because Future Me is going to be like, why didn't you? let the doctor put his hands up your ass that day? It could have solved so many of the horrible problems. Such a good phrase. What? Don't let present me fuck up future me. Right. I love that phrase. Well, I'll sell it to you for a very reasonable price. You demurred before when I asked, can you get me in? Like, and I said yes. Yeah, you kind of were like, yeah. I said we'd talk about it. Yeah. Okay, well. Okay, well, I will make an appointment. I hope I get special consideration because we became such good friends today. Thank you so much. Yes. So much fun. So much fun. I want to do it. Very much so. I think you're on the right path. All right.