Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin - Andrew Huberman, Ph.D.

Episode Date: November 22, 2023

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. In 2021, Huberman launched the Huberman Lab podcast. By 2023, the podcast had become the 6th most popular podcast in the US on Spotify platforms, while his YouTube channel had 4.1 million subscribers and his Instagram account 4.2 million. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: Squarespace https://squarespace.com/tetra ------ LMNT Electrolytes https://drinklmnt.com/tetra ------ House of Macadamias https://www.houseofmacadamias.com/tetra

Tetragrammitsit. I was born at Stanford Hospital and I was raised in Palo Alto and then I was a postdoc at Stanford from 2005 to 2010. A postdoc is after your PhD. It's more or less like a residency in medicine. And what was your PhD in? Neuroscience. And then I was a professor at UC San Diego for five years. And then I was recruited back to Stanford in 2016.

And I'm still a 10-year faculty member at Stanford now. So are you young to be 10-year? I was 10-yeared at 40, so that's young. You know, for reasons that we could get into. Tell me. I don't know anything about that. I don't really even know what tenured is. So tenured, I know it's something you want.

Right. A lot of people mistakenly think that tenured means a job for life. That is not true. People can lose tenure for scientific fraud, for doing egregious things that they shouldn't do. But technically tenure is about academic freedom. So technically. So when you get hired as a professor, you are what's called assistant professor.

And the name is misnomer because you're not an assistant to anybody. It just means that you don't have tenure yet. And then typically depending on the place, it's five to eight years in which you produce original research. And then you go up for tenure. You are evaluated for tenure and it's a process of internal review and usually at a place like Stanford, there are going to be 20 outside letters of recommendation will be solicited from experts in your field and they'll evaluate you compared to others in your field and then you either get tenure or you don't get tenure. And at the point where somebody gets tenure, they have academic freedom, they can pivot

and start working on something completely different if they like. Whereas prior to tenure, you know, you're expected to do more or less what you said you were going to do. And... And do you say what you're going to do before you come in? How does it work? How does that get decided? Yeah.

So if we back up to the education leading to that, it will make a little bit more sense. So in college, you know, I studied biology and psychology, there was no formal field of neuroscience at that time. So I went to college from 93 to 98. I was a five year undergrad because I took a little vacation that we can talk about. My first year was a total flop. The next four years were strong. Then I got a masters in behavioral neuroscience, then my PhD in neuroscience. Then I did my postdoc for five years. So you know, I had about 20 years of formal training before I was an assistant professor. When you get hired as an assistant professor, the process is you put out applications to

various schools that happen to be hiring for a neuroscience faculty position, and you propose what your lab will do. The simplest way to describe it is you come up with a set of ideas about what your lab will be about, and it has to be unique from what other labs are about. So the Hubertman Lab, I proposed in my application, would focus on particular aspects of nervous system development, nervous system regeneration, nervous system function, and what you're really selling

when you go on the faculty job market is your unique vision of what your lab is going to be. And it's very different than any other kind of job process or prior portion of the science education because what you're telling them is that you have a vision of what you're going to do that's distinct from other people. It's a little bit like a startup company

like you're pitching your startup. And then when you get the faculty position, it's wild, you know, that my advisor at the time, right when I got the job, I had several jobs to pick from. It was either go to UC San Diego or MIT. And by the way, when I decided to go to UC San Diego, which is an excellent neuroscience program,

the person in charge of MIT looked me in the eye and said, you're crazy if you go to San Diego and not MIT. And I said, why? You know, San Diego is a great program. And they said, yeah, but it's not MIT. Four years later, I'm sitting in my office at UC San Diego. And that same person was applying for a job at UC San Diego. Unbelievable.

And actually, she wasn't on my schedule, but I requested that she be on my schedule. Yes. And I said, do you remember you telling me that I was crazy for picking UC San Diego over MIT? And she said, I do. And I said, why did you say that? She said, my job was to recruit you.

And I learned something really important in that moment, which is that the person recruiting or the person trying to convince you of something will say almost anything. They're not necessarily on your side. They are not on your side because, and this gets into the intricacies of academic. And you would think, I mean naively, I would think if the person is trying to get me to come there, it's because they're on my side too.

Like it's wearing this together. It's not bad. Yeah, well, and I'm happy to say this. The Boston academic system is notoriously cutthroat. I mean, Stanford's a plus-plus institution as is MIT, as is Harvard. But the ethos is a little bit different on the East and West coast. Stanford by virtue of being in Silicon Valley, and Silicon Valley having so many very young leaders is

very attuned to the future and what's next. The East Coast academic institutions are as well, but they're a little more steeped in tradition. For instance, I had the experience of being at Stanford when my downstairs neighbor, Roger Cornberg, won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the structure of RNA. His father, Arthur Cornberg, discovered RNA. So this is, you know, he's got a brother as a scientist too and I think another one who is a composer.

So this family is interesting in its own right. I remember being so excited, like Stanford got a Nobel and it's my downstairs neighbor and I like Roger a lot and I worked next door to his lab and we could talk, that's some funny interactions with him that we're amusing because he's just quirky and brilliant as so many scientists are. But the point was that I remember telling an undergraduate that was working for me at the time,

hey, the guy next door won a Nobel Prize and me and what his reaction was, does he have an app? Which I think just beautifully captures the West Coast phenomenon of it's all about what are you going to do with it? People want to know what are you going to do with that? Res, on the East Coast it's a bit different. They're very attuned to technology and companies, but I think the reason why you don't have a true replica of Silicon Valley in Boston or even in New York or even in

Austin for that matter, where now there are incredible companies have moved to Austin and are spawned in Austin, is that there's something about the West that even in this modern time of highly interconnected people by way of the internet, there's something about the West representing the future and not steeped in its past. You would be hard pressed to find the list of Nobel Prize winners on the wall of Stanford School of Medicine, and yet we have, I believe, nine or more of them. And I know where that set of plaques sits, but most people don't.

And Stanford isn't walking around talking about it. Why? Because they're interested in what's happening next. So eventually the opportunity to move to Stanford was one that I certainly wasn't going to pass up for a lot of reasons. But anyway, going back to the hiring process, I learned during the hiring process

that once they make you an offer, they can't make an offer to anyone else, and if they don't fill that offer, it's embarrassing for them. And so what she was doing was she was trying to make sure that she didn't have to go back to the dean and say, we failed to recruit this guy, and he went to this other place. And why did you make the choice? It was all gut. In fact, I had an experience from in 2005, where I made the decision to go to Harvard to be a postdoc. And I was gonna work for this guy

that whose research interests were very aligned with what I wanted to do. And I moved there, and I remember calling my sister that night, I'm like, oh shit, I'm screwed. I got a leaf here. I don't know how I'm gonna do, I don't know what to do. So what ended that night, I'm like, oh shit, I'm screwed. I got a leave here. I don't know how I'm gonna do, I don't know what to do. So what ended up happening was I ended up leaving. So I came back and I worked for a guy named Ben Barris,

who's dead now, all three of my advisors are dead for different reasons. As one of them pointed out, I'm the common denominator, but let's just separate correlation and causation. But, and so I was at Stanford from 2005 to 2010 as a postdoc. I'm the common denominator, but let's just separate correlation and causation. I was at Stanford from 2005 to 2010 as a postdoc. Last place I ever wanted to be because I grew up there.

Had a lot of developmental history there that it was a really uncomfortable thing for me to be back in the Bay Area. I was super unhappy. I had about a major depression. Yet when you had the chance to go to the East Coast to MIT, you chose to stay on the West Coast. Right. So what happened was after that post-doc working for Ben, who was an amazing person, and

we could talk about him for hours, but was an amazing person. I remember looking at my job options, and I had a bunch of them, but it boiled down to MIT versus UC San Diego. There was a Texas offer as well at Baylor that financially was really strong, but I didn't want to be down there. Also for personal reasons, I like Texas a lot. And I went to Ben and I said, what do I do? And now Ben had gone to MIT and his experience

there was not a good one. But he said, listen, I'm gonna separate that out. But as your advisor, he said, you're a West Coast kid. You grew up in Palo Alto and the South Bay, San Francisco, skateboarding. At the time, while as a postdoc, I was writing for Thrasher. I wrote music column for Thrasher, covered bands under a different name.

I think you can find these on the internet. Some of them are a little reverent, but anyway, they're out there, but I did for extra cash and I also like going to shows. And he said, you know, you do this music thing, you're into the skateboarding thing, you grew up here. I think if you go to these coasts, you're going to hate it.

And you already had that one bad interaction with the guy at Harvard. Just go to San Diego, it's a great place and enjoy it. So I went to San Diego and to be honest, I liked that the weather was good. I had very few friends there. I was extremely isolated. I had my bulldog that I raised there. My lab thrived there,

but it was not a place I wanted to stay and I knew that from day one. And that went back to when I was a young teenager. When I was 14, I went to a trade show, skateboarding action sports trade show, because I was really in the skateboard community. I probably skipped school to go to that. I can't imagine I would have gotten permission to go. And I had only bad experiences in San Diego. I got into a physical altercation with a cab driver. We had a bunch of stuff stolen from us.

I was getting into a trouble back then. So I had, there's this phenomenon in neuroscience called conditioned place preference, where if something good happens to you, some place you just feel good when you're there, and then there's also conditioned place aversion. And animals show it, you know, give an animal shock in one corner of a cage,

you don't wanna go back to that corner, duh. So I had like a condition place of weightens or a version to San Diego. But I had my lab there, and then when the job opportunity came up at Stanford, I applied. I was like, both hands up, and I took it. But even then, I thought about going to NYU because I've always wanted to live in New York.

I love New York City. I went there when I was five years old with my family, and I remember thinking, this is the most incredible place in New York. I love New York City. I went there when I was five years old with my family, and I remember thinking, this is the most incredible place in the world. It's the most incredible place, and this is when Times Square was CD, and I was born in 75, so this would be 1980. It was grimy, but I remember thinking,

I can't believe it exists. And to me, I've done a little bit of snorkeling and scuba diving. I think of New York City as a tropical reef. Everywhere you look, there's life. Look down an alley, there's life. Look over there. Go downstairs, there's life. Whereas to me, the west coast always seemed a bit more sparse. The life exists on a different scale. If you go scuba diving or snorkeling in the Monterey Bay, which I have, it's all just big kelp beds, and every once in a while, big fish goes by.

So it's, there was always a bit of a depressive tone for me in place, beautiful places like Big Sur Monterey Bay. They did not feel warming to me, but I remember, and I've always been obsessed with like, the caroac thing and all these East Coast academics and creatives. You're a good example of this, who come from the East Coast, get to the West Coast and they just like bask in it.

They're like, whoa, this is amazing, but I grew up on the West Coast. So it's always had this kind of mix for me of feeling like home, but never quite right. And then the East Coast love visiting New York City, but never quite right. And then the East Coast love visiting New York City, but not quite right. So in 2015, I was exploring NYU versus Stanford. And I loved the lab that were gonna give me at NYU.

It's right off Washington Square. It had like exposed beams. The architecture was beautiful. And I thought, well, where am I gonna live? I, there was a little place on Elbridge Street that I fell in love with that I couldn't afford, but I'm like, somehow I'm gonna live there. And my girlfriend at the time, she had lived in New York,

loved New York, we were just like New York, New York, New York, the whole, we're going, we're moving, we're getting out of San Diego, because I had met her in San Diego. And then I was back in San Diego, I had to make the decision, and I was doing work on the speed bag. I'd start boxing in San Diego, that's how the pride I felt that I literally was sparring every Wednesday night,

getting hit, because I'd fought when I was younger, some tie boxing, so now I'm sparring again, totally unnecessary. I mean, I just don't recommend it. You're getting hit in the head, I'm not making money. And I'm working on the speed bag, t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t I'm not making money. And I'm working on the speed bag. And I'm going into this what I call wordlessness, where I'm trying to not think.

Just get into listening and rhythm. I do this when I run sometimes. And out of nowhere. Boom. I don't want to go to an NYU. Why? They expect me to work on primates. I'd done a little bit of primate work. I'm an animal lover.

We could talk about the primate work and why I'd gotten into it. But I was like, you know what? I don't wanna work on primates. And that's what they want me to do. And I don't wanna work on mice. In fact, I don't wanna work on animals at all. Now, I'm a meat eater, I'm omnivore, but I eat meat. I try and get ethically raised,

you know, meat and that kind of thing, but I just think like, I don't want to do it. I see myself in New York working on monkeys, Marmosets, these little monkeys. I don't want to do it anymore. And I don't know how it's going to work out, but I know if I go to Stanford, I can start a lab to work on humans. I can phase out my animal work. And there's something about going to Stanford that even though I don't want to be back in Pallowalt, I have all this conditioned place, aversion to that, growing up there, and I went through a lot there, more than some less than others, but it was a hard place for me to be. If I go back and I go to Stanford, something good will happen.

And if I go to NYU, it's just like going down the wrong path. So it was just in a state of wordlessness that it just came to me. And it came to all at once. All at once. And it was clear and you'd never second-guessed it after that. Right. It was absolute agony to get to that point. Yes. In fact, my then girlfriend will tell you, it was agony.

She wanted to go to New York. I wanted to go to New York. Yes. I became the definition of neurotic around this decision. Talking it this way, talking it that way, thinking about this, thinking about that, getting opinions, pros and con, let's throw the meditation,

like I would have done electric shock therapy to come up with the solution. I was so miserable trying to come up with the right answer. This gets offers that, but that offers this, but then the apartment in New York and then there's the hierarchy in New York that did the stand for it. Oh my God, I was making myself sick.

And frankly, I'm amazed she stuck with me through that because I was becoming incredibly difficult to be around. And everyone was like, no more discussion about this decision, just make a decision, flip a coin. And in that moment, it just came to me. So I guess the way to put it is that I can agonize over a decision, seek input from anyone who will listen about the issue. But once I see the truth and feel it, there's no going back.

And so I... And I love that it happened by yourself in a quiet moment. It didn't happen because somebody made a recommendation. It didn't happen that way. First, you did all of the research, you had all of these conflicting ideas, and then in a quiet moment, it bubbled up. Yeah. It just geysered out of my subconscious. You had clarity.

100% clarity. It just boom. And the first person I told wasn't my girlfriend, because she was really my family at that time. We met shortly after I moved to San Diego. She had a dog, I had a dog, we raised a dog. We were a family of two with the dogs, and it was a hard relationship,

and I brought a lot of the difficulties to that relationship for sure, but I was isolated in San Diego, except for her and the dogs. And I had a few friends, but so the logical thing would have been to call her and tell her. But I had been working with a coach, not a therapist.

I had also been working with a therapist. I had been working with a coach. This was a woman who at the time was the wife of a seal team guy, lived out on Coronado Island. And I had been working with her for a few years. Her name was Wendy. And I would go see her and we would just talk in a completely non-therapeutic way. Like, she was licensed to do coaching and this kind of thing, but

she was like, it's all about getting into these wordless states. It's all about wordlessness. So maybe you should run or maybe you should swim or you should just do something that gets you into these wordless states. So I started the boxing thing and that brought up a lot for me because you know, one of the reasons why I'm terrible at boxing. I mean, I actually fought some fights. I had my boxing license and I loved the training and I won some fights. Never got knocked down, never got knocked out. But when I'd hit the other guy, I'd feel kind of bad.

I don't want to hurt other people. And I understand that the ritual of boxing, and I got, I'd gotten a lot of fights when I was younger. So I used to have to do this psych up for myself before we'd spar, or I fought some fights where you're trying to knock the other guy out. And I think I would make up these stories that, you know, that the guy had raped my sister for instance.

And now I'm trying to like channel this like false aggression. And occasionally, you know, you sink one through the guard. Like a method act, yeah. You know, and it feels for the moment you're like, God, I'm, you see his head snapped back. But then I didn't feel good. I felt like this is not good. Okay. I didn't feel good. I felt like this is not good. Okay, so she eventually said, listen, you seem to like the training,

the fighting seems to be drawing up a lot of old narratives and stuff that doesn't feel good. Cause when I got in fights when I was younger, I didn't like it either. It came from a place of pain. You know this about anyone. It's rooted in pain. There's a great book actually by Sam Sheridan

called The Fighters Heart, where he talks about all the different forms of fighting and martial arts, and I have great reverence for it, and so does Sam. At the end, he talks about, you know, life is about building things up, not about breaking them down. And in cultures like Thailand, where people fight, they think it's insane that people who don't have to

fight for a living would choose to fight. So, you know, here I am as a, you know, I got my system professorship when I was 35, I'm almost 40, I'm boxing, Wednesday night I'm sparring, I'm fighting once every three months or so, you know, doing the whole thing and then I enjoyed that to some extent, I like the relationship with my coach, love the training, but I don't want to hurt anybody. So I get really into the training. And in that moment, it just comes out like hitting the speed bag.

And I went and called Wendy. And I said, I made my decision. And she said, great. And I said, I'm going to Stanford. And she said, great. And I said, but what's wild is how I came up with the decision. I was hitting the speed back. And I got into a rhythm around that.

And all of a sudden, it was, I don't want to go to NYU and harm monkeys. Boom. And she goes, love it. Like, it's a hurt, it didn't really matter. I could have told her that I had picked up a blue pebble on the beach and the blue pebble talked to me. I mean, it wouldn't made any difference whatsoever. The point was that it was about getting into a state of wordlessness.

It's also interesting that you got there through a physical means. So you're doing something physical that took focus, intention, and a lot of energy. And the speedbag is interesting because if anyone who knows how to speedbag, it will tell you there are a million different ways to And the speed bag is interesting because if anyone who knows how to speed bag will tell you there are a million different ways to hit the speed bag. You hit it with the side of your hand you can come but the rhythm of it you're listening to and some guys will tap their foot while they do it some guys pivot their hips. There are a million different ways to do the speed bag but the harder you hit the speed bag the less proficient you're going to be. It's about being smooth, it's about staying loose, it's about keeping your elbows loose. You know,

and they're, you know, people tell you, it's like, no, it's going to count. It's like doing all sorts of things. But it's a rhythm where it's like a dance. Yeah, when you see Floyd Mayweather looking at you at the camera while he's speed bagging, it's all through the ears. Now, I'm not a very auditory driven person. I'm hyper-visual, and I study the visual system. But with the speedbag, I learned how to connect my bodily rhythms to auditory rhythms in the way that probably a drummer does in some ways. And I think it just tapped into a different part of my nervous system.

And even as I'm sitting here now making the motion, I can feel it in my legs, because proper speed bagging comes from the floor up. It's not just about the hands. You're trying to pull from the floor when you punch. You know, this kind of thing. And there it was, just hit me. And I've had the same experience while running.

I like to run, you know, for me, you know, an hour or an hour and a half, at least once a week. And those runs are as much about clearing out the clutter, as they are about exercise, as it is about just seeing what guisers up. And as a neuroscientist, I have theories about this that, you know, we're trying to shut down a certain amount of our predictive brain. A big part of our brain is dedicated to trying to anticipate what's going to happen next. And that part of our brain is remarkable and it is what allows us to strategize, but it is also a problem because that very same part of the brain, it is responsible for the to the rest of

your brain, which is the deeper recesses of the brain, the subconscious and your limbic system and other not just the limbic system, but other systems. So what you do, I believe, when you run or you get into some sort of rhythmic repeated movement is you get into a state of wordlessness, the narratives become fractured, and then they start to disappear, and then subconscious ideas and narratives start to geyser up.

And some people get this while swimming, some people get it while running, I happen to get it while speed bagging or while running. I've tried to get it in meditation, but I haven't managed to do that. I think we can reach our subconscious through sleep and dreaming. That's not an original idea.

Young talked about this. I think this has been known for thousands of years. Young just articulated it. I've just been listening to Man in His Symbols again, and the book starts talking about that. But the decision of whether or not to go to NYU or Stanford is probably one of the most important decisions of my entire career and life. And it was clearly the right one for me. And not just because Stanford's in

amazing university, but also because of what happened after I got back. And it came through a state of physical action and wordlessness. You think it could happen through a breathing technique? You said you've never got there through meditation, but I'm wondering if meditation isn't a physical enough act. Yeah, that's a great question. I so in 2015 I heard about this guy Wim Hof. I got a plane ticket went to Spain. I had contacted him and his family before. I met him in the Pyrenees and did some mountaineering with Wim, some wild stuff that was a little too wild. A beaning, it almost got me killed at one point. I almost got

my leg ripped off. I came back with a pretty major injury, jumping off a bridge backwards. Women I did a sling off a suspension bridge that we rigged up. And I had the rope between my legs and it cut down to the tendons on one side. And then I was lowered into the water afterwards and something got in there and it got a bad infection. It was pretty ugly. I shouldn't have done that. But during that trip, I did get the opportunity to do three or four rounds of true Vimhoff

cyclic hyperventilation type breathing each day with extensive breath holds. Nowadays, it's become a little bit more controversial because people know, because people have done this near water, in water, and it's gotten hurt. When I was there, they were very clear to only do it on land. So we were going hard with the breathing, and I did get into some states of altered consciousness. I don't know that I had any ideas there, but I learned a lot about what breath work can do. And then when I returned, I dedicated a good arm of my lab to studying respiration, which we recently published, a clinical trial.

It's a very psychedelic experience that we have breathing. Yeah, and I think that critics of when we'll say, oh, it's just like tumor breathing or cyclocypropyrenalation, or I get a little amused by the claims that different forms of breathing mimic one another or, you know, we publish this clinical trial comparing cyclic hyperventilation, which looks a lot like Wim Hof breathing versus cyclic sign, which is looks a little bit more like pranayama breathing.

The idea that anyone could be the owner of breathing. It's just, it's the most hysterical idea to me anyway. I certainly don't claim to be. I don't think women does either, but I agree. I think that the breathwork is powerful and it did shift my state, but I didn't come to cognitive clarity about something or decision clarity.

It taught me how to sense my body more. And as my colleague David Spiegel, who's a world expert in hypnosis, clinical hypnosis says, breathing represents a bridge between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind, because it's the one aspect of our physiology that is always operating in the background, but that we can take conscious control over and when we do that, it shifts our state of mind. You could say that about walking like when you walk, you don't think about it, but then you could decide to step with mindfulness. But the shift in your mindset when you do that is not as profound as when you just change your breathing.

So the breathing really is the a bridge, a powerful accessible bridge between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. But to me, this getting into these states of wordlessness on a weekly basis, if not more, is just... It's clear that it's a powerful thing to do. So when your in-mese wordless states and epiphany happens, do you immediately write it down? What's your way of capturing them? Oddly, and I say oddly because I'm pretty verbal, and I also write things down all the time.

Last night we were watching the documentary about the clash, and I got my phone out, and I remember thinking, I hope Rick doesn't think I'm not paying attention to the documentary, but I was writing down songs that I had forgotten about quotes from strommer that like notes because it was just such a great documentary. But when I've arrived at decisions or clarity in these wordless states, it shows up like a bold faced word in one shot. There's no way I could forget.

You know, I had a dream three weeks ago, I'd been working through some hard stuff and I had this very complicated dream. At the end of the dream, this word just popped up, devotion. And I saw the word in writing. I saw the word in writing, devotion saw the word in writing. Devotion. And I went, oh my God, and I woke up and I called our mutual friend Paul Conti. It was like, I texted him.

I have to talk to you about this dream. And we ended up talking about the dream. And he said, it's unusual for something to come through so clearly as I want to say. I've never seen a word in a dream in my life. Well, I felt what devotion. And in this case, it was someone else's devotion to me, and then my sense of devotion, and how critical devotion is as a concept and a feeling to me,

not a concept, but as a feeling. And it was like inescapable at that point. So I could write it down, I certainly don't need to tattoo it on my body. I will never forget the speedbag experience and what came to me. I will never forget the that dream. I will never forget standing on Sam's beach at UC Santa Barbara where I was a student and praying at that point of my life for some sense of clarity around some extremely hard

circumstances and feeling it hit me. Boom. I'll never forget. I'll just never forget that it comes through in like a single word or concept and I have some experience now with the various psychedelics and plant medicines. I'm not a real psychonaut. I've done some clinical trials, so I've done hydrocylocybin once. I've done MDMA, again, in a clinical setting four times. Each time there's been, at least from MDMA, it's been one concept, one word, which for a guy like me who's not known for being succinct,

since I was little, I had my family's half Argentine, so they call that instead of calling it pacifiers, the chupete. The chupete was always on the side of my mouth, and I could talk with the chupete in. And they said, I basically came out talking, you know, and never stopped, according to my sister, and many people around me. So for me, wordlessness is such a foreign idea, but it's also where the gems lie, especially when I've got a problem that's like really vexing.

I mean, I almost got buried in some of these choices. Like, they're just agonizing. Like, oh my God, and I couldn't get myself out of the tangle. Because they're both good choices, and depending on which one you pick, you're gonna have an entirely different life. Yes, and to me, that was overwhelming. Yeah.

And it's reasonable for that to be the case. And I'm not somebody who struggles with decision making, despite what some people close to me might argue. I don't. I love what I love. When I was a kid, I love tropical fish. I could walk into the store and I'm like, that tiger barb, that one, none of that one, that plant. You know, I got really into birds after that. And then it was like, of all the birds, I was like, that one.

It was the great sheet dwarf part. That's the bird. And I can just, I home right in on it. And I've been that way mostly in my life choices. But when it comes to certain choices where there's a more complex constellation of features, like income, location, what your partner wants, what the days are going to be like, opportunities. I think that that NYU Stanford decision was really about trying to portal into the future of where it was all going to lead.

Because even though at the time I had no concept of a podcast, I had no concept of doing anything public-facing. I was, I had no social media, or if I had it, it was just as a placeholder. I must have known, in my subconscious, I must have known, I want to become a public science educator. I must have known, in my subconscious, I must have known, I want to become a public science educator. I must have known. And I must have known. I don't believe that our brain just learns things as we go forward.

I think we have an understanding of where we could end up. templates. With a built-in style kit you can change fonts, imagery, margins and menus, so your design will be perfectly tailored to your needs. Discover unbreakable creativity with fluid engine, a highly intuitive drag-and-drop editor, no coding or technical experiences required. Understand your site's performance with in-depth website analytics tools. Tware space has everything you need to succeed online. Create a blog. Monetize a newsletter. Make a marketing portfolio. Launch an online store. The Squarespace app helps you run your business from anywhere.

Track inventory and connect with customers while you're on the go. Whether you're just starting out or already managing a successful brand, Squarespace makes it easy to create and customize a beautiful website. Visit squarespace.com slash Tetra and get started today. How and when did you decide to go into academics as your life? Okay, so I will try and keep this story relatively succinct. But my dad is a theoretical physicist. He was an experimentalist.

So he's from Argentina, from Buenos Aires. He came to the US on a naval scholarship. It was a student at UPEN. When he finished his PhD, he had met my mother in New York. They moved to California and he worked for Xerox Park, which was a think tank-ish kind of placed down the road from Stanford, up the road from what would eventually become Apple and those companies. And he did that because my dad hated academia.

He told me from a young age, it's peasantry. You don't make any money. Everyone tells you that it's really cool what you do and your life is hard You're always trying to raise money. So he went to a company where they would fund his research and he did stuff related to computer science and some theoretical physics stuff. He was involved in chaos. If the book chaos by Jim Glick as a chapter about him My dad was so when we were kids My mother didn't work at the time growing up.

She was a housewife, eventually became a teacher. But we would go during the summer to the Aspen Center for Physics. We weren't wealthy. We weren't poor, but we weren't wealthy. But we went there because Murray Gellman, who's a Nobel Prize-er under Physics, he was head of the Santa Fe Institute for a Long Time, had decided to hold this Physics Institute in Aspen. So we go there during the summer and I was a kid obsessed with birds and fish, fishing, and nature. And so I've always liked biology,

and I was surrounded by all these greats in physics. I remember meeting Gilman, I went birdwatching with Gilman. I remember hearing stories about Richard Feynman. My dad knew Richard Feynman, in fact, recently. I gifted a book that Richard Feynman had written on physics that he signed for my dad. I gifted it to our friend Peter Rittia because he's a Feynman collector. So I grew up hearing about physics. We had graduate student star house.

My dad had an association with Stanford and so he had graduate students and postdocs. And I kind of heard about that stuff, and I knew what a scientist was, and I asked my dad if he liked doing science, and he said, it's like, every day is your birthday. And I remember thinking every day, he said, yeah, and I said, well, what do you do?

And he said, physics, and I said, well, then I'll do physics. When I was a little kid, we had this conversation, I remember that so I was six. And he said, now don't do physics. The most was a little kid, we had this conversation. I remember this, I was six. And he said, no, don't do physics. The most of the big questions are already resolved. And I said, well, what's the work on it? He said, work on the brain.

I said, oh, I work on the brain. So I remember declaring that when I was a kid. Six years old, standing at the entryway. So really your dad suggested your path. That's right. That's amazing. He did. And you didn't, as punk rock as you are, you didn't rebel against it. Not yet. Yeah, he said, this is the best job, and we don't know

much about how the brain works. And, and I loved the Guinness Book of Worlds records. And I loved the encyclopedia. And through elementary school, I used to spend weekends reading about medieval weapons or about biology in the month days. I used to come into class and I would ask if I could give a lecture about what I had learned. So I was like a little mini professor. So much so that they had me see a psychologist. They were a little worried. And here's what's also strange. I now know the biological reason for this. My voice was always the way it is now. So I was a little kid with the exact same voice I have now. We have some recordings. They called me froggy, like the kid from the Little Rascals.

And so I was like this little man talking about all these ideas, but I was a little kid. I also had hair on my Adam's apple from the time I was really young. So it turned me want to share the information. I couldn't help but share the information. I got obsessed with fish for a little while. My mom told me about these carnivals that she took me and my friends. They were giving away goldfish where you throw the ping pong ball in and I realized that all these goldfish were going to die because people didn't

know about the de-chloronization process. So I went out and bought a bunch of de-chlor, she bought it and then I would give it away at fairs if you listened to my lecture about how to take care of fish. Give it away at fairs if you listen to my lecture about how to take care of fish. That was the price you had to pay. And do you think that you learned the things that you learned because you were purely interested in them for yourself or you learned things you learned because you thought these are the things I want to teach? Always because I was purely interested in them. So it always starts with your hunger for information.

Absolutely. To this day, because the podcast is about researching stuff and then sharing it with the world, it's about finding the gems. Like, I'll never forget seeing tropical fish for the first time. And thinking the saltwater tanks look artificial. That doesn't look like snorkeling.

I've gone snorkeling. The fresh water tanks are amazing. They're these little ecosystems and then I could tell that the fish were happy for whatever reason. And then I'd want to learn everything I could about it and then I couldn't help but tell people about it. Like I just couldn't. It was like this is so cool.

Like if anyone hasn't seen Takashi Amano's work, this is a guy who died unfortunately in pneumonia about 15 years ago. This Japanese guy developed aquascaping, which is all about the plants, maybe occasionally a fish. When I first saw Takashi Amano aquascaping, I thought I had seen, okay, because it was before puberty, this was like cooler than sex, because I didn't know what sex really was. I mean, it had a concept from a young age,

but cooler than an amusement park. It was cooler than cartoons. It was like, holy shit. This is the coolest thing. I need to tell everybody about how cool it is. You know, and so for me, it was always like- So you were always sharing what you enthusiastic about. And to this day, yes.

And that's because something turns on in you that's exciting and positive, and you want other people to feel it. My limbs start to float a little bit. This is the sensation in my body. My limbs start to float a little bit. But I'll see something, like I'll go on PubMed and I'll be allowing a researching something about whatever topic,

you know, sleep and dream, or something, and then you'll find a reference to a review, and then you go to the review, and there's like, okay, like this is kind of cool, like that, and then you'll find a book, and you look at that book, and on the third chapter, and it's like, oh my God. Oh my God. And research and science is the same way,

you're slicing through a brain, or you're staining a brain, you're down the microscope and you see beautiful neurons everywhere and they're there and they're standing and everyone's in a while. You see something. Oh my God, this has meaning. And I don't always know what the meaning is, but I know it means something. And so my nervous system from a very young age

was tuned to mostly biology, later psychology, but to some how certain aspects of biology just dazzle, but not just because they're beautiful like they have meaning. It's communicating something to me, and I want to communicate that to other people. I just want to pass it along. I'm not even sure that I want to. It really is a compulsion. Now when I was eight or nine, I had a grunting tick.

It shows up still now if I get fatigued. I'll start a little bit of a grunting tick. A lot of young boys in particular have these circuits that get activated and have a hard time getting shut down. And it can be a little bit Tourette's like. Some kids will blink hard. Some kids have full-bl bit Tourette's like, some kids will blink hard, some kids have full blown Tourette's. I have always felt like physical energy builds up inside me

and it needs to be released. And learning and teaching is the most adaptive form of that release. I eventually came to see that. I also, I learned that, and I don't recommend doing this, but I used to get rid of that. It's like a motor anxiety that then can be released. I used to shake, I'll just do it right now

because I still do it every once in a while in secret. This is an audio, but I'll just shake my head from side to side really fast. Like, oh, and it feels like it makes me calm again. But when I see something I'm excited about, it's like it's a whole body energy and it doesn't feel like it needs to be extruded. Like it's not something I want to get out of me.

In fact, by teaching it, I always learn. And I know this from teaching at Stanford and elsewhere is that the best teachers have mastery of the material, but they're also presenting the material as a novice. They're looking at it like with delight. And I think that's the word that really captures it is delight. Listen, this is exactly the same feeling I experienced when, you know, growing up, I listened to ACDC, Led Zeppelin, I heard some cool music. My sisters listened to the grateful dead. They were from our hometown, on and on. Everyone's into like, deaf leopard or whatever it was. And a guy named Jim

Thiebo who runs a bunch of skateboard companies now gave me a tape. Because that tape. And it was stiff little fingers. And I'm probably 12 years old at that point, put that in and flammable material. And I was just like, oh my God. That's for you. Oh my God. And I wasn't angry yet. So, you know, I think words, spoken language is incredibly varied and quote unquote, sophisticated.

But I think at a core level, the nervous system has some very fundamental and not terribly varied sets of feelings, you know, or states of mind and body. And for me, it's this feeling of discovery, delight, and excitement like, oh my God, there's more of this. Even if I only listen to that song, like a million times at that moment what I'm realizing is, now that I know this exists, it's available. Something's available. I can listen to this again and I can feel this again and I'm not somebody who attenuates to the things I love. This is one of the reasons why I don't know

that much different music because I'm so sated by the things I love. So, Stiffle Fingers did it and then skateboarding did it. Because in my town everyone played tennis or swam or played soccer and I did some of that, but then getting back to the science piece is that when I was 13, roughly 14, my parents split and it was a super high conflict of worse. You know, I listen, I have love and respect for my parents split, and it was a super high conflict of worse. You know, listen, I have love and respect for my parents, but it's like they took the list of all the things not to do in a divorce and did all of them repeatedly. And so, my dad moved out, my sister was off at college, My mom was really struggling and I was just...

I think I was at first depressed and then I was hitting puberty too. So from really 13 to 19, I basically blew off school and focused entirely on skateboarding. What was your relationship with your dad like? Very complicated, very high, very high. Had it been the whole time or had it been only from the time you had it? Starting then. My dad and I were always close. In the sense that we talk about things, when he'd go to the lab at night and I'd go with

him, he'd let me take bananas and put them in liquid nitrogen and then throw them against the wall and break them. Like cool stuff that you'd never let kids do now, because you know, but I was close with my mom too. I mean, my mom held poetry club for us in the summers. My mom was a real do-gooder. So like, we'd see a homeless person on the street and she would pull over and that person would be in a hotel that night.

And we had the people living in our garage that she would take in. She was a real do-gooder. She really fell into a spiral when my parents split. My dad would see me once a week and it was really hard to connect with him because my life sucked at home. It really sucked.

It was super dark. I went from having a family to like nothing. My mom was in a real spiral. I- Did you blame him? At first yes, because he would tell me, you know, like this is good for us. I'm like, this sucks.

This sucks. I wasn't so upset that they had split as much as, like, everything was falling apart. I remember, like, there wasn't food for dinner. My mom would get food, but then she was, I'd hear her crying all the time. You know, I think her concept of family was that family stick together no matter what.

I was just so distraught. Do you know what led to that, their breakup? They're both older siblings and there was a little power struggle. No, I don't know. I don't think it was any one thing. I think they had very different ideas of how to live life. How long has they been married? 20 years.

Yeah. I think values wise, it was really, really different. My dad was wanting to kind of, I think he wanted kids, but I don't know that he wanted young kids and all that goes with young kids. My mom loved all the family stuff, but it was volatile. I mean, I remember growing up, I'd hear screaming matches and my dad would try and passify things, but yeah, they weren't getting along. And they were pretty good at hiding the dynamics of what was leading to the problems. Like, I don't know really. I eventually came to learn that there were some, you know, friction that is

typical adult friction. But when they said they were getting divorced, I wasn't surprised. I don't even know that I was that upset, but then what the way things played out was really, really life changed in a way that was not great. The house was dark. Now, I have to confess, I mean, I've got two loving parents. They love my sister and I. They're very loving. But they're both still alive. They're both still alive. Yeah, both still alive.

My dad's gonna turn 80 this year. I still active as a scientist. My mom is a few years behind him, but it's both remarried. My dad divorced again, you know, reunion pending. We don't know where that's gonna go. You know, at that time my dad,

and I would meet once a week, and he'd tell me, you know, that things were okay. I'm like, things are pretty fucking far from okay. And my anger towards him was growing, and then the big chasm really, and he and I have worked this out, but was that I asked to live with him. I'm like, I gotta get out of here.

So I switched high schools and I was working at skateboard shop downtown Palo Alto at that time and I had a girlfriend on the other side town, the other high school, so I want to be there. And I was supposed to move in with them. And then we have a differing versions of this, he and I, so I want to be respectful of that. But then he said, I've got a girlfriend and she's going to live with me. And I said, okay, and met her and she was cool, eventually became his wife. But then he said, so you're not. And at that point, it was like putting gasoline on fire. And you know, it was like fuck that. You know, it's a 14-year-old. And I was like, this is not good.

like fuck that, you know, as a 14 year old, and I was like, this is not good. So I started really acting out, stop going to school, getting into fights. I wasn't doing drugs, wasn't drinking, that wasn't part of the skateboard scene in the late 80s, early 90s, it was late 80s, but I was getting into so much trouble and so truant that eventually I got taken away, I got locked up.

So I got called into the office one day. What office? We were at school. I showed up. They're like, And this is public school. Yeah, it's public school, right over the fence from my high school.

And they're like, we need to talk to you, school counselor. And there's this guy sitting in the room and after about 10 minutes, I realized I'm like, they're going to take me away. So they took me to a detention center up the peninsula.

I had no choice. So did they get permission from your parents? Yeah, my mom had his at work. My mom green lighted it. Wow. And she couldn't control me. I wasn't going to school, wasn't doing anything really. LMNT. Element electrolytes.

Have you ever felt dehydrated after an intense workout or a long day in the sun? You want to maximize your endurance and feel your best? Add element electrolytes to your daily routine. Perform better and sleep deeper. Improve your cognitive function. Experience an increase in steady energy with fewer headaches and fewer muscle cramps. Element electrolytes.

Bring it in the sauna. Refreshing flavors include grapefruit, citrus, watermelon, and chocolate salt. Formulated with the perfect balance of sodium, potassium, and magnesium to keep you hydrated and energized throughout the day. These minerals help conduct the electricity that powers your nervous system so you can perform at your very best.

Element electrolytes are sugar-free, keto-friendly, and great tasting. Minerals are the stuff of life. So visit drinklmnt.com slash tetra and stay salty with Element Electric Life. LMNT. So you're not taking drugs, you're just not going to school and you're taking the 7F bus to San Francisco, a bunch of kids are congregating in Justin Herman Plaza, so-called Embarcadero, the EMB.

I'm not a good skateboarder. So here's the thing, I hit puberty right on it. But you feel like this is like your new family sort of? They were absolutely my family. Guys like Jim Thibaud, these older guys who were around, at the time there was amazing skateboarding happening. Mike Carroll, Henry Sanchez, all these guys, J Thibaud, these older guys who were around, at the time there was amazing skateboarding happening. Mike Carroll, Henry Sanchez, all these guys, Javonte Turner, I'm seeing like amazing skateboarding.

It's guy Greg Carroll, it's kind of a dad to everybody, even though he's by 18 at that time. How old are you 14? 14. So I started going to the city, San Francisco was our city, taking the seven F bus, or because they didn't have money, we would take the cal train, and we would lie down coffin style on the top,

so they couldn't see us, and then jump the turnstiles and run in. You know, I learned how to do a lot of that, from we had a kid who went to our school. It was a foster kid named Aaron Curry. His real name was Aaron King. He was a foster by the Curry family. He eventually became a graffiti artist, orphan, ORFN, and he came up through the foster

system. So he knew how to steal, he knew how to hide on trains, you know how to do all of that. So I was hanging around with him a lot, and I started hanging out in Barca D'Aro, and I loved it. I saw amazing skateboarding. All of these kids also not going to school. It was like everyone had the same idea. All either loveless or parentless families

or just no control. In fact, I'll never forget Mike Carroll said to me, you don't have to go to school. I was like, why not? He's like, eventually, they just give up. And I was like, okay, now he became a pro skateboarder and this is an important point, which is that, even though I hit puberty on time, I was skinny and I kept

getting hurt. My body wasn't strong yet. I'd shot up. I grew like a foot during one summer between eighth grade and ninth grade. So I was like six feet tall or six foot one and I'm like 149 pounds and I would keep breaking my damn foot. And I wasn't strong. My body couldn't do it yet.

I had no pop and I had no future in skateboarding. And it was super frustrating. You're still going home every night to sleep. Not necessarily. Some guys slept it in Barca D'Aro. They would just drink or hang out. I wasn't into that. I slept a few nights there,

but mostly just stayed up skateboarding. I had a friend named Ray Meyer, older guy, who lived with his parents in the city. He was a computer programmer, lived in their attic. And I lived there for a while with him weekends or Fridays or whatever. And it was- And would you tell your mom you're doing this or now? Sometimes. And that's eventually why they pulled me out of school. She was like, I was so worried about you, you know, you know, I was just dumb. How many people in the group of kids?

Okay, so the Embarcador, the so-called EMB crowd, because now it's legendary, could be as many as a couple hundred on a Sunday. Wow. Probably about 50 core guys. I was not one of the core guys, but I always had good optics. Like, I knew, like, there was a guy they called James Keltch who was considered the mayor. If he was drinking, you had to pay him, or he beat you up. That's a fact. But he liked me, and he was cool to me. And so, like, I think him or he beat you up. That's the fact.

But he liked me and he was cool to me. And so I think I knew how to slide in. I always got along well with guys. Like I grew up in a big pack of kids down at the end of my street before they played Water Polo. We'd all hang out together. Then I went the way the skateboard thing. So even though I wasn't a good skateboarder,

they kind of let me hang out and be part of it. And I was smart enough to not get into the criminal side of it because... It was as much about the camaraderie and community as it was about skateboarding. It was a place to go. Yeah, and it was a group of, I'll say, like-minded people... That's right. ...who want to get away from something else. That's right. And I was seeing amazing skateboarding.

And Jim Thiebo would roll in every once in a while. He had started real skateboards, he had thunder trucks, and which by the way, this is one of the most amazing heists in all of skateboarding. Is, you know, people at year about like the different companies in skateboarding, real thunder, spitfire, you know,

that one guy owned all of it. They were all those, we're all poured at the same factory, Irma Goen, Hunter's Point. Wow. But they came up with this genius idea of call it for different companies, and then they would like pit them back,

then they would pit the companies against one another, and whichever you bought, it was all going to the same place. Foulstube Attela was a genius in that way. But it was a very San Francisco based, there was a Southern California thing, but yeah, that was where I hung out, and I learned, you know, I stayed out of the stealing,

a lot, they would rob tourists and stuff. Like if you saw that movie, Kids, an equivalent thing was happening in Washington Square Park in the early 90s. Actually, some good friends of mine, love armic bride, Nick Lockman, bunch of guys were in that movie, Kids. And it was a mimic of kind of what was happening

in a Barca D'Aro. And it was probably happening in a lot of places. So Love Park, Philadelphia eventually came along and then Barcelona became a big spot. But yeah, it was an amazing time. I remember loving the crowd, feeling like you have a family. You show up, it was all, you know, get the daps, get the hugs, say what's up?

Like there's my friend, Carl Watson, who I still know, lives the hugs, say what's up. Like there's my friend, Karl Watson, who I still know, lives in Oakland, works for a D to skateboarding. He would show up, he and this other guy, Nick Lockman, were like the greeting committee, and they'd show up and be like, what's up? And then like, you know, like someone happy to see me. That's actually all I really needed to be honest.

I just realized that now that, you know, I'd come home and there was no happiness there, but no one was happy to see me either. My dad didn't want me living with him or was conflicted about that for whatever reason. So my school, I went to this high school called Gun High School. It's one of the most academically proficient high schools in the country. It also is the high school that has the highest suicide rate in the country. They don't like it when I say this because they actually got it wiped from their Wikipedia, but kids there, you know, the suicide rates out, Rage is not when I went,

but it's been an issue. This was written up. People can find that. Hopefully, they have ameliorated that problem, but I went to the school where everyone was. They have. It's wiped from Wikipedia. We can talk about Wikipedia. I'm happy to talk about that. It was like my high school was all about, every kid was obsessed with early admission to Ivy League school X or Y or Z or homecoming. Me and my friends started becoming bad kids, right?

I started going back to Palo Alto and thinking, this is romper room. That's where interesting stuff is happening. Now, the cool thing was I stayed out of with drugs. I didn't get into drinking, but I wasn't good at skateboarding. And that was frustrating. It wasn't good at anything. And my friend Steve Rugi, or Steve Rugi then, who was a few years older than me, put me on the flow team for Thunder and Spitfire, just out of, frankly, out of sympathy. So I get a little product here and there,

and I try, and then I went to some of the big contests, the Reno Nationals, I go out there, I'd skate, I'd get like last place, but I was trying, I was in it, and I look back and I remember thinking, there are no parents here. I'm at the Reno fairgrounds when I should be at school and I'm getting a little bit of money to eat from team manager or something,

or I don't know, from working in the skateboard shop. So I was free. I mean, the one thing I was was free. And this is from 14 to how old? So I did that from about 14 to 16. And then what happened was, I hurt my foot again. I broke it a third or maybe a fourth time. And I was so depressed.

And I remember, so a condition of being let out of youth detention was I had to go to therapy. No one went to therapy back then, if they didn't talk about it. So I started working with this guy, who really helped me. And tell me what was detention like? Oh man.

So I'll say this, like the first night when they lock the door, you're like, oh shit. And I'll never forget, it was a co-ed hallway. My roommate was a guy. He looked like Richard Ramirez, the night stalker. Tall, long hair. He looked like that guy. And I remember, in the same room as you.

The same room. I remember being terrified. I'm thinking like, and I'm like, I'm like, I'm gonna have to fight, you know? I'm not big and strong, but I'm like, I'm not gonna, like, I didn't know if he was gonna rape me. I didn't know if he was gonna kill me. I didn't know what he was gonna try and do. Turned out he was like the nicest dude.

He was like the best dude. But the first night, I remember being terrified. And- Were you guys same age? Yeah, but he was a lot bigger than I was. The first night, I remember being terrified. And we guys say, Mage. Yeah, but he was a lot bigger than I was. I was tall and skinny. He must have been like six, four, mean, wow. Yeah, he's big kid.

And then the other kids in there, we're dealing with different things. Some drug, some abuse. And I'll never forget the next morning they gather us up. They sit us around and they're like the group therapy. And they say how many in the group I'm trying to train? About 18, 20 maybe. And they say, How many in the group I'm trying to create? About 18, 20 maybe. And I remember they said, listen,

there's this holding chamber down the way of kids that are 14 and younger. And then there are the adults in the other wing. Now the kids, the really young kids, they're crazy. And the older people, the 19 young kids, they're crazy. And the older people, the 19 and up, they're crazy. But you guys, you're not crazy. And I remember thinking, that's exactly what they're telling the people in the other fucking places.

I remember thinking like, how stupid do you think I am? I'm like, so I thought to myself, okay, either I'm crazy or I'm just a bad kid. And for the first 72 hours or so, I just sat there, didn't say a word. I was so pissed. And I got the phone call, you get your phone call. I called Steve Rugi, Shrugi. Shrugi. They locked me up and he goes, bro, he was a stoner back then, not anywhere. He goes, bro, he's like, why are you calling me? And I'm like, I need help. And he goes, you're the most normal guy I know. I don't know how to help myself.

And that's when I was like, okay, this is bad. Yeah. So after about 72 hours, I remember talking to one of the counselors there. They would come in three times a night, check us. They would do frisk search to the whole thing. How were they? Do you feel like their intentions were good?

They were good people. They were really good people. And looking back, I realized they must have made nothing. They're trying to get clinical hours. The orderlies were kind of scary. It was like the, it was the Lincoln Old movies. They come in in the white suits and they're like, check in you. And it wasn't a mental hospital.

It was just youth detention. They had a girl's wing and a boy's wing. And then they'd mix us for therapy. And in the sessions, you know, other kids are talking about drugs, sexual abuse and all sorts of stuff. And I'm not speaking so they were convinced, the counselors were convinced that I must have experienced the exact same things because I'm hanging my head

and not listening. And I remember, I'm like, no, I'm not saying anything because what he's saying is absolutely gnarly. You know, and I'm not gonna claim that. And they're like, well, why are you here? And I'm like, I don't know why I'm here. Honestly, I don't know why. They started kind of pulling the threads

and I realized just how dark and depressing my life was at home and how I basically had not been in school or engaging in any typical youth stuff. Welcome to the House of Macadamia's. who are engaging in any typical youth stuff. A rare source of Omega-7 linked to collagen regeneration, enhanced weight management, and better fat metabolism. Macadamias, art healthy and brain boosting fats. Macadamias, paleo-friendly, ketal and plant-based. Macadamia No wheat, no dairy, no gluten, no ghee M.O.s

No preservatives, no palm oil, no added sugar House of Macadamia I roasted with Namibian sea salt, cracked black pepper And chocolate dips Snack bars come in chocolate. Coconut White Chocolate and Blueberry White Chocolate. Visit houseofmacademias.com slash tetra. Is that the first time you ever did anything therapeutic? Yeah.

How old do you in this? I was about four, I think I was like 14 and a half, 15. And how long were you there for? In the end I ended up staying there for a little over a month. To a long time. For a kid. It was a long time. Yeah.

It was a long time. And I couldn't skateboard. And that was my lifeline. Even though I sort of sucked at it. You do see your mom anytime during that so they come up both yeah, they'd together apart together and my sister too and that was it just made everything worse Yeah, it was just they were at each other's throats. Yep, and It was just so bad. And so after a little while I start talking to the counselors and realizing, like, what's the program? How do I get out of here? Yes. And so they're like, listen, you get out of here by being really honest. And I'm

like, well, I'm not lying. And they're like, but you're also not saying anything, which for me is unusual. So I start talking, like I start talking about what's been going on and the things I've been doing. And it was just, it was mayhem. And it was fun and exciting on the one hand, but it was also dangerous and scary on the other. And kind of like a punk rock show, you're not sure how to feel about that. You know, but at some point, I think I realized I was like, okay, I don't like being scared from my life. So I started working the program. Eventually I got got out but the condition was I had to go to therapy So once a week now I'm back in Paloltham going to classes

Which was totally foreign to me and also people in my school knew that I got locked up So now like people are my friends are like he's crazy He's a criminal and I say, I do want people to know that when you treat someone that way, they become that way. When Mike Tyson talks about how he became an animal because people are always telling him what an animal he is, I have a small understanding of what that's like.

So I'm going to therapy the guy's awesome. He's like, hey, listen, you seem to have a big drive and you're very interested in things. And he's like, you should stay away from drugs. And you know, trying to, you should take care of your physical body. Maybe you should make your body stronger. So I started swimming.

I started running. I used to hide it because for skateboarders. This was like the 80s and 90s. Like it was Jocsden hanging out with skateboarders. Like a John Hughes film. So I was doing all that and I was like, oh, I really love the feeling of running. Actually, there was a football coach at our school. I didn't play football.

His name was Bob Peters. He taught me I lift weights and I was like, wow, my body is getting stronger. I couldn't do one pull up. I was so skinny. So I was like, this is cool. I'm starting to feel some control. I started reading a little bit. But then I got my first girlfriend. She was a year older than me, first real girlfriend. And I learned that her former boyfriend had been some big like buff football players. And now I really start hitting the weights, right? I was like, this is geeky kid.

And my mom is still totally checked out. So I was like, okay, I need to take care of her. She's going off to college. I need to be a grown up. so I'll join the fire service. I like hanging out with dudes. I like working out. Everyone likes firefighters. So I started taking fire science courses

down at Mission College and studying a little bit, going to class a little bit. Now what's funny is I completely changed my physical look before that I had like, died black hair, super spiky, and I was skateboard kid. I went back to school and I was like, I'm gonna play this game. Started combing my hair to the side,

wore flannels in the 90s, I'm wearing flannel. I'm gonna like tone down the aggression a bit, and I started hanging out with her. So I was like a little adult, and I'd learn how to do that from the Embarcadero and those guys, Greg Carroll. But I stopped skateboarding. I was just into adult and I'd learn how to do that from the Embarcadero and those guys, Greg Carroll. But I stopped skateboarding. I was just into that and we had a ferret and all that.

So what ended up happening is that she went off to college, she went to UC Santa Barbara, and she was my family. So what did I do? I got my car, I drove down there, I lived in the parking lot outside her dorm. She was one year older. One year older. Right. And I was just terrified

that we were going to split. So I decided to apply to college so I could be down there. So I applied, I write at college entrance essay about my life and what had been happening. I was very honest and that I wanted to join the fire service and that I heard that having a bachelor's degree would help me maybe move up in the command there and I got in. I got denied from every other school I got into that one. Don't ask me how. So I go to UC Santa Barbara and I'm like this is like a playground. This is crazy. And so what ended up happening was July 4th, 1994, and our mutual friend, Jack Johnson, can attest to the story. It was, you know, my girlfriend at the time was roommates with Jack's now wife. They were summer roommates. And Jack and a bunch of people had a party. I

was living in a squat with my fair at working at a bagel cafe. I had essentially flunked all my classes the first year. I got kicked out of the dorms on the last day and it was forbidden from going within 200 yards of the dorms. We're coming back from the store. We'd picked up stakes for a barbecue and it was clear that some guys were ripping off the house.

And the guys I was with were like, let's get them. So we go over, verify that they're stealing. I hit a guy, hell breaks loose. He's with a bunch of other guys. All my friends scatter, they were kind of there or at least weren't willing to engage. Police show up, it was nuts. And I'll never forget the police said to me,

they're like, good job. And I'm lucky I didn't get arrested, but I remember feeling like, good job, like this sucks. This absolutely sucks. Like I'm either gonna kill someone or they're gonna kill me. Nothing good comes from fighting.

Nothing. You know, if you have to do it to protect your family, fine. But nothing good. So I remember walking back to the place where I lived and I thought, okay, I finally got to college. The girlfriend had left for the summer. I'm living in a squat with my favorite. I'm getting in fights.

I'm like officially a loser. I'm not good at skateboarding. I love music but I can't play music. I'm officially a loser. So that day I wrote out and I still have the journal page that I'm like this is it. I'm not going to drink or do any drugs. I'm not going to get into fights. I'm done. I'm going to just go home and

figure it out. So I took a leave of absence. I didn't drop out. I took a leave of absence. I moved home and I went to Fahill College Community College and I worked at a little cafe in Palo Alto called Hobbies and I just went to the gym and studied and I started taking classes and I took a psychology class. I was like, that's cool. I took a biopsychology class. I was like, that's cool. And I was like, this is good. I'm good at this. Like, I can memorize stuff. I can learn. Now, at that point, I'm still not in touch with my dad. And I was living at home. My sister had moved home after college. And I would take her to the gym with me. I just thought to myself, okay, this is it.

Like this is it, this is survival, this is it. And then I started to realize I love learning and it was the same thing as when I was a kid with the fish or the whatever, I love learning. And so I'm gonna do this. So I moved back to Santa Barbara. I lived in a studio apartment, just me. The girlfriend and I were still kind of like working it out,

but I'd allow myself to go out once a month. I would party, but I kept it in check and I would work out and study. And at that point, then I started getting straight A's and I started working in the laboratory of a guy named Harry Carlisle, started doing experiments and he drove a black truck. He smoked cigarettes in the fume a guy in him, Harry Carlisle, started doing experiments, and he drove a black truck. He smoked cigarettes in the fume hood, drank coffee,

and I was like, he's punk as fuck. I like this guy, and his wife is beautiful. He seems really happy, and he's like, it's great, your whole life as a tenured professor, he's learning, and I thought, my dad is gonna be so happy if I succeed, and I don't wanna give him the satisfaction, I thought, but I'm an idiot if I don't take this opportunity. So I just got into science and I just from that point, I ended up graduating with high honors, blah, blah, blah. I got into Berkeley, did my masters at Berkeley, went up to Davis, did my PhD at Davis, went to Stanford,

did my postdoc, when the UC San Diego. So at 19, it was like I'm done being a screw up, made a hard left in the academic science. And in some ways reunited with the pre-puberty childhood delight in nature and animals and learning. And yeah, there's a bunch of stuff that happened in the course of my science career, not all of which was easy. In fact, a lot of hard stuff.

But yeah, it's from night. I've been working my ass off from 19 on, but I don't even like to say that because it's been pure pleasure, right? Learn, teach, research. You found what you love. I reconnected with it. Yeah. Yeah. All the aggression, all the like, you know, I was never a hedonist. like I never thought, oh, I'm gonna party because it feels good. I'm gonna fight because it feels good.

It was just, you know, I think I was like most of the guys back then that I hung out with, we were all terrified. If you had any sense, any real prowess in anything, skateboarding with girls or anything, you were afraid like that it was to get taken away from you. And also, we were all raising ourselves. This is what's so crazy. I mean, like the most adult person I knew was Greg Carroll, who is still a friend.

But he was a kid, you know? He was a kid working out his own stuff. And so we didn't have like dads and moms to, you know, tell us, say, this is what you do and this and that. And I eventually reconnected with my dad. Really, it wasn't until I was a post-doc, but actually, we went to therapy together because there were so much stuff over the years. And I got to learn his experience of why he left, got to understand what had really gone on with the decision around me moving in, not moving in. But I will say this, you know, at 19 I realized like no one's coming to save me.

And so I had to figure it out. When you did get to reconnect with your dad, do you have greater understanding of what was going on? Is it different than what you thought? Totally different than what I thought. And I totally understand what was going on. And sometimes I'll say, I only wish that they had split up sooner. I don't. I think I know from my own struggles in relationship

that we're all doing the best we can with what we've got at the time, the best advice can be coming from the best people that we trust the utmost in our life. And attachment is so complicated, because we can love and get attached to people that aren't good for us and they can get attached to us and often times we're not good for them either. So it's taken a lot of years and I've continued to struggle in in terms of relationship and both you know in terms of making good choices and also in terms of showing

upright, you know, I mean, I've really, you know, I've got a million problems with myself around how I've shown up in those prior relationships. And that's what I've tried to focus on as opposed to focusing on how other people were wrong. But yeah, I think I came to some clarity around what was really going on for him and for my mom too. And look, now we've done, and we do Thanksgiving as a group. Once my sister had a kid, then it made sense for everyone to work it out. So we do it, you know, it's tense and weird. But how much do you think the 14 through 19 experience impacted who you are now?

Oh, incalculable. And I wouldn't trade it for anything. It was like what is drummer saying that documentary yesterday when they asked him about Sandinista, like it was a magnificent thing, you know, is what he said. And then he said, you know, I wouldn't change it for anything. He goes, and that's after a lot of soul searching.

You know, I mean, I couldn't tell you in words what it felt like to show up to a scene with all these kids and some of them. I knew history was happening. This is the thing, when I saw skateboarding, I'd never been part of the early wave of anything. It was the kind of the second wave, it wasn't the Bones Brigade Wave,

it was that second wave of the late 80s and 90s. But I knew something special was happening. I was just frustrated that I couldn't be more a part of it. Like I couldn't be one of the, as Shrewdy told me back then, he said, you're never gonna be one of the big guys. He said that and I remember being crushed, but it was also a gift because I didn't try and do that.

I wouldn't trade that for anything because even now like with podcasting, I got to see the, and I still see the similarities between podcasting and the early days of skateboarding. It's, the rules are still unwritten, you know? And so we're figuring it out and it's so cool and now I get to be part of, like, at least early-ish cohort. I've never hit something on time. With science, I got into neuroscience right as it was emerging

and I think it was easier to break into it then than it is now. There were fewer people in it and there are a lot of other reasons and I love doing science. I mean, when I started working in my PhD lab, I lived in the lab, saved money. I used the money for other things. You just had a cot in the room? Yeah, then the microscope room and I'd shower in the monkey, saved money. I used the money for other things. You just had a cot in the room? Yeah, then the microscope room,

and I'd shower in the monkey cage washer room, and I'd go to the gym. And I'd bring... How long did you do that for? Oh, a month at a time, until, and then I did rent for a little bit, and I'd live with a girlfriend, and then I moved back into the lab.

When I was a junior faculty member in San Diego, I had a home for the first time, a bulldog. I didn't know what a mortgage was, but I'd been effective in science, and I got hired, and they gave me a little bit of money for a nice little house. And then I was commuting so much, I was like, this is stupid, brought my fish tanks, and my bulldog and my couch into the office,

and I just lived in my office. Like the students thought I was crazy. Have you noticed that stores that sell aquarium equipment, fish? It feels like a whole other world. Like when you go to those shops, it's so unlike anything else in the world. I love the sound, like the sounds,

bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. The colors in the place. Yeah, it's like you're underwater. Yeah. It's like you're underwater. You have. It's like you're under water. You have to check out these Takashi Amano things he was brilliant. There's a museum that he has in Japan.

It's like being under water. I brought my tanks to my office. I brushed my teeth in the sink there. And then when I moved to Stanford, I was living with my girlfriend in a basement apartment in Oakland because, look, the salaries for academics aren't great in the Bay Area, Area was super expensive at the time. And I was saving up so I could buy us a house.

And then when we split up, I lived with friends for a while and I just moved into my office. And I remember, they told me, the administrators at Stanford said, you can't do this. It sends the wrong message. I was like, well, what message is that? You can't afford a place to live. And I'm like, I can't afford a place to live. You know? So, you know, and I was like, and Costello, my bulldog,

and you're like, he thought I was cool. You know what, shower at the gym. And then on the weekends, I could stay in a hotel. So, or stay with friends. And, you know, eventually I did Bailo House. I was fortunate to buy a little house in Oakland. And I put what I could. What do you make sense?

Because you were dedicating your life to this thing, and you might as well live in the place where it's happening because that's all you were doing anyway. Exactly. And I didn't have kids. Total focus. And I'd still go to shows. I've always gone to shows.

When I was a graduate student, I'd go up to the colonial theater and Sacramento go to shows. Saw the transplants play there, saw a meringue and the disasters play there. Like always gotten energy from going out and seeing punk rock shows. Now when I was in San Diego, I did it at the beginning

and then I stopped and that was one of the biggest mistakes I made. And then when I started again, it's like I get energy by seeing that creative energy. And I've always stayed in touch with the skateboard scene, either through communication with people, or now that I have the podcast and number of people come back around,

Jim Thibault and I are friends, through some weird twist of fate, I truly never had it in mind to be come friends with Tim Armstrong, but I'm a huge rancid fan. I got the tattoo for God's sake, band tattoo. Nobody gets band tattoos whose knows what they're doing, I got one on purpose, the off their little micro label.

And then I got to be friends with Tim. And so I go hang out with Tim at his studio because to me being around punk rock or skateboarding is the energy that we're trying to create in the podcast. When we get together, it's so different, it's not music, it's not skateboarding, but it's like, let's just mash up this stuff that we know is really cool. You know this, this is your history too, right?

With music and you know, Mike Blayback, the photographer for the podcast, is the guy that I helped get sober and get fit back in 2019, because I have a lot of connections to the sobriety community, we can talk about that, but when it came time to like, how do we brand this thing? How do we get photos, top cards? It's like, skateboarders. How are we gonna film it?

Skateboarders, poached to guys from DC skateboarding. And we got a couple other guys on our team who are not from the skateboarding thing, but they're full DIY. Like, we're not gonna do it through some big thing. Cause then they're gonna tell us what to do and it's all about not being told what to do. It's about doing the thing that feels right because you guys just know it's really cool. And that's the thing about skateboarders is that style matters, how you do it matters.

In fact, if you do it, the cool thing, but in an uncool way, it's worse than if you didn't do it at all. They will torment you. I mean, the hazing process that I went up came up through and skateboarding was so brutal. Like, I hear about these fraternity hazings and like how they kill them with alcohol. That's like terrible in that dimension. But what I went through, I was a physically afraid. I was like socially afraid of being tormented, but it gives you a thick skin. So, you know, and so the podcast thing to me just feels like, it feels just like skateboarding, just like punk rock. I look at who the kind of tribal leaders are in it, you know, Rogan, Lex, your podcast is amazing, Rich Roll, Tim Ferris,

you know, they're a bunch more, right? But these are all people that I think are awesome and they're doing great stuff, and it's not, they get something and I don't. It's all, like, rising tide raises all boats. And that was skateboarding. If somebody did something awesome, you weren't like, oh, I wanted to do it. It inspired you to go harder. So to me, it's the same energy in all the different things. Tell me your understanding of the DIY world. So yeah, do it yourself DIY world to me is it starts with an understanding that this can be done.

There's almost like unconscious confidence in it. Like, we're just gonna do this. We're not asking for permission. Right. We're just gonna do it. Like, why wouldn't we do it? Yeah. Why wouldn't we do it?

Yeah. But it's just, it definitely, when people here DIY, I think they sometimes mistakenly think it means do it yourself alone. Uh-uh think it means do it yourself alone. It's do it yourself, but always there's the component of pooling together the people that are right to make it happen. Yeah, finding the right people with that right sensibility of the same kind of people who feel like We can do it regardless of what anyone says. That's right. So you're not asking permission You are also not looking for examples of how it's been done.

You know, like with the podcast, it was, okay, I want to do a podcast. Lex Friedman suggested I do a podcast. I was like, why would I do a podcast? And he said, well, you seem really attuned to teaching and lecturing. Why wouldn't you? And I was like, oh, you're right.

And then he said, but just make sure it's not just you blabbing. So I do that half the time, not all the time. Who's Lex the first professor to do a podcast? He's technically not a professor. And I don't say that to diminish his academic accomplishments, but he'll get on me if I don't catch that one. He's a doctor, Lex Friedman, he PhD. First, formally trained scientist to do an independent podcast. Did he not teach? Yes, he's been an instructor at MIT since 2015.

Okay. Yeah, that's a difference between an instructor and a professor. I don't know what the catalysis is. He didn't want his own research group at MIT. So I have a research laboratory and I teach. So and in the British system instructor and lecturer are different things, it varies by country a bit. But he has a formal affiliation MIT. And yeah, he was first person to do that. And I remember thinking this is way cool. I loved his podcast.

When I discovered his podcast, I was like, oh shit, I wanna know that guy. What would the first podcast you listened to? Tim Ferris podcast. When I was a junior professor in San Diego, I was interested in health and productivity. Yep. And I was concerned about my health because when I was a postdoc, my health went south,

my mental health went south. Because starting in high school, when I learned about lifting weights and running, and I was always reading about nutrition, I'd spend hours in the bookstacks at Tower Books. You know, I paid Mike Menser for a phone consult to learn how to weight train. I got really into health and fitness, basically when I turned 16. And I learned how to, you know, get stronger, add muscle, learn how to run. I ran across country my senior year just for the experience and to run, I love running.

But I was always reading about supplements. I started taking supplements in high school. Some protein supplements and some amino acid supplements. It wasn't much around then. It was always learning. And then by the time I was a postdoc, I wasn't working out as much. I wasn't getting my sunlight.

I was staying up late going to shows, and my health was really dwindling. And I got things back on track when I moved to San Diego. And in part that was because I read Tim's book, The Four Hour Body, I started listening to his podcast. It was a great book, I love that book. It's a great book, I still go back to The Four Hour Body and gleaned in important information.

That was the first place I learned about cold. We met a lot of things. He, Tim, seems to always be five to 10 years ahead of the curve. It's remarkable on so many things, you know, investing in all of that. It's an area that I did not get into. But he's just, you know,

and I'm sure there are failures in his portfolio, but he has an amazing success rate, because I think he's a forager, he's systematic, and he's brave. I've become friends with him, and he's a DIY guy for sure. He seems to do a lot of it alone, even though he has friends and connections.

He seems a bit more of a lone wolf. I'm not a lone wolf. Those years in San Diego, we're dreadful for me. I need that pack. That non-biological family was my fucking life line. You know what I mean? It still makes me choke up, because it's still my life line.

While I've been here with you, I'll just be honest, I've been out here with you and it's just amazing, but I have to be careful. Because to this day, I still go visit families. I'm out here with your family. I visit friends that are families and I start feeling like, oh, like, will they adopt me? I know it seems crazy, but I was as a professor when my girlfriend and I

split. I went and lived with a family in Santa Cruz that I'm friends with. It's taken a lot from me to learn how to like set up a home for myself and do that because it's not my default. And you know, my podcast team, you know, Rob, Mike and Ian and their bunch of other important people there too, but that's like the core for that's like I at times like we'll be hanging out, we'll be working and I'm like, man, I love this so much. And sometimes it'll make me kind of like, a little anxious like, oh my God,

what if something happens to one of them? Like, what will I do? So I think my brain didn't, I didn't attach to my family the same way, or I did, but then I detached, and I've got this idea in mind that I always need to have some place to go. And it's not a sob story, it's just how I'm wired.

And so, like I couldn't do what Tim does. You're trying to create the family that you didn't have when you were a child. That's what it is. And I have 100% love and trust for my friendships. Yes. You know, and I'm blessed with incredible male friendships, like incredible.

And yes, I've prioritized that over pretty much everything because that was something that to this day I could just like really count on. Like I, it just could really count on. That was a skater community. That was a skateboard community. And then now, you know, I mean, the people I talk to most are you,

Atiya, playback, Paul Conti, you know, Rob, and you know, and there are others like Tim, spend a lot of time with Tim lately, you know, and there are others. I've got other friends, but like it's like, it's my feeling of safety. If I were to wake up and even just conceive of like not having that, that community, it's just so, it's just terrifying. It would be like, it's existential dread for me. Um, so anyway, the, the DIY thing is about, for me is about, then you, you get, so you don't ask permission and you gather the right people.

So for the podcast, it was Mike, he's a world-class photographer, but he's also just the best dude. So Lex suggested doing it. Lex suggested it. Lex suggested it. Lex suggested I went to Rob Moore, who was representing me for PR because in 2020 I started going on podcasts. Wasn't selling a book, I was just going on podcasts

and he was helping me book those and I was paying him for it. And did you like the experience of going on podcasts? Loved it. Great. I felt useful. I was like, you know, the whole thing was in 2019 I started posting a little bit on Instagram just for fun and

Talking science in 2020 the pandemic hit and Rob was gonna represent me for my book But he's like look, you know, the book thing is kind of slowing down now and but people are going on podcasts They're going remotely some people are still having them in person. They would just go So I was like, all right, cool. So I started going on podcasts and I was like, really excited about it because at the time, the world was kind of falling apart psychologically. And I thought, you know, I'm not going to get into this whole vaccine thing.

That's a barbed wire tangle. And also, by the way, I was forbidden from talking about it. There were rules that Stanford put forth. And also it's not my expertise. But what I do know about, because my lab worked on as anxiety, tools to overcome anxiety, sleep, circadian rhythm, how to get your sleep right, exercise, physical health, mental health. I'm like, okay, I can be a value and go on these podcasts and just teach and share. And I felt great doing it. And I didn't, I wasn't selling anything. I had no go to purchase.

Did you ever teach in a classroom environment at any point? I did. So when as soon as I got my job at UC San Diego, I started teaching. I actually taught more than I was required to. I started a course called Neural Circuits and Health and Disease. And it looked a lot like the podcast. And it started with 50 students the first year

and it ended with 450 students. And it was taught at night, I liked to eat. Is it fun? I loved it. I loved it. I absolutely loved it. And I'd bring Costello, my bulldog. And he loved it because he'd have this herrhum of people

like petting him and giving him salami and stuff. And we'd, I loved teaching at night because I always find that the students are more relaxed at night. And we would explore papers and it was a bit more free form. And I never thought it would become a podcast. But even as a graduate student, I took opportunities to teach. And I taught a summer course as a postdoc and as a junior faculty member at Cold Spring Harbor in Long Island.

Just summer camp for scientists. I ran a course on visual neuroscience. It seems like you were meant to do this. Like, you're hardwired to do this job. To learn and teach. Yeah. There's so many people who teach, but it's not their strength. Maybe they're connected to the subject they're teaching, but you seem to really be connected to the act of teaching. I love teaching. I love learning and teaching. For me, the podcast is pure delight because it's go learn stuff, talk to experts in the field, look at the literature, form my own opinions to learn it and teach it. And the world gets it for free if they have an internet connection. And yes, we have sponsors, sure, but they get paid if people want to buy this stuff

and you don't have to. It's like the perfect ecosystem. So to me, the DIY thing made sense. You know, Lex is like, start a podcast. So I went to Rob and said, I want to start a podcast and he was already doing a podcast called The Fight with Teddy Hattles. Rob's interesting guy, he was working in PR in New York

but he's always liked sports. Spectre sports, but he liked boxing and MMA. And he had this thing for Teddy Hattles, the old school guy who's a commentator who'd come up, he used to work in Tyson's camp years ago, and he's got big scar on his face. He's from Staten Island. And he pulled Teddy out of retirement, basically. And they started the fight with Teddy Hattles podcast, which is the interview fighters He's got big scar on his face. He's from Staten Island and he pulled Teddy out of retirement basically and they started the fight with Teddy Atlas podcast which is the interview fighters before fights and they talk about the fights that happened last weekend. It's like pure heart for him. You know, he's an interesting guy Rob. He runs Iron Man's and all this stuff but I'd worked with him for about a year and I said, what do we need

to do a podcast? He said, well, here are the cameras you need, here are the recording stuff. So I went and got it. I went and bought it. And then I moved to Topanga Canyon. I was teaching remotely. Mooted to Panga Canyon. Because everyone was teaching remotely a thing.

Everything was remote. Yeah. And I loved Topanga. I moved to Topanga because all of her sacks, who was a neurologist and a writer, wrote about the brain, lived into Panga. So I was like, cool. I didn't know that, that's cool.

And he was really into weightlifting and fitness. Wow. And he died in 2015, but I've always admired him. And so I was like, cool, I'm gonna move there. And there was a street called Vision Drive. And I worked on the visual system, so I'm like, it's fate. So I moved into the old Fleetwood Mac house. It was like a barn.

Cool. And I put a gym in the main bedroom, my bulldog, and we started the podcast in a closet, literally a closet. And Rob lived up the road, and then Mike Blayback, who did the branding for, you know, photos for DC skateboarding, LaCai, Girl's skateboard, DGK, done a lot with Supreme, you know, it was Bill Strobick and those guys. He was my friend, I was like,

hey, we need a top card, we do this. So he took some photos and I told Rob, I was like, we should bring this guy in to just so that the photos are the same on every top card. And Rob at first said, yeah, I don't know, is that really important? Like do we need it? And I'm like, trust me, this guy, the branding, like there's the look, like even just the fonts. And he kind of knew what I was't know, is that really important? And I'm like, trust me, this guy, the branding,

there's the look, even just the font. And he kinda knew what I was talking about, but that wasn't me, I'm like, it's gotta look right. And I don't care if anyone else notices. And then I said, I want a song at the beginning in the bumper up front. And my favorite song is Burning Lights by Joe Strummer. And we try to get the rights to Burning Lights too expensive.

So, talk to Mike and he was like, oh, skateboarders have a solution for this. Like, you can change a certain number of chords. And then, I hope I don't sink myself with the copyright on this one, but anyway, the... No, because you changed the record. Change the record. We had a guy play it, change a few of the chords,

put that up front, and I was like, yes, it's a strumber song at the beginning. It's got pictures of my favorite science memorabilia. It's a strumber like song. Strumber like song. It's a strumber like song at the beginning. Strumber inspired. Strummer inspired.

Strumber tribute. Strumber tribute. Exactly. Love him. Never met him, but I know him through you, thankfully. So many questions about him whenever I see him. Okay, so it was just pull the guys together and then we needed to do a bunch of stuff

like uploading to RSS feeds and all this stuff like I don't know about. And so I knew this kid at Stanford Media, Ian Mackie, was like let's hire Ian and Rob was like, I don't know, do we really wanna bring inside? Boom, once the four of us got together, perfect chemistry and we just released in January 21. And the first six months, it literally felt like it was just

like pouring out of me because I've been carrying all this stuff for a long time and I've gone on podcasts. But the moment I sat down and was just like, all right, let's learn about sleep and circadian rhythms. Let's learn about dreaming. Let's learn about testosterone and estrogen, because I'd worked on endocrine stuff. I'd worked on thermal regulation.

So hormone stuff, cold, neuroscience stuff. I mean, to all been in here, and I just, like that kid with a grunt, with the Tourette thing, I was just like, I just, just, and I don't even remember feeling like it was ever work. It's never felt. How much research does it take to put together an episode? Depends on the topic.

So if it's a topic about, say, visual system or brain development, you know, I know it. So maybe four or five hours to kind of piece together. Maybe two hours even. If it's a different topic, like the one that we did on hair and hair growth or fertility, which I wanted to have have one comprehensive video that any couple could watch if they were thinking about having a child

and thinking about fertility or egg freezing or embryos, that was 11 hours of recording and probably 100 hours of prep. So it varies widely. And I'm fortunate also to have a really, really deep roster of experts in my life that I can just text or call. So like, as you know, if someone has a question about eye stuff, I get the chair of Stanford on the phone now.

I have a question about endocrine stuff, urology. Michael Eisenberg, our head of urology, urology, reproductive health, at Stanford, you know, a psychiatrist, we can conty. So I'm very fortunate to have this community of people that not all of them are likely to go on podcasts or if they do, they might go on one or two. There are exceptions to that, of course, but one of the things that I feel very lucky

to be able to bring forward is the voices of experts either through my words or by putting them on as guests. Because let's face it, there's tremendous range of knowledge and quality out there in terms of academics and clinicians. And most of what the general public gets to see and who they have access to is pretty meager. You're in a very interesting position because you have access to these experts at a time when it seems like most people are questioning the information coming from experts more than ever before. Even though you're coming from Stanford, you have credibility in spite of your credentials. Yeah, I think that what I like to think I'm good at

is vetting the information, getting to the right people for the particular question, getting to the right information. Because like especially in the landscape of health or what to do, I mean, there's so much garbage out there. And sometimes the garbage isn't, quote, unquote, false information or misinformation. Sometimes it's just like muddled.

We just had this episode with Dr. Reenomolik, who's a urologist talks about reproductive health, sexual health, and the questions were very straightforward. What are the different causes of female sexual dysfunction? Are they hormonal? Are they pelvic floor? Are they vascular? Okay, depends. What about from male sexual dysfunction? What about bicycle seats? What should people do? Okay, here are the five things that they should do. Bicycle seats turn out to be bad if you're on them for certain amount of time. Bob, Bob, it doesn't depend on whether or not you have a prostate.

It's that the blood supply, the perinium gets cut off. People get, okay, so you know, it's straight forward if you get a person like Reena in the seat across from you. She'll just tell you about anything. But like, those conversations weren't like salacious. It was just questions and straightforward answers based on extensive clinical experience and actionable takeaways. The problem now is that you go on there, like let's say somebody, God forbid, has Alzheimer's

or somebody in their family has Alzheimer's. What have they heard? Okay, Alzheimer's might be diabetes of the brands. Should they do the keto diet? I don't know. There's no clinical trials. But what about this drug? What about the fact that the last five drugs didn't seem to work or that the whole theory

of Alzheimer's got flipped on its head from a data fabrication last year? You're terrified and no one's telling you what to do. So you go to a neurologist and they tell you whether or not on a whole lot you can do. You can take this prescription, you can take that prescription, no like no discussion about how it works or why it works. Why is mechanism important to understand? Because if you understand that it has something to do with acetylcholine, well then you can think about other ways to increase acetylcholine. Because guess what? There are other ways. And so I benefited a lot from the fact that my third advisor, who was an MD and a PhD,

Ben Barris, sadly died of pancreatic cancer, but prior to that, we hung out a lot. And he had absolutely no reverence for the standard system, zero minus one reverence. He believed in certain prescription drugs. Of course. And he also believed that there was a ton of garbage in the literature. And he also understood that there was a lot of financial interests that were problematic. And he also understood that nutrition counts.

Supplementation can count. Whether or not people, you know, that's a tricky thing for me for a bunch of people. I went to the hospital and found out he had a diabetic problem, and the hospital gave him his new diet for when he left the hospital. And he, for example, was restricted to only eating two slices of white bread a day. White bread is basically sugar. Yeah.

Which for a diabetic is a bad idea. Couldn't be more poisonous. Yes, a bad idea. And if you went to the hospital today, that's what they do. Well, I can tell you that there are some healthy doctors, but there are many many very unhealthy doctors. And I know this because I grew up in a community of doctors and scientists I would say the same thing

occasionally you'll get like a health nut scientist, but you and I were talking about this earlier, I think one of the issues is that in Western medicine and in Western science, we are trained to be ultra specialist. You asked how we get our laboratory. The way we get our laboratory, I said, was you define a very specific vision for your lab. My lab is going to do blank and you become the world expert in that thing.

That's how you define yourself in the American system and in the Northern European system. It's all about the independent investigator. There's very little opportunity for integrating things from other sides. But it's the example of you are the expert hammer manufacturer, so you're looking for the nail to hammer. Exactly. Well, and when I moved to Stanford in 2016, I started studying respiration, deliberate breathwork, as a means to, I was testing, can it be an effective intervention for anxiety and stress? It turns out the answer is yes, even just, you know, double inhale through the nose,

long exhale, can reduce anxiety quickly, done repeatedly for a few cycles. You can improve nighttime sleep, overall mood, and not just while doing the breath work immediately after. Okay, that's what we discovered. And so on. In the 1970s and 1980s, a small collection of students proposed that respiration and maybe meditation could be useful for mental health at Stanford. They were not escorted off campus. They were forced off campus. And a couple of them moved down to this place called Esselin. Wow. Fast forward to 2020. Studies of psychedelics like psilocybin, LSD, and MDMA,

MDMA is more of an empathogen than a psychedelic, but are now going full-bore with government support, donor support, and legal permission. And these are all things that were vilified in the past. I could list off five to ten Harvard professors that were fired for suggesting the mere idea. So meditation made it through the shoot. Breathwork came later. But even when I was looking at this stuff in 2016, it was considered kind of wacky. Breathwork. Now, breath works through the shoot. The idea that changing your patterns of breathing deliberately

could change your state of mind and body for the better. Everyone's on board that. You don't have to do it, but most people are like, okay, cool, make sense. In fact, there's a lot of mechanism to explain it. The idea that mindfulness meditation might be a good thing. Maybe even kids should do it, make sense. In fact, there's a lot of mechanism to explain it. The idea that mindfulness meditation might be a good thing. Maybe even kids should do it, make sense.

Maybe psychedelics with the appropriate controls and support for some people, not all, could be helpful. People are on board. But each one of those things, separately was considered a absolute violation of code, of conduct, of ethics.

It was illegal. And like, in many ways, it was, quote unquote, illegal in academics. Academics, I just talk about respiration or breathwork. People, you might as well have said, you want to study levitation. Or you want to study how genies come out of bottles. And so now when somebody comes forward and says, yeah, I'm curious about

like acupuncture. A lot of people disacupuncture, but Chufu Ma's lab at Harvard Med thank goodness, is publishing papers in top tier journals showing that when needles are introduced to particular places in the body, particular glands respond with release of immune molecules, or molecules that stimulate molecules of the immune system that defend against infection, and on and on. It's like, there's- And it's been known for 3,000 years. It's been known forever.

But so, I have nothing against academic science or my colleagues. Some of them are very open-minded. It's the system of funding for it just constrains people to this like single-track hypothesis thing. And look, science needs that too. But, you know, it's also not a single-track hypothesis

for the public good. It's a single-track hypothesis where there's probably some upside. Yes, and the upside is rarely financial for scientists. I must say this, I feel in fairness to the academic community. Maybe not for scientists, but for somebody. For somebody. Very few scientists get rich. Some do, but very few scientists get rich. Scientists are interested in discovering things,

and yes, they are human. They are interested in discovering things and yes, they are human. They're interested in career advancement. They are interested in career advancement. In fact, the system, whether or not you have tenure or not, demands career advancement. So I'm not cynical, but I know how the game has played from the inside. I was on an NIH panel for as a standing member for four years until just recently where I stepped down because my term was up, right? They didn't ask me leave early. I understand how the funding game is played. I understand philanthropy.

I understand how that game is played. I understand about patents. I understand how certain things make it to clinical trials and how certain things go from clinical trials to productization and companies. I can also tell you about major biotech companies in the Bay Area that are founded on discoveries get to clinical trials and how certain things go from clinical trials to productization in companies. I can also tell you about major biotech companies in the Bay Area that are founded on discoveries that everyone in the lab knew was complete and total bullshit. And yet, those companies will thrive because they'll just pivot to a new drug and a new

drug. And, you know, I'm not in the business of outing people or writing exposés, but if you think that everything is right angles and people just trying to get the answer right, I'll tell you right now, there's some amazing scientists who are absolutely committed to the truth and there are a lot of them who are committed to their careers and they're not lying, but you're not hearing about the stuff that didn't work. And you're also hearing about things through a particular tunnel of understanding and focus. And I don't claim to have the full 360 degree picture,

but that's why I like to talk to people who are practitioners, clinicians. I like to talk to people who are practitioners, clinicians. I like to talk to people who are just like 10 degrees off from that. That the people, you know, like nurse practitioners often know things that doctors don't, because they're down there in the weeds. I like talking to people who for which there's no degree. And I'm interested in prescription drugs, supplementation, behavioral tools, Eastern medicine, Western medicine, whatever the hell you want to call it. I'm interested in prescription drugs, supplementation, behavioral tools, Eastern medicine, Western medicine, whatever the hell you want to call it.

I'm interested in all of it. Whatever works. Whatever works. And I have my taste. And that's what I, you know, can't help but inject into what I choose and what I choose to communicate about. But if people are wondering how we got ourselves into this massive lack of trust of experts, it's because we are not broad enough about who we consider an expert. We're too narrow in terms of who we consider an expert. At least that's my belief. If you could rewrite the way the whole system works, what would you change? Well, I think for any patient who has a unknown condition, like they don't know what's going on with them, they would see, in my ideal world,

they would see four or five different people each with very different perspectives, then those four or five people would communicate and they'd come up with a plan of action. That's foremost. So let's say it's a psychiatric issue like depression. I think they should talk to, I could imagine a quick meeting with four people,

a clinical psychologist, a psychiatrist who's more on the neurochemical prescription writing side or orientation. Somebody who maybe is very somatic in their orientation and then somebody who's really about lifestyle interventions. If they talk and they're a team, they're a squad that has good chemistry, I think that patient's gonna walk out of there with three or four things to do

and a bunch of questions that need answering in some tests and they're gonna arrive at a solution much faster and I would have at least the greatest degree of confidence that they're gonna do well. Right now, they'll see any one of those people and it'll be X number of years of either success or failures before they arrive where they need to go. That would be the first thing. So there's got to be communication across the disciplines. So broad spectrum from experts from different modalities.

I believe in panels, not individuals. In fact, I'll say this about the pandemic. One of the things that always perplexed me was why isn't there a panel, why is it individuals? Now, I'm sure behind any individual there's a panel. There may be, but when a patient or a citizen hears from a panel, it's different. And also, nowadays, everything's about getting diversity of opinion. You can't get diversity with an individual by definition.

So you want panels. The panels don't have to be 100 people. I think three or four is a good number and it's totally workable. And, you know, I think anyone who is in the fortunate position of having the finances to get real medical workups, even if they have a primary doctor, nowadays that primary doctor, nine times out of 10,

is having them talk to behavioral interventionists, physical therapists, you know, an immunologist as the case may be. I mean, for someone diagnosed with cancer or a kid with depression or somebody who just wants to improve their health overall, like you have to go to 10 different people or have a doctor who has an extensive network of experts in their clinic.

And so it's no surprise to me that people get very attached to the one thing that feels like it worked until it doesn't. And then the one thing that feels like it worked might work for one person and not another. Absolutely. And so with a panel that's willing to, that has a good chemistry that is willing to pivot quickly, that's willing to, that has a good chemistry that is willing to pivot quickly, I think we could get much further, much faster. I mean, I've got a friend, he's down San Diego, he said, I've got vertigo in my ear hurts, and I said, have you been checked out for an ear infection?

No, why not? Well, I went and the doctor said it's the vertigo, and I said, well, the vertigo will be the consequence of the ear thing. He said, well, okay, so do I need antibiotics? I said, I don't know. You need to, like, clear you need to talk to an ear nose and throat person.

A primary care physician is not going to be able to solve. This guy's really suffering. He's just, you know, we should, but one example of somebody that is probably going to, you know, pinball around in the system for a couple weeks until it resolves, or it doesn't. But to me, it's not rocket science. We have the expertise.

They're just not arranged in the right categories into the right collections of people. You mentioned earlier journaling when you were 19. When did you start journaling? I started journaling when I was about 14, Jim Thibault. This guy who runs East skateboard companies, amazing guy, by the way, he's a very humble. He takes care of a lot of people in skateboarding and he's known still as one of the most giving and supportive people in that community.

He had a couple of books, one called Loose Change, and another one called Do the Distance. And these were short stories and poetry that he wrote. And I think they were published by high speed press, which was thrasher, but I still have them. He gave me a couple copies, or maybe I bought them, and I'll remember, but I remember thinking, like he's writing about some hard stuff here in his life, and it really helped me.

I carried, you know, this chokes me up too, because like I carried do the distance with me when I got locked up. I carried it to college. I still have that book on my shelf. That little grade book was like my life line. You know, and so I started writing early on, and I still have all my journals. I don't go back and read them. It's always pen on paper. These days I might voice dictate something into the phone to capture something

and then I bring it to the paper. When do you do it? Anytime, but usually in the morning, especially if I'm struggling on planes, I get a lot of writing done on planes because you just detach. You typically do it every day? Most every day.

Most every day. And I definitely take notes in my phone every day. The phone is pretty convenient because it dates it. There are a bunch of things about the phone that are helpful. And actually on the flight over here, I spend some time looking through my notes across the last two years.

I also have a folder on my computer that blocks my life by years and at each inside of those are some word documents with what happened during those years. What might a typical journal entry be like? Yeah, so this morning I went out by the pool and I was just walking, I tend to get my ideas in the morning and I wrote, I go, oh shit, I'm really focused on other people, stuff right now and I don't know if it's a defense against thinking about what's really going on with me or if that's what's really going on with me is I'm focused on other people, right?

So it's just kind of like mind chatter and then I wrote the important thing to me or the important thing is to never look down on anyone or look up to anyone too much. I'd like to be like on level ground with people to understand them. But I also am really keenly aware of how I can get pulled into other people's stories and stories about them. And I wish I was more like Rick. That's what I wrote. Are you sure? It's interesting, the process of writing something down, that you're not really planning on going back to. And somehow is the process of writing it a way of locking it into yourself. Yes. So on my computer, for instance, I have a way of locking it into yourself. Yes. Yes, so on my computer, for instance, I have a couple of stickies,

you know, those like sticky function and Mac, those yellow tabs. And I'll put stuff in there, and then I'll delete those out if they don't seem to matter over time, but I'll read those every once more, and like in the top left corner, I think I say something like completing something

feels really good, because I have this feeling sometimes like completing something feels really good Because I have this feeling sometimes like mid-morning my productivity Energy will start flowing and if I don't capture that I won't feel so good But if I do something I finish it and I'm like I have energy. It's like, you know Sort of like a really good workout can give you energy I just like whoa and so it's that sort a reminder type thing. So I do go back and read that. Certain things just hang out forever because it matters and it works. But most of the time when I write, it's either to clear out clutter or to stamp down something. And you know, it's funny. I also have these lists, these were docs that I made in the years. 2011 to 2015, when I was a junior professor,

really hard years for me. I was in a really self-destructive time in my life, even though my lab was flourishing. I was really not doing well. And I would write at that time, at these little lists, and it was like, I would write. It's so funny. I was half in Barris to say this,

but not really. I just chuckled out it. It said this list, I can show you. It said Jim Thibault, Mike Menser, Tim Armstrong. I didn't know Tim at that time. I had met Jim, hadn't talked to him in years, new Mike before he died. I'd like, David Berson, he's a scientist,

Jonathan Horton, Joe Strummer, like lists of people that I respect and look up to, and I would go to that document and just look at it and be like, be more like them. Like, I was just like, so I have, I've created this committee of mentors for myself. I never really sought them out directly, but these are people who I've always looked up to respect.

I do like inspirational figures. Yeah, and but like to embody, to try and embody some component. Like I'm not gonna sing and play guitar like Tim or Stromer, like, hell no, that's not my thing. I'm not gonna run a skateboard company, but I remember Jim, like Jim's generosity is something that like, I feel like we can, you know, the energy that he embodies in things, you know, is what I'm interested in. And of course, like, he has flaws like everybody else, but that's not what I'm accessing, right? I'm not, you know, not trying to make

people perfect or iconic, but to me, they are. They're like my guides. What I'm hearing is that these are people who are true to themselves. Yes. And listen, it's weird to say, because I already said I'll be more like, like you're on my list, I have this list, playback's on my list, you're on my list, conties on my list,

atias on my list, you know, there's a list of barber chapments. Clearly for different reasons. Definitely for different reasons. But you know what, it makes me feel safe. Yes. It makes me feel crude up inside. Because it's one thing to look out and be like,

man, my friends are doing amazing things. And I trust them and they're cool people and they're running their relationships and their businesses with the utmost drive and integrity, all that. But that's looking out at them. But this is about being crude up on the inside. And yeah, maybe it's from a kid who didn't,

I don't think I attached right to my parents. I definitely didn't, you know, I love them and I know they love me back. I'm super attached to my sister. I love her, I'd do anything within the bounds of ethics for her, but like, I don't think I attach to family, my own family the same way that most people attach. I think I attach to this like community of dudes

that are doing stuff. And so whether or not they're with me or not, or whether or not we're in communication or not, like I'm trying to like, I'm trying to make them proud by being myself. And in the ways that being myself is not going to make them proud, I'm definitely where I'm like, don't go there. So, you know, a lot of people like, I want to make my family proud. It's like, yeah, I guess I could get into that mindset, but for me, it's like, I want to do a good job on the podcast for me and

for the listeners, but it's also like my team. Like, they're my family. Do you feel a sense of competition? Not with any of the people I'm talking about, not with any other podcasters. No, with any one at all about anything. I'm not a competitive person. I love what I love so much, but I'm not accustomed to anyone trying to take it away.

Yeah. So, like, if someone was like, I'm gonna, no, no, like, no. Like, if, if, no. Because what you're into is personal, so it can't really compare to what anyone else. No one can do what I can do, and I can't do what they can do. Exactly.

And in my scientific career, I never once had the experience of going to a meeting and thinking, oh, I wish I was working on that. I was always working on the thing that interested me the most at that time. And then with the podcast, like I love other podcasts. I genuinely listen to your podcast, Lex's podcast, and Joe's podcast, and Tim's podcast.

And I listen to some others also. Chris Womson is doing amazing stuff. Now and again, I'll see it and be like, yeah, I like some of the comedian podcasts, the Saguira, Khrishar thing, Andrew, Andrew Sholes, you know, like, I love that stuff, but I've got my core stuff, but I never, ever think like,

oh, I should be doing that. Like, ever, it would never occur to me. Yeah. Yeah. No. What's it like speaking in front of people? Well, we do these lives that have like 3,500 people or something like the beacon. Well, I came up teaching in the classroom.

So it's a lot like that. The rooms above, you come out and like world goes quiet and that's just your voice. I like it, I like teaching. How different is that then doing it to a camera? Very different. When I do the solo episodes, it's just Rob in the room. It's only ever been Rob and when my bulldog was alive,

he was there too. How do you talk in a robber, you talk into the audience. Talk into the camera. I'm talking to the audience. I'm looking at that little box and I'm like, are you picturing anything? So I have about three to five pages of bullet point notes. And then as I'm talking about it,

I can think about the next thing I need to see and I sort of see it in my head and my mind's eye. I've always had a little bit of a capacity for visual memory. I'm not photographing. What's going on is in your head, you're not picturing a person listening. No, you're focusing on what you're saying

and making sure the information is correct. Yes, actually these days I'm listening to come out. That's what makes me calm. I'm listening to how it's coming out and I'm trying to see if it sounds right for the point I'm trying to make. Sounds right, meaning make sense. Is clear as concise as possible,

and where there needs to be an inflection on a particular point or point in a sentence, I'm doing that. You know, I think to imagine that there's an audience out there would just freak me out, because then I'm thinking about how it's gonna land. So when you're in front of an audience, is it the same or are you considering the people

in the room? I know they're there. Yeah. So I'm acknowledging their collective presence. Yes. But I'm not thinking about, oh, the guy in the back or the person in the front room. You're still probably doing a similar process

of looking in and like, what's the next thing I'm going to say I come off stage from the lives Like the last one we did the beacon was to me I think the best of the four we've done only because I came off stage and I was like I have no idea what just happened Yeah, you're just in the zone. I have no idea it happened. It happened. Yeah, and And I spent the entire day listening to strummer talk. I have this collection of clips of him and that's what worked then. And I think that it texts you about this. And I'm like, I'm not gonna use this at the next one.

But I kept walking up and down the pier and I remember there's this interview with him where he's like, music is not the point. He was like, you know, and it's like, it's his like intention and like, when I listen to him, I'm not paying attention to the words. It's like, he'll say something,

then he'll pull it from the like bottom of his gut. He has his like breath, oh, it might as well be, oh, no, no, no, no, no. It's like a like, it's like a tribal leader going, oh, oh, no, no, no, no, no, and you get it. And so what I was like experiencing

is like, I wanna just channel that. I mean, I know I make a lot of strummer for like, but to me it was like, he was really tapped in. Not all the time I'm guessing, but he was super tapped in. He understood that there's like all this stuff that could like funnel through him and come out. I really think he got it.

I like it or I get it from him and I don't do it nearly as well, but like I could tell he could pull energy together in some sort of coherent framework. But I think what he was trying to say over and over again is it's not the framework. It's like the message is a felt thing. Yeah. And when I do the lives, it's like, what I want people to understand is irrelevant. What I want them to feel is just the beauty and utility of biology and the beauty and utility of ongoing inquiry. They're inquiry, not mine, theirs's beautiful. You mentioned Wikipedia earlier. How do you verify

information? If you do in research, how do you know what to believe? Yeah, we talk about Wikipedia, but PubMed, Library, Congress, peer-reviewed research is my bread and butter. You know, that's where I've published my whole career. You publish the journals, then the stuff goes there. If there are corrections to those journals, entries, or papers are retracted, that's going to show up there. Does it mean that all papers are created equal? No. Is there a lot of lying in papers? Yes.

Most of the lying in scientific papers is by omission, where people throw out things that didn't fit, so you never get to see it. It's the unknown that we'll never know. Outright data for abocation is more rare. It does happen. Now with... Just happened recently, no, with Stanford.

Yes, our former president of Stanford, who was a neurobiologist, is a neurobiologist, was either left voluntarily or was forced to leave because of issues in prior publications of his. Those were discovered through, there's an online site called PubPier, where people who see errors in journal papers, like or duplications of figures that could only be either human error or intentional are called to attention and then authors have the opportunity to respond. Now, AI is used to forage digital images and all these papers and it's finding lots and lots of errors and outright fabrications in different papers.

There's a woman. Are those being shared or those being hidden? Yeah, there's a woman on Twitter named Elizabeth Bick, B-I-K, who tweets out about some of these, and often with the author responses. Sometimes the author responses are absolutely hilarious. Like, there was one yesterday where clearly there were a bunch of cells duplicated

in a brain tissue slice from a control subject versus Alzheimer's subject. Same cells put to different locations in the two. There's no way the same cells could exist in two different brains. I mean, these are clearly the same cells. And the author's response that she put up was something like, we cannot explain why the images show up in both sides. Clearly, it's an error. But then they didn't say that they like intentionally did it, but you can't imagine anyway it could have been unintentional. So sometimes it's just silly responses.

Other times it, you know, it will open up in entire investigations. People will lose jobs. More often than not when there's an error, it's traceable to one author. This is the big debate now. If it's traceable to one author and it's not the head of lab, was the head of lab responsible for knowing about it.

Sometimes labs are really big. I always ran a relatively small lab. So when labs get really big, it's harder to control everything coming out of there. I tend to trust collections of papers from different laboratories that arrive at the same general sets of conclusions. What I call the center of mass of data, because otherwise, you're relying on a one-off. And having worked in big labs and coming up, I mean,

I've got stories and everyone in those labs has stories about people getting the data to please the head of lab. I mean, that's probably the most common problem in science that's not talked about enough, which is if career advancement, like getting a job, going to the pros, getting an income, taking care of your family is dependent on publishing, and publishing in high tier journals gets you better jobs and career advancement. Well then, the incentives are obvious, and in a lab where there's 10 post-docs and research is hard and it doesn't often work. There will be people, not all,

but there will be people who will try to figure out what the head of lab wants, because they know that if they give them that, give mommy or daddy that, they are gonna be the person who's pushed forward and promoted, and that head of lab is gonna be on the phone to top universities saying, you gotta hire this post-docum, I'm there amazing.

I benefited from working on things very different than my advisors. As a graduate student, I also benefited from working for a woman, Barbara Chapman, who said early on, be comfortable publishing papers in not the highest tier journal. So my lab I'm proud to say and I've, you know, coming up over the years, yes, we have some papers in nature and science. These are the apex journals. And, but we also publish papers in journal neuroscience, journal of comparative neurology, journals that are considered archival and solid, but they're not the kind of journals that are going to get you promoted.

But guess what? Not every discovery we made was worthy of the highest tier journals. So you learn to trust things based on the center of mass, also certain laboratories get reputations for being excellent, so you can trust stuff from there better. When it comes to what's out there on the internet, that's a lot tougher.

You know, I still have an affection for kind of odd theories and interesting things because I don't think there are terribly many new ideas. There's better tools that can reveal those ideas in new ways. But look, if we're going to get really just direct about this, I believe that there are certain compounds, not all of which are prescription medication compounds that are of value for human health, the data on some of these is relatively thin, and yet I know from my own experience and from the experience of others that a lot of these things are quite safe and quite effective and quite cost efficient.

So I talk about some of that on the podcast. I just make it clear what my sources are. I'll say, you know, there's only a couple of mouth studies in one human study and there weren't that many subjects, but it's pretty interesting what they saw. And guess what I tried it. And it worked for me. I don't know if it's gonna work for you.

But, you know, or things like Ashawagando, where, you know, it's very controversial, but a big issue is that people take it for high doses for periods of time that are too long. It should be psyched if it's gonna be used at high dosages or it shouldn't be used at all. I think there's a lot of individual variability and the nice thing about the podcast is

I have an opportunity to talk about all the caveats whereas in your typical clinical trial, it's like the export from it is going to be depressed people should take 20 milligrams of blank and blank. But when you talk to a psychiatrist and they tell you how medication is prescribed, it's like this. Person comes in, many of symptoms,

if they meet eight out of 10 of them, they're quote unquote depressed. And the psychiatrist is literally told, pick a medication off the list, doesn't matter which, prescribe it, see how it goes. Now, that to me is almost pseudo random. So, it is random, not pseudo. Right, exactly.

And so I think that there's a batch of psychiatrists, Paul Conti among them that believe in medications, but also believe in other approaches. There are, and are thinking about this in a far more nuanced way. I think that when it comes to cancer and oncology, you know, this became clear to me when my graduate advisor died of breast cancer at 50

and my postdoc advisor died of pancreatic cancer at roughly 60 and barris, the second guy told me, he said, he took an immunotherapy treatment. He said, this made it worse. And I said, well, why'd you do it? And he said, well, I had read this clinical trial and one of our colleagues suggested it to me. And I'm like, are you sure you mean it?

Or he's like, I'm absolutely sure. Now Ben was a data junkie. He was absolutely sure. Then he was doing different diets that helped, but eventually he succumbed to it. And I remember asking him, because I interviewed him the entire year up until he died. I have it on audio. I haven't released it yet.

And this is 2017. So I didn't have a podcast. I just recorded it, because I loved him. And I, he was my friend, and he was really quirky, but I also loved his irreverence for things. And he said, he's like 90% of what we do in medicine. Now keep in mind, he's an MD. of what we do in medicine. Now keep in mind he's an MD, he's like is complete and utter nonsense. He's like it's just sifting deck chairs on the Titanic.

And I said, well, what's the solution, Ben? And he's like, it's more research, but also we just have to know that we're really flying blind in a lot of areas. What are you most excited about for the future going forward for you? For me, I'm very focused on the next podcast. I'm interviewing the Surgeon General in a couple of weeks. That'll be great. Which is a trip. And I intend to ask him some hard questions.

Like how come now we're talking about all this mental health and isolation crisis, but during the pandemic, no one was talking about it. I was talking about it because no one else was talking about it. I kept waiting. It didn't happen. Why are we still in the 1985 model of mental health? You know, I mean, there's some things that are just baffling to me. I'm imagining some good answers that are based on some really serious practical considerations,

but I want to know what those are. I also want to know about what's possible. So I'm excited about the next episode always. I'm excited about what I don't know is going to come, right? I don't know. I mean, being friends with you is taught me like, I don't know is going to come, right? I don't know. I mean, being friends with you is taught me like, I don't know what's next. I'm focused on trying to do the best job I can

on the sunscreen episode. I'm excited about the episode we did with Dr. Reenomolik on sexual urologic and reproductive health, because finally, she gave straight answers for a lot of things, not everything, but a lot of things. I'm excited about getting information out there, but I'm not thinking like what happens after the podcast. I'll podcast it until it doesn't make sense to podcast anymore.

What's the first time someone approached you since doing the podcast and let you know they like it's making a difference in their life? I don't remember the first time. I'm always, you know, obviously happy when people do that. I don't get the like a dopamine hit off of it. Look, if I could be anonymous and do the podcast, I would. I know I'm not very extroverted. I love being among close friends, but I think that the most satisfying feedback is when people say, hey, I'm sleeping much better, or you know, I always wanted to quit drinking alcohol, but you give me a really good excuse. Or, you know what, I heard you episode on alcohol,

and I'm not gonna pay attention to the advice, but I really appreciate, I got that a bunch. Or, you know, this helped, because we have somebody in our family with a needy disorder or that kind of direct feedback, but maybe the best feedback is just when people say, I can't believe this is free. That feels the most gratifying to me because those years at Embarkadero, or like we were all like struggling and I got to see in those years things and people and get really close to environments that I would have never gotten close to. There's a lot of suffering out there.

And one of the things that always bothered me was, like depending on the pure chance of the parents you're born to and where you live, you either have access to great information or not, and I think that's changed now. And sure, certain things, medical care, et cetera, cost things, but a lot of what I focus on are behavioral tools that are accessible to anybody.

And I always say optimization is about optimizing for your environment that you happen to be in. And so the idea that the information can get out to some kid in Malaysia or somebody who has no means whatsoever, but they can do a few things like viewing morning sunlight and dim in the lights at night, taking a cold shower, you know, there's a reason to save money turn off. You know, these kinds of things, that's very gratifying.

Like I want to help people, I think trying to do good in the world is important. And the tools to do that should not be the exclusive domain of the wealthy or those that are on a university campus. Yeah, I love that you're sharing what feels like protected information with everyone for free. We all get the benefit of what you're interested in learning about. I just want to thank you for sharing the wisdom. Thanks. I really appreciate that. I'm very gratified by the fact that people seem to like the material and hopefully benefit from it. And just like me talking about fish or you know God knows

what when I was a little kid like I couldn't help myself anyway. Yeah, it's so unique. The fact that it's coming from you with so much heart and soul is felt. I think the reason it connects is much because of the way you feel it as the information itself. Thank you. Well, I definitely feel it from from go like when I discovered like this is how something might work or could work or does work. It's exciting. Like it's so exciting. Yeah. It just is like wow, how could I not tell everybody? Well, thanks for doing this. Yeah, well, thanks for having me. You've been a huge influence on my life

as by way of example, in the way you've led your career as a writer, a producer, things that I'm not involved in, but the way you approach things is amazing, and your friendship has been amazing. I've grown so much as a person as a consequence, so thank you. you