Jocko Podcast - 436: Lean Into The Pain. it Will Make You Better. With Andrew Huberman

Episode Date: May 1, 2024

>Join Jocko Underground<Andrew Huberman, Ph.D., is a neuroscientist and tenured professor in the department of neurobiology, and by courtesy, psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford School of Medicine. He has made numerous significant contributions to the fields of brain development, brain function and neural plasticity, which is the ability of our nervous system to rewire and learn new behaviors, skills and cognitive functioning. More at hubermanlab.com Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 436 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. He no longer cared at all. Exhaustion, hunger, thirst, dirt, the fatigue of perpetual fear, weakness from lack of water, bruises, danger, had all taken their toll of him. Until somewhere within the last few minutes, he had ceased to feel human. So much of so many different emotions had been drained. from him that his emotional reservoir was empty he just no longer cared much about anything this great

evil where does it come from how did it steal into the world what seed what root did it grow from who's doing this who's killing us robbing us of life and light mocking us with the sight of what we might have known. Does our ruin benefit the earth? Does it help the grass to grow, the sun to shine? Is this darkness in you too? Have you passed through this night? And those are two passages right there.

One from the book, the thin red line, and another from the movie, The Thin Red Line. The book's written by James Jones, who fought in the bloody Battle of Gwadal. Canal that's where John Bazalone fought also where Mitchell Page fought we just covered a book about that podcast 435 the movie was written and directed by Terrence Malik or Malik and both the book in the movie explore as much about who we are as people who we are as human

beings as they do about war and the guests I have with us tonight will help us and discuss with us who we are as human beings how we become ourselves what choices we have and what we can do to steer who we are and what we become from a philosophical perspective from a physiological perspective from a psychological perspective and yes, from a neurological perspective. This would be none other than Dr. Andrew Huberman back again last on this podcast, 332. He's back again. Andrew, thanks for joining us.

Great to be here. Thanks for having me, guys. This great evil, where does it come from? It's the last time I was on your podcast or when I was on your podcast, you were asking me, questions about identity, my identity. And it was weird because I listened to it afterwards, and I kind of realized that I missed out on sort of the root question that you were trying to get at.

I gave you some pretty just nonchalant answers. When you were asking me about my identity and about where I came from, what were you looking for? So this is something I think a lot about. and I think a lot about it more and more every day. My understanding, based on conversations with some incredible psychologists and psychiatrists, people like I just had the amazing experience

of talking to Dr. James Hollis, who wrote Under Saturn Shadow on the Healing and Trauma of Men. He also wrote The Eden Project about relationships. So he doesn't just write stuff about men. right stuff about stuff for men, women, everybody on identity. And the way he put it, I think captures it best. So I want to credit him, which is that, you know, we, we come into this world and we are essentially, you know, there's some genetics, of course, that play a role. Body size, body shape, eye color, all this kind of stuff.

But that so much of who we become in our early life relates to our parenting and our attachment. and then there's this weird phenomenon whereby we either unconsciously or sometimes consciously adopt the patterns of our parents, sometimes more from one parent, sometimes more from the other, single parent home, it varies, right? But we develop these patterns of thinking certain things, valuing certain things, believing certain things. And then adolescence in the teen years and the young adult years hit, and something really interesting happens. We either internalize those and carry them forward, or in some cases, we do not something different, but we consciously do the exact opposite. And it's at that point in our developmental trajectory that we really start to elaborate

and change our sense of self. And so a different way of putting this is, you know, we hear things growing up, we believe things that kind of, you know, what got us affection, what got us punished. Those things, we were internalizing them all the time. You know, people from Go are trying to get their needs met. And then at some point we become conscious of like, oh, you know, like that doesn't feel good when they do that or that seems to cause conflict between them and other people when they do that. So I'm going to do the exact opposite. Or, you know, we hear the message, you know, you can't trust these kind of people or you can't trust them or you can trust everybody and for some reason we go 180 degrees in the other way and that evolves the family line was i mean just

think about how amazing is that we can evolve or devolve our family line in one generation i've talked about talked to a lot of parents and especially when they're going through those teenage years with their kids and the kids start doing things that Clearly, they're looking for conflict with their parents. And I know I did that. I know both my sisters did that. It's kind of normal that you're going to have that rebellious phase. And what I tell parents is, you know, when you're 13 years old, you look at your parents and you say, wait, I need to, I'm going to need to go out on my own.

I need to break away from these people somehow. I need to make that happen. And so you just start making that happen and usually do a pretty good job of it. So that, to me, that's where a lot of that 180 can come from where you're looking at your parents, oh, I'm not going to, I need to get away from them. I need to break the ties that I have with them. And I need to do that so I can go out on my own. And if I still have these ties to them, then I'll be stuck here forever.

Yeah, it's amazing because even in animals, there's this thing they call dispersal where the animals hit a certain age. and they just start like venturing out from the nest. And they do the same thing that kids do of looking back to make sure that it's still there, right? I have a friend who has spent a lot of years working with kids that like really like hard scrabble backgrounds, gangs like inner city stuff. And I always said that, you know, those kids, like all kids, are extremely appreciative of any kind of warmth or kind of nurturance.

like they're not, it's not like the movies where they're just always resistant to that. They might not be as trusting immediately for understandable reasons, but that they appreciate and can understand and recognize like real generosity. And so I think we all have that in us. We want that. But yeah, there's this age where we just start dispersing. We just want to go. I mean, that was why I picked skateboarding is like my first quote unquote real sport, right?

I did other things like play soccer and swimming, but I need a ride to those things or I could ride my bike, but the skateboard was a sport, and it was also transportation. And then when someone got a driver's license and admittedly and don't do this kids, even before they did, you know, we would start going places. Plus soccer is sanctioned. Oh. It's sanctioned by the parents, right? Right.

The parents have got you in there and you're just kind of playing into the whole thing. Oh, you want to be, you're on the soccer team. You get sliced oranges. Right. Right. It's all part of the, it's part of the nest. Right. You're in the nest when you're playing soccer, when you're playing football.

when you're doing whatever sports you're doing at school, those are all sanctioned and they're all part of the program. Right. Skateboarding is not part of the program. No. No. And one of the great things about skateboarding was that, especially back then, it was all ages. So you got education and a lot of things for better or worse. We talk about that. Learned a few things, you know.

And it was wild. It was wild. You know, I don't care what anybody says. You know, it's like, it was wild. How old would you started hanging out? in the streets with the skaters. Yeah, so it's fun because basically everybody on my street who is my age, like there were all these young guys, and we all grew up together. And then they all started playing water polo and soccer.

Sanctioned. Yep. And then it was me and really one other guy. His name was Paul Zwanich. We just called Muzuch, because you got to have a nickname. Right. And he was really good. Wait, what was your nickname?

Oh, come on now. Hube's. Hube's. Yeah, just kind of rolled out of the tongue. Yeah, some people still call me that, but anyway, there, outed, Hughes. And we, you know, he was one of these guys who was just a natural athlete. And so when he went, he'd score five goals a game in soccer. His mom was a soccer coach often.

Then we started skateboarding and he could just, he was just so good. You could just call the trick. You could be like, hey, do like feeble in the backside tailslide. He'd be like, okay. And you would just do it. And you're like, I struggled. Okay, I was not a great skateboarder. but you know I worked at it and I loved the community of it I loved everything about it

and so he and I started venturing further going up to um embarkedero so called EMB so that was I was probably 14 when we first took the 7F bus and started going up there so about 13 14 yeah and um that's where I saw it all right the and it's wild because in recent years largely because of the podcast and social media I'm now close friends with some of the guys that I grew up looking up to as legit heroes, legit heroes. Because I was the same age, I'm the same age as like Danny, who just celebrated birthday, happy birthday, Danny, jumped the great wall of China. He's down here. He's from Vista. So I saw those guys. I was around all of that, but I wasn't one of the really good skateboarders. So I could hang in there, but I got to be friends

of Carl Watson and all these guys. And so I've reconnected with them over in recent years. But yeah, Pollack, she got a pro model with Think, Pro Model with Planet Earth. Literally, it was the sponsor me tape, sent it in. One of my best friends sends in a tape. Next thing you know, he's a freaking pole model. You know, so we were like in the community very much so. But yeah, in recent years it's been amazing because I've gotten to be friends with two people

who were legit heroes for me growing up. And in many ways still are. One is Jim Thebo, very humble guy who runs Spitfire Deluxe, Thunder, real skateboards. The nicest guy you'll ever meet. He grew up in Albany, California. He's going to be really embarrassed.

I'm saying this. But just the best dude. And he's played an absolutely, pivotal role in skateboarding. We're both huge fans of Rancid. He's a big, you know, like Coxbar fan and like, oh, you know, so we, we send each other morning, good mornings and music every, almost every morning. We've gone to shows. We actually went to a Rancid show together, not that long ago. So Jim growing up, he's a few years older than me. It was like generous Jim. He would show up at Embarcadero, he would give people board, stickers, wheels. I'll never forget the first time he gave

me my first box of gear. And like, I was just like, whoa, not gear like gear, guys. Not injectable gear. We're talking skateboard gear. And so yeah, it was it was just amazing. It was, um, it was so free. No parents, no regulation, which has its problems. But and then the other guy, you know, because I was always in it from, from about 14 gym and this guy, Wally Suyashi, who unfortunately is dead now, gave me my first, like real punk rock tape, Stiflow fingers tape, crimshrine, bands like that. And I fell in love with Operation Ivy downfall, which eventually rancid, Tim Matt Larson and what used to be Brett, and now it's Brandon. And they didn't know me. I didn't know them, but I go to all of their shows. And then in

recent years, I've had this, it's kind of wild how life works out. I've been connected to and become very close friends with. We'd probably hang out two, three times a week with Tim Armstrong, the Tim A. Rancid and he's an amazing songwriter, just an amazing human being. And he and I will just go hours and hours talking about history of punk rock music, history. of anything of that culture. And so, yeah, what I fell into early on and truly fell in love with. And you and I know also exchanged this like,

I think there's a Cromag show tonight, right? Or, you know, it's, for me, it was just the home I needed. You know, I think it's kind of interesting because recently there's been some interesting call into question about my backstory, but listen, you know, like any one of those guys who's been in the industry for a long long time, they'll say like, yeah, remember, they called me Andy back then, I remember Andy, but I wasn't one of the main guys.

Meaning, it was clear I wasn't faded to be a great skateboarder. So that was tough. That was, that was God's first lesson and like, you're going to get broke off every time you push yourself a little too hard. So it's a good lesson, push me into academia. But make a long story short, I mean, if ever there was a community to go feral into and be a part of, it was amazing. And some of those people became great artists. It was always adjacent to incredible stuff like what Giant was doing with, you know, the obey stuff and like graffiti art and twist and, you know, and so skateboarding, punk rock music, all that. And I should just weave it around for a second because we were talking about this a little bit earlier. Podcasting feels so much,

so much the same way as the early iterations of punk rock and skateboarding, where it's like people are doing independent, right? It's DIY, set up some cameras in a room. You know, I'm sure people will see your podcast, hear your podcast, and think, Like, oh, you must need like this huge production studio. You need some stuff. But we started in a tiny room in my house in Topanga when I was, you know, kind of doing a little self-appointed, you know, retreat to the Southern California during the pandemic.

And so it's like you set it up, you record, you edit, you put it out into the world skateboarders. It's 100% DIY. So right now I look at the podcasters and I look at the enormous reach that the podcasters individually, of course, Joe being way out in front of everybody else, who, but, you by the way, check out how much he works, check out how many episodes, folks. For sure. You know, it's like, you know, it's not a coincidence.

I look at that and I go, oh yeah, it feels exactly the same. It's exactly the same. And people, the general public often going like, whoa, like this thing feels really cool and it feels kind of big, but like kind of scary. Like you remember, like you see somebody with like a bullet belt or something like that. And like, I mean, I remember in high school,

this wasn't my thing. I never pierced, you know, ears or anything like that, but that was just my person. I remember you saw someone with a tattoo and it was like, oh, they must be blank. Or you saw somebody with an earring. They used to say all sorts of things. But then, you know, four years later, it's mainstream. I remember one year in high school, because skateboarders, unfortunately, had like severe sag one year in the early 90s.

In the early 90s. Thankfully, I was already in the military. Right. Small wheels, sat, you right, big baggies. And I remember we got teased so much. It was unbelievable. We got teased, like, just ridiculed stuff thrown at us. Of course, we were like pretty, pretty wily.

So we'd always get people back. We had, I'm not going to give people ideas, but like, you know, you know, it's like high grade firecrackers and stuff. Like you could get back at people. It was fun. But don't do it, kids. Things have changed. But next year, after the summer, come back to school, everyone's dressing that way. And that's when it just clicked.

And I go, oh, most people don't actually know what they like. They're looking outward to try and figure out what they like. And I guess I've either always been blessed or stricken with this thing like I feel something. It's just so cool. And I just feel it like an energy. I'm like, that is cool. What they're doing is real. And they're doing it themselves.

And so like, I'm in. The, I want to jump into music and skating and stuff a little bit. But what you just talked about, so kids are growing up and we are. Like this is like I say kids, you could be 38 years old or 52 years old, which I am right now. And you have your perception of who you are and your self-perception. And a while ago, we did a podcast and I was talking about the fact that everyone's insane. And why is everyone insane? Well, it's because the definition of insane, everyone's somewhat insane because the definition,

the clinical definition of insanity is where your reality doesn't match reality. That's what, so it's, and when they're off by a lot, you're now definition is insane. Well, guess what? My perception of reality is not the same as your perception of reality. And neither one of our perceptions of reality is completely accurate. We have our own biases and tints to the lenses that we look at life through. So it can be difficult to know what reality is. And then, of course, like you just said, like you're a 14-year-old skateboarder with baggy pants

and people are making fun of you because of that. So now you're getting criticism from the outside world. How do you know what reality is? How do you know that you're not actually wearing stupid pants? Or do you think is the reality is that you're a trendsetter that everyone's going to be imitating in a year? They might be right. How do you weigh what you're hearing from the world as they tell you?

Because also, if I'm jealous that you got a new skateboarder, What do I say? Skateboarding stupid. Or I'm jealous because my girlfriend likes you. Well, then the way you dress is stupid and she's an idiot, right? So I'm going to attack you because I'm jealous. And that's a problem too. But at the same time, it's like reading comments on the interwebs, right?

Rogan, classically, right? Don't read the comments. Don't read the comments. And we all agree with it. But if you can read the comments and be like, yeah, there's going to be some outliers that think I'm an idiot and some outliers that think I'm perfect and it's like most people are going to be somewhere in between and that's cool that's pretty realistic. How are you judging what criticism you're getting? What kind of grain of salt do you take it with? Yeah, sense of self,

obviously, as we were talking about before, develops early. For some people it's firmer than for others, right? I mean, one of the reasons why for me it was skateboarding in punk rock music. And by the way, folks, I think a lot of people hear like punk rock music and they just think like noise. And we're telling like some amazing melodic stuff, like all of it, right? One of the reasons for me, the music piece was so key to just who I was. I mean, if you look at my high school year, but my graduate, everyone else had like a photo or something. I think I would actually made to my senior photo. But you have to get to draw the thing in the back.

Mine's the cover of the Operation Ivy Energy LP with a few initials of people that help me out, you know. And I showed Tim that recently. He was like, oh, yeah, cool. You know, in my PhD, which is somewhere online because someone found her saying, in my acknowledgements, I acknowledge rancid. They didn't know me, but I went to every show. I listened to them on non-stop. Anyway, like these things are lifelines, you know. But one of the things is that, you know, people hear punk rock, they think noise or anger or whatever.

There's a, there's a place for that. But the real spirit of it. And I think Joe Strummer summarized it the best is like it's about the real humanity of it. It's about putting, it's about your heart. putting your heart into what you do not in a soft way although sometimes in a soft way but it's about being true to yourself and one of the things I love about every time I drive by like 924 Gilman Street one of the longest running punk rock clubs in the world I drive through Berkeley or something like that and I see

all the kids out front is just the huge range of styles high hold boots you know the like bullet belt spike belt the kid who's just wearing his like just wearing sneakers you wouldn't even call him a punk rocker but he's but they're there or you know, you get the mod kids and the goth kids and like it's just all the styles and you just hope you just hope that they're expressing themselves in the way that feels right to them at the time. And you know skateboarding for a while did become a little too homogeneous but the cool thing about skateboarding is especially once we made it up from the South Bay where I lived to Embarcadero was like the huge I mean you hear a lot about diversity nowadays

I mean Vietnamese kids black kids white kids kids from the inner city rich kids poor kids everything in between there were fewer girls doing it back then now there's some girls that kill on skate on skateboard I mean it's like amazing I mean um just unbelievable I think her name is um Reese Williams I have to check it out

but like she skates Tony's ramp down here in San Diego it's like unbelievable with so much power too not a little not a little girl skating like no like power right and so what I love is when I see people expressing their uniqueness and they can still be part of a community.

I see less of that online, although within the podcast community, I like to think that maybe 90% of the people that watch who may be comment, they feel some resonance. Like they feel resonance with your 430 a.m. call to action. They feel resonance with Joe's desire because, you know, I can never speak for him. How could I? But to explore lots of topics from lots of different angles and be kind of fearless about it. Not kind of.

Delete fearless. Okay? Or Lex to like bring as much loving compassion to things and people will will will spit at him like, oh, you're just, you're kind of like using the softness to try and pretend that what you're showing isn't. No, I know Lex. I know him. I know his heart. He's a close friend of mine. He showed up in my house in times of crisis and all sorts of like we've sat down late into the night on and off Mike. Like we are close close friends. He has a huge loving heart and a huge curiosity to understand. And he'll go where he needs to. I think he's in the jungle right now. That's right. That's right. I saw him check out. So like I know like you can't really, you can't, the thing about real podcasting or real anything, music, skim, where you can't fake that. It's from the heart.

And when I say that, I think some people just say like, oh, it sounds soft or something. And you know, Tim, who's like a big brother to me now, he's always says, like, you know, there's a couple of lyrics in there. He's like, he's like, there's this one lyric where he goes, I know, I wear it. I wear my heart on my sleeve. But he's a tough guy too. And I think that what you have to understand is that for anything that's new where there's no precedent, there's no like podcast playbook, now you can kind of figure it out and go. And but what you find is that like people are all in because it's like in their heart. I have to imagine that it's like in your hearts to sit down and talk to people, perhaps like me from now and again, but people who have been like legit warriors.

Not like playing war, but like war where the other team is trying to kill you and talk about. that from a place of understanding, also sensitivity, exploration. You can't make that up, right? That's not journalism. That's called, it is like, that's real. And so for me, it was like, you know, skateboarding when I first saw that was like, whoa, punk rock music was like, whoa, like they mean it.

They mean it. And same thing with podcasting and science too. When I first got into research science and I had the incredible benefit of working with people that just loved the lab. And I just loved being in the lab. Love doing experiments here. Just like, it's you alone there with nature

trying to figure out how nature is put together. And there's just like, there were times I was just like, I can't believe this. I can't believe that this is like a real thing and that they like give you a degree to do this. And then they eventually paid me to do it. So I don't wanna get overly sentimental here, but I think that the sense of self

that I hope people are trying to find is like their essence. And Hollis actually said to me yesterday, he said, you know, The key to finding this, because I said, okay, give me the practical tool, right? And he said, oh, very straightforward. He said, you got to get out of stimulus in response. You have to be able to sit with yourself for like 10, 15 minutes and just listen.

So like what's inside you and what moves you in a positive direction. And I said, that's it? And he said, yeah, but how many people do that every day? How many people get up in the morning and do that? I did it this morning after he told me that. How to work out? Yeah. I mean, like we, I think we all have an essence, like, you know, not to get too spiritual here, but I think we all have an essence of who we're trying to be and what we're trying to put into the world. And you mentioned criticism. I think one of the hard things about being public facing, and I'm not complaining. It's a great honor to do what we do, right, to be able to speak our thoughts and our conversations to the world is when people try and take something, look at it through. a particular lens and then somehow without any clinical training and without any basis whatsoever

place intention on that like they could understand why you did what you did or what people did you know we're so I see a lot of that people just sort of like projecting intention labels on people and it's it's you know the great Joe Strummer he said there's a great quote he says you know it's time to take humanity back into the center of the ring You know, the problem is we've been dehumanized, right? I think he said, you know, you know, greed and I ain't going anywhere, you know, and put that up on a Times Square, something like that, you know. Never met him, but I would have loved to.

But that's true, like there's a dehumanization when we put a label on somebody, and I'm just talking about like a pathologized label. We're dehumanizing them. And I see a lot of that on the internet as probably people can tell I'm pretty passionate about this, not just from my own experience, but frankly more from the advocacy for others, not just podcasters, but like, I look at the way people attack one another. And I'm just like, well, first of all, on the schoolyard, where at the Markanero or where you come from or you come from.

And then there, you know, like none of that's going to fly, right? Because it's going to go to loggerheads and fists quick because that's real life, sadly too. But that's kind of how things they got handled throughout history. On the internet, it really is people just lobbing stuff over walls. And the anonymity is part of the problem. but also the harshness of it. I mean, every time I hear about a kid who commits suicide based on online bullying,

I'm like, whoa. And then I was just like, what must have they been feeling? And then what must have the other people been feeling? This is like, I mean, it does break your heart. It's insane. And I think that, yeah, I mean, I think that we, that the humanity is really about what Hollis said. knowing who you are, touching into that,

and then having the support hopefully, but just the guts to just express yourself the way you see yourself, and then understand that people are gonna make fun at you, they're gonna do all sorts of things. But the people that used to get spit on and teased and all that, they're the ones that everyone's mimicking and the next year, the two years later,

it's so wild to see that. Those are the fashions, those are the things. Like, if you can count on anything, it's that. Yeah, when I think about like growing up, I was really in hardcore music, obviously. And some of the things that I think about that I totally, they became embedded in my life, right? They kind of became part of who I am.

No, let me phrase it. They became part of who I was and who I am. And for one thing, and you know this, you get this crew of friends, and they're like, your bros, your brothers. And so you get this super tight brother, of friends and you're just doing stuff together going out. There's fights, right?

You just mentioned it. Like, there are fights. And so there's a test, right? You are going to get tested and you're going to see how you react. You're going to see how your friends react. And the people that react the right way become tighter. They become a tighter element of friends. And I've actually talked about the fact that I did a lot of dumb stuff when I was a kid

based on the fact of I wanted to prove to myself and to my own. friends that I was like a tough guy that's why I love Jiu Jitsu because in Jiu Jitsu you don't have to do anything to prove you if you want to prove something go to the mats and we know exactly where everyone falls in the pecking order and it's all good before Jiu Jitsu you don't have that the only way to do it is like oh we're gonna go get and fight so it's dumb but you get that tight group of friends that have now been through something together the whole idea for me of Straight Edge which was a very radical thing. I mean, this is in the in the 80s, right? Where I grew up, there was just not a,

it wasn't a thing at all, like drinking and smoking pot and doing whatever LSD, like that stuff was just kind of the normal way to go through high school. That's what was happening. So the idea of straight edge and for me, what I connected to was like, oh, going to be strong. Like I'm going to be I'm gonna be mentally strong, be physically strong. Like we started working out. It had nothing to do with Echo Charles over here who was working out because he wanted to get a little bit more buff. Oh yeah.

Like I was working out to be stronger. So I could be better friend, a better friend to my friends and be strong. So that became part of my soul of, okay, I'm gonna be strong. I'm gonna be mentally strong. I'm gonna try and be mentally strong. They're working towards that. By the way, it's all, I have like, most ridiculous I have the most ridiculous writings from when I'm a kid you know and I still

have them but they're just you know I'm I can't be weak about this I need to be stronger need to be better like that's what I was writing when I was 14 it's it's kind of crazy so I think the way all that stuff landed on me and by the way this was all like this was all oh it'd be like you know how they the animals in Australia they kind of became these their own things like kangaroos and platypus like all these weird animals in australia we kind of became this weird sort of off shoot of what we knew what we found out because i lived in the sticks man and and so we kind of became our own little off shoot of what we thought this was supposed to be man the first time i had harley flanagan on the podcast and he and i read his book and he's like i mean he's doing

heroin. I mean, he's just off the freaking rails. Yeah, there was there was a segment within hardcore and punk that was like heavy into drugs. There was the straight edge. Although it was less prominent. It was Ian yeah, yeah, those guys. Yeah. So I'm what, but we didn't we know that. I thought you know, listen to the Cromags and listen to minor threat. I thought that okay, this is what this is what it is and I kind of took those couple threads and me and my buddies, we made that our thing. This is what we're doing. And so that was, very instrumental in the way because I'm going back to this is when you asked me how you know where'd you get your identity from I just after the podcast I started when you were coming down I was like where did what who where did I come from another thing that's huge in that music and in that in that spirit as you mentioned is like rebellion like we're not going to conform with something else just because it's there we're going to do what we think is for lack of a better word the right thing to do.

Like we're going to do what we think is the good thing to do. And so we kind of developed this whole, this whole ideology, really. And part of it was like, oh, yeah, I'm not going to, if something doesn't make sense, I'm not going to conform, right? That's not happening. So then you take that. Then you have this trying to be really good at what you're doing. And I was definitely into that, not in school, you know, not in education.

Not only this, oh, but with what we're doing, skating. Like, we're going to do our best to become good at skating, good at, like, trying to work out. So the things we're trying to get good at. We wanted to represent well. And the hard work idea, the working class idea of like, hey, we're working hard. And the DUI thing, or DIY thing you already mentioned. And that's a huge thing. I mean, why do I have a publishing company?

Well, because, oh, you can't publish my book and time calls to make my own. That's complete from the spirit of my youth. Uh, same thing with starting a podcast. You don't, you can just do this. What do you do? There's no, you don't need a producer. You don't need, you don't need anything. All you need is an iPhone and you can start a podcast.

So there's a DIY thing behind that. And, and then the last thing that I was thinking about was this group of friends that you had, that I had, you didn't want to let your friends down. You didn't want to be a blood clot. You didn't want to be like a liar or you didn't want to let your friends that you had this sense of honor Right. It was like we you're not going to let your friends down and that had a huge A huge impact on me of a it doesn't matter what happens. You don't want to let your friends down. That's a huge thing and then all that stuff right there Again, me trying to trace my freaking personal identity now I roll into the military and guess what you learn out of the gate going to going through seal training is you don't let down your swim buddy you put the team first that's what's

going to happen it does not that it was a perfect crossover for me a perfect crossover me you don't want to let your friends down that's what that's what we're doing you want to put the team first you want to do the right thing you have to do the right thing this is something that again look let's give ian mackay credit from minor threat like he was just doing what he thought was right and going against Everybody and just standing up and doing what he thought was right. Look, I always listened to Black Flag and Rollins huge, huge influence on me. Black Flag, my war, side two, just listening to that album for a year. Just that side for a year and a half over and over again.

It's like, that's going to leave a mark on you. Absolutely. It's going to, it's going to etch your neural circuits. There's a, there's a Black Flag Live album where Roller, is just yelling the discipline. I am the discipline. And here I am. I'm probably 13, 14 years old.

Did that leave a mark? Yeah, it left quite a mark. And yet, the weird thing is, like, there was people that were listen to Black Flag that were heroin addicts, heroin addicts, right? And here I am going, oh, I took that and made it into what I thought was the thing. Oh, I understand what he means by that.

We went kind of like on tour. with Rollins band in the late 80s. And so we'd hang around with Rollins. And he would be doing push-ups. And I'm, I think he's 10 years older than me. So when I'm 14, he's 24. So he's like a grown dude and I'm a little kid. But it's like, okay, we're doing push-ups.

That's what we're doing. Okay, we're working out. He's getting ready to go on stage. What's he doing? He's working out, stretching. Like that's what we're doing. So I took all that stuff. It just made so much sense to me and I formed it into what I thought it was.

And some of it I was just inaccurate on. You know, I sat down with Harley Flanagan for the first time. I realized, man, I was away. I'm glad I was off base. I'm glad I was off base because the direction he was going, not too many people survived. He's lucky to be alive. I didn't do that. I was like, oh, what this means is discipline.

What this means is working hard. What this means is supporting your friends. And that's as I look at my identity, so much of it came from that, and then getting in the teams where it's, oh, you take care of your teammate, you put the team first, you do the right thing. You've got to be tough. Like the same thing when you're skateboarding. You fall down. What do you say, oh, I'm going to go home now? No, you get up and try again.

You will rub dirt and hit. You get up and you go again. That's the freaking seal teams. The seal teams, you're tough. Like, oh, you got hurt. Cool. Keep going. Oh, you got.

dinged up, cool, keep going. You don't even say anything about it. You don't say I'm cold. You don't say I'm tired. You don't say I need a break. You don't say that stuff. You don't say it. I know there's probably a bunch of bad ramifications because of that.

Okay. But when you're 25 years old, 21 years old, 32 years old, that's what you're doing. You're not taking a break. Another huge piece was in, especially now I'm in the SEAL teams, you're not going to be the best at anything. Like there's a guy that is going to be better than you at shooting. There's going to be someone else that's better than you running. Someone's better at you in swimming. So you're not going to be the best of anything.

And you just have to own that. You have to be, you just get humbled by everyone around you. And it keeps you humble. And then on top of that, combat keeps you humble. Because when you go to combat, there's all these things that you can't control. All these things that are going to happen and they're going to unfold and you're going to be looking around. And you're going to say, oh, I'm at the whim of what's going to be. on right now and I got to hang on and try and get it figured out.

So it's it's very very humbling to have that happen. Being squared away. Does that mean anything to the civilian sector? Echo Charles be squared away. I mean you can imagine but that doesn't that's not like a common thing that everyone's going around saying. Andrew squared away. I mean I've heard it done a few scuba dives.

We're a team guy on one of those. Yeah, getting squared away is that one, just all your shit's in order. Your shit's dialed in, right? There was phrases. I need to bring these phrases back. There's satisfactory, which is sat, like that sat or unsat, which like that's unsat. And that was it. It was just those two choices, a binary choice.

You either were sat, you were ready, your stuff was squared away, or it wasn't, you're unsat. So you get this programming where it's the worst thing to do is be unsat, is to be not ready. Oh, to show up to a die. and be like, oh, hold on, I don't have my knife or hold on my rigs. I didn't bring this part of my rig or all those things is like, you're letting everyone down. You're letting everyone down when you make those mistakes. So there's this weird, this weird paranoia that I got from that.

I, to this day, have a level of paranoia of wanting to be squared away. Like, yep, squared away. Worse case scenario, yep, you want to be squared away. going on an archery hunt, right? You're going on an archery hunt to show up and not have all of your shit dialed in. To me, I would, I mean, I was so freaking paranoid in the SEAL teams. Now it's archery hunting. It's like, oh, check, check, check, recheck, recheck, recheck, get everything dialed in.

Be ready for that operation because I don't want to be the guy that fails and lets down the team. So those things again when I got to the SEAL teams We a group of us we kind of took the the spirit that we thought was the right thing and we ran with it I love it I love it I you know the rebellion piece is something I it's uh ringing in my my mind Um because what starts off as rebellion as we talked about a moment ago eventually just becomes mainstream And what's cool and I think is exciting and I'm looking to where this is going to happen in the podcast community is when rebellion happens within the rebels. So examples from the important cultures of history that we're talking about are, for instance, Joe Stromer, so in the 101ers thing starts, excuse me, starts to clash.

Clash just blows up. It's like a worldwide sensation that, I mean, should I stay or should I go? You know, people hear the clash and they, you know, like those are like pop music at that point. He starts bringing in hip hop as openers and the punks start booing. They booed. Like, who are these guys? And he's like, no, you don't get it. This is the thing.

So then he starts to realize the hypocrisy of it all internally. I don't see hypocrisy inside the podcasting community. That's not what I'm saying. But the moment someone starts a rebellion within the community of rebels, that's cool. Because what that means is that it's going to evolve. skateboarding this happened in numerous ways the examples that come to mind and there are many Danny way

is skateboarder he's skating big vert he was considered the little kid that could hold up with Tony Hawk they tried to create this false like competition between them and like it was ridiculous because they're their homies and like it's whatever just do the same thing differently both great Danny starts Danny breaks his neck fractured vertebrate surfing

I believe it was Newport comes back, decides he's not going to jump motorcycles in the desert and surf as much anymore. He's going to take skateboarding to the next level. He starts building mega ramps and jumping over, you know, going 40 miles an hour or something. Actually, a friend of ours who's a photographer for our podcast, Mike, forgive me, I'm going to tell the story. But I think Mike was set one day to go film. He's been the photographer for DC for a long time. And I think he was supposed to go take a picture of some guy like skateboarding some, you know, street thing.

And I, this is the quote. I'm paraphrasing, I think Danny goes says to him, you want to go see someone do like a crooked grind on a on a knee-high ledge? You want to see someone fly through the air at 45 miles an hour for 100 feet upside down, you know, like Danny was doing. He's evil-can-eval. What did he do, though? He started building that, but then the other thing, I'll never forget, he's working out. He's training his neck. He's training, he's training hard.

He's doing like these like cyclone like rope ball swings. And in skateboarding, if you worked out, you were prior to that, you were a jock that was not considered okay. okay, Danny broke the mold. He's taking his body and his health seriously because he keeps getting hurt. He had the neck thing. I think he worked with Paul Check also in getting strong, doing all this stuff.

Next thing you know, he's breaking multiple world records. So he rebelled within the community of rebels. And I don't know him super well, but we occasionally talk still. And he just has this spirit like it was for him, a slayer, slayer, slayer, slayer, like you know, all the time. Him and the Red Dragons is a little gang in skateboarding that wasn't a part of.

And he rebelled within the community of rebels. So then it evolved. Now you got this whole new dimension of skateboarding, X games, mega ramps and all this stuff. So, you know, this stuff repeats. You see it in science. You know, it used to be you were an anatomist or a physiologist or this or that. All of a sudden, somebody who's a neurobiologist, there's a woman up at Stanford who years ago, many years ago, 1998, Carla Schatz decides, no, I'm going to study the immune system.

Everyone says the brain is an immune privileged organ. That is not true, by the way, but back then that's what they thought. She started sending immune neural interactions. It's an entire field. You can probably get a degree in it now. What year was that that she kicked out? About 1998 is when she started looking around at immune molecules in the brain. She had already done spectacular work.

So, you know, and I'll tell you, I know academia very well. And even though my lab is, you know, vastly shrunk now, I still have a lab, I still teach. despite what you might read on the internet, still a professor of Stanford. Last time we checked, which is a few days ago, they called me, still very involved. But the point here is that academics and academia

is very insular. Why? Everyone's afraid to rebel. Why? Because anonymous peer review of your grants and papers. Biggest fear, you can't get papers published. How do you get papers published?

You need money to fund the product. How do you do it? You write grants. Your grants are reviewed by your peers. Everyone is terrified of upsetting each other. So the party line becomes the line. Very hard to rebel. Some people get independent funding from other sources

and they can be a little bit more adventurous. But it is one of the most, it didn't used to be this way when funding was more readily available. But it's one of the most like, yes, communities. Like, you go, you go. Like rebels are, it's not really okayed. But, you know, Carlo was in the best sense of the word,

She broke the mold multiple times. Other people have done it too. These are just kind of salient examples. Then another example from skateboarding that non-scapeboarders will probably hear. Rob Dierdick. Here was a guy who skateboard is a great skateboarder. I used to see him around. And then he turned to our friend, Mike Blayback,

who's the photographer podcast, one of my closest friends. And he is like, I want you to start filming me. Mike's not a filmmaker, never call a photographer or filmmaker. Take photos of me. He got himself a bodyguard, big, a bulldog, and started a TV show. And he became a businessman. You weren't supposed to do that. You weren't supposed to be like an athlete businessman.

He's like, he's a, now he does a lot of stuff on entrepreneurship. He's a super impressive entrepreneur. So I love it when people are breaking, like rebels, rebelling within the community of rebellion. And it seems to me that within the SEAL teams, it's a little harder to do because there's a high risk, high consequence outcome, you know, situations, right? I mean, it's war, right? So it feels like there's probably less room, but I'm wondering like in Jiu-jitsu,

Has anyone, is it Gordon Ryan who's considered the man? Yeah, yeah. Actually had the privilege of talking to him recently. He called me about some stuff. You had some questions. Hopefully he was able to help him. But like, I mean, is a guy like that somebody who just kind of like does it differently or just does it more, does it better?

Yes, yes and yes. Okay. Well, there you go, rebels against the, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Anyway, I'm going long, but I guess the point is that like breaking the mold among the mold breakers is how it evolves. I'm excited to see what's going to happen now in public communication, podcasting, et cetera, because we're all very different, but I don't know.

I feel like we're on the cusp of something. Yeah, there's also the whole commercial side coming in to the podcast. Like, they're not doing what you're doing and they're not doing what I'm doing. They're doing something different. They're doing something very different, which is, you know, massively highly produced shows. Do people watch those, listen to those? Yeah, sure. Are they popular?

Oh, yeah. I mean, some of them are huge. Some of those are huge and they have huge backing and they're owned by someone and they get a, you know, to me it's all good. I mean, if that's what people are into. Sure. That's cool. Hey, you mentioned the internet and all this kind of stuff. You just kind of popped up for the first time with some scrutiny, like public scrutiny and article and stuff like this.

What was that all about? What was that like? Yeah. I mean, we started the podcast in January 2021. and so it grew really quickly. And honestly, like, I didn't know it was going to grow quickly. 2020, I was on 2019, I started posting stuff to Instagram. 2020 during the kind of like the peak of the lockdowns.

I started going on some podcasts, no book, no nothing, just trying to give people health tools and teach them some science. We launched it in January 2021 and just push, just kind of took off. And kind of figured like sooner or later, you know, you start taking, you start getting some criticism. I think the first thing that happened that prior to that was people started to supplements. You know, people like, oh, it's a supplement thing. Yeah.

It's kind of obvious. You have sponsors that makes the podcast free so that you don't pay wallet so it's available to everybody. I happen to like supplements a lot. I've been taking them since I was in high school and I've benefited from them a lot. And I understand that they are different than stuff that is, you know, from randomized control trials. You know, oftentimes there's not a ton of testing of the different things. But anyone who uses the right ones can tell you like, okay, there's something there. And they may or may not choose to do it.

It depends on disposable income, interest, et cetera. But they're not the foundation of like what we teach in the podcast. It's almost all behavioral tools, information. So that was kind of the first wave. That kind of hit. And when that happened, I was kind of like, well, these people look like they could use a few supplements. Just kidding. What I thought was, listen, if you want to take them, they can take them.

And if they don't, they don't. Like the information's free. It allows it to be free. Yeah, the, the recent stuff was interesting because it was, you know, in many ways it could have just been titled like, you know, Andrew Huberman is a bad person. Because it really, like, sought to really just like undermine every aspect of like who I am, you know, and who I know myself to be and who my friends know me to be. you know, this idea that like, okay, my backstory or whatever, you know, it's like, listen, actually one of the, I'll tell you a brief story, one of the best things to come out of that was a guy named Steve Rugi, Shrugi, who no longer smokes a lot of weed, doesn't smoke weed

at all, but back then when I was a kid, he did, it was 14. And there's a true story that I got pulled out of high school and, you know, put away. And I got one call and I called Steve because he was my friend slash team manager for Spitfire thunder, but I wasn't one of the good skateboarders, as I mentioned before. So it was unclear whether I was like on the team or he was just being kind. It was out of sympathy. And I call him and I go, Shrew, you know, like, I'm in this place. I don't know what to do. And he goes, bro, you're the most normal guy I know. He goes, you know. And, you know, as funny is they interviewed him for this piece. They interviewed a lot of people, but they didn't use his piece. But what he did is, he wrote

to me after the interview. He goes, oh, yeah, I talked to them. And, You know, and I told them I had put you on thunder and spitfire and I go, you did? And I go, I go, you did? I waited 30 years. To know that you were. 33 years to know. It turns out I was actually on thunder and spitfire. So I was like, yes.

Like if nothing else, it was totally worth it for that. So in any event. You got three pairs of trucks. Totally. It was purely awesome. I mean, I went to the Reno Nationals, but I didn't do very well. And like, listen, I would have cut. I would have done anything to be one of the skateboarders that could really make it.

But he was actually kind enough at a different point to tell me, look, He goes, bro, you're never going to be one of the big guys in skateboarding. And I remember just being so heartbroken. But it was a gift, right, that he told me that because it turns out I need to do something with my mind more than skateboarding. In any event, yeah, it was, it's weird. I mean, I think when you take a step back and go, hey, like, what generates clicks, right? It's rarely like, oh, this podcast is doing really well. Time Magazine had done a really nice piece, which had balance in it where they, you know, kind of, you know, touched on how the podcast was really making an effort.

to teach science and also health and health and also science. This was not that. And it was interesting because I know me. I've got, fortunately, I have tons and tons of friends I'm really close with. I'm in contact with some of them less often than others. And yeah, sometimes I get busy and I don't text back as much. But I have people that I talk to every single day. I exchange a good morning text with like four or five people,

including Armstrong, Thiebo, and a few other people, every single morning. like we hang out we spend time in person right um they interviewed an ex-girlfriend of mine who was super awesome which actually we met here in San Diego in supporting me and then of course you know there was some assertions about me and my character and that's where it gets down to this thing where it's like luck i mean we as humans are complicated we do something's right we make mistakes but to ascribe an intention to like why people do things. Like that was the part where I thought like, you know, they're like, you know, they sort of tried to tie like dopamine neurobiology to protocols in the podcast

to like some diabolical, like even the cover photos, like diabolical like controlling mastermind. Listen, I'm just trying to get through the week. Like I'm pretty squared away on the order of a day or a week. I'm thinking next episode. But there's no, there was no and there's never been any master plan to do anything except one thing. Like I genuinely, like, I know this in my heart is that my desire has always been to put valuable information into the world that people can benefit from and to do it at zero cost. And to do that to the best of my ability, right? And, and also to do the most amount of good and the least amount of harm in life in all aspects of life.

And of course, you know, nobody's perfect. and I certainly am not. And, you know, there was, if I'm going to just be direct about it, I mean, I think there are a couple things. One is, first of all, like, there is no version of me or life where, like, I'm validating or supporting behavior that is common, but not good. Right? I think that was something to kind of be born out of that.

Like, oh, you know, six girlfriends. Okay, look, I've had challenges maintaining one girlfriend. Okay. I think we can talk about this a little bit more, but this is where it gets to the importance of defining the relationship and what a relationship. You know, that's an important label, right? I mean, girlfriends of mine, I met my family.

We spend time together, you know, that met their families. That's a girlfriend, right? Okay. It doesn't mean that other people are insignificant. It just means it's a different nature of relationship. But I would never want to validate or support, like, cheating, right? Listen, I've been cheated on, it sucks. It sucks.

I've cheated on people and that sucks. And so I would never, ever, and especially now, because I'm saying it, want to validate or support that as a success, right? Like that represents failure. Cheating represents failure, not success. That's clear. The other thing that's really important is I think, like, we have to all, all be careful about not pathologizing behavior and how do we pathologize behavior we give people labels we call them sociopaths or we decide or non-clinically appointed people to say oh that's a narcissist or that's

gaslighting or something like that i think you know one of the great things about human beings is that we can look at ourselves we can look at others and we can try and take understanding and accountability and try and do that without, you know, self-flagellating or flagellating other people because only then is there a chance of people changing their behavior. So, you know, those, you know, that whole thing, you know, some of it, I just once like, what? Like, you know, being, uh, probably one of the most, I just had to like literally laugh out loud. It was like that I doted on my bulldog excessively. Listen, if you want to know somebody's heart, look how they treat their animals, you know? I mean, it actually runs countercurrent to the clinical diagnosis of sociopathie,

which they also sort of alluded to, right? I love animals. So, you know, to be criticized or kind of poked at for like, you know, making sure that my bulldog Costello was tucked in, like, hey, he liked being tucked in with his blanket, you know? And I love seeing him comfortable. And, like, you know, it like, and it broke my heart to see him cold or like, you know. And like, I mean, I have only two words for anyone that has a problem with how well I took care of my dog. And I'm not going to be, you know, I think the scientific explanation is, fuck you. It had to be weird. You know, I was thinking about this, and we were talking about it a little bit prior to,

but, and you just mentioned kind of your trajectory to go from a person that, I mean, well, in, in 2018, you were just like a working stiff dude, like doing normal working stiff stuff. Right in grants, writing papers, on advisory boards. It's 2018 driving back from at that time. Oh, no, I'd moved to my place off Piedmont Ave in Oakland. Did you buy, did you own a place there? Yeah, I had a little place out there.

So you were established enough that you owned a place? Small place. So when I, so I was first a professor at San Diego. So I finished my postdoc at Stanford, got hired at UC San Diego. That was very end of 2010, early 2011. I lived in normal heights. Yeah. I was, you know, it was the pit of the market.

I was able to buy a little craftsman home, lived there with my bulldog Costello. And, um, talk to him in every night. Talk to men every night. I'm, I love that dog. And then met my,

my, you know, then girlfriend, Kegan, who was kind enough in that, you know, it was interesting that the, these,

these media things, you know, that they, there's a data selection in terms of what's emphasized. But she, she very, you know, graciously,

we had a, we had a pretty awesome relationship. of living here. She had a dog, she had a little pit bull. So it was Costello and Zoe and we live there in normal heights. And then she eventually went up to do some schooling up north. I was going back and forth. And then when I took when I got moved to Stanford, meaning I got offered a job at Stanford got tenure at Stanford on entry in 2016. And 2016 and we were living literally in a little basement apartment off high street. It was pretty rough zone back then. I think maybe it's a little lighter now, but commuting, you know, doing that.

And then I eventually, we parted ways. And I got my own place off B. Bon Ave in Oakland and was commuting and doing the academic thing. And you're just working. And traveling the world, like working like a mania. I've always worked like somewhere between like 70 and 80, sometimes 100 hours a week. Sometimes I throttle back. Now it's, you know, a little more segmented. But yeah, then, you know, 2021 start the podcast.

and all of a sudden it's like, well, like I didn't, like when I put stuff out into the world, it's, I mean, this is what's also so, I think important for people to understand about these online things and media and all this. And we can talk about this a lot if you want is that it's like a one way conversation in many ways, but then you're like catching it back through a fire hose, right? So you have to, you do develop a really thick skin, right? You know, people are going to say stuff. You know, I think that it's very different than a one-on-one conversation. And to just also, like, make sure that I'm rounding the corners on what we were just talking about.

Like, I understand that, you know, my podcast isn't for everybody. It's kind of long-winded. It gets down into the weeds, although we have some shorter content coming, some 30-minute audio-only summary-type stuff that I'm hoping people will enjoy if the other stuff's too long. But, you know, I understand because I grew up intentionally doing different, looking different, acting different, because it was what was in my heart that people are not going to like it. And I also understood that there are people that are going to like it. And I also understood that in a couple of years, people kind of drift towards it. And by then, we're already on to the next thing. And that frustrates the hell out of everybody.

It frustrates the hell out of everybody. but we don't do it intentionally, right? There isn't, again, there's no diabolical plan. You know, I once saw a quote of Rogan. Maybe it's accurate, maybe it's not, but he described himself as like the fish that got through the net, that there's no on, you know, he's just being himself.

There's something so refreshing to people just being themselves. And I think that, so for me, I'll put stuff out into the world, and I'm not thinking about like, are they gonna like it? Are they not gonna like? I'm just doing the best I possibly can. Of course, I make mistakes. Like, this is the,

thing like the idea that like I saw some headlines that were kind of derivative headlines or like you know the the falling of like Mr. Perfect like what like anyone that knows me and that's close to me knows like I've said it before on Lexus parties I'm like I'm replete with flaws because I'm a human being and I'm always trying to do the best I can and if like someone has an issue with me and they want to talk about it one-on-one I will absolutely every time I won't do my best to work that out with them now when things are getting very publicly, that's a whole different business because now it's a dialogue that you can't control and it's people would say whatever they want, but whatever labels. And then you have to

understand the incentive schemes too, which is that they're trying to sell clicks and they're trying to get their angst out and people are resentful or people love you and people hate you. And I think we were talking about this before, like here's, here's my thesis these days. And I've talked to a couple legitimate psychiatrist psychologists and so far it's, you know, three for three. The internet and social media in particular is borderline. Borderline, not bipolar, but borderline. Borderline means literally weaving back and forth across the line from healthy, logical, sane to psychotic.

It's either projecting at you love an adoration or it's projecting hate and vitriol. And you can't control which one it's going to be. going to be. So when you go, when I go online now, I'm like, okay, I'm going on X, which I enjoy. I really like X. I don't know why. Because I like a little bit of a scrap. You get in there and it's like, it's borderline. You're going to get psychotic stuff. You're going to get sane stuff. There's some smart people. There's some dumb people. There's, you know, but that's what you're dealing with. You're dealing with a borderline organism. And, you know, I don't know who said this, but you know, the larger the group, the lower the level of consciousness. Somebody said that,

not me. Just repeating it. So I think when you, when you're outfacing or even if you're just on the internet. You gotta know what you're dealing with. You gotta know. But I would hope that if you or you ever had an issue with me, that you call me up and be like, hey, dude, you need to get your ass down to San Diego. We need to have a conversation. And actually a team guy that I'm friends with. And I end of year had to have a long one, like a long one, where we kind of, and yeah, like words were said and tears were shed. That wasn't supposed to rhyme. But it did. And it fucking hurt. It hurt. It hurt. It hurt hearing that I, I had done some things that like I wish I hadn't.

And it hurt for me, him like not understanding like, dude, we were trying to tell you this and you, you know, and at the end, we like got off the phone and he just go, man, I hope that was for the best. Guess what? He was at my house recently with a son. We're good. We hike. Yeah, there's still some like stuff there, but he's gone through some stuff recently, family-wise,

totally unrelated to the, and it's like, you're close. That's intimacy. That's actually how you bridge a divide. And to me, like the idea that people are gonna like sling stuff as a way to try and work things out. The one person I've worked things out with purely physically, is Johnny Ferrer, his name is funny, we got all these knives, we call him Dagger.

Unfortunately, he's dead, suicided out in 2017. You know, that's one thing that pissed me off about that, right? And when people were like, oh, these kids that, you know, died, listen, anyone wanna go check, like John Eichelberry, Aaron Curry, also named Aaron King, a great graffiti art, same orphan or FN and Johnny Farrer. Three rad kids I grew up with who eventually went to the graffiti game bike messenger like wild ones.

All three of them died end of year. It was fentanyl for John Eicholberry, orphaned, Aaron King, also Curry because he was in a foster home last name. Curry. Stomach cancer. He was in the MoMA, San Francisco MoMA from a street, you know, before he died. And then Johnny Farrer, sad situation. But raddest kid.

when we were kids, one day we were on the bus, I said something about his mom, dumb idea, he's half my size. He goes, well, then come over here. And I'm like, what? And he'd come over and he hit me. Done. Okay, now we scrap.

And honestly, this kid, half my size, he beat me up. He beat me up. And guess what, we're best friends after that. So it used to get handled that way. Nowadays, somebody would pull out of a gun or a knife and like, you know, but the scrap thing used to work on the internet. Name calling is not going to solve it.

In person, the way you do it, you sit down, you have a conversation and it hurts. And I will say now, and for the record, and forever, I'm always open to having private one-on-one conversations with people to resolve things. If the goal is resolution. Or people can like keep pain in their hearts and move forward. You don't always get that opportunity and that's sad to me.

Or you can let that pain out on Twitter. Yeah. Or you can leverage other things to try and get it out. But I don't know. Anyway, the point is this is like I have certain patterns and, me that I'm sure are healthy, certain patterns in me that are unhealthy. Of course, like I'm always trying to reflect. Like, that's just who I am.

I'm always trying to reflect on how I can be better and do better. But again, I am replete, look up the word, folks, with flaws. But I like to think I get certain things done well too. Anyway, I'm going along here on this. But if we ever have an issue, just talk to me first, hit me second. Yeah, you and I were talking about that. We're on the phone, actually, we were talking about the internet. And you told me about that idea of it being a borderline person.

And I brought the definition, clinical definition of a borderline personality disorder. Mental health condition in which a person has long-term patterns of unstable or explosive emotions. Mood swings, extreme love to extreme hate of same person, all good or all bad, inappropriate or intense anger,

chronic emptiness, plunging head first into relationships, then ending them just as quickly. That's the internet. Don't you love it when people tell you they're going to unfollow? You freaking nail it. Yeah, bro. So we have to ask Jonathan, hey, you know, who's out there talking about social media and all that.

Yeah. Have you had them on here? I have not. Yeah. I haven't had them on my podcast either. But like, I mean, I think this social media thing in the internet that we built this thing, this creature, I mean, we're now starting to understand like what's the biology and psychology. What's the psychology of this creature that we interact with constantly and that we're a part of? It's wild.

It is a creature. It has a personality, right? And it's a split personality support. My current girlfriend is a. She's trained in CSN AI from she has an undergrad and a grad degree from Stanford. No, we didn't meet at Stanford. This is like a theory on the internet. No, she worked at Meta after that and now she's, but she teaches AI online.

It's awesome. I don't understand most of it. She's brainiac. She's like, it's a brain. Like the, the internet is a brain. It's a nervous system. It's a neural system. And it has personality and it has dimensionality to it.

And it's kind of interesting for the last 15, years, it was all about neuroscience, everything that's the brain. Now it's all about math and AI. Everyone's talking math and AI. The kids coming up are into it. I'm trying to learn these large language models, what they mean. I mean, I barely understand the top contour. But yeah, these are, it's an organism. It has expression. It has moods. It hallucinates. I know it's my AI has hallucinations and then it gives you the wrong thing. And like, it's wild. And I'm not afraid of it. I'm excited. Like here we go. This is, this might as well be skateboarding punk rock podcasting. Like, it's.

This is the next iteration. Have you tried to AI yourself on one of the, have you said, hey, I'm feeling kind of low energy today. What would Andrew Huberman advise me to do? Have you tried that? I haven't. I mean, I've played around with Chat GPT a little bit. We have an AI thing for our podcast.

My team built it. Some people prefer that. I'm like, I'm not cautious. I'm just, I haven't gotten around to it. I'm a purist. I'm trying to get back to nature. But you haven't just tried what I just said. No.

So I've done it with myself because people say it's so awesome and so I would ask it, let's say a leadership question and What I've found is it's about it's pretty good. It's pretty good But it's not quite there like there's a there's a certain what's the uncanny valley that Rogan talks about all the time? How wouldn't you see a picture or you see AI generated person on a TV? You're like it's not quite right. You know there's something wrong with it so the answer is that it when there's There's like obviously large language model of me. It's going to have all my podcasts and it's got all my books. So it's got a lot of my thoughts that it can capture. And what I notice is it gives a very good answer that definitely sounds like it could be me. And then there's some little thing that you go,

eh, didn't quite nail it. But because it didn't quite nail it, it also is great at giving itself an out, kind of a caveat. So the end of the answer, it says, and by the way, all leadership situations are different. So this particular approach may not be appropriate for the situation that you're in. So if I asked it, if I asked AI Huberman, if I said, hey, I'm feeling low energy today, what should I do? It would say, well, you want to make sure that you have woken up and gotten some good sunlight in your eyes? Perhaps do 30 minutes of zone two cardio.

It would give me a list of things to do. And then it would say at the end, of course the human body is a complex, Organism then these may not be the right answer so it gives itself an out even after it gives information It gives itself an out amazing it's pretty clever amazing. Yeah, I mean My girlfriend's been like trying to encourage me to use more of these tools Right and I'm listening, you know I listen Do you know that and I'm and I'm Slowly moving up to to using them because it just it does sound like it can generate also for generating email responses

You know, I'm not the quick on email. I'm not the quickest on text message, admittedly. You know, I didn't, you know, what's funny, when text messaging first came out, I remember I was a postdoc at Stanford. It was probably around 2007 that, you know, Facebook was cropping up and like, I think I had a flip phone. People still had sidekicks back then. And I remember thinking, like, people are texting. I remember thinking myself, this was my thought that this is, why don't you just call? I thought, this is so dumb. This is so dumb. This is like people that passed notes in class. Who passed notes in class? I was I didn't pass.

If I needed to talk to them, I'd talk to them or I'd wait until after class. Half the time I wasn't in class. But anyway, that was in, go to class, folks. Go to class. Trust me. Trying to make up for lost time is very, very hard. Don't do that. Skateboard after school.

Skateboard before school. Do your thing. Go to class. But I remember thinking this is so stupid and indirect and doesn't make sense. And it felt like whispering. Like I always, you know, my dad, because my dad's old school, you know, this kind of goes back to what we were talking a little bit about before and adopting kind of scripts within your head.

My dad's Argentine, okay? And he's pretty traditional. I grew up with a lot of kind of like hearing about a lot of traditional stuff. My parents are diametrically opposed politically. They end up divorced. You know, they're both happily and other things. Cool.

But, you know, you internalize some of those scripts. And I remember him telling me when I was a kid because I had a friend over a male friend and he whispered to me. And my dad goes, no. He goes, no whispering. You want to say something? You say.

And I was like, okay. Like I can still remember that, right? I don't know if that's good or bad. It sounds good. We all love these stories of parents being very clear, right? But then, you know, sometimes the things we internalize don't serve us well, right? Because what if you can't say it to somebody or it's like overwhelms you to try and say it? Then like, do you not say it?

Like that gets you into trouble. That's not good. And so I think, you know, taking these scripts that exist like these, these like if thens, they're worth challenging. internally. I'm doing a lot of that lately. I do that kind of like, yeah, like, what are the scripts in my head? Like, what do I really believe? Because especially when you start getting feedback that's so different than the way you know yourself and that the people close to you, you know, you say, go like, oh, like, I mean, I would hate the idea that someone would think like I was like unkind even or, you know, or, you know, so I think we have to address these scripts. And so I think that we're talking about

AI. I think with, is AI going to have a, will AI feel proud, guilty, haughty? I don't know. It sounds like it will. I've asked Harper this. My girl, I've like asked her and she's just like, oh yeah, no, it has feelings. It hallucinates like it knows. And it all makes sense to her because she thinks in math, she's math dimensionality. And I'm like, whoa. And it's scary to me, but it's here to stay. There's no question. It's here to stay. I think we're all going to have, I'm told, an AI twin where you'll go, hey, Jocco, or hey, Echo, like, what do I need to do today? And it's going to say, yeah, you think you're tired, but you're not tired. You think you're, you don't need rest, but you need rest.

Like it will know you based on biometrics better than you know you. Now that's scary. But then again, that's the kind of therapist I want, knows me better than I know me, as opposed to me trying to explain things with words. I mean, you know, I've already tried that. I've tried to explain myself with words that didn't go so well. So you were talking about James Hollison. I know you just went out to interview him.

And you actually had sent me a video of him talking about creating a life. It's probably an hour and a half long. But it was very interesting to go through that. And we've kind of touched on some of the stuff that he talks about in that. But one of the words that he taught, one of the things that he talks about is, your vocation. And he breaks down the etymology of vocation, meaning it's,

it's not just your job. It's what you're actually called to do in life. And then you get the things that society is telling you to do, and your family's telling you to do, and the materialistic is telling you to do, and your ego is telling you. So you've got all those things, and they're kind of at war or at odds with this psyche,

this human spirit that you have. And what he says, which is interesting, is you can't outrun the psyche of an unlive life. So if you're not doing what you're truly called to do, that creates problems, that creates issues. And when you're trying to figure out where you're at, when you're trying to think through, do you think you landed your vocation? Do you think you got it done? Oh, man. Well, first of all, Hollis is amazing. And we would normally not travel with our studio to interview someone,

but he wasn't able to travel. And he said exactly that. He talked about a, you know, he said, he framed it an interesting way. He said, you know, he said, I don't think we should immediately applaud people to have a 50-year marriage. And I thought, what? He's been married a very long time. He goes, yeah, because sometimes inside that 50-year marriage,

there's a soul death of one or both people. And as a kid from a divorced home who still would very much like to have marriage and family, working very hard to make the changes in me that would be required to do that, obviously. That sort of broke my heart. And on the other hand, I said, like, what are you talking about? And he's like, listen, in those moments where we're not in stimulus response, we can hear what our soul wants. That's what the psyche and the soul wants, our expression.

And if we don't listen to it, it's the saddest thing of all because there's no way you can go through life without feeling you lived the right life. And so for me, I have both a blessing and a curse. The curse is that I can't help it, but to do what I believe in. And that's the blessing too. So when I was a kid, I'll go through this quickly. I loved tropical fish, and I loved birds. I was obsessed and I spent all day, all day at the aquarium store and at the bird store and just logging them and eventually I got these great sheet dwarf parents and they shit all over my room

and made everyone miserable squawking and it was a disaster. And then I hit puberty and then I fell in love with skateboarding and the stuff the peripheral to that and discovered girls and like it was super exciting. And then punk rock music and then it was biology and neuroscience and psychology and biosecology and then run a lab and those were all. And it was just, I just couldn't and can't stop myself. That's right. What I love, it's like what I, I just bask in it.

And then when it came to podcasting, it was like, Rob Moore, he was going to be my book agent because he does some publicity stuff, but he does the fight with Teddy Atlas podcast. And like this guy, I was telling me, he's a punk rocker. He doesn't even know it. He didn't even know what that is. Like, he drives a Tesla. He parts his hair. He's like real good looking guy.

And his wife's a real squared away life, everything. And I'm like, but he's just got this spirit. He runs triathlons. and he's just got this spirit. He's just like, sense in. I was like, let's do a podcast. He was like, okay, we set it up. It was like, go.

There was never a should we, do we get Mike Blayback from D.C., be the photographer. Bring two guys, you know, Martin Foz and Chris Ray from, they have this video production company. They worked for D.C. They're from down here, kind of Orange County guys, skateboarders. Bring them together. Ian Mackie, Stanford Media, like, get all the guys together, do the podcast. Could not stop us.

Couldn't stop ourselves. And we're just all on the plane ride back last night from D.C. And everyone's like editing and working and doing it. And I'm like, this is the best. This is like getting in my friend Jake Rosenberg's Volvo in high school, taking time off with forged signatures, don't do it, kids, going out to the Reno Nationals for skateboarding. I'm kind of like, do it, kids.

You know, and just doing it and, you know, and having to get someone's credit card because no one was 25. And I don't know, someone had a credit card and staying at Circus, circus, and seeing all the craziness. And it was like, and all of that and just like, we're just doing it. Like, I can't help it. And so I think that it's, I have, I feel like I'm exactly where I need to be right now. And the hard lessons that come with it exactly where I need to be.

This is like very much in your guys' wheelhouse of like extreme ownership and good. It's like, okay, that sucked. That's not how I would want it. That's not how I would have written the story. And also I've learned something. And a really smart person told me this, actually on the way here. He said, you know, like we'd love to think of our life, our life, excuse me, as a bunch of threads where you can follow it and connect the dots. And people have talked about connecting the dots, blah, blah, blah.

Looking back, you're supposed to be able to connect the dots. This was the whole Steve Jobs commencement speech on 2015 at Stanford. He said, you can't connect the dots going forward. I would argue you also can't connect the dots going backward because if you spend too much time doing that, you lose sight of the fact that it's actually just a tangled ball of thread. We have to do is just keep spooling it forward. I mean, I think living in the past is dangerous. You have to reflect on the past. But I'm thinking, okay, podcasts now get information out in shorter form.

We're thinking about how to do that. Maybe use AI to edit podcasts, get them out in shorter form. Think about like, I love the Olympics. I'm obsessed with track and field. Go up to Hayward Field in Oregon. Like, I want everyone to watch the track and field at the Olympics. I don't know why this feels so important to me. But like I miss some like positive stuff about country.

Like these kids are amazing. They're working so hard. And like, I want to go up there. I'm hoping Cam's going to join me. We like watch them. You know, the Olympics. I love Sesame Street. I think each character on Sesame Street is like,

Cookie Monster is dopamine. One cookie. Like cookie monsters, I bounce because cookie could come from any direction, right? It's like he's just pure dopamine. Oscar the Grouch. It's our grouchy circuits, right? Elmo. It's like that, like, sweet or science.

Like, it's all neuroscience. And so I'm like, ah, like we got it like, Sesame Street. I don't know. I don't know what's going to come of it. So it's like an energy. And I'm like, I don't know where things are going to evolve, but I want people to understand their biology, their psychology, and learn. And for me, it just kind of explodes through me and I try and do it with words or podcasting.

So yeah, I feel like I'm exactly where I need to be and I can sense the next thing coming. And I spend a lot of time with Rick Rubin these days. I'm not trying to name drop, but because I, but you just did. Yeah. You know, he's a really close friend. We've been spending a lot of time together for a couple years now, get together, sauna and cold. And I love Rick as a person as a person, as a friend.

friend first, but I mean, he's like the essence of like learning how to tap into your creative energy and sense what's coming. And he's just somebody who can just like wipe the slate clean on. Like he'll answer questions I have about Strummer or the Ramones or whatever. He loves that stuff. But he doesn't really like talking about the past. He's got all these great stories, but he's just like always focused on like, what's the next creative thing? What's the next? So I've been trying to think about that a lot. So yeah, I feel like I'm where I'm supposed to be. And, and it's weird because I think the punishing features of being public facing. Yeah, they suck, but it's like nothing, nothing,

nothing compared to like the like humbleness, the like privilege and like the thing of being able to like share what you love with the world and hopefully they benefit. I mean, that to me is like the ultimate when your love can benefit the world. And I see that. Listen, what you do. I listen to your podcast with Ferris, with Rogan.

Like I'm a fan. So for me, like here, like I'm also fanning out. Hang out with Armstrong. He comes over. He's like, oh, good morning. And I'm like, Tim Armstrong's in my house. You know? I listen to him every day in my life.

You know, sit down. He left a guitar at my house. So every once in a while he'll pick it up and he'll just do it in a wall. You know? So, yeah. I mean, but it wasn't always like that. And I want to be clear because it all sounds like magic. There were many years where I was just like, I felt disconnected.

I was disconnected. When I left the skateboarding community, I was very alone. And the academic community, I made eventually great friends there, but I didn't feel the same thing. And then podcasting, it's brought it back. So I would say to anyone, like, there are years where you have to go out and alone and kind of lonely, hopefully not alone alone, where it's lonely. Like finding your people is hard. And I think that's part of the reason why people are online. They're trying to find their crew.

Like my sister, I always said, you've always been a pack animal, and I'm like really crewed up these days. Men and when I have female friends too. I have female friends. And they're like great sources of feedback and fun. And I think that it's one of these things where we, you know, we sometimes think like it all just like pops up and you're supposed to just, you have to build these things. And I don't know.

If anything can come through it, like the spirit that you guys put out there is like, you can do this. And it starts with getting your ass out of bed in the morning and doing a workout when you don't want to. And then you go build the next thing and build the next thing. Like I think people sometimes forget you have like four kids, right? I do have four kids. You're steadily married with four kids. You know, well, I only have one left that's, you know, in the, that I'm, that's a dependent, they say.

Yeah, but that's a huge accomplishment. Yeah, yeah, it's awesome. Yeah. And I know you, you're, you're a dad too. Yes. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah.

And you guys train and you do it. You know, I think that we need more examples of this, you know, and I don't know. So yeah, I think I'm where I'm supposed to be. But, you know, listen, late. lately I text you every once in a while and say should we should we do it should we run for office listen there's there's there's um Rogan Haynes and then there's you know willing Huberman doesn't have the same ring to it I think it's pretty good I'll run with you as long as long as you're president yeah bulldogs grazing on the white house lawn you realize that

we can upset some people by saying this right I'm one of them very possible you'd be great you'd be great and I know that's why people keep tapping you for it wasn't said it. No. No. Yeah, I really don't like politics. And, you know, my standard answer is if things got bad enough, of course, but people, people's ideas of what's bad enough. Most people's idea of what's bad enough is not close to what bad enough is in my book. Yeah. I think people, I know this, this conversation is not a pleasant one for you. But I think the reason people bring it up is people feel your steadiness. And they feel your integrity. And those are felt things. Well, like I said, hopefully there's not a civil war or some kind of crazy. You know, people, it is bad. They'll tell me, I like, you have an iPhone right now and power and food and like,

everything's going good. So everything's going good. We're on track. I can keep away from that world. But we don't want you to miss your morning, sir, for your morning workout in time with your family. And talk about people, you know, know, trying to parse your life. I mean, you know, that time when you, like, borrowed an extra stick of gum from the

kid sitting next to you and didn't give it back, like, that's coming back to get you, Jock. Because that person, if they're mad, they won't talk about the stick of gum. They'll say some other, you know, they'll say some other accusation. And you're like, oh, okay, awesome. Who is this? What's going on? So it'll get wild real quick. I fantasize these days in a real way.

I mean, we have obviously a big device. someone came up with this name, not me, but I think that there should be a call for league of reasonable people. Like not a tightrope in the middle, you know, but like a league of reasonable people that explore things issue by issue, that really parse them as carefully as one can in the time allotted, and then make the best decision they can for the greatest number of people. And I don't know if that's just a pipe dream,

but God willing Like there will be To emerge out of what's happened right now A league of reasonable people But not as long as the internet is borderline It's gonna require some other Mode of communication and building I don't know I don't have any genius ideas

I've brushed up against it I talked about it on our podcast one time It's just like normal people Hey this is the party of normal people I'm not crazy I'm not flying off the handle I'm just a normal person. I have a normal job and I want to live a normal life.

And that's most people, by the way. The people that comment on the internet is a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of people. And they're not normal. People that are normal are focused on doing a good job at their place of work. They're taking care of their kids. They're taking care of their spouse. They're trying to save up for a new car. They're trying to put an addition on their house.

They're trying to save up a down payment. That's normal people. And that's most people. That's most people. And another thing that happens is, oh, you have one idea that I don't like. Therefore, I hate you and I hate all your ideas. And that's what's been very interesting right now is because you're starting to get all this muddled world where things are starting to come back. And if you go far enough to the left, you actually become right.

And if you go far enough to the right, you become left. And so now those people are starting to get confused and they're looking around. They're not knowing what they're protesting about. They don't know whose side they're on. Listen, the solution was given to us years ago in none other than the Ramones. Joey Johnny, Dede and Tommy, right? Joey left, very left-wing Democrat. Okay.

Johnny stated, self-stated Republican, right-wing. They hated each other. Rick validated these stories because he knew them well. they toured together. They spoke through an intermediary. One guy took, I won't say the direction. You can watch the documentary. It's awesome.

One guy took the other guy's girlfriend and married her and then she would tour with them and they all managed to stay in the same van. Now the drummers turned over all the time and the best one, of course, was Dedy because when they were inducted into the rock and roll Hall of Fame, you ever see his acceptance speech? He gets up there and they're like one person.

So I think Johnny thanked President Reagan and the Republican Party. I think Joey thanked, I don't know, some left, I think the world or something. I don't know, check it with Joe. And Didi gets up there and he goes, I thank me. He thanks himself.

He thanks himself. He's just like he could care less about any of that stuff, right? Sadly, he died of a drug overdose a couple weeks later. But Joey, Johnny, Dedy, and Tommy got it. If they could tour in a van together and play music together and even have this interpersonal. dynamic together and have it an intermediary help them communicate. That's proximity. Okay, if they can do that, then I like to think that humans can get along just by

diametrically opposed views. Yeah, it's like a talking about the left becoming the right and the right becoming the left. I just was reading a quote from John Leiden and I can't get it. You know, Johnny Rotten from the sex pistols. The original, one of the original punk rockers. And he basically said it's very strange now that the most punk rock you could be is to be a conservative because they're the ones that are actually against authoritarian government now. So you get this role reversal. And actually, if you go back and look at California Uber Alas, right, by the Dead Kennedys. And what's that song about? It's anti-authoritarian, but the authoritarian that they're talking about is Governor

Jerry Moonbeam Brown. Is that right? Oh, yeah. I remember when Jello Biafra from the Dead Kennies, he like ran for governor. Yeah, he did. He did run. But when you read that song or you read the lyrics that song,

it's, hey, there's this authoritarian government. Well, the authoritarian government he's talking about is Governor Brown by name. You know, that's what he's saying. You're trying to impose these things on us. And it's really funny. It's really funny to imagine that he wrote that in 1982 or something like that. And it's talking about basically, political correctness in 1982.

Like, oh, you're going to come at me with your swayed pants. He's going off on these freaking tyrannical liberals that are going crazy with the government. And so it's very interesting that you see the way the tides turn and the way things have shifted. It's very bizarre. I actually still have, I have a lot of hope. I have a lot of hope because, like I said, I work with companies all over this country. and I work with energy companies, oil companies, financial companies, insurance, every company. And you go and talk to those people?

They want to know, hey, how can we help with leadership? How can I do this? How can we do better next quarter? How can we help our customers more? That's what people are thinking about. They're not thinking about what these crazy people online are talking about all the time. So I think eventually that some of this stuff will burn out. And I think there's burnout right now.

I think there's a little bit of burnout. It feels like it. on on on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook people are like dude I mean how can you consume all that information really like at the end of the day how many comments are you going to read when you realize that you're going to be there's going to be some extreme left there's going to be some extreme right there's going to be a bunch of bell curve and that's that and before you go look how much time did I spend doing this if you spent 20 minutes imagine spending 20 minutes like reading comments you're and what could you've done 20 minutes get a guitar

and learn to play guitar. If you play guitar for 20 minutes a day in a year, you're going to be able to play guitar actually quite well. Or do what Hollis said. Sit there, close your eyes, listen to what comes up, and resist the temptation to get up and move,

and you'll learn something really valuable by taking yourself out of stimulus in response. You'll learn something about who you are and what you want to put into the world. And, you know, I've only done it once since he suggested doing this and it was this morning. And it's like, wild.

Like this, you know, I couldn't agree more. But this is why, Chaco, we want you to run. But no, I get it. I understand that the moment you step into the political fray, it's a very different picture. It's a, you know, it's a 12-hour news cycle. It's the whole thing.

But I think people do want, they also want to feel trust. They want to feel confidence in who's out there for them. Yeah. We're going to keep pushing. It's going to be an interesting election in 2024. Oh, boy. Yeah. And I think we're rolling towards it right now. I mean, I think that's what people are feeling. It's kind of like, what's going to happen? But, you know, I'm still somewhat optimistic. Have to be. Yeah, I mean, late 60s, early 70s, there was people getting murdered.

There was bombs all the time. Bombings all the time in America. Like, there was a major issues. and we made it through that. Obviously, we made it through the Civil War. So hopefully we can make it through the 2024 election. I think we'll make it through the election. I think the question is what happens after that. But listen, I'm not very versed in politics.

I have friends on both sides. Like I said, I grew up in a split political home. You know, I've lived in Berkeley, California, San Francisco, San Diego, you know, Los Angeles, you know, never lived east of Interstate 5, at least not far east of interstate. You always laughed at it. I've been to the East Coast, though. Love it.

But I think that, yeah, I mean, you don't really know humans, I think, until you have friends from both sides. I mean, I've always had a huge mix of friends with different political leanings. And I don't know. You don't hate them now? No. I love people. This is what's so, like, this is the thing.

Like, it's my heart is what gets me in trouble because I love people I want to understand. And then I think then, you know, empathy is a weird thing, right? I'm not saying I'm the most empathic person in the world. Certainly not. But I think in order to empathize, we actually have to leave ourselves by definition, then come back. And, you know, I think, you know, earlier we were talking about relationships. I think the best advice I ever heard on relationships, that I'm really trying to internalize

more and more is from Paul Conti, who has been on my podcast. And I think it was on Whitney Cummings podcast. He said, you know, if you had to write down the top one. hundred things that are important for relationships of all kinds. It's self-care communication that just repeat 50 times. You know, that's some jaco simplicity of directness. That's definitely simple. You know, and I think he's right. And I think that, you know, we don't get taught how to do all that. Do you want me to make that more right? Yeah. Self-care, I'm not 100% sure because I'd have to get some kind of definition. But let me tell you about communication. You want to talk about how to help a relationship

with communication, 97% of the part of communication that you need to be good at is listening to what the other person's on. Because everybody thinks that good communication means I'm going to talk a bunch. Like, oh, I got a beef with my wife.

I'm going to go talk to her. So I go, we sit down, I talk 97% of the time, I walk away thinking I had a great conversation, I really prove my point, my wife's ready to file for divorce. You know what I mean? Like, that's what happens.

So if you want to communicate, Well shut your mouth and listen to what other people say by the way that also includes political discussions So if you've got some some opinion that I don't agree with I shouldn't try to argue against you. I should listen to what you have to say so I understand where you're coming from Otherwise anytime I open my mouth is pointless because I don't even understand where you're coming from the first place So everyone could do a lot better if they shut their mouths and listen more which is a weird thing for a person that has a podcast to say Yes because well I'm sitting here talking well but you're giving valuable information. I think, you know, I think one of the hallmarks, one of the real challenges of being a person,

being an adult or a kid is you have to figure out, well, let me put it differently. I think 50% of having a self is standing your ground around what you know to believe, know and believe to be right and true. Like, yes, this, know this. I'm not this, I'm that. You're this, you're that. Or this was A, not B, and standing your ground. And we place tremendous value on that. The other half is hearing what's coming in and going, oh, whoa, okay, maybe. Or whoa, okay, you're right. Okay. And the thing is, is we tend to place enormous value on the former, not the latter. But we also have to be careful because we need to be semi-permeable to input. We can't take everything that comes our way and say,

oh, yeah, you know, you're putting this label on this or me or you or whatever or them and you go, oh, yeah, right. I mean, you can't be wishy-washy. You need to be semi-permeable. And the challenge is knowing when to stand your ground and when to take in. And I think that's one of the major challenges of being human. Yeah, I think that people get caught up on a lot of little things that don't matter and stand on, stand their ground on a bunch of things that they have no business standing their ground on. And then, and there's a few core beliefs.

Like you said half stand your ground, half be flexible. For me, it's like, let's say there's a hundred things that I believe right now. There's like seven of them. They're not moving. Seven of them. So that's 7%, not 50%. There's seven things that I believe that, okay, you're not going to be able to change. It's going to be very, very, very difficult for you to change my mind on these seven things or five things or whatever that number is.

It's a very small number. This is to me a strategic thinking, right? I think of like, okay, where am I at as a human? There's big, giant things, individual freedom. Like, I believe that people should have individual freedom. It's going to be really hard for anyone to convince me that taking away people's freedoms is a good idea. It's going to be really difficult. Now, are there a million little details in other worlds and other aspects of life that I sort of have a, what is that, a softly held belief on?

Sure. But I can change my mind pretty easily about a bunch of stuff. There's probably seven things that I'm like, yeah, I'm not changing my mind on that. not without some significant, really strong evidence articulated really well, backed up by some kind of historical understanding of the world. Because most things, they're going to change. They're going to change and they don't matter. And that's why I think it's people tie themselves. And actually, that's another thing that Hollis talks about.

He talks about the fact that these people that are ideologues, ideologues, they're caught, they basically, they lose their soul because they surround themselves with, I'm a left wing person, I'm a right wing person, that's who I am. It's not who you are. That's not who you are. But wait, hold on. You're going to tell me that this whole belief system, you adopted the whole thing. Like you hit from top to bottom and just said, yep, everything that is left wing or everything that is right wing, I buy it all. Like who does that? That's crazy. Who does that? The answer should be, no one. Everyone should say, yeah, you know what?

I don't believe in, what, I don't believe in welfare. Because I'm so right wing that, okay, well, hey, what about this person over here who, single mom, she lost her job, she's trying to find a new job, but she can't find one right now, and she got four kids to feed. Do you think she should get nothing? Well, you see what I'm saying? Yeah. To just say, oh, I'm an ideologue, and this is what I believe, and that's it.

It's just a dumb place to come from and yet we do it all the time and then you throw your opinion out about something You're gonna get attacked from all different directions. It's been it's actually I had Robert F Kennedy Jr on He that's a that's a they're having a hard time pinning him down because who who's gonna who's gonna vote for him I'm not sure because if you're the most left-wing person and the most passionate thing that you're passionate about is Is the environment? Cool. He's your number one vote. But at the same time, you're anti-Israel.

Okay. Then you, you, or sorry, if you're, yeah, if you're anti-Israel, you're not going to vote for him. So here's, he doesn't make sense to anyone. And they're trying to figure, because he doesn't fit in one, one particular view. He's very hard to pin down. And so what's happening to him is he's getting attacked from both sides. And guess what? I don't agree with everything that guy says at all.

Sure. How could you? How could you? I don't agree with everything that anybody says at all because I'm a human. And I have an open mind about, like I said, 96 of the things that I'm thinking right now, I have an open mind about and I'm ready to say, yeah, you know what? I can see where that makes sense. And you know what? At least we could try it for a while.

And if it starts to backfire, we can pull it back and we can make a different decision. That's okay. So people get really into what they think they know and you actually don't know anything and I don't know anything. There's very few things. I always have a little trick question that I ask when I'm working with the company. I'll say, how often do you think I have to admit that I'm wrong? And people will say all the time, you know, because I talk about humility. It's important to be humble.

And I'll say, so how often do you think I have to admit that I'm wrong? And people say, you probably do it. I say, how many times a week? And people will say, probably 12, you know, seven. No, no, no, no, probably even more than that. They'll have these little arguments amongst the crowd. And then I'll tell them the truth, which is I rarely almost never have to admit that I'm wrong. And the reason that I rarely almost never have to admit that I'm wrong is I never go out there and say, hey, I'm 100% right about this.

I don't go out there and say that because I don't believe it. There's very few things that I feel so strongly about that I say, hey, I 100% know this thing that I'm about to say is the truth. very few things do I feel that way about. And yet, you can go on the internet and meet thousands and thousands of people that actually think they know everything 100% better than anybody else. It's very disturbing. It's super disturbing. I mean, it's super disturbing.

And I think that we've been talking about politics despite, you know, it always being a third rail topic. Like, I have to believe that people want to be reasonable. I think that there's so much projection on to like who the candidates are that I think we forget who they're supposed to serve and what it means, you know, to be on one side or the other. I'm very bothered to the point of being like legitimately concerned, not enough to run unless you run.

I made this joke actually. at the end of the Time magazine interview, they were like, so what's next? And I'm thinking to myself, well, I got to record this episode this week. Like I said, like one mile, one week horizon, rather. But I just, I don't know why I blurted it out. You know, I just said like, I don't know, maybe I'll run for office. Like I think that's when the heat started, actually. I mean, the heat would have come anyway.

But that's like when some of the heat started. And, you know, I'm not flip about that. I mean, the decision to be a, you know, a politician is a serious one, right? I mean, you're making decisions on behalf of millions and millions of people. And there's rarely any recourse for four years or so. So I just, I don't know. I like to think that there's some young girl or guy out there who's like, I'm going to get this someday.

Like they're like on it. They want that slot and they want to do it for the right reasons. That's the hope. I was going to say because most people that have that attitude, you do not want them in charge of anything. Sure, but at least, right, I agree. I mean, not for their own ego reasons, but that they really see an opportunity to do better and to serve, you know, and it might require. And then you wonder if someone like that can actually win.

At this current time, it'd be very difficult for a person with a good heart and a humble attitude to make enough noise to actually move the needle. It would be very difficult. Yeah. Well, this country has a history of celebrities running and doing well. I don't know. Like is Taylor Swift going to run? It just seems like everyone loves her. She does this amazing tour.

She certainly has the stamina. That tour schedule. I couldn't tell you one Taylor Swift song. Sorry. It's not my proclivity. But that tour schedule. You think you were taking heavies before. Stand by.

Oh, I think she's amazing. I think she's amazing. I just couldn't tell you one song. I'm just going to be quiet. I'm in trouble now? About Tatee. Oh, sorry. Okay.

She's super impressive, but the tour the tour schedule is incredible. It would bury 10 people. Somehow she pulls out. I heard there's some workout. Have you heard this workout where you like do her however long her concert is, you do some kind of exercise like what she does? And apparently it's quite challenging. Echo Charles? I've never heard of that workout.

Okay. Yeah, just the fear, the mere physical part. Yeah, the physical part of it. Yeah. No, I like some, you know, not. on quote unquote punk rock stuff. I have some friends that are very into Taylor Swift. Peter Attia, super into potential.

There you go. We call them Swifties. Yeah, Swifties. But the mother daughter combo, but I was talking to the mom, whom I'm good friends with. And so it is like she has just nailed relatable emotions and feelings and eras

that girls go through and women go through. And she just nailed it because she's been doing it through that. in her life. So she's just captured like here's what and so as a girl grows up into a woman, she can kind of track emotionally what's being felt and it just she just nails it apparently. Yeah, apparently. Yeah. I mean I mean the success of the tour, the success of the tour, the enthusiasm and it seems like the universal love right like there are these people who are just universally loved. It's they're rare but I mean,

I'm sure she catches flack, but if she does, I'm not aware of any of those stories, right? You know, it seems like she's just revered and it's awesome. I think the, yeah, the just the, right, the sheer physical stamina, the mental stamina, that, you know, obviously she's got a great team around her, but like you can't, you can't just kind of imagine that stuff into existence. So who knows? Maybe she'll run. Well, she's also an epic songwriter.

Mm-hmm. And that's been proven over and over again. But she taps into, you know, that thread of emotion that people have grown up, especially girls and women that they get and she's nailing it. So props to T-T-T-T-T-I-T. I don't know, Taylor, Taylor Swift. Yeah, is that her name? I don't know.

I just kind of thought of it. Yeah, you made that up. Hey, I apologize. There's something you were talking about when you were. Okay, so before you had the podcast, you were kind of a normal dude. Out there grinding still normal issue you well your life was more normal my life was definitely more normal It was me and the girlfriend and the dogs and And I still worked out read all that there's something that Hollis talks about and it's authority and if you're living your life for authority

For an external so authority is something that's external and it's usually it's large and external that's the way he describes it So this is when you're living your life to for in your case academia right you're living your life according to this external authority also according to the external authority of you've got to pay rent you've got to pay taxes like there's a bunch of external things that you're you're living your life for and then you kind of found your vocation I would say in being able to teach a bunch of people kind of wide and deep and broad millions of people that's pretty awesome when you think think of someone that's trapped or they're and what he says is if you're serving these external

authorities it's at some point look they can be aligned right now I'd say they're pretty aligned for you you're going to be able to serve kind of both masters both the external things and your own internal did you stumble into that because it kind of seems like you stumbled into it yeah so I that I've been cursing a bit more than usual during today's podcast forgive me. We'll need an explicit lyrics warning, which by the way, parents, that made every kid want to buy it more.

That's true. Yeah. And that's like when they put the warnings on podcast episodes. What was her name? Tipper Gore. Tipper Gore, yeah. Tipper Gore, once again,

like she was the authoritarian figure that was trying to stop free speech in music, right? And that was Tiber. That was Al Gore's, you know, wife. So that's kind of, interesting. Yeah. So it remind me the question again. Sorry I took his off. So you kind of like, oh yeah. Did I? Yeah. So I was about to swear. I'll try not to swear. So I became a scientist on purpose. I became a podcast kind of podcast or kind of on accident. In the sense, I really wanted

to get the information out to a broader range of people. And Instagram was limiting. I still use Instagram quite a bit as a platform, but podcast just made sense. In some ways, though, it was long before that I started teaching. So when I was a kid, I would go to these fish stores. I was obsessed with fish and birds, as I mentioned before. It was a real nerd, like a real nerd. And I would even come into class on Monday sometimes and ask if I could give a lecture about what I learned over the weekend.

I did one on medieval weapons. I was obsessed with catapults. It's like the coolest thing. And I was obsessed with fish and that kind of thing. I was at a carnival with my mom when I was a kid, and they had the little fish, they had the little bowls with goldfish in them, and you'd throw the ping pong ball, and if you got the ping pong ball, and you'd get it. And I was there, and I saw people doing this, and I was just mortified because they'd take the fish home, and I knew that those fish were going to die if the

water wasn't declorinated. So my mom, who's like a real do-gooder, you know, really, like my mom just as, like a one second aside was the kind of person where when we grew up, there was a homeless guy in our town. They called him the show. Sheep Man because he wore these sheep skins even on really hot days. Like years later, I found out not him, but she would put homeless people, she would get them hotel rooms and just pay. Like, you know, like she's that kind of person. And so I told her about the declor. She was mortified that the fish would die.

And so we went and bought a bunch of declor. And I would then go to these things. And I would give you a bottle of declor to declorinate the water when you won your fish. But there was a cost. And you had to listen to me, talk to you about declorinating and taking care of. A fish. So it kind of started early on, like there was a purpose, and I couldn't help myself. And who knows, I have a little bit of a grunting tick that takes over if I'm tired. And when I was a kid, I had a little bit of a thing that. And my dad used to say, hey, he used to squeeze my hand.

We were in D.C. once on a family trip, and I stopped this. I used to hide in the closet. It was a little bit of probably like early Tourette's kind of like, and it would give a lot of relief. Eventually passed. A lot of young people have this. It's more prominent in boys. and then as the frontal brain circuitry develops, it suppresses it. Because basically that's what the frontal brain does is suppress these reflexes. So fortunately, they didn't like throw me on medication.

There wasn't even medication for it back then. But in any case, for me to like get out what I feel inside or for me skateboarding and falling and slamming, I'd feel like, oh, I feel okay now. Or boxing, not a sport I was any good at or that I recommend if you want to keep your brain unless you're a professional.

Great sport. I love it as a spectator. But I remember I'd get hit sometimes. We're like, oh, I can think clearly now. You know, just kind of like shake off the cobwebs or like a good, hard slam skateboarding. Like, oh, now the day starts. You know, there's something to it. But actually, that's a reminder earlier.

You asked me about the difference between was it OCD and this would be appropriate time because Tourette's has a little bit of a OCD-ish component to it. You asked about OCD versus neurotic. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because I was the same kid who would organize his stuffed animals all in a row. and have a perfect wake up in the morning, get them all in a row, and feel I could go about my day.

The difference is with true obsessive-compulsive disorder. The, well, the obsessions are mental. Obviously, the compulsions are the action. The engagement in the compulsion doesn't, sadly, doesn't serve to reduce the obsession. It just exacerbates it. So, like, a hand-washing compulsion, like, it's not like, oh, like,

I'm obsessing about washing my hands. I wash them, I feel some relief. It's, you wash them, and then it somehow trips a reward circuit or something we don't really know yet, that then makes you want to do it more. So it's like an upward spiral or downward spiral, depending on how you think about it,

of that the behavior makes the obsession worse, not better. It's a dreadfully difficult thing for people, but there are decent medications now that can help and some behavioral stuff and some medication-based stuff. And that's OCD. And then is it a spectrum, essentially? Like, you know, some people have it worse than others? Definitely.

you that, okay, so when I was young, I used to count the steps, you know, when I want to go upstairs, and it would always be by seven. I don't know why. I always felt like I had to do that. Like Joey Ramon. The Joey Ramon had OCD. He would go up and down the stairs. He'd have to count seven. They were always late to tour spots. This was like discussed in the documentary. Oh, for. So wait. What do you mean by seven? Yeah, so I wouldn't go up and down the stairs.

Yeah, exactly right. And then I'd feel kind of off put if they didn't land on seven. It's like something bad was going to happen. Yeah, nothing specific, but something bad, exactly right. And so in high school or might have been junior, yeah, high school time, I remember skipping some stairs so the seven would land perfect at certain places, you know? You know, it's not totally uncommon. It's actually really good that you're talking about this because a lot of people have these internal obsessions and knock on wood compulsions and things like, step on a crack, break your mother's back, that kind of thing. Like, you hear that in childhood and you're like, oh, you know, and like, um,

It's when it starts to diminish life that it can become problematic. And it can get out of control. Actually, there's a guy at Harvard who does beautiful work on motor patterns. His name is Ben Soelowski. Mispronouncing last name, a Hungarian guy. And he shows these videos of these rats learning to press levers and turn on lights and stuff in a cage in order to access a reward. So you see the rats and they're like press and it's like random.

And then they go, they get the reward like a, then they try and reconstruct what they did. And then over time, you see these rats get like wicked fast at doing these. Boom, boom, boom, boom. And you see they're hitting the levers in the right thing. They're turning on the light and off the light and then they get the thing. But they also are introducing these other behaviors, like picking up the leg and doing a little circle over here that has nothing to do with the actual requirements to get the reward. And now think about baseball pitchers. They have this whole elaborate repertoire of things that they do every single time, very few of which are actually involved in the throwing of the ball,

is just we develop these kind of, these are behavioral superstitions. And they become these fixed action patterns. We have a lot of these. There's some nice studies done. I think it was at Caltech where they put video cameras on the parking lot and they looked at people's where they parked, their trajectories getting in and out of the car,

and then they put lines over it like they were a rat in an experiment, but these are humans. And then they just show like six months of behavioral data. And people are just like robots, robots. with like respect to like the trajectories they take through the parking lot. They might pause every once in a while and say hi to somebody. Like we get into these fixed action patterns. So a lot of what we do is subconscious that way.

But I would say unless it becomes a problem, you know, then it's then it's probably okay. If the best thing to do to get over that is actually literally to do what we're doing here is like to talk about with somebody. Like if you think you're crazy because you do this, you talk to someone like, yeah, I kind of do that too. Yeah. Yeah. So that so you and that's what it, it always felt that way to do it. me like it was a superstition when I'd stop and think about it, not necessarily that there's something up with my brain or nothing like that. I didn't, I don't think I know what knew what OCD was

at the time. But yeah, when you talk about it, it's kind of like, oh, wait, why do I believe that? And then you connect the dots, but then you still feel that it's working. Yeah. You know, feel it's working. And listen, I have, I have some superstitions. I'm a logical person, but I have some superstitions. And the one, the one thing you can do is just challenge it. Like, if you really want to break it, it's just like classic, you know, behavioral desensization. You just You count to five, not seven. Or you just say, no, not today. And then, you know, hopefully you don't get into a car accident.

Yeah. And that's the problem is that oftentimes people are tense and then things happen. I think, or you stay busy with other things. The mind wants to be occupied. I think it really does. And some people have a greater kind of hunger for thinking than others. This is that underlying tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. This is why I think doing is so valuable.

Is why I think, I'm trying to get to the 430 program. I'm starting to get up earlier and earlier. because getting into a mode of forward center of mass forward action I think does set you into a mode of doing rather than ruminating. I mean, there is something really deadly to the mind about scrolling in bed in the dark. Not just for the lack of sunlight, all the things you miss out on, but it does something. I don't know what it is, but it ain't good. My mind can scroll with no screen. I mean, my mind will just be scrolling, thinking about stuff.

My wife has been doing this, which she's been super stoked on. Falling asleep. No, look, let's be, I'll be real honest just between us. My wife doesn't have a lot of trouble falling asleep. This girl can sleep. She can put it down. That's great. Yeah, she's great.

But she told me the other day, she's been doing this thing where you count down from 20, you count each breath. And if you mess it up, then you start again at 20. And it was. So I tried it. And I'm like getting down to one and just having to restart the thing. I think again of course you are or I'm just or I'm just making it to 19 I'm like 20 and then I'm like thinking about some other stuff Go back just think about something else so I I kind of can get in it's it's not fun it's not fun

To do mental scrolling it feels like a roller coaster so for me if if I'm like trying to fall asleep And you are just it's like I'm going from one thought to another thought to another thought to another thought to another thought to another thought and feel like I'm on a roll across in my head. But the reason I thought of this is because you said your mind likes to be occupied. Well, what my wife had read was you need to make your mind think about a specific thing and it's easier for it to let go and fall asleep. That's why I wouldn't a little kid. Remember this count sheep, whatever?

Remember this? Little myth your parents told you. It's actually kind of true. A lot of falling asleep is stopping to pay attention to your body position. It's about kind of just going into your mind and then your thoughts become fractures. and then you fall asleep. We've put out these scripts. I've put them out on audio and video.

Non-sleep deep rest, which is just my, and people will say, well, that's Yoga Nidra. Yoga Nidra has intentions and things. Non-sleep deep rest is like a body scan, long exhale, breathing and some other stuff. And we put them out as audio scripts because a lot of people don't want to look at a YouTube or something. But in any case, 10 minute and 20-minute one.

And they let you really, they teach you to move away from thinking and doing to being, and feeling. Now, that's about not sleeping. That's about staying awake while perfectly still. I'm really interested in this state of mind that is being completely still with the mind actively alert, mostly because Carl Diceroth, who was a podcast, it was on my podcast, he was probably one of the best neuroscientists that ever lived, bioengineer, he's also a psychiatrist, he's got five kids, he's a hyperfunctional guy, said that his practice every night after his kids went to sleep. Now they're older, they put themselves to sleep, is to sit in a chair and,

close his eyes and deliberately think in full sentences, complete sentences. It's hard. And then Rick, Rubin, who I spend, again, a fair amount of time with, oftentimes will go into, like, lying down or seated, you know, position and just kind of like keep, but mind very active thinking while still. He's also big on walking and that kind of thing. It's interesting how Rick has kind of come to embody like the mystique of creativity. You know, there's so much mystique around seal teams and around spec ops, like, because it's like, how do they, do what they do. And it's like, well, they're not really going to tell you, but you can keep wondering, but that's mystique. That's what's cool. I remember the old commercials for it, like

footsteps on the beach, and they disappear. That was the coolest one, the coolest commercial. I don't know how it did with recruiting, but it was a cool commercial. And then with Rick, it's sort of like, how does this guy access this? And I think he has his own protocols. He's not like just haphazard about it. He spends time in the sun walking. He's talked about some of this, you know, still while thinking. Diceroth does that too. Einstein was known for that walking and stopping,

closing his eyes and thinking. So something about body still mind active. It seems like it's a good, good place to be. Yeah, you gotta get control of that brain sometimes, man. And I'll be the first one to tell you, like sometimes mine.

I like to be really tired at the end of the day. Yeah, you mentioned that when you came on my pocket side. Yeah. Like if I'm, like if I get to train hard, man, I just my head hits the pillow I'm out did you roll this morning I did not roll this morning but you train this morning yeah definitely but like yesterday freaking had really good

workout really good training and like I just fall asleep in a millisecond like your head hits a pillow but if there's if you don't get if I don't get that that physical like let it out get it out then it's going to be then my mind can start thinking about things and also if my mind start thinking about things even if I'm kind of tired but if there's something going on in brain it's like yeah that'll that'll that'll tick many hours away earlier you asked me whether I feel like I'm in the right groove my career I was rude I didn't ask you like like you've been at this a while mm a little while now how long you've had the podcast since 2008 yeah okay nine that's good good good not 15

awesome and you have the other stuff dialed your kids are mostly out of the house except one you're happily married you got great businesses like do are you thinking specific evolution. I know you have the show or the movie the warrior kid. Yeah, the warrior kid. Yeah. Yeah. He didn't ask me to plug this folks. I'm actually just interested in stuff. There's it there's no see. Earlier before we started we were talking about how like there are all these theories about how podcasters have these like secret commercial relationships. So we won't talk about but like because we don't want to like exacerbate the conspiracy theory. But um, which will be kind of fun. Which we just did even more by saying. Yeah. I'll say. Listen. But,

but this is this is cool. You, you might. mentioned this the other day and I'm excited and I retweeted about it, re-xed about it. Way of the Warrior Kid is going to be a movie. Yep, movie. Yeah. Awesome. With Chris Pratt. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's epic. He was in zero dark 30. He was in zero dark 30 and he was in terminal list and he was in a bunch of other stuff. I mean, he's Star Lord, Jurassic Park. Like he's very popular. Yeah. He's popular.

I mean, he's, he's great too. It's awesome. Super, super cool, super stoked. And, you know, that is that book. I've gotten such the best feedback of everything I've done in my life. The letters and emails and handwritten notes from kids and from parents that did their first pull up, got an A on the math test, memorized the presidents, like all the things that are in that book that are going to help them so many different ways. There's nothing more gratifying and feels better than helping out all these people.

and also giving kids a framework. You know, there's a, there's a, there's a, one of the messages in the book is like, you need a code to live by. It's everything I just talked about. Oh, there's a couple things that I, there's a few things that these aren't going to change. That's like the code you have as a human. And part of that book is the kid writes his own warrior kid code. And once you have a code that you live by, it really can give you some direction in which

way you're going to go. And it's going to let you make so many decisions. That's going to point you in the right direction and lead you to a better path. So to have that opportunity and actually the guy that I had I have I probably had four or five people Reach out to me over the years that wanted to turn it into a movie finally this guy named Ben Everard He reached out to me and what had happened to him was he Walked into his kid's room in the morning, you know 11 year old kid and the kid was doing push-ups and he says what are you doing? He's like I'm gonna be a warrior kid. What's that? Shows him the book and And he's a movie producer and he said, oh my gosh, if this book can have this impact on my kid, what is it?

So he reads it. He's like, oh, we've got to turn this into a movie. So that was kind of what got the ball rolling this time eventually, you know, got the screenplay written by a really good screenwriter, which is a totally different skill set. I've been joking about this a lot. My initial thought was, oh, we need a screenplay. I was like, well, obviously, I'll just write a screenplay. Obviously, I wrote the book. Who could do a better job than me?

But it's a different skill set and what I would have done is I would have taken the books and turned them into the movie There's like one for one transfer. You know, it would have just been like that But movies are different than books They land different they it's it's audio it's visual a book is a book you're very it's it's personal right So got this great screenwriter named Will Staples and he just took this book and turned it into a book and to an awesome screenplay. And eventually Chris Pratt, we were working on some other things

with Chris Pratt, Origin USA and Jock Fuel and he's been using Jock Fuel for a long time and he's a patriotic guy, supports Origin USA. And so we were talking about doing things, partners, partnerships on that end. And he ended up getting a copy of the script and Reddit was like, I wanna do this. And so it just very,

Very fortunate and he's a great guy and we got a great team. There's a guy named Mick G who's an awesome director. So yeah, we've had a, we're, we're, it's awesome, man. It's awesome. It's great. It's going to, it's going to help a lot of parents and kids get on the right path in life and learn about hard work and learn about discipline and learn about respect and learn about empathy and learn about how to learn.

And it's, I'm very, very lucky, very happy, very blessed to be in the situation and super stoked as well. So stoked for you. I can't wait to see it. Yeah, and it's one of those things, you know, you're asking. So am I in the right place? I mean, basically am I in the right vocation? I guess so. My ultimate vocation was being in the SEAL teams.

Like, to me, that's going to be the only thing that I will look at. And I was like, yeah, that's kind of what I was supposed to do. And I was very lucky I got to do it. And I got to do it for 20 years, had awesome experiences, worked with awesome people. And so now everything else is just pure bonus. It's pure bonus. It's awesome. And trying to take some of those lessons that I learned in the SEAL teams, obviously,

and pass them on, the leadership lessons especially. But, you know, I took those lessons and tried to give them to my kids. That's why I wrote those books. So I'll continue to do that. But is doing a podcast as fun as it is to go, you know, out to the desert training facility and running gun? No, it's not. It's just not. Sorry, Echo Charles.

You're cool and everything. Like hanging out with you. Thank you. But I'd rather be shooting a machine gun. I understand. I mean, that's a pretty unique and peak set of experiences. You know, knowing a fair number. of people who were in the teams.

It's like you guys obviously enjoyed something really special. Yeah, the best job ever, the best, best job ever. And it's weird. I've kind of gone through a little transition where I used to never tell anyone to join because the chances are you're not going to make it, which is a terrible thing. And so when someone says, oh, I'm thinking about going to the SEAL teams, I'd be like, yeah, you should maybe check out the Marine Corps, maybe check out the Army, you know, go do something else. Because there's at least an 80% chance that you're not going to make it.

make it. And of course, no one thinks that they're that person, right? Every person that shows up to seal training thinks that they're the one that's going to make it. And 80% of them aren't. And when you take that to like, they haven't even joined yet, now it's probably 96%. Of the people that join the Navy to be a seal, most of them don't even get there in the first place. So it's a very small percentage. And I got into a habit of telling people, yeah, you know, it's a good job, but it's difficult. There's drawbacks. I kind of am now at a point where, dude, it's the best job ever. It's a job ever. It's the best job ever. You work with awesome guys.

If you want to do that kind of stuff, I don't understand what else you could do with your life. So if you want to shoot machine guns, you want to blow things up and most important, you're willing to risk your life and you're going to have to kill people and you could get killed, which is the huge piece of it. It's like, oh, I want to be a seal because I want to live in Coronado and I want to freaking run on the beach. All that means nothing. If what you're doing, what your job is to kill people and put your life on the line for your friends and for your country.

That's what it is. So if you have that thought in your mind, best job ever. If you have any other little thought in your mind like, well, I want to do it. There's some little thing. It would be cool. But anything like any but in there, it's the worst decision you can make. But if that's really what you want to do, best job. I had the best time ever.

Me and my friends, friends for life, best time, doing the best job. Like it's awesome. So you can't do that forever. Can't have that job forever. And when I got to 20 years, I looked at my family and I was like, you know, like, I've been gone a lot. My kids barely knew me. You know, I tell us, my first deployment to Iraq, when I left, my son couldn't crawl

When I got back, he's walking around. My second deployment to Iraq, I got home and my son could swim. Someone other person was actually a Navy lifeguard taught him out of swim. So I'm a waterman, I'm a surfer, I'm a frog man, and someone else taught my son how to swim. That's jacked up. You know, you want to talk about missing out on life events and then, you know, throw my daughters into that as well. What did I miss from them? All kinds of stuff.

So I got to 20 years and I thought to myself, well, I'm going to go in. And it was a bummer because it was a hard decision to make. I had a freaking ridiculously awesome career. I was in a great spot. I was, you know, screen for X. I was like screen for X.O. Deep Select. Like I was in a great spot.

My career was awesome. You got to op a lot. Yeah. Yeah. And I was past. My days of operating were. were coming to an end. They were kind of over.

Like, you know, you get to that level of seniority, you're not going to get to operate. That's why in the SEAL teams, there's a lot of guys that get out at that 12 to 14 year mark. Actually, 14, they're going to hang on. But 10 to 12, 13 years, guys are like, they're looking at their future and they think, oh, well, I came in the job to be a commando,

and now I'm going to be not a command. I'll be helping the commandos. I'll be supporting them, but I'm not going to be doing that job anymore. That's what a lot of guys, they don't have that same affection for the job at that juncture. For me, it wasn't really that.

It was more, more, it was just staring at a bunch of deployments in the immediate future. And, you know, my kids were just about going into high school and, you know, you start talking about wrestling tournaments and jitza tournaments, you're just going to look, you're not going to see any of it. That's what's happening and that's why guys that do 20 years 25 years 30 I got friends that have done 40 years in the teams

40 years in the teams what they call them bullfrogs if if you're if you're the if you're the person with the lowest class number on active duty yes you this is one you're the bullfrog and there's one at a time and that person you know usually will have around 40 years That's how long being on active duty. So yeah, that bullfrog position is hard earned. And huge sacrifice. You know, like families are not going to be seen very much. And the teams comes first.

It always does. So you're committing to that life. And I did, man. And the teams came first for me 100%. You can ask anyone in my family, like, what was the number one? What was the number one priority when Jocko was in the teams. They'll tell you without question what the number one priority was. That's not balanced. Maybe if I was more balanced, if I would have been more balanced, maybe I would have been more

open to staying in longer if I would have figured out a way like, oh yeah, I can, I don't have to be 100% focused on the teams or or 97% focused on the teams and 3% on my family. But I wasn't going to miss a training evolution for anything. So yeah, that's at a certain point, that ride is going to come to an end. That's exactly what, you know, I had to make that decision, this freaking rough, and especially because I,

I was expected to carry on, you know, and for me to go and tell, you know, I'd work for the admiral, for me to go tell the admiral what I was doing was, was a tough conversation, you know,

and to tell my immediate boss, who was the Commodore at the time, to tell him, hey, here's what I'm doing. And it's rough. And unfortunately, there was a whole bunch of guys that got out around that same time. And so it wasn't good for the community at large. It's rough.

It was rough. But you did it on your terms. They didn't tell you you need to go. You didn't get injured. No. It was time. Like you decided it was time. And there's something beautiful to that, right?

That's that sense of agency. Well, I don't know because if I, I don't. I don't think that I wanted that. That was harder. If I would have been injured and been like, sorry, guys, or been a screw up and been like, yeah, I guess I can't. But it wasn't like that. It was 100% on me to look at my friends, my brothers, and be like,

I'm quitting. It's quitting. I'm going to quit. Because that's what you're doing. And you go your entire career in the SEAL team. It's like I talked about earlier. It's like we're not quitting. We're gonna carry on. We're not complaining like you don't complain You don't complain when you miss your kids learning how to swim No one in the teams knew that my kid no no no no no knew that

No one knew that my kids you know went to the had the recital did this starting the in the school play I didn't see any of that Where was I? I was at work didn't tell what you know one in the teams tells anybody You you you you eat it and you carry on and then that's what I did and I did it because I loved the teams I mean I wouldn't do anything else it's freaking the best job ever and the guys are awesome and do anything for them and so when you get to to the end of that so for me that vocation was 100 percent I was 100 percent aligned was 100 percent aligned the the pull that I started to get was hey hold on a second what about these freaking four children that you created and that you

have not been paying attention to how's that feel Doesn't feel good. Doesn't feel good. The other team. Yeah, the other team. And so that's why I made that decision. And then from there, the other stuff kind of happened like you said, you know, and I joke about this. You said there's no diabolical plan. I didn't have like a plan for any of this, for any of this.

It was like, oh, well, there was a guy that asked me to come and talk to his executive about leadership. I was like, okay, well, I can do that. And then he said, can you come talk to him? All my divisions. And I said, okay, I guess so he started paying me money. It's like, okay, cool. And then the owner of that company, I want you to come talk to all my CEOs of all the

companies I owned. And he owned 45, 50. So it was just, so then I have a new job, basically, teaching about leadership. And then I need some help. Call my friend Laif. Hey, Laif, need help. You in? Hell yeah.

Let's go. Now people are asking us, do you have this stuff right now? end up writing the book. First book, Extreme Ownership. I thought extreme ownership would be like, I'll give it away at the back of an event, like for free.

Did a lot better than that. Yeah, did a lot better than that. Didn't expect it. I didn't see how well it would translate to the world. I mean, even the title is extreme ownership. What does that mean? It means taking responsibility for your actions. That's what it means.

That's something you learned in second grade. That's something I learned, you know, the teacher told you in fifth grade. You need to be. accountable for what you do you need your responsible love that's extreme ownership but people realize that that's what they need in their world so then as that's coming out of a seal friend of mine told Peter Attia to tell Tim Ferriss dude you should have this guy on the podcast I still remember in my mind the photo of you

was it like the scariest Navy SEAL he click baited that stuff good job, Tim Ferriss, like the most clickbait title. I was in my apartment. It was Keegan in my apartment off High Street in Oakland. I remember where I was standing in the kitchen. I saw it. And I just go like, I was like, yeah, if you were going to like draw a Navy seal, I'd been living in San Diego prior, right?

You guys used to come over and take over bars. Yeah. Like, I have good friends in the team's community, so I can joke about this. And I spoke at a veteran solution event, Marcus Capone and Amber Capone's a veteran solution event at Coronado and Veterans Day. And room full seals. And I said the same thing. Same thing.

I used to, I don't drink much. Never really did. But these days I don't drink at all. But I was in, I'd go into bars, hang out, whatever. And you guys would show up. I was like, okay, night's over. Let's just leave. Like, it's over.

It's over. Like, they're taking over. Let's go. You guys, yeah. It was San Diego's a good spot for you guys. Yeah. But it's great. Yeah.

But the point is, I think that it's such, it's a great community. I could see how it. It would create that peak thing. It's also, listen, you also, you're alive, you know, I mean, not telling you anything you don't already know. You're alive. So four kids missing the swim instruction thing is socks. I feel you on that. Not being able to be there for any of it.

You know, you clearly did the math. And the other team seems to be thriving. Yeah, the other team's great. And, you know, my wife, God bless her. she just held down the fort like a boss and never complained about anything and just gave you know she just covered all the home front I'm talking three kids in maybe four years the first three kids were like in 40 yeah like in four years she got screaming kids my wife I remember she's a very bad morning sickness her morning sickness her morning sickness would be 24 hours a day for the first trimester of births.

And I remember we had, she's pregnant with my son and my other daughter, so it's like one's four and one's two or three. And my wife is like standing over the toilet throwing up. And she's such a awesome, sweet, good woman. She's looking at my daughters and she's telling them she's sorry. And I'm like, I'm saying they're, I'm a totally idiot, right? I'm just like, there's nothing you can do. Your wife's just throwing up.

Your daughters, as I mentioned, they don't know. I'm not around enough for me to be like, hey, come with me. They want to be their mom. I'm the random dude that shows up every three weeks with like laundry. But there's my wife just holding down the fort and saying like, I'm sorry. She's apologizing to my daughters that they have to see her like this. I'm like, bro, this is rough. That's about a warrior.

Yeah. So she was holding down the fort. And then when I eventually, you know, retired. And so now I go into leadership teaching. And then going back to Tim Ferriss was Tim Ferriss has me on his podcast. And again, you know, there wasn't that many podcasts then. There was a very small number of podcasts. By like 2013, 2014.

It was 2015. It was 2050. Okay. Yep. So 2015, that podcast come out. And then Rogan hears it. I go on Rogan's podcast. Both them told me, like start a podcast.

And I'm like, okay. So started the podcast. And a Twitter account. Yeah, and start a Twitter account too. And Ferris lied to me. He's like, he's like, just started. I'll help you. He never helped me.

But, you know, he did help me by telling me to start it. But he's like, don't worry. I'll show you how to do it. That's a pretty amazing team to roll you forward. And so when the pod, when my podcast come out, came out, again, what am I talking about? I'm talking about the stuff as to, I'm talking about the stuff that's coming from my heart, who I am, what I care about, what I like to talk about. What do I like to talk about?

What do I like to talk about? Like those are things that I talk about and that's what we were talking about. And, you know, speaking of like highly produced podcasts, because we haven't really changed very much. And someone asked me like, hey, are you going to do, are you ever thinking about, you know, maybe putting a background and this kind of stuff? And I was like, oh, you remember that disco song that ACDC wrote? And I'm like, no. And I go, because that's not ACDC, you know? And I'm not a disco.

I'm not going to make a disco album. We're making what we make us. Like, still what I really like doing is, I actually really like reading books that are written by first person accounts or written first person accounts of war. That's what I like. Why? Because it teaches you about human nature.

You get to understand people better when you see them in very terrible situations and how they get through them and what they do and how the other people react around them. That's one of my methodologies for learning and becoming better. So that's how all this started. And then it's just applying sort of the mentality of the DIY punk rock mentality. Oh, well, I drink tea. Okay, well, people are asking me, what kind of tea do you drink? Because I talked about on Tim Ferriss podcast. I was like, well, There's these few different brands, but I can just make my own. I love the white pomegranate tea.

Yeah. Yeah. So there you go. Made my own. And I wasn't paid to say that. I just, I'm going to like it. I like it. But I think I made 10,000 tins, the first run.

Made 10,000 tins. Put them on Amazon and they were gone in like, whatever it was, nine days. And I'm like, yo. So that's kind of where it started. Okay. Well, people. want good products, boom, started making. And that's kind of how this stuff started,

and that's where I ended up. So what does that have to do with my vocation? To me, the vocation is ultimately trying to help people and trying to help people with whatever they're doing. And look, if you interact with other human beings, you're in a leadership position, and you probably need help doing it. Leadership is not a natural thing.

Leadership is not any more, natural than skateboarding. In other words, yeah, one of your buddies was a little bit naturally better than you and you're a little bit naturally worse, but neither one of you was born with the ability to do a kickflip. It doesn't exist. You have to learn it. He got to learn a little bit better. He had a little bit better coordination.

Maybe he had a little bit better build for it. He had better muscle fiber recognition, whatever the case may be. But he didn't know how to do a kick flip when he was born. And people don't know how to lead when they're born. They might have some natural attributes that make it a little bit easier for them. Maybe they're articulate. Maybe they're able to break things down well. Maybe they're able to simplify things.

Maybe they're a little bit better at understanding what emotions other people are having. And all those things are going to be beneficial. But you still need to learn how to do the kickflip. You still need to learn how to lead. And so for me, that's kind of the essence of it. How can I help people out? Well, started with leadership. How can help them with that turned into like, how can I help you get better physical

condition turned into, oh, you got kids. Let's help those kids out as well. And so that's what it really boils down to me. And that's where the most gratification comes from is being able to help people out. One, the fact that it's an expression from your heart comes through. Like people, that, again, it's like a felt thing. I don't think any of us, podcaster, non-podcaster, athlete, academic, poet, right, or whatever, it can get any degree of success without like really touching into like what what comes from the heart.

And I think this is what Hollis is talking about when you have to listen to that call from your soul, your psyche. I think some people. He says it's an irrational calling. An irrational calling. An irrational calling, which is important to remember. Yeah, I love that you remind that. And also he several times reminded me that the people who do it, the people who like, really step into their expression are going to suffer.

You wish they didn't have to. You wish it was just all reward. There are rewards, certainly, but that they're suffering. And that's part of the reason people resonate with it. Like, again, you know, we talk about Taylor Swift, Billy Eilish, you know, anyone. Like, you know, pick your favorite musician. Like, you have to imagine that because of the amount of emotion they put into it, there's zero minus one chance that it's all.

Rosie. It has to involve suffering. And I think, and I think that's one of the reasons we revere these people. And I mean, you're highly revered and, you know, that might be weird for me to, you know, to sit across from me and to hear me say that. But the truth is, like, people can feel like you, you take the things you learned and the structures and the things that make you uniquely you. And then you're trying to share them with the world in a way that can really benefit other people. And, you know, that's where there's this like protective part of me that comes out, not that you need protection from anyone, let alone me, to protect you. But I would.

I would. You're a friend and I would. The thing that's frustrating is when you see people coming at your friends who are like, like, you know, who are doing it from the heart. And then you're just like, damn, like, it's so aggravating, you know. I mean, whatever they throw at me, and I'm sure we'll all get stuff thrown at us more. Like whatever they gets thrown at me or like it's the response internally for me is nothing like the response when I see friends getting attacked. And we got some friends in the podcast community.

I've got friends in the science community. Remember academics are under fire right now. They're losing jobs left and right and there's a that's a whole other biz. But you know, you just it brings out this spirit of like you want to just say like hey like they're trying to get it right. Stop. Like stop. But, you know, I think there will always be, you know, 10, maybe 20% of people who are just, like, have taken upon themselves to, like, completely dismiss their own sense of agency and just try and tear people down because they feel like that's the right thing to do. But it's a completely misplaced sense of agency, you know.

Yeah, I think that's just the way. That's just, that's just, as we say in Hawaii, that's just how, right? That's just how. You got to be, you got to expect that stuff. I'm trying to learn to do this. somebody really close to me who serves as an advisor to me is always just saying like he's like your life will become so much easier when you realize that there's a certain percentage of people that are just really unwell and I'm like no no like they're like I can change their mind or just

or we can we can you know we can talk about we can figure this out like today and they're like no no they're that unwell and I'm like oh it drives me crazy and um you know I think that that's my work and my my thing is to realize that there's something that else to be careful of and I made an explicit note when I was kind of getting ready for this because I knew we were going to talk about like what's your true vocation, what you're calling, this irrational calling and got to go after that. There's a separation between the authoritarian things in the world that you kind of have to obey and if that doesn't match up, you're going to be, you're going to suffer.

Here's the thing you're going to watch out for too is like and you just said it, which is chasing your dreams, there's going to be a lot. lot of suffering and there's absolutely no guarantee whatsoever that you ever get anything good from it like externally there you look if you're doing it like when people for a while it was sort of now that everyone already has a podcast like everyone but there was a while where not everyone had one yet and people would ask me like hey you know I want to start a podcast what do you think or what what what advice do you have and I would say if you want to do it because you're you, it's in your system and you want to get it out.

Cool. Then go do that and upload it and be happy. If you want to do it because you think a lot of people want to hear what you have to say and they're going to listen to it, don't like keep in mind there's a very slim chance that that's going to happen because we're, I was just talking about this other day. Like most of the time most people don't want to hear what you have to say. Like that just doesn't, it's not normal. Like if I'm in a meeting, I sit there and think in a meeting.

most people don't want to hear what I have to say. Like people don't want to hear what you have to say. So that's most of us most of the time. Occasionally, you have this strain of knowledge that people wanted to hear. It's like, oh, wow, this guy, like you said, it landed with a bunch of people at a certain time. Okay. That's uncommon. So if you're going to, for lack of a better word, follow your dreams, you have to do it because that's what you want to do for yourself to,

to get these things out there. And if the world happens to appreciate it, great. And if they don't, you gotta be okay with that. The chances are they're not gonna appreciate it. The chances are your efforts and your suffering and your work is going to go, it's not going to be rewarded. It's just gonna be out there.

And if, and so if you're doing it because of that, great, if you're doing it for some, if you're doing all these things for the external, by the way, by the external forces, including your ego, that's another thing at Hollis talks about. Halls talks about your ego being an external force on the true you. So your ego is an external force that's saying, oh, I would like a bunch of people to listen to me.

So therefore I'm going to write a book or therefore I'm going to start a podcast or therefore I'm going to do this performative thing in the world. Well, you better just make sure that you're doing it because you want to do it. Not to satisfy your ego, not to satisfy your neighbors, not to satisfy the interwebs or anybody else. Because that's going to be rough. It's going to be rough. I would just say watch out for that. If you want to do it because you think there's going to be seven people that are going to be freaking hype for it and you're down, cool.

Dude, do you think that I thought a bunch of people were going to want to listen to me talk about the, you know, genocide and war crimes? Like, I didn't think that. Did I think people were, oh, there's an out-of-print book from 19, 1332 about World War I written in the first person that is out of print literally out of print it doesn't exist anymore I have a copy I bet a bunch of people are going to want to hear me read and reflect on that what are the chances no we didn't do it for I wasn't thinking hey I'm going to go do this so because a bunch of people

are going to want to listen to this in fact we haven't done that I haven't done that it's like oh I've got a book that was written by a Marine that was in global Canal who wrote a first person account of what it was like for him. I want to read that. If anybody else wants to hear it, they can press play. If they don't, it's okay. And I think having that attitude is a smart attitude to have. And I also think that it's the, it's the authentic thing to do. Totally. And I think that there's a way in which whatever we happen to be working on or caring about most, I'm not talking about podcasters, although they're just, includes podcasters, that's the thing that if it feels like almost like a compulsion,

not the OCD clinical thing, but almost like it has to come out, then that's the best case scenario because there isn't that deliberating. Do I do this? Do I not do this? Like it has to come out and it's just, it just runs through you. I mean, people talk about this, like like spirit running through you. Hollis talked about it. In the best circumstance, you drop in once a day or so touch into your psyche, your spirit, who you are, your unique expression, and then something runs through you, it comes out and it benefits the world. That's the, that's the, that's the ultimate, you know, form of humanity. Does it work that way? Also, the rewards when they come can be distracting. They can contaminate. People start doing stuff for money. Rick's talked

a lot about this in his previous book tour around the creative act. Like, he talks about it as you're offering to God. Like, that's how he talks about your creative expression. Because If you're paying attention to the metrics of, oh, well, get paid this or do it with that, then people start modifying. There's this amazing clip. I don't know if you've ever seen the movie Basquia about Jean-Michel Basquea. No. Okay.

Amazing movie. Not the documentary. I haven't seen that. It's got Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken, David Bowie, Parker, Parker Posey, Benicio del Toro. It's amazing. And it's like him when he was coming up as a painter. Courtney Love. It's awesome.

What's the name movie? Basquea. B-A-S-Q-E-A-S-U-S-R-E-S-E-R-E-S-E-S-U-Ro. U-I-A-T. And this is a famous painter. Yeah, famous painter, the Andy Warhol.

He was kind of a street artist that made it big. Anyway, I won't give it away. Amazing, amazing movie. And there's this great scene where he's shooting hoops

with his best friend who's played by Beniso del Toro, who I think is supposed to be the young Vincent Gallo. And he asks him, he says to his friend, Benny,

who's Beniso Del Tori, he goes like, hey, how long do you think it takes to get famous? And so Beniso Del Toro does this just brilliant, one and a half minute description.

I'll send it to you as a clip. Maybe we can link it. Maybe not. I don't know. But one and a half minute description of how long it takes to get famous, how they'll reward you for doing something a certain way. And then when you try to evolve, they'll punish you so you continue to do the thing that initially got you famous.

Then you'll be rewarded again. But then they're going to hate you for doing it that way anyway. And then in the end, you end up right back where you started, but basically wishing that you were an unknown person because then you can be left alone. And so it's just a brilliant, like, street level kind of. like a guy from Manhattan telling a friend basically, listen, you got your life exactly where you want it. You're painting, you're making money, you have an apartment, you have a beautiful girlfriend, like, you don't want that life.

And it's really interesting. And it's not to say that success isn't great. Success is great, but people, you have to be so mindful in any pursuit as to why you're doing something. And if it's a physical pursuit, like in the SEAL teams where you can get killed, or it's a sport where it's music or something like if you get away from the essence of why you're doing it there's we know this there's basically zero chance of success if you do it for the pure essence of it and i know ricks talked about this you just said it um far more succinctly and eloquently than i could

that but there is a chance and if you do it for the right reasons you keep doing it for the practice of doing it and it comes from the heart and you know we talk about the heart the heart the heart and i think that it's one of these things where it's like what is that that that's the thing we're like you can't imagine not doing it and you're scared to do it and it doesn't feel right and it's also where you and we haven't talked about this but like aside from outside the teams but where you also assemble the people around you that can help you do what you need to do like I didn't go oh podcast mic in and go it was like Rob Moore producer get Mike playback you know pull together things I again I have many many flaws but one thing I've managed to do very well across my life

for whatever reason is I can assemble a look an awesome, awesome team to do work. The people who've been in my lab, my students, my postdocs, like to get the best work done with a ton of attention to the right things. And, you know, and I look to them, I'm just like, they deserve like 99.9% of the credit. I raise some money to do it. I try and guide them along, but just spectacular. A couple of them are professors now. Nothing makes me happier than like the call I got this morning. Hey, what do you think of this person? it was a woman who worked in my lab who now has her own lab. And I'm like, she's awesome.

He's like, great, I'm putting her up for this big award. You're like, yes, like nothing feels better. You know this. Like, nothing feels better than that. So being able to assemble a team, even if it's one other person or someone that you can talk to at the end of the day or week, like, hey, check me on this. Like, no one goes at it completely alone. Some people in the podcast community or other communities are more of lone wolves, but nobody's doing this stuff alone. You just see that person.

Lex's got a team. Joe's got a team. You got a team. I got a team like and you pull together those people and that's huge. I don't care what your vocation is like you need people around you who can be like more of this less of that and you know and iterate. Yeah. I do have to say that you can manufacture success with like my my examples of the monkeys, the

band the monkeys. Oh, right? And you just take one of those boy bands. Like a boy band where they say, hey, here's the formula. We need this beat. We need this like riff. We need this kind of lyrics. And they put them together.

We need this look. Like they select the monkeys because this guy is the cute one. And this guy is the jock one. And they do that. And but here's the thing. And it's very obvious when you fast forward however many years, oh, like they had no soul and they're kind of meaningless. And so that can happen. Like you can do that with music.

You could do that with a. You could do that with you could write a you know a shocking title of a book and you could get it out there and it But if you're if there if it's not coming from a place that's real Then people will see through it. Yeah, it won't go anywhere one podcast. It's great. I need to listen to it more But I've listened to it some is the founders podcast with David Senra just talks about founders and he's covered like Amazing you can tell it. He's just like an ultra nerd about founders of companies and stuff is a spectacular podcast and then when I went I went and visited Rick last summer. We would tread water in the morning.

It's kind of like seal team type thing to do. But there's like Rick and me. So it's slightly different picture. But we're treading water. And we would listen to history of 100 rock and roll songs by Andrew Hickey. And it's just an awesome podcast about rock and roll songs and stories.

And I don't know, I didn't continue to listen to it when I got back, but I'm like, whoever that Andrew Hickey is, You know he loves rock and roll history. And you just feel it. Like he'll talk about rock. He's probably talking about rock and roll history right now. And so, yeah, like learning stuff and teaching, you know, that's always been my thing. Gather, organize, and disseminate information.

And by the way, never did I say, flawless human being. You know, it's like gather, organize, and disseminate what I think is valuable information. And so I think it's interesting when we project onto other people, their expectations, I'm being kind of tongue in cheek about it. But in all seriousness, like no YouTube channel, no podcast is supposed to give you all the answers. You're supposed to create a composite of the things that are meaningful for you and focus on one more than the other, maybe a couple, two or three different things. I only listen to about four or five different podcasts total.

But, man, they've taught me so much. Yeah. What you just pointed out that this guy loves rock and roll. And he's talking about it right now. I mean, bro, I'll sit around. People ask me a question about leadership. I'm freaking gone. Like, I'm just talking about it forever.

Or somebody wants to ask me about some military thing. It's like, okay, well, you want to talk about that? Let's go. And you and I were having a conversation the other day. And you were mentioning this, I think it's Bill Gurley gave this talk running down a dream. And he's basically saying, like, if you're not totally into this thing that you want to get into, someone's going to outwork you. Because I don't consider recording a podcast.

podcast and reading a book to prepare for a podcast, I don't consider it work. I'm doing it because I want to do it. So if you're out there and you're like, well, I want to make a podcast and I want to talk about stuff too and it's work for you, I'm going to beat you. And if that guy that loves rock and roll so much, bro, I guarantee he started that thing with he was going to do it regardless of and I don't know the particular podcast or who sponsored him and that stuff. But I guarantee it was like, I'm doing this podcast and it doesn't matter.

what's happening, I'm doing this podcast about the greatest hundred rock and roll songs of all time. Boom, that's what I'm doing. And probably because of that passion, he made it and then probably it became successful. But no matter what you're doing, if you're not 100% into it and you don't love it and it's not your true vocation, it's going to be problematic. It's going to be rough. I mean, one of the amazing things about becoming friends with Tim Armstrong is that, you know, he has Operation Ivy Rancid. It transplants with Travis Barker and Rob Astin. It's an amazing band.

A lot of people hear Travis and they think, blank, but I always think aquabats. He's gonna laugh at that one. Aquabats and then I think transplants. Amazing mashup of like punk rock and some hip hop tones and some hardcore stuff too. Anyway, Tim, like this is a guy who's written songs for- Meanwhile, I'm over here on the old firm casuals. That's like, that's right, too. Yeah, Lars.

Yeah. Well, I'm a huge Lars and the bastards fan. Huge, I mean, like, don't get me started. But, you know, the amazing thing is like, you know, and seeing how Tim works and he's written, help, you know, a ton of pop male and female songwriters and he's, you know, all this. But he, you know, he gets up and sometimes in the middle of the night and paints. Then he'll go back to sleep. I know this. Sorry, Tim, I'm sharing a little bit of this, but I think it's so valuable for people to hear and he doesn't really do front facing media anymore.

But I'd love to get him on my podcast. But he does, then he'll get up and he, you know, he works out. He's super fit. does does his workouts. But he also, he writes music every day. And for a while during the pandemic, he did this Tim Time Bomb series where they were putting out a song a day.

I think him and Kevin Beauvone from the interruptors, like, I think that's who he did it with it. Like every day. So he's writing every single day. Guys always got a guitar picking a guitar. Always. He's got his studio. It's like he's constantly helping artists develop stuff.

And he's like either painting or writing music or working out or he's got like a great situation socially personally like he's he's like always in touch with his friends he takes care of himself he takes care of people like but he's he's 10 years older than me okay so he's 58 every single day he's writing music I'm like is every day we don't he's like he's like no like every day yeah constantly constantly and so like there's no stopping him he's like a tank you can't compete he just you can't compete and and he's and he's giving and he loves it And you can just feel it. And you ask him any question about anything with music.

And he's just like, whoo. Like, he'll talk about guitars. I know I can't play any music. He'll talk about guitars for hours and hours. Like, he's just, the fire is there. And he's aligned with it. And there's a kid who was basically like sparing for change playing guitar on Telegraph Avenue in front of Blondie's Pizza.

I think he worked there for a little bit too. Was hanging out at Gilman Street. And there's that great line in turning to the end of the East Bay. Like, what you're going to do when everybody goes on without you? And that resonated with me over the years because all my skateboard friends kind of went up and forward. I was kind of lost in that time.

Like, what are you going to do when, like, other people find their vocation? I don't want to inspire any fear in anybody, but it's like, he founded, he was like, this is what I'm good at. And this is the thing I love. But good at meant, like, good at doing it all the time. And he just went,

and it's, at least to me, it's one of the more beautiful stories in music because he's also outlived a lot of the people from that world. But he's just like the number of creative things he's involved in. There was movies that they've done. There's all sorts of stuff. He's a character on the, on the X-Files sometimes. He plays trash, man. He's going to be so, he's going to be laughing or ready to kill me that I'm talking about this. But like I just see him as

like one of one of the many essences, although they're rare of just pure creative energy. These are people that never stop creating. It's just in their soul the same way that learning and sharing. Like right now, I'll be really like if I'm going to be a little bit more vulnerable as it were, you know, like, sure, anything that's happening me in my life now, I'm taking a new information learning. I didn't go talk to Hollis on accident. I want to know from a guy who's 85 years old, like, how do you make the best version of yourself? How do you do that? How do you do that with tools that maybe I haven't had access to? Clearly, I've succeeded in some areas in my life. I've struggled in others. Lord knows, I've struggled like anyone else. And how do I, like,

take, how do I take an information, learn, and do different? You know, anytime we see somebody doing something, we're just like, why? Just do it the other way. Like, clearly, people are rational. But sometimes there's some two plus two equals fives in their, in their unconscious mind. So how do you pull that stuff out? So I think, like, the evolution of somebody is interesting to me. Certainly, I'm always trying to evolve, but just the desire to learn and take an information, make the changes, see what works, and then share. That's my thing. You've got your thing. You've got your thing. And I think Tim's got his thing. Lars has his thing. I love when Lars posts about professional wrestling because he loves professional wrestling. Rick Rubin watches 10 hours a week of professional

wrestling. He told me he said it's the only thing that's real because everyone agrees it's fake. Yeah. He told me he said once I sent him something, it was really disturbing from the news. It's about somebody we know. So it's a while back. And he just wrote back. He texted, I'll never forget, I screenshot this. He said, it's all lies. Back to nature, the only truth. truth. And I was like, what are you talking about? That sounds like a riddle wrapped in a, you know, in a myth with a, you know, he's like the sphinx. What are you talking about? He's like, anytime we go back into nature, we're in touch with truth. Like there's no negotiating. That's a fern. That's a tree. You're you. And that takes us to this place where we start again to kind of like

ask what's my essence in this bigger picture. When we're taking in all this stimulus, you know, that's when we get kind of overwhelmed and we start becoming reactive in little unconscious ways and we lose touch with ourselves. I mean, I don't have a language for this yet, and I think Hollis goes the greatest distance towards putting a language, and I think you're on to this too now, and we're kind of like,

we're kind of pulling along this line underwater and trying to figure out, like, where does this go? But there's something, there's got to be tools, and I think that sitting with oneself for 10, 50 minutes a day, quietly, and listening, there's got to be something that allows us to go, like, this is my unique gift. And I don't mean me, Andrew, I mean everybody.

I do believe that everyone has a unique gift that would better, the world were they to lean into that gift? I absolutely do. It's just it's a it's a it's a it's not a fantasy. I believe it because Hollis said it and the psychologist have said it and it's it's what makes us who we are. It's what makes us different than the other animals. And this sets me up for the last thing and we've already been on almost three hours. So I don't want to drag this out too much. But the last thing, um, which is a good counter to that, which you and I were talking about the other day. And that is as much as we're both sitting here saying, you,

got to do the thing that you love. You also got to do the things that you don't want to do. Absolutely. And you were talking about this kind of, I don't know if these are recent discoveries, but things that go on in your brain that are so beneficial, but they only occur when you're doing things that you don't want to do. Tell me about that. Oh, yeah.

To me, this is, you know, maybe it's because I've had a bunch of friends die. Okay. and again, I just like get in this slightly kind of like abrasive mode where you know, like talk shit about me all you want but don't talk shit about my dog, okay? Don't talk shit about my dog and don't talk shit about my friends

that aren't here. That actually checked out, don't. The John Aikobos, Johnny Ferrer's the, you know, Aaron King Curry's like those guys, like other people. Just don't. Like just come at me with anything, but not that.

because like that's just like a step too far. You understand this. Oh, fully. Okay. So if ever there was a discovery in neuroscience that I think people should know about. And I mention those guys and that theme because I think every day, okay, bullet bus or cancer, like if I were going to be taken out today, like what do I want to make sure it's in the world? Okay.

Because when that bus comes or whatever, you know, that's it. Like sometimes that's it. So I think, okay, what's the the discovery in the recent years that I think everyone needs to know about? I blabbed a lot about dopamine. I blabbed a lot, okay, get some sunlight, please. The anterior mid-singulate cortex is this brain region that I knew about. I teach neuroanatomy to medical students. Do it every January.

This last January. Do it next January. I taught it for years. The anterior mid-singulate cortex, neuroscientists knew was there. They didn't know what it did. It's an area that gets inputs and outputs from a lot. a different brain areas, like a hub. It gets inputs from the dopamine system, serotonin system, motor system. It's like interconnected with a ton of stuff. But a collier of mine at Stanford,

Joe Parvizi, is a neurosurgeon, is operating on a patient and stimulating different brain areas and gets in and starts tickling neurons with an electrode in the anterior mid-singulate cortex. And the patient, and it turns out every patient where he does this, says, I feel like there's a storm coming at me, but I'm going to go through it. Or I feel like something's about to happen, but I can lean into it. Okay, interesting. Moves the electrode back a few millimeters, totally different picture. Okay, so this is super interesting. The enter in midsinglet cortex increases in size when people take on hard challenges on a consistent basis, decreases in size when they don't. It increases in size in successful dieters, exercisers, people taking on a new

skill. It's maintaining size, unlike in other people, it maintained size in a group of people called superagers. It's a bit of a misnomer because what are superagers? Superagers are people that maintain cognitive ability laid into life. They're constantly learning, taking on new challenges. Okay, the summary that we now have is that the anterior mid-singulate cortex is a brain area that's highly plastic that grows, that becomes active and that can actually grow under conditions where we lean into things that we don't want to do. So if you love working out, sorry. You love reps to failure.

I love reps to failure. I came up training like under the Mike Menser thing, although I add a few more sets and a bit more frequency. They kind of Dorian Yates. You're wasting your time. And it worked for me. It's like it's what my body reacted best to given my time constraints and like it's what worked best for me.

I occasionally do a little bit more volume, but that's what works for me to get stronger. So the enter, so training that way isn't going to do. do it. But you send me out on a like a five mile ruck on a day with like just this amount of water. That sucks. Might even be dangerous, but we'll probably survive if it's not too hot. If it sucks and you do it anyway, your anterior mid-singulate cortex gets bigger. And it transfers to other aspects of life. And this is something that I think we've missed in the do hard things thing is we missed that the hard to you, hard to you, it's not sufficient to just do something

that other people think is hard. If you love getting in the cold plunge, like, like, Like, it's not doing as much for your interior mid-singulate cortex as if you hate getting in that thing. So I think it's beautiful. Like, I think it's beautiful that neuroscience discovered this. I do feel like it landed on my lap to tell everybody about it. I'm going to blab about it until I, you know, until they tell me to stop or they stop me, or give me a trichiotomy and then I'll probably just be like, you're mid-singal cortex.

But the point being that this thing does not care about the stuff you want to do that's hard. You know, if you love grinding reps to failure, you'll benefit. Clearly, there's benefits to that exercise, but it's the stuff you hate. It's if you're a talkative person, you want to be right and you sit down and you're going to do the, okay, I got to listen for 97% of the conversation. It's that. That's where the growth is. And the great news is this area is so interconnected that it's clear that it carries over to

other types of behavior so that you can tackle other things that you would otherwise avoid. Then the last point is that this thing about the. super agers is not trivial. It very well may be that the brain is paying attention to our efforts to absorb new information and grow itself. And the brain, of course, controls the body. We know that. The body talks back to the brain, but the brain largely controls the body. And then there's some interesting data based on the longevity stuff. And here I'm not talking about living to be 200. I think genetic limit for aging is probably 120. And then there's variability in there, depending on genetics and life style, et cetera.

But what ends up happening, it seems, is that this brain area is also related to the will to live, the desire to keep pushing. And, you know, if ever there were an appropriate place to talk about this, it would be here. Because I think when I hear about buds or when I'd take Costello out to Coronado sometimes, I need to run around, I'd see guys out there doing their thing.

Like, clearly they're trying to find their, you know, who's going to ring. the bell. They're trying to find the people that can learn to do the thing they hate anyway. And I think I got a few things wrong early days of the podcast, not scientifically wrong, but I put so much emphasis on on learning to make the effort, the reward, which it can happen. But what we missed out on is that like sometimes the effort's supposed to suck. And maybe, probably, and based on these data on the intermit signal cortex, certainly, when the effort sucks, you're really benefiting.

So I keep that in mind a lot, and it scares me, and I hate it, and I guess that's exactly the point. Well, there you go. That's a good bookend, because we talk about doing what you want to do and doing what you love to do, but you still got to do things you don't want to do. Probably a pretty good place to wrap. Echo Charles. Sorry, we've got any questions.

We're not wrapping yet. Okay, I don't figure you had some questions over here. Wait, wait, wait, so we didn't go into the neurotic part. part of it. So we were talking about OCD, but then what, so then what's a neurotic thing? Because I thought neurotic, I guess I was getting them kind of. Yeah, well, this is kind of fun because the word neurotic actually used to be what the, what the Freudian and Jungian analysts would consider healthy. They said the best you could be was neurotic and what you wanted to avoid is being psychotic. That's the kind of old school language.

Keep in mind what we think of as neurotic now. They might have thought was different. Maybe just like of the neurons or something. I don't know. Yeah, neurotic. people as a stereotype are people that like are very effusive and kind of like can't can't be satisfied by anything. There's all there's always some underlying dissatisfaction but we have to be careful because um that itch is what drives us and sometimes someone can be really

neurotic but quiet. You know I work with a guy who likes to tell me he goes yeah I'm like a I'm like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs and I'm like you're the calmest dude I know he's like yeah I'm stressed all the time so people people hide it well people hide it well. So I don't have a lot to say about it except that I think neurotic people and people that are just anxious in general. I mean, I'm with Jocko on this one. Do more. Tire yourself out. Like, I mean, there's some dogs that are just like tail always going. They need a lot of running. And then there are the Costello's that were just like super chill. And like economy of effort is the name of the game. So for example, so I know a guy, we went over to his house for Christmas.

It was me, my friend, the kids. So there are, They had a Christmas tree. The ornaments were on the Christmas tree. It wasn't the fragile kind of ornaments. It was just like regular ornaments. And one of the kids was over there by the Christmas tree, like kind of pawing at one of the ornaments. And the guy didn't know the kid. It was the first time, you know, he had been introduced to the kid and the dad.

They were just kind of guests at the house. And he was like, you could tell he was really bothered about the kid almost, I don't know, disrupting the ornaments or whatever. Maybe. I don't know. I don't think they could break. but he was just like, he was like, hey, hey, hey, hey, you know, almost like he lost control of himself because of that scenario. And I was like, does he have kids of his own?

No. Yeah, it sounds like, like having had kids living with me before, it's, it's a, it's a, you just have to embrace that like stuff's going to get dirty, stuff's going to get broken. Embrace the wildness. Yeah, it's like a, it's like a punk rock. I thought at that moment, I was like, okay, because it had nothing to do with me. It wasn't my kid. One of my, what was my ornament.

I don't care. I'm an observer, you know. But I was like, oh, that guy seems a bit neurotic because that doesn't move me either way, even if it was my ornament. Yeah. You know, is he neurotic? He's uptight. Or just uptight. Okay, so uptight is like the mild.

Yeah, I mean, one thing we know for sure is trying to, you know, control the behavior of others or, you know, or get them. Gosh, like, life's got to be pretty challenging for that guy. Don't just day-to-day kind. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, that. He's not a happy camper, bro. No, that's, I mean, the world is, the world's full of havoc and, like, stuff isn't aligned.

And, you know, like, you know, like, you know, that kind of thing. I mean, some people have the counting obsession thing, you know, but yeah, that sounds like he's uptight. I don't know that we could diagnose him, but I'm calling him uptight. A little uptight, yeah. So that's like this, what, the street version of neuroses? Yeah. Yeah. Nowadays people are using these terms, like neurotic and narcissists.

I mean, all these accounts on Instagram, like, are people calling each other names? It's like people have given themselves like the authority used DSM diagnoses. I mean, it's kind of wild. Then again, I'm a guy who talks about dopamine and serotonin, but those are real things, right, that, you know, exist in all of us. I mean, I think the clinical definitions of these things become really important. We have to be careful because we will erode that the, like, importance of, like, real psychological diagnosis. So we're like, you're obsessed, you're OCD or someone's calling. Like, well, you're, you're whatever.

Like, you know, I think we have to be very careful about not drifting into that. Kind of like the word literally nowadays, right? Because people are like, oh, yeah, no, literally now means like just very much so. Not like for real, you know? Like the word literally has become not literally. Well, the internet's a free, largely free open resource for people to declare themselves, whatever. A few years back, I won't say what platform.

I was contacted because there was discussion about only certain accounts being able to talk about things from any kind of diagnostic labels or health labels. And I think there was just so much pushback because we put great value on degrees and obviously I'm degreed. So I put some value on it. But then of course we know that there's a lot of great information like in the health sector, like especially exercise physiology and stuff that comes from outside of the standard practices. Like, I'm a big fan of knees over toes guy, Ben Patrick. And, you know, some people are like,

well, that doesn't fit with what the like orthopedic surgeon's saying. Like, but then everyone goes, well, he's the guy doing the, you know, the standing still to dunk, dunk the basketball and do a back bend. I know Ben, he's awesome and like, and he's very generous with information and kind of like, well, you look at the orthopedic surgeon and he looks like he needs to take a few laps. And then you look at Ben and you're like, his knees look pretty good. He's looked damn good. So I think, you know, we have to, I don't know, I'm a and Derek more plates more dates doesn't have any kind of degree does he he I mean as a college degree and something else but he's oh it's like but he's so so knowledgeable about the practical applications and things and he reads papers very well like it's it's a real skill to extract the best of papers and

he's he's extremely knowledgeable very thoughtful and and again a person like he took what he loved and put it out there for the greater good you know he's done a lot of harm reduction I also think he's just really, really smart. Like I'm pretty good at spotting intelligence. He's really smart. And it comes through in the content. And to your point, he's not a guy that he didn't go to school for it.

Neither did Ben from knees over toes. So those are two guys that through experience and research and personal knowledge, they can put out really good information. That can be really helpful to people. And then there's this. Isn't that kind of offensive to some people? Oh, yeah. They hate it.

That's got to drive some people. Because it means they would have. to go do something, they'd have to activate their mid-signol cortex. Did anybody, does anyone get mad at you for validating these freaking charlatans that are out there? Sure, sure, but I'm just going to say, like, look at the results. They speak for themselves. Also, I've been working out since I was 16, and I also been running since I was in high school.

And so- So you actually have dual degrees. You also have a degree in bro science. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, it's interesting because, and I've had plenty of training partners that were women. And they kick butt and they, yes, they're unique needs that people have. I mean, one person I'd like to mention, I know that we're both friends with her, but also because she represents the combination of a number of different things.

Medical doctor, so MD, also very good teacher and information shareer, as well as a practitioner who's clearly got her own health, not just worked out, but is really thriving, is Dr. Gabriele Lyon, right? who knows a ton about nutrition as well. So the space, this health space in particular, is starting to bring in people, they're already here and there, that are checking off multiple boxes.

And I'm excited about the work she's doing, not just for women in particular, but also for men. I think she's getting a specialization in urology. Her husband's urologist. They're open about the practice, former team guy. So, I mean, there's a lot that comes.

I wanted to go down that. She worked in a freaking like a, sane asylum. Did she? Oh, yeah, for a while as a psychologist. And I almost wanted to,

I mean, we only talked about it for 20 minutes, but I'm like, what's going on in there? Because, you know, I've never met anyone that was worked in an actual, like,

asylum. It was kind of crazy. Oh, man, I got to introduce you to somebody I'm close with who is a psychiatrist who spent a lot of time out saying Quentin examining the files and talking to the people

of the worst, narliest cases. I'll be in touch with them. I couldn't bear to hear the stories. I'm not, yeah. I'll have them on the podcast. That'd be interesting. That'd be great.

Yeah. He's impressive. But yeah, I mean, I've caught some stuff for it. But, you know, yeah, I think Ben's great. And I think there are others that are, you know, who are degreed, like Ben Bruno training is a friend of mine. He's not the biggest guy, but he's super strong, like circus man strong. You know, so you look at what people can do, and it's not just physique, you look at what

they can do performance-wise, movement-wise, the Dr. Kelly Starettes. And you just go. So you go, okay, listen, like these people obviously know what they're doing. And sometimes they're agreed, sometimes they're not. I think the word expert nowadays is a complicated one. I think it's almost like, what does that mean? It depends on people's orientation and how they approach health and science information. And listen, there's been a real fight for trying to make sure that only one source of information is considered valid.

That fight has been lost. That fight's been lost. It's been lost because as long as people... COVID. Oh, gosh, you said it, not me. I think because I didn't say that. No, but I think the fight has been lost because people start to realize that diverse sources of information filtered through a logical mind where one can try things safely. And here I'm not talking about COVID. Okay, I want to be clear. I'm talking about kind of daily self-care. And I'm not saying that to be politically avoidant or anything like that. It's just like, it's just that that became such a

a tangle on the internet. And I think that when it comes to how to eat, how to exercise, is OZempic, you know, the right thing for you or should you rely on something? Like those are conversations that I think like need to happen and are happening. And look, whatever this beast, the internet, social media is that people thought could be just used to communicate one type of information. Well, I got news for you. Too late.

So Zemphics the fat loss thing, right? Yeah, a lot of people are losing a lot of weight because it reduces appetite. And so are people coming at that from both directions? Are some people saying it's good for you and some people saying it's bad for you? Yeah. So, and Atia has more to say about this. There can be some muscle loss in addition to fat loss. So people can offset that with resistance training.

So it's not all good or all bad. It's clear that people are benefiting from it. It's very expensive. There's this question whether or not insurance will soon take care of it. It's on track to be hundreds of billions of dollars. Oh, yeah. The kind of polarization here is as follows. And I won't reveal my stance.

I'll just tell you the way I understand it, and I'll probably get it only 80% right, that some people are positioning this as, hey, doesn't matter what you do lifestyle or try and eat less. This is the only thing that works. And there's, you know, people are genetically or metabolically stricken, and they need to do this. Other people are saying, no, you don't need to do that.

There's a bunch of lifestyle things you can do. And the answer is probably somewhere in the middle where you can imagine that it probably helps some people get to a lighter weight that then allows them to move around a bit more. And one would hope than they would resistance training and they would do cardiovascular training. But the way it's been positioned kind of like sociopolitically is that it's one versus the other. And that agency over one's health, mental health and physical health is the domain of one political camp and the other political camp is like no. like where it's it's all about using certain treatments that are coming through pharma but that's not real right but that's how the conversations on social media and the kind of media landscape would have you think about this but of course it's going to be the league of reasonable people as you

point out which makes up most people are going to say all right let's say somebody's like 40 pounds overweight and they're really struggling like maybe it's a good starter for them maybe it's a good place for them to drop a bunch of weight and then start exercising. You know, other people are going to say, hey, listen, I never want to exercise, but I want to be healthier. Well, maybe that's the right thing for them. Like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to argue with them. But I do think that you can do a hell of a lot.

We know this with proper nutrition, with really tasty food, exercise and sunlight and sleep and taking good care of yourself and the information is all out there for free. You just got to tickle that intermit cingulate cortex a bit, you know. Get in there. What else that coach? The word expert is kind of like the word world champion. Because you know how like me, I'm a grappling ex world champion. Oh.

Seems same. Actually, I did not even know that. I can, I can see it. Oh, you want the world championship? 2008. Yeah. But if it's not like what, recognized as a governing body. That was a small pond.

Yeah, yeah, exactly right. Hey, but factually, factually, let's face it, I won the gold medal. Seems same. World champ. Well, you want your service. surgeon to be an MD. You know, like, like you, you want your lawyer to understand the law, right? I would hope. You want your seal team operator to have made it through buds. You know, you want that, okay. But the word expert, though, you see what I'm saying? Like, when can we not use

the word expert even though, you know, now it's a free for all. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. Exactly. It's a, it's a free for all. And I think that, you know, the interweb is a complicated place, but it's also like stupid. simple at the same time because once you understand what you're looking at, that it's a borderline situation and you realize that the goal is clicks and polarized things get clicks. Well, then if you're a reasonable person, you're part of the League of Reasonable people who want to access the right information. What it means is you're going to have to look at information across the board, integrate, try, see what works for you, what doesn't work for you, and probably avoid the strong

opinions at the extremes like the outliers that that's my suggestion okay so perfect so my second to the last question so to be part of the but bear with me I'm bearing but if I want to be part of the league of reasonable people yeah what would be like one of the obvious criteria like I would say and I don't know this is with 10 seconds of thought I if I lose my temper on the internet I'm automatically disqualified no because the league of reasonable people understands that we're not supposed to judge people based on a state, you can potentially judge them on the basis of trait, but one state of mind, one, you know, assuming you don't do something like horrific,

right, that if you can recognize like, oh, I was in a state of mind at that time and it just doesn't faithfully represent who I am and the people around me know me to be, then we'll be like, you're absolutely still in the league of reasonable people. What if I do that three times? Well, then we, then we then the people close to you might say, hey, like listen, you might need some help. I mean, if you've ever been online and you have a channel, you're familiar with this. I'm sure you get someone who's just like adoring you, adoring you, adoring you, adoring you, then tells you're going to stop following you and then start sending attack stuff. You're probably looking at somebody who is bipolar. Then they disappear.

Then they come back. Like you're probably remember a lot of times people are drunk when they're sending these messages in posting. You don't forget like. So wild. You know, like we're not good at ascribing state of mind in another. people so no you're absolutely in the league of reasonable people why because you asked the question which means that you're a reasonable person oh I was more asking for a friend but but but or more of a hypothetical if you will because

look I would am I look I don't want to make it a big thing you know because obviously it's still hypothetical but I feel like after about 10 temper reactions infractions drunk or not drunk after while you're like bro is this guy one of the league or not you know maybe penalty box at that point yeah I mean you know like yeah I mean let's what would it be in the military like I enough safety violations. Yeah, review, you gotta go. Yeah, you got to go.

Yeah, exactly. I feel the same way. Exactly. All right. Maybe put some kind of restraints on your, something. You know, at least something, something written down. Again, let's not normalize,

let's not authenticate unethical behavior just because it's frequent. People drunk drive all the time. But we all know it's a terrible thing to do. So don't do it. But we also don't want to pathologize by labeling people to the point where they think, oh, if they drunk drive,

God forbid, please, don't. But if they do, that somehow they are incapable of change, especially if they still have a driver's license. Yeah, I dig it. What if they do it 10 times in a row? I don't know, bro. They're going to jail, bro. They're out of the league. Okay. All right. Okay. Last question. You use this expression, which I just kind of real casually, immune privileged. The brain is immune privileged. What does that mean? Yeah. Privileged. Yeah. So you have two immune systems. One is called the innate immune system. This is the one that like, let's say you get a splinter, you'll get some pus around it, some swelling. There's not really antibodies to

a splinter. It's just that the, um, your innate immune system going, hey, there's a foreign body in here that's not me. The body is so good at recognizing not of me. And then creating a bunch of responses, trying to isolate it, et cetera. Then you have the adaptive immune system, which comes along and starts making antibodies. So let's say you have a bacteria or virus gets into you. At first, the innate immune system, like in the first, you know, 24 to, you know, 72 hours is going to like, Okay, let's just like contain this thing somehow or launch a like, like it might make you want to sleep if it's a virus like it does.

But then comes the second wave where the adaptive immune system, which is amazing. We have a whole discussion about this, basically sends out these like these cells that go, oh, what is this thing? And then they go, what's on the surface of it? What's the shape of this thing? Oh wow, okay, and then they go back

and the body actually manufactures antibodies that then can go and stick to the surface of this thing to make sure that it can't either spray spread and or go attach itself to other parts of the body. That's just like amazing. And then there's like another wave where it's like an even more specific antibody. So the idea was that the brain is immune privilege,

that there's no antibodies, innate or adaptive immune system in the brain. We're certainly not no adaptive immune system. And Dr. Carla Schatz, who coined the term, fired together, wire together, brilliant neurobiologist at Stanford now, has been at Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, all those places. She was the one that said,

Well, let's just like test this idea. Maybe they're, the brain actually does have an immune system. And lo and behold, has immune system, boom, there's an entire field born of that. Critical field for a treatment of brain cancers, for treatment of brain plasticity or all and on and on. So immune privileged is essentially it has the privilege of having an immune system. Sorry, it didn't mean to interrupt, but the word immune privilege were meant to refer to that it's not, there's no immune system in the brain. Now we know that, nope, the brain is not privileged like every other organ and lung. the body, it is subject to the workings of the immune system.

Oh, okay. So it's kind of like, yeah, it's all like the lay-a-person thing. I know scientists are love getting that backwards, just confuse people and keep it secret so we can talk about it, pretend we know more than that would be. I'm just kidding. It sounds just kidding. So, so. Just kidding. Just kidding.

So they'll clip the just kidding. Someone take off the internet. It'll be just kidding. Freakin hube's over here. Hube's, bruh. There were worse nicknames, but I'll tell you those later. Oh, so, okay. So what is, so there is no immune privileged scenario.

the body or there is? There may be a few, few areas, but no, pretty much your entire body is subject to immune function. Like your hair maybe? The niche of the,

of the stem, the hair follicle has stem cells in there. No, there's immune system stuff going on in there too. All good then. Cool, that's all I was going to ask about track and field.

What do we like, 100 meter dash? No, man, I go up to Hayward. I went for the worlds. I go for the track and field qualifiers whenever, I only didn't go, during COVID because it wasn't open.

The 5,000, 12 laps, Steve Prefontein, talk about a hard race. He died right in drunk driving thing, but his thing was he was calling it. He was going to do 12, 60 second laps. Oh, damn. The 5,000 falls on the last day. I'm going to be up there. We already got seats. I'm going to, you guys should come up.

I invite Cam. Like, I want to be there to watch the 5,000. That's just a brutal, brutal race. I mean, think about three mile, three mile sprint. Yeah. Looks like it's print to me anyway. I think in the Olympics they should have like a very skilled recreational swimmer. Go back and forth next to the rest of them.

Yeah, yeah, to compare, right? Yeah. Or a very, for jih Tzuza, it wouldn't make any sense. But like, like, a skateboarding. A swimmer, I mean, have you ever, like, walked along the pool and someone's a high-caliber swimmer? Like, it's a, they're hauling. Oh, yeah, you're a swimmer because you're, you wouldn't even be, like, the recreational swimmer wouldn't be in the game.

He wouldn't be in the camera. Like, he would just be back there. be fishing they be on to the next event. Yeah, they'd be on the next event. Next day they're like to finish his freaking, whatever. Yeah, those guys and gals are missiles in the water. You're probably a pretty good swimmer despite your thickness. Dude, earlier I saw you, gave you a dapp and a hug and I was like, man, like you and you

and Rogan. Like, whenever I remember and I'm like, damn, you guys are like turns out like this thing. It's crazy. Like, is that jujitsu? Is that what does it? Well, jih Tijuana is definitely part of it. But there's guys that are not, you know, big. Yeah.

And they're sick at jiu-jitsu. There's guys that there's guys that feel kind of like Noodily almost in a real good You gotta watch out for those dudes a little bit Because they're gonna get a little bit crazy with their flexibility Who's that kid I like his Instagram account Mikey is that his name? Mikey Musa Mechi yeah he's his Instagram account is amazing Yeah he's so freaking crazy flexible and he's he's just really sick at Jiu Jitsu

Yeah, he's he's amazing and a great guy like a just a super good hearted dude who who fought against this other guy, and the other guy wouldn't tap. I'll show you the video. You'll, he's just ripping, all of his legaments are getting totally destroyed. The guy's not tapping, and he doesn't tap. And Mikey afterwards was just kind of like,

he was a little bit freaked out, you know? I bet. I mean, that's psycho. Yeah. That's some G.G.L. And stuff right now. Only 10 people are going to know that joke. Uh, my friend got into a street fight and did an arm lock on someone.

And he said, he goes, you know when you're trying to break a chicken bone off of the chicken? And it like, you press it and then it goes, and then you go go the other drink and you're just breaking all the ligaments. That's what, when you see this Mikey Musamechi doing it to this guy's leg. Oh. And the guy's just not topic. Oh. That's not adaptive. I was talking to Mike Perez the other day.

80CC just just won 80cc open classes 170 pounds but he's like talking about footlocks and knee locks he's like yeah I'm not tapping he goes I've turned off that switch like and he's been in tournaments where he's just got his ankle destroyed and just didn't tap and won because he just turned off that switch yeah I'm not tapping so that to me I mean it's it's a decision that you're going to make and certainly when you watch the the highest level of submission arts, submission grappling, ADCC, those guys, they will

absolutely sacrifice their freaking tendons for a victory. It's crazy. And look, I know what it takes to recover from an ACL, so I've never had it, but I know, like, you're out for a year. But these guys are going for the World Championship? Doesn't matter.

You can have the ACL. You can just take it. You can keep it. Some people, it's the body. Other people, it's the family. You know, you've got to be careful. You know, I know children of academics who are like really messed up because their parents were just like going for it all the time at work, you know, like, you know, like there's, you know, there's, it comes in different forms, you know. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The sacrifice you're willing to make. It's pretty disturbing to watch someone get their ACL snapped and not tap. From the heart does not mean foolish, reckless abandon. Be smart. Agree. Where can people find? Do you have human? Hubermanlab.com is kind of the central place to find everything.

Yeah, we got links out to all the podcasts. Everything's zero cost. The search function there, you put in anything, take you to timestamps, AI, Huberman Lab on all social platforms. Keep it simple. Yeah. Huberman Lab, you're out there. Let's see.

We don't always want to work out. Now we know that we're going to work out anyways. When we work out, we're going to need some fuel. Let me send you to joccofuel.com. You just had a, you've been drinking the streak right here. Yeah, you know, and again, I don't get paid to say this. We don't have any deal, nothing like that. I, uh, I, my sources of caffeine are Yerba Mante, some coffee.

And, but if I drink an energy drink, I'm going to drink these because I love them. And you got your specific Yerba Mata. What is it? So people want to get in there. Matina. So is it? And I have a relationship to them. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's a zero sugar. We'll get you some. I have a relationship to Jaco Fuel. So we're kind of on an even. Yeah. I mean, my dad's Argentina. As I mentioned, I grew up, you know, drinking matte out the gourd with you know the loose leaf they sell a loose leaf i i help them design a

zero sugar uh cold brew one that i like a lot it's like 150 milligrams of caffeine it doesn't have the neutropics in it so this is like if i need that zip the extra kick and um uh i'll do one or two of these i have to say if i do one of these because i'm not that condition i'm like going they're good they're going this one's really good i would not say that if i didn't really feel that um and i love it Yeah, so I hit the energy drinks usually before workout. Yep. Or a three and a half hour long Jocko podcast. Yes.

So there you go. Joccofuel.com. Check that out. Also origin USA.com. We got stuff made in America 100%. Rebelling against the world, bringing manufacturing back to America. So crazy. And we're making it happen.

It's DIY. By the way. It's DIY. We're making it happen. Just, dude, we got this new workout gear. It's freaking legit. Is it jujitsu or just workout? No, no, it's just, just workout training gear.

And I'll, I'll get you some. And you'll be freaking pumped. It's all made 100% in America. The fabric's made in America. Sown in America. So whatever you're doing, jujitsu, working out, jeans, because you need jeans.

You can't go to the club and your ghee, Echo Charles. No, I know you think you can. He said that before. He used to. In San Diego, that's probably a lot. Yeah, I'm sure they did. It's like, you're going to your ghee, really? You know, when I, when I.

I was in the lab more doing experiments. It was Halloween. I just used to wear my lab coat and the disco. It was kind of lame. But, you know, I was working late. I thought to still make the Halloween party. Yeah. You can't wear your ghee out, Echo Charles.

Despite the G&A ghee scenario. Despite the G&AGI Scenario. It's a long story. It's a long story and a good one. But you need jeans, boots. We got you covered. OriginUSA.com bringing manufacturing back to America. Don't support communism.

Don't support slave labor. Don't support companies that trash our environment, which if you get stuff that's made overseas, they have no EPA, they have no rules, and they just pollute and they ruin the earth. So don't put up with that. Don't put up with slave labor.

Origin USA.com. Go check it out. Hey, also, Origin USA, check this out. We've got a, we do a jitzyt camp, right? It's in Maine. This year, we're doing a law enforcement jiu-jitsu camp. It is August 27th through the 31st. So if you're in law enforcement or first responder or military and you want to get training

that's focused on that environment, then check it out at origin USA.com. The LEO, the Jiu Jizu Camp's already sold out. The jih Tijuana itself sells out in like a match. matter of hours. So this is open for first responders, military law enforcement. Check that out. jocco store.com. You can get cool t-shirts there, Echo Charles. Yes, represent discipline equals freedom because it does, by the way. Equal freedom. It's the last sign. No. But yeah, you want to represent. Blumness. We can get it. Good. All this other stuff. Short locker. New design every month. Subscription scenario. People seem to like them.

People still hitting me up for the sugar-coated lies. What is short-short locker? shirt locker the shirt locker play on words hurt locker it's a long story but it's called the shirt locker so basically you have a subscription you get a new shirt with a discipline equals freedom design but we go a little bit more free as far as the uh the creative so you're talking about how people have it in them they got to get that well echo charles got that you freaking needs to get it out i have my good shirt yeah hell yeah so we have a good so an old shirt from the shirt locker because they're just like one month and then they're gone See what I'm saying? But actually, when you join, you can get one from the past. So you're all good. If you're a member, whatever.

But we have a good one. It says good. But it's like in this, what would you call it? Fancy, fancy, whatever. Curseve, cursive, cursive, right? It looks like elegant, which is kind of not Jocco's Jam or whatever. But that one's called good high-level problems. See what I'm saying?

Yeah. And all that means is, hey, you can be in the gutter that you can have problems. They still got an approach with that attitude. Or you can be freaking, you know, what do you call top 1% type scenario. You can say, damn, I got a flat tire on my Mercedes AMG. Yeah, or the Uber eats guys later. I don't know, whatever. These higher levels and, you know, whatever, problems.

You still need the same attitude. That's what I'm saying. People seem to like that one. It's kind of relatable. Anyway, like I said, it's a new design. People seem to like it. It's called the Shurlockery. It's on jocco store.com.

Oh, so you're going to need some steak. We're going to go have some steak right now. And we're going to have some primal beef or some Colorado. We're having both. We're cooking a both. Primal Beef, Primalbeef.com, Colorado Craftbeef.com. Best steak you can get. Go check those out.

Subscribe to the podcast. Jocco Underground.com. Check that one out if you want to get in there. We have YouTube channels. All of us have YouTube channels. So check out the YouTube channels. Psychological Warfare. Flipside canvas, Dakota Meyer making cool stuff to hang on your wall.

You got a shirt that says good. You might want to freaking, uh, uh, what's it called? A piece of art to hang on your wall. Says good. From Dakota Meyer. You can't go wrong. I've written a bunch of books. about leadership.

I've written kids book. You heard it today. We got a kid's movie coming out. It's actually something, Echo Charles. Four quadrant movie. Do you know what that is? No. Four quadrant movie.

This is a movie that goes for the whole family. All quadrants are covered. I don't know what the four are, but it's obviously the kids. Yeah. Maybe the teens, maybe the parents and maybe even the grandparents. Love it.

So four quadrant movie, this is what it's called. Yeah. So that's where we got coming. So it doesn't matter who you are In the fam, you're still going to get something out of it. So check out the books. Also, Eschleonfront, we have a leadership consultancy.

We solve problems through leadership. Eschlamfront.com. Check that out. A bunch of live events that we do for individuals, FTX, Council, Battlefield. We got the Women's Assembly happening September 11th through the 13th in San Antonio, Texas. We got the Nashville muster. We're at it right now when this is playing. So that's sold out.

Next one's in Dallas. So if you want to come to one of these events, They all sell out, so register, go to Eshlonfront.com. Also, we do consulting. So if you have a company, you need help with your leadership. You have a need help with anything. It's going to get solved through leadership. So eshlamfront.com where you have an online training academy as well.

Extremeownership.com. Learn these principles virtually. We also have some charities that we support. So if you want to help service members active and return, tired you want to help their families you want to help gold star families check out mark lee's mom mama lee she's got an amazing charity organization she helps out veterans with health support that the VA is not going to pay for so if you want to donate or you want to get involved go to america's mighty warriors.org also heroes and horses dot org micah fink up in the

mountains right now last report he just whittled a small stick and defrault He defended him and his family from an onslaught of grizzly bears in the mountains of Montana. Then he takes veterans up to the mountains where they can get lost and get found. It's an awesome program. Jimmy May is also got an organization beyond the brotherhood.org. So there you go. We're all on the interwebs at Huberman Lab at Jocko Willink, at Echo Charles. Just watch out for the algorithm because there's a freaking psycho right now.

sitting there, two of them, an engineer, a software engineer and a psychologist, and they're trying to figure out how to get you to stare at that screen longer. They make that algorithm. They carved it up just for you, put little taunting little things that you love. They know what you like.

They can tell a long you looked at that post half an hour ago. They know that you looked at it for an extra 0.4 seconds. They're gonna throw another one at you. And then they'll throw another one at you. And they get it honed until you're just addicted and you're wasting your life. Just don't let that happen. Watch out for the algorithm.

Thanks once again, Andrew for join us. Any closing thoughts for us? Just thanks so much for having me here. Thanks for giving me a venue to talk about some fun things, some harder things, you know, and let me show up from the heart. That's what I'm doing. And, you know, I always appreciate you and you both. And people tuning in.

It really, again, it's an honor and a privilege. So just very grateful. right on man well thanks for what you do thanks for getting the word out there and thanks for helping people become better people also we want to thank our men and women in uniform around the world holding the line right now and protecting our freedom and our way of life we couldn't do what we're doing without you doing what you're doing so thank you from our hearts for getting out there and holding the line also thanks to our police law enforcement firefighters paramedics emtis dispatchers Correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service,

all other first responders, thanks for doing what you do to keep us safe here at home and to everyone else out there. Got one more quote for you from James Jones book, From Here to Eternity. Quote, you had to lie down with pain, not draw back away from it. You let yourself sort of move around the outside edge of pain, like with cold water, until you finally got up

your nerve to take yourself in hand then you took a deep breath and dove in and let yourself sink down it clear to the bottom and after you had been down inside pain a while you found that like with cold water it was not nearly as cold as you had thought it was when your muscles were cringing themselves away from the outside edge of it as you moved around trying to get up your nerve and that's it's a good call it's a good call with life lean into the pain don't draw back away from it it won't be as bad as you thought and in fact it will make you better so go get after it and that's all we've got for tonight until next time this is andrew and echo and jocco out