Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin - Andrew Huberman, Ph.D. (Part 2)

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

Dr. Andrew Huberman returns to continue his conversation in Part Two. Dr. Andrew Huberman is a neuroscientist and tenured professor of neurobiology, psychiatry, and behavior sciences at Stanford School of Medicine. His research centers on brain development, neural plasticity, and how vision and respiration shape human performance and cognitive function. Beyond his work in academia, Huberman is the creator and host of the Huberman Lab podcast, the world’s leading health podcast, where he shares science-based insights on brain and body optimization.Exploring how to improve mental and physical health alike, he is also the author of the upcoming book Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: LMNT Electrolytes https://drinklmnt.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Athletic Nicotine https://www.athleticnicotine.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Squarespace https://squarespace.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

Tetragrammaton. Tetracket. So I've talked a little bit in the past, although not much, I was part much. I was part of a clinical trial for MDMA, so-called ecstasy. A lot of people don't realize this, but it's methylene-dioxy, methamphetamine. It's a weird drug because, first of all, it's completely synthetic. It doesn't exist in nature. When was it created, do you know?

For the first time, I think it was created in, like, 1913 by Merck or something like that. I'm probably having the date and the company wrong, but sometime around that. It's an old drug. Then it wasn't touched again. And then a guy named Sasha Shulgin and his wife. living in Berkeley, California, made it. Sasha and his wife would make compounds and give it to their friends,

all these therapists in the Bay Area, at a time when the Bay Area was still hit. There is cool, but it's not as adventurous as it used to be. Maybe there's a new generation, but, so Shulgin would make these drugs, give them to his therapist friends, they would take them and then they'd take notes. He actually wrote a book,

has the worst name of any book, it's called P-K-K-K-H-A-L. phenyl ethyl amines I have known and loved, dumbest name ever for a book if you want people to read the book. In any case, MDMA, ecstasy is not a plant medicine. It's also not a psychedelic, but it's what's called an empathogen. And it has a very interesting property. What's an empathogen? An empathogen is a molecule that makes you feel more empathic for yourself or others, basically anything you focus on. This is the one, well, there's several, but But this is the one danger of MDMA, which is that unless you have someone to guide you,

you can fall in love with water on MDMA. Is that bad? No, but it's the waste of some potentially more useful therapeutic time. You can really start to develop a relationship to anything you place your sensory focus on. So I think in general, used as a tool for like PTSD, where you're developing empathy for yourself or maybe even for your oppressor, that happens too, where people forgive themselves and others. It's a weird drug because it increases serotonin dramatically

and dopamine dramatically. Normally when dopamine goes up, serotonin goes down. That actually was shown beautifully in a study this last year. Dopamine tends to make people very plans focused and focused on what they're going to do next. This is why drugs that increase dopamine like methamphetamine and cocaine make people very like every, idea is a good idea in their mind anyway. And serotonin tends to make people very happy with what

they have right in that space. So it raises both simultaneously, very unusual. And I had good results from MDMA as a tool for PTSD. That was the first psychedelic you ever took? Well, no. It's not a psychedelic. Sorry, not a psychedelic. In full disclosure, when I was in high school, I took, and I don't recommend this. When I was in high school, I experimented with psychedelics, and I did not have a good time, and I stopped. It was really not a good experience. And for years, I was just almost disparaging of it. I was like, well, I would go near this.

But then a clinician and a clinical trial convinced me different. So I can summarize my experience with it by saying that it allowed me to forgive people that I felt had wronged me, and it allowed me to understand and have more compassion for myself and to feel more completely, like, as a bodily experience off the compound. This is a compound that no one has bad experiences on? Is that true? You can have a bad experience. Well, people with heart conditions have to be careful because it raises blood pressure and heart rate pretty dramatically. You can't be taking us. It's not like a bad trip drug.

It's hard to have a bad trip on ecstasy. And it's one of the reasons why it's a party drug. There have been some interesting things to clear up, actually, is a good opportunity. to clear some things up, it was thought that it was neurotoxic that killed serotonin neurons that was published in the journal Science, one of the premier journals. The same laboratory published that they had accidentally injected pure methamphetamine, not MDMA in those studies, and the study was retracted, but most people don't know that. So it doesn't... Very little evidence, if any, for neurotoxicity. Any? Very little evidence. Maybe not any, except in rodents, and that evidence is weak.

The real issue is, are people getting pure MDMA? Because a lot of times it's cut with methamphetamine, which is neurotoxic. And in addition to that, it does leave you feeling in a bit of a trough two or three days later. You feel a little low, and then you kind of bounce back out of that.

The interesting thing, too, you'll find this amusing craps, most people do, is that there have been studies of people that take either MDMA once, dozens of times or hundreds of times and explore the effects. And it turns out you find very few negative effects. The population studied is super interesting.

There are very few populations that you can study who've never done any drug besides MDMA. And the population that's done that, and not all of them, but the population that was used in this study were Mormons. Wow. So the Mormons were open to doing... It's not on the no-fly list, apparently.

that's wild it's wild i learned that from dr nolan williams he's a psychiatrist and neurologist from stanford on my podcast i looked up the papers and indeed these are people from the church of latter day saints never drink never take drugs never drink don't take drug they don't use caffeine because there are things that used in combination with mdMA that can make it neurotoxic so alcohol and mdma together if people take you know sometimes people will take mdma and go go out dancing or something and then they'll take another drug like ketamine and the combination can be very toxic or even deadly so So, you know, and now there's fentanyl contamination, which is very deadly. So it's interesting.

For me, it really helped. It really helped. I'm so glad I participated in that trial. Things that were emotionally heavy, just lifted. Or I can still feel something about it, but it doesn't feel like it sticks around as long. So it changed you? 100%. For the better.

Yeah. I won't say it changed 100% of me. No, no. But you were a different person than you were before, and it has benefits. to do. Absolutely. That's great. Absolutely. I wouldn't recommend kids do it, but in the right clinical hands. It's up for FDA approval soon. We'll see if it happens. It was up last year. It did not pass for two reasons. One, they didn't have a good control group. Like, there's not a good control drug. And the other is some people did some not ethical things during the guidance of patients.

And, you know, you need to have a guy that knows what they're doing and where they're really benevolent. Because you're- What does the guide do? The guide usually will sit there with you. In the best case, you're in an eye mask and you're talking about what's coming up for you and what you're feeling. Why with an eye mask? Because if you're not in the eye mask, you can fall in love with anything you look at. I don't mean you'll fall, like romantically fall in love, but you would, let's say you were listening to, well, I'm now listening to The Grateful Dead a little bit. So let's say you're listening to a Grateful Dead. I love that song, Ripple. I could listen to that on repeat and just kind of enter. Go into the song. Go into the song and you lose the opportunity to work through something. I see. Good therapeutic sessions with psychedelics or empathogens involve working through something hard. I see. Every single time it's been hard.

But you feel enough support from the guide and from the medicine and the safety that you're in. You feel very safe on it. Do you tell them in advance what you hope to work through? Yeah. So all these trials are arranged where you do at least two discussion sessions prior. Then you do the actual medicine with a guide. sometimes two guides present while in the eye mask sometimes you'll come out of the eye mask you use the restroom or something they'll write something down you go back in and then

afterwards the integration piece is really when you walk around when you take the eye mask off and go to the bathroom do you feel high do you feel different so at the peak of it which is about 90 minutes in they give you a booster and then your pupils are as big as quarters and you are like you can still function you can still go to the bathroom and use the bathroom, but you could not drive a car. You wouldn't let someone get near your text or your email. I mean, you're blasted. You're in a very altered state.

Describe the feeling of it. Your whole body feels like a tuning fork that's reverberating. Is that a positive feeling or a negative feeling? Yeah, it's almost like waves of, that's no doubt the serotonin. You can feel kind of waves of warmth and not too hot, not too cold going through your body. if you have a thought like let's say you were to think about someone you love and you place some focus on it that thought and the feeling would expand and eventually they would collide kind of like in a lava lamp and then the feeling would get even bigger than before and it could just

and then at some point you would reach the natural end point of that thought and emotion it does reach its own natural endpoint yes and so the guide is there to say what are you thinking about and you'd say, you know, it's crazy. I've lost so many people. It doesn't make any sense. Like, why? Like, it doesn't make any sense. Like, all these kids, like, we weren't in the military.

We weren't in the inner city. I mean, some of these kids, and you'd start to feel empathic about how a lot of life is just luck, good and bad luck. You would start to feel into what an amazing thing it was to know these people. And you could understand life energy in a way, like, we're, here kind of like Steve Jobs said, right? You know, you're like a rainbow and you have a chance to shine and some people that arc is shorter and you come to terms with things in that way. But here's the key thing. In a talk therapy session, you're describing something and emotions might come up.

But in a empathogen therapy session, you're feeling those feelings times a hundred and you have the opportunity to work through the feelings in real time. Let me give you an example. at one point during the session the clinician said I'm going to go use the bathroom and get something to eat and I'll bring back something to eat if you want it tends to kill your appetite you can go in hungry you're not eating for like a day and a half food's the last thing on your mind and he stood up and left and I remember that moment I felt the most profound sense of loneliness I've ever felt in my entire life but like times a thousand do you think it's because you feel like you're depending on this coach I

I don't know, I think I just felt so alone. Yeah. And then I remember thinking, when this is a great opportunity. And I sat there and I thought, huh, like loneliness comes and it goes. And then I watched it grow and then move through and I could feel the process of it moving through. And so the next time in real life, it's still real life, but not on the empathogen, I would feel lonely, I'd think, I could do this forever. I don't want to, but I could.

Do you remember everything from the experience? Yes, although there are moments where it's important to write things down or for the other person to write things down. There tends to be something to emerge thematically. I would say I'm not alone in this, that there's always one major takeaway and maybe some micro takeaways. You know, we have to remember that whether or not it's an antidepressant or it's MDMA or it's psilocybin. The goal is plasticity. It's not necessarily the experience you have. And all of these compounds increase these neuromodulators. Neuromodulators are dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine, and epinephrine. Plasticity, does that mean getting to feel the feeling? Yes. So inside of the session is like the flick of the first domino. But the plasticity actually

occurs for weeks afterwards. So a very common experience. I've had this experience, is you have the session, you feel like you really get to some core conclusion. Like you really are able to feel differently. You're able to embrace grief. You're able to come to clarity about hard things and you're at peace with it. And then inevitably, two or three days or a week later,

something happens and you get upset. And the first thought is always like, damn it, I thought I was better. But then you realize, wait, this is the opportunity. And you go back and you activate the same process. without having to take the compound again, and you go, oh, so I would say it's like getting a thousand repetitions of talk therapy in one session. Now, there are issues with it in the sense that you can't try and tackle too much in there. You're not going to tackle an entire

lifetime. And you also can't take it too often because it's depleting. I mean, that day is written off. The next day is written off. And there's also this big question, is the experience that you have on these drugs, because that's what they are. Is that really the thing? Or is it what comes after? You know, there are a lot of people now trying to design psychedelics that don't create any of these odd experiences. So that's MDMA. Ketamine is also not a psychedelic. I've never done ketamine. How are they different? Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic. It makes you feel out of body. People who've talked to me about it say that it's as if you lift out of your body or looking down at yourself and you can see things, a good and bad, PCP and ketamine are very similar

in structure and have a very similar function. Fenceuclidine is, you know, they both block the same receptor like it's, we used to hear about PCP being this wild drug like in the 70s and 80s, right? This was every other chips episode was like they were going after PCP dealers or something. Angel dust. Angel dust. That's right. And then the classic psychedelics are LSD and psilocybin.

And I was fortunate enough to be able to participate in a psilocybin trial. And I will say, and this is high-dose psilocyc. So just to tell you what the research says, I've never microdosed. But the data on microdosing for depression are very unimpressive, the scientific data. People will counter that from their own experience, but that's what the data is. Not a whole lot of effect. psilocybin chemically looks a lot like serotonin. high-dose psilocybin so we're talking two grams to four grams four grams is like quote

unquote five is like heroic dose this kind of level two grams is typically two and a half is typically what's given clinically typically two sessions spaced by three weeks or so also therapy before therapy during therapy after do you take it orally yeah it's it's usually ground up and you drink it oh it tastes so awful to me it's a very different experience in mdMA the way that it was described by a psychiatrist friend of mine is that it recedes the water line on your on your unconscious mind so that you're down in your unconscious mind and everything becomes symbols. You see things in symbols and feeling. So you might like see an octopus and its tentacles will reflect different forms of seduction, for instance. You can interact

with it. And you know it's happening in your head, but there's a way in which it feels kind of movie like. Sometimes people will have hallucinations with their eyes old, but typically it's with the eye mask. I will say psilocybin for me personally, terrifying. From start to finish, terrifying. Demons, octopuses that want to eat me really, really challenging, scary, sad, hard. After you did it the first time and you knew you were going to do it again in two weeks later, were you not looking forward to the second one? Okay. So, No, I was looking forward to it. And the reason is coming out of it and then in the days following, you feel like you have

much better understanding of things that are hard and you feel light and clear. At least that was my experience. So in the moment of doing the drug, it was harrowing. An ass kicking. But after it, you felt like you got something from it. And it sticks. Wow. Even though, you know, it involves doing several sessions, I would say it was among the scarier experiences of my life.

And I've done some things. Yeah. I'm not the most advanced. I'm not Alex Honnold. Yeah. But I did cage eggs that dive with great white sharks. Like I left the cage. I did that that was scary.

Yep. Silocybin was way scarier. Probably less dangerous, but way scarier. You need a guide with psilocybin. When I hear about people taking a couple grams of mushrooms and taking a walk in the wood, I could never do that. In fact, the last time I said to the therapist, I said, you know, I thought this was, we were going to like hang out and listen to the Grateful Dead.

And she was like, no, not when you work with me. But it was really good work. And on the second time, I purged, I ended up feeling sick. And I thought it was perhaps from the psilocybin. And they encouraged me to vomit. And I was like, to get it out. And they're like, no, you're having a very strong bodily reaction to whatever you're thinking about. I'm like, I think it's the psilocybin. They're like, no. And it was interesting. I ended up

purging. And I never throw up. I'm like, I hate throwing up. I've done it on a boat. I've done it like a couple times when I was a kid. I mean, I hate throwing up. And afterwards, I did it twice, I have to say I was like, felt something came out of my body. So I will say I felt very good coming out of it. No, I do want to emphasize again, these are clinical trials. that were they recruiting people either with major depression, not major depression, and you can end up in the control group, right? I wasn't. And I have to say, after this last time, I don't want to do it again.

And that's not because it was so terrible. It was because I don't feel like I know what it is. I don't feel like there's any new lessons there for me. After the first one, I felt like in my mind I was telling myself there's 15% more work to do. I don't know why 15%. The second time I went in and I felt it kind of the heaviness coming in at the beginning. And I thought, oh, I don't want to do this. And then I heard it sort of is like, you want to do this today?

You want to do this another time? I'm like, let's get this over with. And I think people need to understand that the reason these compounds, if they work, work, is because they dramatically increase the levels of these neuromodulators. That opens up plasticity. What kind of modulators? In particular, serotonin. I see.

And that allows for plasticity. Remember, all recovery from depression or PTSD is a, about plasticity. And so the question is a very fundamental question in mental health, really, and in the psychedelic world and in being human, which is, is the psychedelic experience necessary to get the plasticity? I think there's so much learning that occurs in those states because they're so heightened. But I will say, and I'm not saying this is like a public disclaimer, but it's true. People with a predisposition of psychosis, schizophrenia or with bipolar issues, should not be taking psilocybin, LSD, MDMA.

And I don't know about ketamine, but probably not that either. I don't know what the deal is there. Because there have been instances where people have taken these compounds, and it has triggered psychotic episodes that don't resolve or don't resolve quickly. And I could never imagine being in that state for longer than the four to six hours that it occurs. But I will say super powerful, and I feel grateful that I was able to participate. is there any reason to ever combine any of these drugs polypharmacology as they say always exists well interesting point before I answer that so Robin cardard Harris at UCSF is really like one of the

world's experts on all this psychedelic research stuff and I asked them why are there so few studies of LSD modern studies and the answer is really funny he said well they study it a bit in Switzerland. But in the United States, no one wants to stay that long with the person because it takes like 13 hours. And that's a long day in the lab. Silocybin is like four to eight hours. In Switzerland, they're willing to work overtime. They get paid really well for overtime. So it shows the practicalities of science. Yeah. So the combination of the two is kind of interesting. I mean, this obviously has to be done in a medically safe way because of the increase in blood pressure that comes from both compounds.

So that's serious. But the MDMA psilocybe in combination is being looked at because the MDMA is thought to take away some of the scariness of the psilocybe and literally to create a sense of safety and comfort. And MDMA, because it's not a classic psychedelic because it's an empathogen,

may not have as potent an effect on brain plastic as psilocybin. I mean, the studies on psilocybin and major depression are super impressive in my mind. I mean, some people go into complete remission from major depression. Wow. Likewise for the studies of MDMA and PTSD, something like roughly 60% of people get significant relief and many go into complete remission. It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. Those are incredible numbers. Incredible numbers. And we're talking multiple clinical trials. And then, of course, a clinical trial will come along, which says, well, there wasn't a significant effect compared to SSRIs. Keep in mind, SSRI, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are designed to increase serotonin to get you plasticity.

No one ever thought that depression was because of too little serotonin. The idea was always to create plasticity. The problem is that people just take a compound and they don't do the intense work to have the plasticity be in a certain direction. Because of meaning anything. You can't expect anything to happen. make it worse. Could make it worse. Because too much serotonin without a directed plasticity can lead to a sort of apathetic state, which is what a lot of people report on high doses of SSRIs. They lose their libido. They lose their appetite. They lose their drive. And then the other

compounds that increase dopamine very dramatically and norepinephrine, like cocaine and amphetamine, those are highly addictive. And yet, you know, drugs like Adderall, which is basically amphetamine, it is amphetamine, and a generation of kids that was raised on them. Not that it doesn't have its place, but anyway. The MDMA is a lab-made thing, and the psilocybin is a natural material. Is there any difference in that way between natural and chemical? I personally can feel the difference. I mean, they're different compounds, so it's a little tricky to answer in a straightforward way.

But this gets to this larger thing about plants. and plant medicine, I had a guest on the podcast, Chris McCurdy, who's an expert in plant alkaloids, and he studies cratum, the leaf. And he said, you know, the cratum leaf in Indonesia is used and creates a pretty balanced stimulation and relaxation. In the U.S., they create cratum products, which they take the cratum leaf, isolate it, or create synthetic cratum, and it doesn't have any of the other plant alkaloids that balance it out. And as a consequence, it's almost as addictive as a lot of opioids. And this is why it's so controversial, because people will use Kratum to get off traditional opioids. But then people also-

It's legal, Kratom, isn't it? Yeah, it's in that feel-free little blue bottle, that little energy drink. People are also getting addicted to that. So now the new administration is trying to limit the use of Kratum products and synthetics. Interestingly, McCurty told me that the Coca-Cola factory still imports the Koka plant, takes cocaine out of it, and And I was like, where are all these? There's a building. I think it's somewhere in New Jersey where all the coca plant is going. He said it's one of the most protected buildings in the world.

Wow. And he said, yes, indeed, Coca-Cola had cocaine in it for many years. I didn't know this, but soft drinks were given out by pharmacists. So Coca-Cola had cocaine in it. Seven up had lithium in it, seven ingredients to lift you up. This was the idea. Dr. Pepper had Pepsi in. in it for your gut. It was supposed to be for gut health. And then maybe Pepsi had that as well.

So plant product like psilocybin, the idea is that the balance between the alkaloids and the stimulation of the serotonin release, I mean, it is serotonin. It's very closely structured to serotonin. The psilocybin itself is different than like synthetic psilocybin. You do get the subjective experience that it's kind of earthy. Like you have, you, hallucinate, for sure, inside of the eye mask, especially when your eyes are closed. The things that you see tend to be, often they're geometric and things like that, but they tend to have a kind of organic quality, whereas MDMA, because it's not a hallucinogen, nor is it a psychedelic, it's more of an empathogen, is more of a feeling of kind of warmth and electricity

in the body. And yeah, it feels a little synthetic. It feels like you're a little bit plugged into a lava lamp. I mean, no one complains about the feeling, but it does not feel like a plant medicine. And I should say for thoroughness, I've never tried ayahuasca. I know a lot of people have. That one, ayahuasca kind of frightens me for reasons I don't quite understand, nor have I tried Ibogaine, which is the one that's gaining a lot of favor now and will probably be legal. What is Ibogaine? Ibogane is Iboga. It's a 22-hour-long psychedelic experience. Where with your eyes open, you see normally, eyes closed, you get, I'm told, everyone who's taken this that I know tells me the same thing, you get high-definition movie-like images

of past experiences. Wow. But you have agency inside of those movies. And then they switch like a cube from one slide to the next. That's wild. Former Governor Rick Perry down in Texas, staunch Republican, has been a big proponent of Abagame Therapy. He's done it.

Really? Yeah. For people who have challenges giving up alcohol or opioids who do Ibogaine, and you need to be heart rate monitored because it has some heart issues, et cetera, the number of people that never touch alcohol or opioids again after using Ibogaine is really striking. Really? Yeah, and it's super impressive. Wow. And the studies are being done by Dr. Nolan Williams at Stanford. He's been imaging these veterans.

It's illegal, so you have to go out of country to do it. All these things are illegal, by the way. I should say MDMA is still Schedule 1, psilcim is still Schedule 1, I bet again is still Schedule 1. But it's very likely that all three of those will be moved to Schedule 2 soon, which means has some potential medical application.

Based on all the testing and the positive results. Yeah. Yeah, I think the only reason MDMA didn't make the cut last year with the FDA is that there was this impropriety at one of the, you know, it's very important at the beginning of a session that the person working with you say the words there will be nothing sexual there will be no violence those two things cannot exist in the session i mean shouldn't exist in any therapy but you know

especially under conditions where somebody's like couldn't even run out of the room right so unfortunately there were some things that happened in in one of the trials that shouldn't have happened and now it looks like it will be looked at again and chances are it'll pass L M-M-N-T, Element Electrolites. Have you ever felt dehydrated after an intense workout or a long day in the sun? Do you want to maximize your endurance and feel your best? Add element electrolytes to your daily routine. Perform better and sleep deeper.

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Oh, man. Now, that's my drug. 2017, I went out to Florida to learn about trauma release from a guy named Ryan Suave, who's a very talented therapist and trauma release guy. And every day started with an hour of Yogan Nidra. Was it a recording or did he perform it? He talked or his wife talked. So a live guided yoga.

Live guided yoga. So lie on the mat, long exhale breathing, body scan, some intentions, et cetera. And I found it to be remarkable because it seemed to recover the sleep that I wasn't getting the night before because it was jet lag and it was a stressful time. and it was hard to sleep and it was humid down there in Florida. And I did not participate in it. I would have said if I did. Ryan runs a drug and alcohol recovery center down there with very high success rates

where other people can't seem to get sober. They can get sober there. And they would do Nidra with them. Had you ever done guided meditation before that? A little bit. I read when I was 16, I was, or 14, excuse me. I was given the book wherever you go there you are. So I'd done some of the Junkaba Zinn stuff.

not formally guided. No spirit rock experiences. I love that book. Yeah, I love beautiful. What a great book. Beautiful book. Beautifully written, beautiful paper, beautiful, yeah. I still think about the mountain meditation a lot.

So when I left, I thought this Nidra thing is really amazing. And I asked Ryan about it. And he said, yeah, you could do it for 30 minutes. And he put me in touch with some of these apps and recordings from Cominee to Sye, who has a beautiful voice. I really liked her voice. and I would do Nidra for like 30 minutes a day. And then about a year into doing the podcast,

I realized that I wanted people to understand and appreciate Nidra. But I was challenged by the language. People think it involves movement. And because it has intentions and some mystical language, that's kind of a separator. So I took the risk of creating some Yoga Nidra scripts

that don't have intentions or mystical language that are 10 minutes, 20 minutes, or 30 minutes, 30 minutes, and I called it non-sleep, deep rest. Which is what it is. Which is what it is. And those got many millions of views and listens and have done very well. Again, there's zero cost. They're out there.

I did catch some heat from the Yoga Nidra community, you know, about cultural appropriation of thousands of year old things. And I always come back saying the same thing, which is I have tremendous respect for Nidra. I do think that the mystical language and the intentions serve as a separator. and my goal is just for people to use these incredible tools. So Nidra, to me, can be summarized the following way. It replenishes mental and physical vigor, but unlike a nap, it doesn't create sleep inertia,

so you don't emerge from it groggy. You emerge energized. And unlike a nap, it helps you get better at sleeping as opposed to disrupting your sleep. Naps really mess up sleep, especially if they're too late in the day or too long, Nidra does the opposite. So I've been doing Nidra, did it this morning.

I do, yeah, basically 30 minutes a day, at least five days a week, usually first thing in the day or in the afternoon. And in the hardest, most stressful times of my life, I can confidently say that Nidra saved me. Wow. Because if you're going through a stressful time, that cortisol spike is going to come in the middle of the night. You're going to wake up and you're going to have a hard time falling back

of sleep. and the sleep deprivation makes everything worse and Nidra while not the same as sleep really lets you deeply relax and it's a beautiful skill to me it's as important as physical exercise I love Nidra, I love NSDR I sound like people usually say this about psychedelics

but I'll say it about Yoga Nidra NSDR I think that if everyone did yoga Nidra NSDR the world will be a much better place because people would be so much more peaceful with themselves. Yeah. It's a guided meditation. It's meditating without needing to learn to meditate. Yeah, it provides just enough to listen to that you don't have to work hard to focus.

And also deliberately trying to fall asleep is really tough. But trying to stay awake while relaxed is perfect for somebody who's a little stressed out or just wants to relax. Tell me about caffeine. I love caffeine. I have a very high caffeine tolerance. I drink so much caffeine, man. But then again, I can show you a picture of me at three years old in my Spider-Man pajamas on my grandfather's lap drinking Yerba Mata, which is just a lot of caffeine. Caffeine increases the number of dopamine receptors you have, so your dopamine goes further. That's good. Caffeine doesn't raise cortisol, but it extends the duration of it. It increases mental clarity

and physical vigor. It sharpens your focus. As long as you don't drink it too late in the day, doesn't mess up your sleet. It is a little bit of an appetite suppressant, especially if it's matte, but even coffee, can think of very few reasons not to drink caffeine if you're an adult and you don't drink too much of it. I mean, I love caffeine. I think caffeine's one of the best inventions. And again, it's plant medicine. I mean, if you're taking synthetic caffeine pills, which I don't do, it's one thing. But if you're getting it from matte or getting it from coffee, I mean, you're getting it from some chocolate. Green tea or green tea. Like, it's a plant medicine. 90% of the adult population of the world consumes caffeine every day. In fact, I think Michael

Paulin did a book about caffeine where he came off caffeine. It's an experiment I never intend to try. And he said, you know, caffeine is one of the few drugs that we take just to feel normal. But I'll never forget my first cup of black coffee. I think I was probably like 13, 14. And my friend Jim Thiebo, he ran real skateboards. This guy, Steve Ruggie was a team manager for Spitfire. They gave me a cup of black coffee in a styrofoam cup. I drank it.

And I was like, oh, I love this. It was like, this is how I'm meant to feel. Yeah. You know, some people drink alcohol and say that. I don't feel that way when I drink alcohol. I don't drink alcohol anymore. It's easy to quit for me. I haven't had a sip in ages.

It doesn't like it, but caffeine, oh, man. It gets the gears turn. I love it. Oh, and it helps with bowel motility, which, you know, provided it's not too much is good. You want things moving through. Tell me about nicotine. Nicotine doesn't cause cancer.

Smoking, vaping, dipping, or snuffing causes. cancer but the nicotine compounds very interesting compound technically it's a stimulant but it also relaxes you at the same time so that's an interesting combination very interesting combination unlike any other stimulant well it works by increasing acetylcholine another neuromodulator increases so it increases focus probably can help with plasticity too we know does acetylcholine do anything in particular that others don't increases focus That's what it does. And it provides a window into neuroplasticity.

You know, nicotine is known to be neuroprotective against Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. The problem is most people smoked to get it, and that is worse than not smoking. Yeah. So the delivery method of the nicotine, if it's smoking, the smoking is the part that's toxic. That's right. Or vaping, yeah. The nicotine is the part that's good. That's right.

So the one thing about nicotine, people need to be aware of. Two things. One, it increases blood pressure. So if you have eye blood pressure, that's an issue. The other is that it is very habit-forming in a way that caffeine is also habit forming. Most people who start continue. Some people who start soon are taking a lot. I know people that instead of taking one or two pouches of nicotine, they start with one or two,

and pretty soon they're taking a canister a day. Wow. Which for me would be unheard of. The other thing is it will make your voice a little bit more raspy, even if you're not smoking, because it will stimulate what's called the muscarinic receptors and there are a bunch of muscles in your throat that have receptors for the nicotine and when you're not using it,

sometimes you'll feel like your voice is a little bit hoarse and then you take more nicotine and it tends to smooth it out. These drugs are very diabolical. There have been cool studies, get this, you'll find this interesting, done with caffeine and with nicotine, where they give bees the option to go to different types of flowers

where they also get caffeine or nicotine from the flour. And basically all animals will work to get a caffeine or nicotine sensation. I want to say buzz, but that would be a bad pun. So these things are very reinforcing in nature, in lots of species. We're not the only species that likes these things. What have you learned about peptides? Oh, man, peptides are super cool. Peptides are a little short chains of amino acids.

So insulin's a peptide. There are a lot of peptides that you make naturally. We should be clear. But when we talk about peptides, we're generally talking about things that you take. I mean, the one that's super popular right now is all the GLP ones, the Monjaro and Ozmpic and stuff. And people are now starting to microdose those because microdosing those seems to allow people to avoid some of the gastric distress and side effects. And it's a lot cheaper to microdose them than take the full dose. That said, some of those compounds have helped people who really struggled with their weight, lose a lot of weight.

but they lose muscle too so they need to exercise i've never tried monjaro or any g lp1 type peptides the peptides that i've experimented with i'll tell you one that i tried that did not work well for me which is sir more ellen which is a growth hormone secretagog you take it before sleep it increases your deep sleep and it makes you release more growth hormone it spiked my prostate specific antigen really dramatically so i stopped after a very short while but there's another one called tessamerelen that seems to work very well that doesn't do that. What does that one do? It also increases growth hormone.

One thing I've noticed, though, and the reason I don't use any of these things regularly, is that Tessimorellin increases my slow-wave deep sleep dramatically, but it tends to nuke my REM sleep at the end of the night. There's a great peptide that I'm a huge fan of called pinealin, which is thought to replenish the pinealocytes that make melatonin, which tend to deplete as we age. That will dramatically increase REM sleep. and sometimes I'm getting like up to two and a half hours of sleep. I don't use it every night.

Many people think you need to use every night. I think you can pulse with it every once in a while for a couple of nights and you still see the effect. So that's pretty cool. And then the other peptides I think are interesting is, you know, BPC-157 does seem to anecdotally increase wound healing time and recovery from exercise. It's pretty powerful anti-inflammatory. Still, there are mostly animal studies, very few human studies,

but it's a peptide normally made by the gut that's involved in healing. You know, years ago, like in World War I, if somebody would like had fingers cut off or blown off or they would put it in somebody's gut to keep the tissue alive. Yeah, I know, right? It's warm and, you know, wow. Yeah, wild, right? Yeah, talk to surgeons sometimes about some of the crazy stuff that used to be done

and you find an underlying mechanistic logic. So maybe BPC is involved there. Well, I think some of the more interesting peptides coming out are things like SS31 to improve mitochondrial function. There's something called SLU, which I haven't tried, which is a fat loss peptide. Phymosin alpha people will take to improve immune system function. And then there's one which also I've never tried, which is GCU Copper, which is in the longevity space, epithaline to repair the DNA in cells.

So stuff's getting pretty sophisticated. You're not going to find a lot of really good clinical trials on these. So a lot of it is just kind of anecdotal. but I think BPC 157 provided you're willing to be experimental and you know that there aren't great clinical trials and you can get real BPC is very interesting for people recovering from an injury. I think that for people that want growth hormone enhancement, I think Tessa Morellin, as long as you're willing to cycle it for about eight weeks on, a month off, I think Tessamorellon taken before

sleep on an, you know, not having eaten for a couple hours is probably a safer way to increase growth hormone as compared to taking growth hormone and a lot less expensive. Growth hormone is like $1,500 a month. And these other things are a little bit more subtle and certainly more affordable. But none of them are really like steroids or they're not hyper performance enhancers. They're stronger than most supplements, but they're not like a full press on the gas pedal. They're more of a nudge. If you ever take any of their branch chain amino acids or natural amino acids?

Yeah, despite the literature saying that branch chain amino acids are not useful after exercise, I find that I recover more quickly. So I'll take essential amino acids or branched chain amino acids. What's the difference between them? Do you know? It's just the ratios of things like lucene, the different ones. I think what you really want is lucine after you train. So I'll take a scoop of branch chain amino acid or essential amino acid with like some water

in an element packet after I train. But then I also, after resistance training, is when I'll typically have some rice or some oatmeal or some bread, replenish my glycogen, some fruit, usually a lot of fruit. And then I'll have like a protein shake and then some protein. Like after I resistance train, I'm pretty darn hungry. I might not eat right away, but the next meal tends to last a while and it's got, I'm just trying to get as much stuff in there as possible to replenish and recover. In general, I eat meat, fish, eggs, cheese, fruits and vegetables and not a lot of starches. But especially in the U.S. where the starches seem like filled with crap. But if I have starches, it's like rice, good sourdough bread or rye bread, like good,

not out of a plastic bag, usually from a bakery, definitely from a bakery, maybe some oatmeal. And that tends to come after training when you're replenishing your glycogen. The branch chain amino acids are also great. Like if you're going to sleep in an hour and you don't want to eat something, but you've worked out hard that day, maybe take some before sleep, just you have a few more circulating while you sleep. But I'm not super strict about this stuff anymore. I eat so clean and I have for so long. Like I don't tend to eat breakfast, you know, sometimes at 9 a.m. or usually around 11 a.m. I'm like, like, have my first meal or protein shake or something like that. Is it, I think that

over time you learn that as long as you're getting enough protein, enough fruits and vegetables to get that fiber, because I do think fiber is important. And I think the low sugar fermented foods, like the sauerkra, the kifur, the nato, the kombucha, that's, that's stuff as long as it's low sugar and it needs to be refrigerated that stuff is awesome like the more you can support your gut microbiome the better you feel i've just see that and every time and i and people sometimes tease me about it but i've been taking legitimately been taking age you on once or twice a day since 2012 that's why people can come at me all day by but i love that stuff yeah and when i travel i'll do three or four packets a day and i feel great and feel great

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and experience next level performance with athletic nicotine Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. How does technology impact science? Well, I mean, I came up in the age where bigger, faster computers made it that much easier. Like even just submitting papers, we used to have to print them out, do photo scan, all that, storing large image files because a lot of what we did was taking digital images of neuroanatomy,

using lasers like two-photon microscopy where you can image deep into the brain without having to make it, you know, you could even just thin the skull. You wouldn't even have to like cut into the skull or brain. I think when it comes to like medical technology, all the gamma knife stuff, for instance, non-invasive control of brain activity using sound waves. So using ultrasound, using transcranial magnetic stimulation. Like this stuff is awesome. The engineers are what make it happen. I think that engineers are really good at building tools. They're not so good at asking the best questions, but that's why they have friends

that are neuroscientists and psychologists. They're really good at asking questions. And then all the viral technologies, I'm not talking about to treat humans, I'm talking about, I mean, that's a separate issue, that the viral technology is to, like, introduce genes into experiments, like gene therapies. Incredible.

Do the engineers come up with the idea and then the neurologists figure out how to use it, or do the neurologists ask the engineers for what they need? Typically, it's the latter. Like, at Stanford, which is a very, very strong engineering school. The engineers are made aware that, like, in Parkinson's, there's this brain area, and these neurons tend to deplete. And if you could just stimulate these three brain areas at this level, non-invasively,

and updated according to how the activity patterns change, you know, they tend to collaborate in that way. I mean, Eddie Chang is also a bioengineer. I mean, you get these polymasts that are good at that. But in general, the engineers are really good at building stuff for which someone else knows the specific goal. Like Neurrelink is also taking on the challenge of neural augmentation, but they're also mostly clinical right now,

trying to cure blindness, paralysis, et cetera. What are your thoughts on spiritual practice? It's hard to emphasize how important. and that is for my life now. I mean, I always secretly prayed, secretly because it, like, wasn't cool. No, I think secretly because, you know, as a scientist, we were taught that, you know, stuff in spirituality and is incompatible. I think over time, I just allowed myself to lean into prayer more and more. And I grew up in a split religion home.

People had divergent feelings about religion and which religion. and it was the whole thing. Was it friction? Not outright, but I think that there was, I could clearly detect a divergence in the value system. You know, one person felt religion and belief in God was so fundamental in the other, like, did not feel that way. And feelings about the value systems

for different religions and how those didn't, were incompatible. And, you know, because my parents divorced and remarried, And we now have a really extensive family with adopted kids and all this stuff that, not mine, but you know, what ended up happening was we ended up with a very international, very multi-racial, very multi-religious family, which is cool because it's more of a buffet.

And then I have a security guy that works with me, it's former tier one operator. It's also a friend named Eddie Penny, who's a really incredible human. He was on Sean Ryan. podcast and he somewhat public facing has talked about his experiences with faith in Jesus and getting sober and getting over some of the challenging things he experienced in his work and life and he was the one that got me reading the Bible and he didn't force me do it he just

wasn't even nudged me you just kind of inspired he inspired me and you know the more I learn you know this will raise some people's cortisol, but I kind of don't think about it because for me, the more I learn about Christianity and Judaism, and the more Muslim people I get to know, and the more that I pray, and the more that I read the Bible, I'm reading both New Testament and Old Testament, the more that I'm like just amazed that I made it this far without, it like to the point where I'm like I don't know who or what was looking out for me like I have a feeling but I just can't believe I made it this far because I think that inside the human brain we have like the capacity to go so many different directions I don't care how good somebody is

there's this it's not about the battle between good and evil in our heads it's that life is so confusing and then there are these roadmaps that come from science or that come from parenting or that come from how to be fit, how to eat, how to vote, how to, you know, like all this stuff. And as you've said before, Rick, you know, it's like so much of it is manmade. Humans made this stuff up. And humans are fallible. And humans have blind spots.

It's part of being fallible. And humans are out of touch with their unconscious mind. That's why we call it an unconscious mind. And no matter how striving somebody is, you can't keep all that in, in clarity. And I feel like the Bible explains this. One arrives to those readings with all of that understood. And so what comes back to you are just things that you can really trust at least to explore. And I'll just say that the practice of prayer has completely transformed my life in ways that yes yoga nidra yes exercise in eating right yes amazing friendship yes

getting a phd in neuroscience yes the pot but like not even on the same scale i pray every night before i go to sleep if i fall asleep first i get up out of bed at some point to use the bathroom and after i use the bathroom i get on my knees and i pray every single night and it's become an act of of discipline for me because sure there are nights when i don't want to do it I'm telling me every single night without fail. And I'll tell you, I pray for others, I pray for clarity. I rarely pray for things for me, but for clarity and for others. And I'm always positively amazed at what comes out of those prayer practices.

I'm just grateful to Eddie, and I'm just going to keep doing it. Yeah. It's amazing that such a great resource is so totally discounted. Well, I think people assume that if you pray, it somehow means that you don't believe in reality, which is like, makes no sense. And if you understand a little, just a smidge about the human brain, or even just the visual system, like we can't see tons of what's out there that other animals literally can see. We can't hear tons of what's out there. And people go, well, okay, that's your eyes, that's your ears. What I'm saying is that our nervous system, which govern, that's our filter. Of course, there are things that we can't see.

It makes perfect sense. And even my father, who, you know, we talked about this a little bit on the podcast when he came on, I said, you know, I believe in God. I really do. And he said, well, as a theoretical physicist, I can tell you that quantum mechanics is very hard for the human brain to comprehend. But I do, I know it's real. And he said, and I know that there are things in the universe that we can't comprehend with our logical mind, but that have to be real. We know this. And we started talking about the various scientists who were brilliant, who are brilliant, who.

believed in God. And I just don't see how it doesn't work. I'm just grateful that I came to the clarity that forming a relationship with God was important and makes sense. And I think that it sucks when you see people using religion to divide. That sucks. Like it sucks. It's not what it's about. I also feel very loved and comforted by God. I feel encouraged. congratulations it's a good discovery yeah yeah i'm glad you have that yeah yeah that's the big one more than any of the other stuff we talked about that's amazing yeah because life is a lot to bear even with the best people in the best circumstances i don't know i mean i'm not going to try to encourage anyone to do anything or believe anything i never would but i will say that if people

have a kind of a that little voice in their head like yeah like i want to want to believe or I think there's something there, like, you know, don't be afraid to pull on that thread a little bit. You know, sometimes it's just like pulling on that thread and listening to what comes back. It's like, he's got you, you know. How have the people that you know from your old academic life see your newfound mainstream connection to the world? Oh, man.

Well, God bless Eddie Chang, our friend, the chair of neurosurgery. I've known since I was seven. So little Eddie is now, he's taller than I am. He's probably like six, two. God bless Eddie Chang, chair of neurosurgery. And now, member of the National Academy of Sciences of USA, one of only three neurosurgeons in the history of neurosurgery, to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences,

this is no small feat. God bless him because he's as good a scientist or physician as there is. He's legendary among neurosurgeons, legendary. and he's been a great person to touch base with and me ask, hey, like, what do you think of the messaging here? His wife wrote to me recently and said, just want to thank you 80% of his daily practices besides brain surgery are from the podcast. And I said, well, you have to understand that for me, Eddie represents, he's like the Michael Jordan of our field. So I'm just, I feel lucky to know him, much less that he's my friend. He's been great. Others have been great. Many have been

great. Many have been on my podcast. Mike Eisenberg at Stanford, Jeff Goldberg, like so many people have been amazing. And then, of course, there are those that I think don't like the podcast, either because they wish that they were talking about this stuff, or I think for many people in academia, not all, but I think for many people in academia, the ability to keep it shrouded by language and with awards and things, it was a way of maintaining prestige that falls away when someone is like talking about it out there. When people can really understand what you do, it either makes what you do seem really, really cool or kind of like, oh, cool.

Demystifies it. Demystifies it. Mystique, you know, my friends who, I have a number of friends who were in what they call Tier 1 special operations. So these are like the guys have to be ready on 24. hours notice to do super dangerous, super complicated stuff. And they'll tell you that, you know, a lot of the movies about special operations, seals and green berets and stuff that happened in the 2000s, one of the reasons that was complicated is it eroded some of the mystique. You know,

prior to that, these were people who showed up in the middle of the night did stuff and disappeared. And we didn't even really know they existed. That's right. Until that image of Obama and the other officials, I think it was Obama and Hillary and a few other people, in that room on the night where they got bin Laden. Until then, the whole thing about SEAL Team 6 was very cloaked still. Some people knew about it. There's a book about it, Rogue Warrior and stuff, but people didn't really talk about it. After that, there was just a rash of these movies. And those guys still do incredible things, obviously. But what I've been told is that those movies actually made their job harder. Because before that, the mystique carries so much

from the perspective of their enemies, from the perspective of the American public, we're not really supposed to know about that stuff. And so for scientists, a lot of it is supposed to be like this magic that no one can understand. And I think that the pandemic was really when the reputations of scientists as fallible. Like they're not perfect.

They make mistakes. That really became public knowledge, that these are people making decisions. And that's the scientific process, well... It became public knowledge, but I don't think it was admitted. No. No, no, no, no, no. To this day, and this is a big part of J. Barucharya's charter with the NIH, to this day, I have close friends who are strong believers in science.

These are people that, without question took the vaccine. These are people that without question, like, are huge believers in science and the scientific process. they tell me that until NIH apologizes for some of the messaging during the pandemic, that they don't want to see another dime spent on science. These are people who use the practices. These are not anti-vaxxers. So I'm sure there are some of those too. But these are people who are like science tech junkies and they're angry.

At first I thought, wait, how can this be? They're like, it's because ultimately it's about honesty. It's about disclosure. They feel like they're being made fools of. Right. They either feel like they were tricked. Listen, to be totally fair, many of them feel that they made the right decision in following what the CDC or whatever said. But they don't like the way that it was implemented.

And I feel like the scientific community doesn't understand this yet because it always gets couched as you either believed in masks, lockdowns, or you didn't. But that's the more important crowd right now to really convince are the people who just don't trust science and government as institutions. That's where the real chasm is. And no one's talking about this. It always gets couched around the issue

of masks or vaccines or lockdowns. And that stuff's super important to discuss. But the scientific community still hasn't realized why people are angry. It's not because they don't believe in science. it's because Americans don't like to be told what to do. We do not like it when the government interferes with our plans. Americans hate that.

They hate it. And you had this community of people who just wouldn't message things in a way that made sense to a huge number of people. Even the people who are super into vaccines. So, you know, it's interesting. And I think Jay understands this. and so he's very sensitive to this. I know because he was on my podcast and we talk from time to time

and I think he really does want to unify people around this because we need science but we also need the discourse around science to be grounded in what it really is what we really know and what we don't know. And I actually think if you tell people what we know and what we don't know, they're still going to make the same choices

or similar choices. but people can feel authenticity and people can feel lack of authenticity. So much of today's life happens on the web. Squarespace is your home base for building your dream presence in an online world. Designing a website is easy, using one of Squarespace's best-in-class templates.

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Visit Squarespace.com slash Tetra and get started today. What makes a great teacher? A great teacher is somebody that obviously has mastery of the material and can explain it clearly, but who also delights in the material as if they were a novice learning it for the first time while they're teaching it. So enthusiasm. It's enthusiasm, but I saw this. There was a course that I directed at Stanford for the medical students for a number of years called NBio206, which is neurobiology for medical students. And it was teen taught.

So I would do neural development and I would talk about the biophysics of the neuron and someone else would talk about some aspects of biophysics of the neuron, vision and hearing and all the stuff. And these were the best people for these subjects. And yet I would say about half of them would give lectures that were truly transformative. Like, Anna Lemke came in, this is how I got to know, Anna, the author of Dopamination, and she started talking about addiction and explaining it. And it was like she obviously has tremendous command of the material. This is her career. But then there were these moments where it's like, it's almost like she's realizing that

the dopamine pathway involves pain and pleasure. So you're feeling her love of it while she's teaching it to you clearly. The best teachers are both teachers and students right alongside you. best teacher you've ever had okay best lecture of research materials a guy named eric nudson who studied brain plasticity uh for reasons i still don't understand he's my colleague at stanford he's retired now for reasons i don't understand still the best lecture he takes you someplace else he's this really tall uh kind of Swedish paul newman looking surfer guy to UC Santa Barbara, super mellow, plays volleyball, beach volleyball, kind of strides it around.

And then when he lectures, everything is so precise. No extra words, no extra language. And you walk out of those lectures and you're like, brain plasticity is the coolest thing ever, and that's the coolest lecture I ever heard. And I've heard him lecture 50 times. And every single time, I'm blown away. Best teacher, Harry Carlyle, UCC. Santa Barbara, teaching me the physiology of the neuron, neurotransmitters, mental disease, what it is. He was the first person to tell me a whole class of us. Like, schizophrenia is probably a disruption in these neural circuits. It's not from bad parenting, you know, or depression is probably a combination of things we don't quite understand and relate to neurotransmitters. But he used to

do this thing where he would, if he was explaining Parkinson's, he would shuffle, he would kind of act out the things. Or if he was explaining a seizure, he would like shake. So he would physically embody the things he was teaching. Which just made it more clear? Yeah, it made it more clear. And it provided this like this visceral sense of what it was. If he was teaching like biophysics of the neuron, which frankly is pretty dry unless you think about biophysics of neurons and that's really, really cool about sodium ions rushing in and stuff. And he would use sound effects. But he didn't do it to be theatrical.

Sound effects he made with his mouth? Yeah, he'd go, where he'd say, you know. And so unlike so many online lectures, he wasn't trying to impress us. He was not trying to impress us. And he was, like I said, he was this kind of a mellow Quaker guy who had been in the Navy. He was punk. I worked in his lab. he he would drink coffee and he would smoke cigarettes in the lab and he would light the cigarettes

in the bunsen burner in the fume hood and they'd come down the hall and they'd yell at him and they'd be like harry you can't smoke here and he would just and then he would go right back to doing it he would go right back to doing he was super cool but he was not trying to impress us when he taught yeah he was purely focused on us understanding how awesome the biology was and when it came to the mental health stuff. For some reason, I've always had a sensitivity to people with mental health issues. We had this guy in our town. They called him the sheep man. He had like a sheepskin vest and he was schizophrenic clearly and he always covered in his ears and stuff. And my mom, who's a very compassionate person, used to pull over and give him stuff. I found out years later, by the

way, just give you a sense of who my mom is, that she had been housing a number of the different homeless people in Palo Alto in hotels for years without telling anyone, without telling any of us. I've always had a sensitivity to people with mental health issues and Harry had that sensitivity too this is why you know when he killed himself it was like this guy lectured about depression

like what's going on here but yeah he was a phenomenal teacher and my dad to this day will say you know you're so lucky you had a teacher like that because I was not that turned on to school I was kind of you know I had my challenges in year one

And then I was kind of like thinking maybe I'd go to Whitman up in Walla Wall, maybe it'd become a journal, let me, I write, I don't know. I was kind of like floundering. And I take this guy's class and I'm like, there wasn't even neuroscience back then. There was psychology and biology. And they had a biosecology degree. And I was like, I want to be that guy. Yeah.

I want to be that guy. And then when I went to work in his lab and he taught me how to inject rats with ecstasy and then we were like doing experiments. And back then, don't do this kids, but I just. I smoked a cigarette or two, and then we drink coffee together. I was like, this is the best. And it felt a little bit the same way that skateboarding had to me, even though that it was now in the rear view.

It felt, I was like, this is punk. Like, we just kind of do what we want and we're figuring things out. And I knew it was cool. I knew neuroscience was cool in the same way that the first time I saw someone like, I don't do some sloppy front side grind or something on a curb. I was like, that is so cool. I just knew it. Like, I didn't care if people liked it.

because no one liked skateboarding back then. Yeah. It was like a niche thing. Yeah, he was spectacular. Do you think that for the teachers who were great? Do you think everyone who was in that class would say that was my favorite teacher? He was very beloved. Yeah.

I will say, in fairness, the hardest class I ever took, which was neural development from a guy named Ben Reese, who had gone to UC Santa Barbara, but then he trained at Oxford. And apparently he came back from Oxford, like super proper and probably even had a British accent. sorry, Ben, he was brutally difficult, and he had no sense of humor. I'm sure he has one at home, and he taught me neuroanatomy, and I really learned neuroanatomy. Like, he kicked our asses with neuroanatomy. And neural development, which was the field I initially went into as a graduate student, because of him, that course was hard.

In his case, it's not that it was fun or cool. He just was a great teacher. It was the standard that he held us to. I mean, I didn't think I could do neuroanatomy the way he taught it in a lab and with, I mean, to this day, like I teach neuroanatomy to medical students. And my command of neuroanatomy and my ability to understand the nervous system in three dimensions stems from that course. And my ability to understand neural development and to marvel in what it takes to go from sperm and means egg to a human comes from that course. And it's because I got to work with specimens and I got to understand it at a consensus. conceptual level and a practical level. And because Ben Reese was and probably still is one tough

son of a bitch. He was completely unforgiving. I think on one of my answers to a test, he wrote not a brilliant response. And I was like, shit. So I went back to him and I said, what's it missing? And we parsed it. Yeah. And he taught me to raise myself to a higher standard. I think because he had gone to use remember uc santa barbara in the 80s and 90s was considered quote-unquote a party school and it had some good departments and it had some really strong majors our friend jack johnson was there is in my class uh he was a film major there there was really good teachers there but it had this reputation of being kind of lucy goosey and i think ben because he went there then he went to oxford and he got a really formal training he understood what being

held to that really high standard could do for someone and he applied that to everyone He applied that to everyone. So he kicked my ass, and by time I got to graduate school, I mean, I can honestly say, like, I know a lot more neuroanatomy than a lot of, like, people that teach neuroanatomy. Because of him. Because of him. Yeah. And even, and years later, when I was in graduate school, I worked with one of the best

neuronatists in the world, Ted Jones. He wrote the book, The Thalm, it's like this tomb of neuroanatomy where I talked to Eddie Chang, who's a neurosurgeon. And, yeah, like, I think it's not that I can name every structure, although I can name a lot of structures. It's that when you get that deep into the material, kind of like a musician or a producer or creative, I can rotate it in my mind and I can see the pieces it's connected to in my mind's eye. And so I'm not looking at things in isolation, going, oh, that's the central media nucleus of the thalamus. It's not what you memorized. You can see it. That's right. You could see

the system. That's right. I'm seeing processes. I'm seeing processes. And so when people talk about dopamine, I'm thinking about circuitry. And I'm thinking about the way that circuitry works and I can see it in my head. And that's not because I'm special. It's because I spent a hell of a lot of time on it. I used to study for neuroanatomy by looking at a textbook looking down the microscope, snapping an image of it with my mind, drawing a picture of it after class, and then I would lie on my bed in my studio apartment and I would fly through the circuit. And the moment I'd get to a structure I couldn't name, I'd look it up and I'd go back. And so I have an atlas in my head. And so it's not that I'm special as I put 100,000,

if not thousands of hours of work into it and then teaching it later. And it's because Ben Reese forced me to do that. He forced it down our throats. And he was unrelenting. He did not give a shit if you thought your answer should have one more point. I'm knowing that he'd probably dock you a point just for asking. He was tough. He was tough.

How is it different learning something from a teacher versus learning it from a book? I think learning from books requires that you teach yourself. You know, I did this solo episode on how best to study and learn. And the entire literature on how best to study and learn can be summarized by two sentences. The best way to study and learn is to self-test on the knowledge when you're not near the material. When you're away from the textbook, when you're away from the microscope, when you're away from the music, when you're away from the language class, just ask yourself, do I know how to say that? and if you don't, note what you don't know because it turns out that all of learning

is anti-forgetting. All of learning is anti-forgetting. They've done these beautiful experiments where they have people read the same passage one time, two times, three times, or four times. They have to say people either highlight, take notes, teach someone else, blah, blah, blah, every iteration you can possibly imagine.

And included in these experiments is a condition where people self-test. If people self-test on material, a week after they learn the material, even if they realize they don't know some of the material, their maintenance of what they do know lasts many years. Otherwise, the forgetting happens very quickly. It's kind of a duh, but when you think about most of learning

is anti-forgetting, is just countering the forgetting process, you're like 99% of the way there. Talk to me about education versus entertainment. Good education is always going to require a bit of kind of teacher-student friction. Like if you make things too easy for people, it becomes passive listening. They don't learn. You know, the conditions for rewiring stuff for plasticity is you need alertness. You need attention.

You need a little bit of friction. And then you need that reflection, ideally self-testing. You need people thinking about it. it later and one of the best ways to get people to think about it later is to have a bit of like confusion or friction in there like you never artificially introduce like contradictions but it's got to have a texture I imagine a good song is the same it can't just be like easy listening like nothing is worse than easy listening you say easy listening like I'm afraid what will come up in YouTube right like there's no texture to that so good education involves

inflection. And I don't do any of this consciously. But you know, you got to sometimes raise your voice a little bit. And you sometimes have to repeat yourself three times. And you just intuitively know when to do that? Yeah, because when I'm teaching, I'm teaching myself. It's like you're listening to what you're saying and you repeat it because you need to hear it again. I don't know if I'm hearing it like from the outside hearing it. If something's really important. I'm going to say it three times because it would feel wrong to move forward any faster. And it's funny because whenever, because I do it every once in a while, I or somebody else will like do an inflection or change something when it's designed to have narrative or character

in a way that it never works. It never works. I had a teacher in graduate school who could write with both hands. And he loved to impress us that he could write with both hands. And he was teaching neuroanatomies. Brilliant neuroanatomist. This was Ted Jones. Brilliant neuroanatomist. But he would do this and you could tell he was trying to impress us. And I love Ted, God bless him, you know, died of natural causes. But there was this, he had some issues around wanting to be seen as this scholar by everybody. He was from New Zealand, but he wanted people to think he was British. He had been a, he used to call it a pugilist. He was a boxer when he was younger. He liked to fight. I'll never forget the day he was elected into the National Academy of Sciences.

He came into class and he said, all my enemies must be dead because I'm now in the National Academy of Sciences. Who announces that they're in the National Academy? Come on. He was so stupid. It was so silly. This guy's brilliant. He didn't need to do it. So he would teach in a way that was so fluid that I think that for us, we were like, oh, like, this is not being a novice right alongside with us. So sometimes, like, if I'm teaching neural development. It was almost like standoffish? Yeah. I mean, I think when we go see a performance, we want to see virtuosity.

But I think we also love seeing the energy being put into it. The humanity. The humanity. Right. The humanity. And I think that if it's just so easy, it's like, I might as well read a textbook. And I think this is what's, we oftentimes will just, our response as a student is, oh, they're really smart and that's over my head.

Whereas if you can, if you can get into the friction, of it, then they're right there alongside you. The other thing is, there are these little tricks. There are some benevolent tricks that you play. If you're about to say something complicated or that requires a lot of attention, I'm about to give myself away here, you say, okay, so what I'm about to say next might seem complicated, but it's super simple. Anyone can understand it. If you say anyone can understand it, it cues the brain to, oh shit, if I can't understand this, there must be something wrong with me. That's great. And then you've got people's attention. but you can't you can't play with that too often yeah yeah so if it's complicated you say listen

this might seem common but anyone can understand it and then people go oh i'd better be able to understand it you give it to them and then you see see it's actually work well it's tricky but if you just and so then you get people to kind of lock that into bookend in their mind so those are kind of the tricks that you can play how'd you learn that i don't know yeah i don't know i'm sure i picked it up from someone in the same way that when i do live shows like we do these live shows and what's that like oh man that's so wild because i forget where i am for like two hours i just start telling stories about science and teaching science it was like 7000 people and you're in australia it's like i'm not thinking like i'm up on stage i'm just in a total warp yeah you know but i realized

going back and watching a few of those to see what i can do better and and worse that i've lifted did things from a number of people in terms of stylistically. Yeah. And a lot of it comes from punk rock. And a little bit of it comes from wrestling because some would be social distortion fan. And I'll never forget going to see Mike Ness play. I think it was at the Fillmore or something. And he does this thing where he does a windup where he goes,

is anyone here from Orange County? And then people cheer, right? And then he goes, anyone here of Cal State Fullerton? And people cheer, and he goes, well, I didn't go there, but down the street from there, it's a little porno shop. And when I was 15, you know, so he doesn't wind up. So when I'm doing public speaking things sometimes, like if I want to teach something and we're pretty far into it, and I think I might be losing people a bit, and I want to engage more

with the audience, I'll say something like, you know, have any of you ever experienced when you wake up first thing in the morning and you're still paralyzed from REM sleep, but you're wide await i'll say if it's the case here just you know like raise your hand i just kind of want to get a sense and then i'll say okay those are all the pot smokers in the room like it's like and then i'll talk about how cannabis can exacerbate this thing what did it so it's a wind up so like i borrow things from mike nest right you know because i want to do crowd work but i want people to understand and so there's that one and then the the wrestling thing is uh i don't do this sorry i don't do this but i noticed a big Rancid fan, there's no secret. And Lars Fredrickson, rhythm guitar player for Rancid,

vocals also, he's a huge wrestling fan. And he does this thing where he'll stand up and he'll put his hand to his ear and he'll lean to the crowd and he'll get them like working in. And it's, and it's so clearly from wrestling, right? It's called Kogan. It's right. It's so clearly from wrestling. And it works so well. And Lars is such like an awesome from in it. And he was wearing a of the same style clothing that Strummer was wearing, like those big, like, it was almost like jumpsuits that were, it would say like, uh, rebel truce or something like spray painted on it. I don't do that. But when I'm there, I think about how can I engage with the crowd? And so I try and lean toward them and do things, but it's not theatrics. I'm really kind of trying to

go through a rhythm because there's nothing more boring than just watching someone on stage talking and you have to follow every word without them bringing you in. And I don't have instruments because I'm not a musician and I don't have visuals but it's a lot of fun I mean I love I love the live stuff I think we'll probably do a live tour again when the book comes out next year the book was supposed to come out this month tell me about writing the book man I'm a teacher I talk I draw a lot of people don't know this but like I'm pretty serious about neuroanatomy drawing and I used to post these on Instagram and I'm doing a lot of art with Tim and I also am doing illustrations from my book, but I mean, my voice and those pens are my instruments. And I can write pretty well

if it's a scientific paper. I can write a letter. I can write an email. But when I shifted back from podcasting to trying to write a significant number of hours each day, man, my nervous system just, it was so tough. So then I tried to voice dictate. And then what I found is as I would write, more, I'd get more proficient at it, and my podcasting would kind of suffer because I was too in my head. And so a lot of the reason why this book is taking so long is because, A, I want to include illustrations because I don't have another opportunity to put illustration. I think there's certain things people need to see. I can talk about the cortisol curve all day, but you see it once. And I draw a little rainbow where the sun part is, and you'll never forget

it. At least that's my belief. It's coming along now because I know how to get myself into a free space and let it go and I'm adding stuff and there's a lot more literature out there but the process have been tough and you've been tremendously helpful and encouraging me to take the time that I need but it's hard to do a full-time podcast where you release one long episode every Monday we have our essentials our shorter episodes every Thursday which are just the 30-minute cut-down ones those don't take much work for me now but a little bit, and also write the book. And I'm also pretty active on social media.

I mean, on Instagram, I'm doing original content usually. Often do you post on Instagram? I try and post once a day. And sometimes those are clips. Sometimes those are ex posts that I then convert to those. But I pay attention to every aspect of the caption. And I'll draw diagrams and talk to the camera. And I really want it to be clear.

I want people to learn. My criteria for putting something on the Internet is 90% of it has to be, at least in my mind, going to be of real value to people. So every once in a while, I'll put something and just entertain myself a little bit. That's the exception. It's not the way. Yeah, I mean, I found there was a strawberry that was shaped like a heart, and I put it in my Instagram stories.

And, of course, it got the most views of any, any friggin thing I'd put up ever. I was like, what the hell is the wrong here? No, I really, I want to be the signal in the noise. I want to be the thing that people go, that's a little tricky, but like, there's something there. Yeah, so I found it hard to write, but the book is done. It's just now I'm going back through and I'm adding stuff and I'm eliminating stuff, like real Rick Rubin style. Getting to the essence. Getting to the essence. And I'm adding the drawings and now I'm having fun with it. And I had to give myself permission to extend it that year. And I just, if it can be better, why wouldn't I make it

better? Once it's out, it's out forever. You might as well do whatever it takes for it to be the best it can be. Yeah. But yeah, writing is a bear, man. It's intense. You're like in a conversation. with the audience, but in your head, what do you think is the hardest part about writing? I guess finding the best words to explain the thing that you're imagining. Language doesn't seem up to the task of really explaining these very amorphous things. It's like describing smoke. Totally. It's really hard.

Totally, especially since you live in the land of energetics and, you know, rhythm and yeah it's tough what subjects are your listeners most interested in so on youtube it's always going to be muscle and fitness and fat loss those episodes it's like it's like we could put out one that was like be jacked now or whatever it's just muscle fitness and fat loss seem to be the thing and of course the algorithms are always changing last year without any plan we ended up bringing on a number of people who focused on menopause and women's health. And kind of like women's specific biology for fitness seems to be really big, even though my audience is, I think we're probably about 55% male, 45% across platforms. That seems really big. The ones that surprised

me where I was like, whoa, I had no idea. We had Ethan Cross on, he's a psychologist at University of Michigan, talking about how to shut down chatter in one's head. He's done some beautiful experiments on this and teaching about how to like quiet the noise. That's been interesting to see how people are curious about that. And I'm very interested these days in like lymphatic system and like herbs and adaptogens. I'm really into this now. I know it's going to offer me up as a target and I say bring it because it's what you're interested in. I'm not trying to be at all aggressive. I'm just interested in it. And if people are going to come at me, they got to be healthier than me. And a lot of my colleagues that are like, what is this? You know, I'm like,

man, you need, you need some sunshine and a good steak and some strawberries and let's put you in a red light bed for a day. And, you know, like, I want to, I want to hug them. Because my colleagues, like Eddie Chang, he's like a 5 a.m. runner and a neurosurgeon, all that stuff. But he also, he has this understanding about Chinese medicine. And he thinks about this stuff. He thinks about energy and energy because his whole world is about keeping his hands as these magical instruments to be able to do the hardest surgeries that no one else will do. He told me the other day about a surgery they did that no one else would touch and he did it successfully. And I said, what's the hardest thing? He said, well, sometimes it's a tenth of a millimeter either has you

giving them a massive brain bleed or getting this thing out and you get it out. And he's still got family and kids and a world of good things and challenging things. And so he really understands about the channeling of energy. I mean, we talk about Chi. I'm learning about Chi from Eddie Chang. Amazing. And he's not going to bring that to his, you know, scientific discussions, but he understands like these cords of energy that run through us. And maybe that's why he's better than everybody else. I do think that's why he's better than everyone else. You know what's funny? He was like that when we were seven. We had our bird club. Oh, no, he's going to kill me if I say that. All right, it's out. We had a bird club. There were two of us in the bird club. There was a third guy that

we led in also could, even though he was a bird club. So you had to know about really cool tropical birds to get considered to be in the bird club. And it's kind of interesting. He went on to study speech and language in the brain and epilepsy and a bunch of other things. And we were obsessed with talking birds. And that's like what he's devoted his profession to. And even back then, like, we would go look at these, like, African gray parrots or something or these toucans. Two cans aren't particularly good talkers, but the minas and the African grays are. And Eddie, even at that age, he was like, that bird's looking at the other bird and thinking,

and he would tell me, like, he could really tap into things. Other people couldn't tap into. It's wild, you know, and I think he has a gift, and he works with the gift. Yeah. So when he's running, I'm like, are you running to sloth off energy for your day? Or are you running to kind of build energy? He's like, well, I do it because it's healthy and it relieves stress. But I do it in a way that focuses my energy.

So then he like scrubs up and goes in. Amazing. Amazing. What's some of the real world impact the pods had on listeners? Well, humbly, I mean, I hear many people have quit drinking alcohol because of the alcohol episode, which I think to this day, again, humility aside, was the most popular podcast episode across all podcasts, all platforms in 2022 and 23.

What's interesting about that is this is a podcast speaking against something that people love. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think I would say about half of the people that come to me and say, hey, your alcohol podcast changed my life. Yeah. we'll say they stopped drinking and they didn't like drinking

but they didn't give themselves permission to stop drinking because they either thought wine was good for them or because they felt they had to do it. Social obligation. Right. I would say a good number of people that say they stopped drinking because of that episode did so because they don't want cancer, they want to live longer,

better sleep, better microbiome and they just feel so much better. Is there a cancer alcohol relationship? Big time. Wow. 5% of cancers are probably alcohol. alcohol related. Wow. Five percent. Hard to attach the exact numbers, but that's, and then a study just came out recently that Stanford Medicine covered, I didn't cover because I haven't touched the topic in a while, saying that even moderate drinking is detrimental. You know, especially for women, breast cancers. And so I would say that episode, I think the morning sunlight piece

has been big, the physiological sigh, the double inhale, long exhale. I think breathwork had been around and yet people like WIM and other people talking about it, but giving people a that they could use right away to calm down. And then I think the dopamine discussion was really big in terms of understanding like, oh, it makes sense that I kind of burnt out on stuff and feel kind of this enui. I think I need to reset.

And then a lot of it is just most people have never had someone speak to them like an intelligent person in a way that was designed to help them learn so they can do better and not charge them at the end. You're never condescending to the audience. Max Dillbrook said it. Assume zero knowledge and infinite intelligence. Yeah.

That's the way you teach. Yeah. And that was actually written on the whiteboard of the room across the hall for me when I started my lab. And I had a big class at UC San Diego before I was at Stanford, I was at UC San Diego. And class went from 40 people. The next year it was 100, 400, 450 people. And I remember teaching those courses in the evening. And it was such a pleasure in large part because I could interact with

the students, you know, evening courses, people interact very differently. And I'd bring my dog and it was like it was fun. But every once in a while, I'll say there are these episodes like the grief episode or the episode I did an eating disorders. You know, for a guy who doesn't have an eating disorder to give a tutorial on eating disorders and the literature and the treatments, I think for a lot of people was like a little bit like a lot of women especially were like, this guy's going to talk to me about anorexia. Even though there are men with anorexia, It's mostly women. And I received only positive feedback on that.

People saying, thank you. You approached this with a lot of sensitivity. And, you know, I have, I don't have an eating disorder. I've known people that had. And so I purposely approach that one with silk gloves because it's a weird topic because it's a real disease. You know, the most deadly psychiatric condition is anorexia. Wow.

The most deadly of all of them. And so, and it's also, it's a myth that it's because of social media or marketing. The frequency of anorexia nervosa, true anorexia nervosa, is the same now as it was in the 1600s. Wow. What are some of the outer bounds of where you've gone on the podcast maybe further out than you would have thought you would have when you were starting? You know, looking back, I'm surprised I talked about Tonga Ali and Sheila G. And, you know, it just goes to show how when you're starting and you're not paying. any attention because you shouldn't to how people are going to perceive it and you just want people

to learn and you think something's really cool and you've received benefit from it and you want them to receive benefit from it too and you don't have a financial stake in it you just tell them yeah but looking back I realized I was not because of the heat that it brought looking back I'm just like oh my god like that was crazy like what were we thinking if you asked me now like if someone came to me and said, hey, listen, I want to start like a serious science health podcast. And I want to talk about neural circuits and endocrinology and, you know, the immune system and, and I want people to get practices from it. I would tell them to take that stuff out because I'd be in my strategic mind. But you know what's really interesting is, you could probably explain this

better than I can, the things that I loved that I put into the podcast, even some of the outrageous things that I said, which I still am glad I said, outrageous because they were like kind of unconventional, no one attacked those. Or if they did, it bounced right off. It's kind of interesting. I do think that when we really believe in something, because we know it worked for us, the criticism doesn't last. It like ricochets off. But when it's not like that, it can get in. Martha Beck has this great visual. She said, all of your life, you're like a lighthouse. And you have to just think about your light sweeping around. And she said, when you're public facing, especially if there's any kind of stain on the lighthouse, the stain being like something that you're conflicted by or that

like you haven't resolved, that provides like a wedge of shadow. That's where critique enters. That's where you're vulnerable. And she said, you can never stop critique. But if your lighthouse is clean. And she's not talking about your behavior. I mean, I think maybe that too, but like, she's not talking about, if there's something that you're, like, conflicted by, you haven't really resolved. You're not, you're not clear on for yourself, one way or the other. That's your work, because that's where, where the attack vectors are. But if you're comfortable with where you are, kind of like, I'm like, I love supplements. You don't have to take them. I don't care. I also take some prescription drugs. I also do a lot of behaviors. And guess what? I'll probably do

more of some of those and less of them going forward. Like you can't get to me with it because it's just like there's no issue, right? In some ways it doesn't impede anything about the creative process or the teaching process and it just moves forward. And I think that she's really on to something. And that's where personal work comes in. That's where deep dive personal work comes in of asking oneself like what's unresolved inside. Because that's where I think we express cynicism.

when we shouldn't or we overly confident where we shouldn't be. I mean, that's, and I think that's like ongoing work. No one's perfect, certainly not me. I think that's where the work is. Tetrogrammatin is a podcast. Tetragrammatin is a website. Tetragrammatin is a whole world of knowledge. What may fall within the sphere of tetragrammatin?

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