Joe Rogan Experience #2553 - Andrew Huberman

The Joe Rogan experience train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day Hello Andrew great to see you again, you'll see my what a thick-ass book you wrote sir Yeah, I figure it doubles as a doorstop or a weapon Yeah, it's um, it's designed to be read front to back learn a lot of science a lot of health protocols But you can also just decide I want to get better at managing stress go straight to that chapter look up what you want to do say, oh, I already do that go to the next thing and Use it sort of like a manual. This is a very ambitious undertaking. It took me Just shy of eight years the operating manual or an operating manual for the human body. That's a lot Like yeah, just sitting down there, you know in front of the computer thinking I'm gonna write an operating manual for the human body Well, it didn't start off like that at first. It was a book about the autonomic nervous system Stress sleep focus then it evolved then I had a third completely new rewrite and My good friend now, I'm honored to call him a friend. He's just such a good dude Rick Rubin was like, do you like it? And he goes scrape it I'm like what and then he said I'm gonna get myself in trouble. He took us scrape it man Like what are you doing? And I said, I don't he's like you have to love it. And then he said They're gonna push you to release this thing. I said, I already said I was gonna release it I did I did again and then I did that again And I was going to visit him in Europe each summer and we'd sit together and he goes let's read some stuff together but with Rick what that means is you sit there and he reads you and How you're reacting to the material so we barely read any of it I was just talking about he goes It's not ready. I go. What do you mean? It's not right. You're not ready. And so then this year Finally, but this book I mean we were in Europe this summer For a friend's wedding. My team was over there and my girlfriend I were traveling She was so understanding but from I was doing edits from like 9 p.m Until 2 30 in the morning every single night and waking up the next morning like this book has been While you on vacation Quote-unquote vacation. Yeah, I owe her a real real vacation now She was working too, but she was asleep in those hours and we stopped by Rick's he's like, how's it going? I'm like it's there and he's like he just like checked in. He's like it's there like he can just be Weird. I mean he's he he has this supernatural ability to feel where people are at But not get absorbed in it and I have so many Rick stories We could spend the whole time talking about Rick stories but the the man is just like he's plugged into some energetic layer that the rest of us aren't and He's all day every day He's connecting with people and and trying to help them like he really spends most of his time like Looking out at the world and trying to help people with their with their art with their stuff And I'm that's really him if you know him, that's him 24-7. He lives in that space It's a very weird headspace to be in because you're constantly like looking at other people's stuff It's like he's a tastemaker, you know, or that's not even a good description of him he's just like an analysis of art like that's his his his function he and now analyzes art, but from like For lack of a better term almost like a spiritual perspective like he sees whether it's real Totally he finds the realness and like we made the red-hot chili peppers Record one of their albums in a mansion because he wanted to hear like instead of a recording studio He wanted to hear like the sounds of the house. That's so Rick There's a you know, I I didn't come here to plug this but we should because it's gonna be awesome because I I may have Seen pieces of it. He has this documentary with Jay-z coming out like next week where they sit in this incredible monument Structure in Europe and they just listen to music together and talk about music and it's so good It's just a documentary on them listening. It's really about Jay But about his music. Yeah, so Jay's music and they're listening to it. Yeah I think this was filmed in an abandoned post office in France because Rick liked the skylight I've seen pieces of it. I'm so excited to see this. It's all black and white I think so HBO max Okay. Yeah. Yeah, he's he's on a whole other Weird good. We're very weird, dude, but he isn't very rational too, right? I mean his whole thing I may have said this before but his whole thing is he says There are only three things it used to be two, but he updated it to three things in life that are true one hours the laws of physics biology chemistry, you know nature the other is God we talk a lot about God these days and The third is professional wrestling and and he watches 10 hours a week, you know professional wrestling because he said he's like Everyone agrees. It's made up. So it's the only thing that everyone agrees that he thinks everything else is made up He thinks because we made up, you know media we made up show business We made up the game, you know a sport and what the rules are and he just thinks it's the you know It's the closest thing to truth out there. Yeah, that's where he and I part ways I mean I went to an AEW event with him. It was pretty cool I have to say his first time going and The athletes all adore him like everyone loves him and he's there front row. Oh, yeah, he's a huge fan huge fan I think he's a lifetime member and and and Lifetime member and and he he he really can extract like truisms about human nature from Watching wrestling. Oh, yeah. There we go. I'm the only one on my red glasses on at that point Well, it's wild is at one point the guys are like climbing the ladder They're gonna like grab the thing and they're they're both coming up the sides of the ladder and then one stops and goes Hey that's Rick Rubin and the guy pushes out the ladder and I look at Rick to see if he's sort of like Getting some sort of dopamine hit off and he just goes He's just listen. He's just there Experiencing it that he's not like pulled into it. Yeah, I need to drug test him I think he's on acid. He claims he's never done any drugs. That seems ridiculous Maybe had one sip of alcohol ages ago, which in the music business, that's a feat He must have one of those brains that's broken and just leak psychedelic chemicals all the time I don't know whatever plane and consciousness. He's I've always thought that about like schizophrenics I wonder if that's what's happening. I wonder if they have like some Dump of psychedelic chemicals that's constantly like leaking into their brain because we knew we know the brain really does produce endogenous Psychoactive Compounds like DMT. Mm-hmm. I mean, is it impossible that you could have a brain that leaks it? So here's the weird thing about schizophrenia and it speaks to the larger kind of ways that medicine works For better or worse is that for the longest time? We thought that dope dopamine too much dopamine was schizophrenia why because drugs that reduce dopamine call them neuroleptic drugs Haloperidol all these things clozapine would reduce auditory hallucinations So the conclusion was auditory auditory meaning voices in your head. Yeah, and that's mostly what people deal with, you know, especially paranoid schizophrenics They're hearing voices do this do that. You're awful I mean, it's if you think about it from that perspective imagine all day and night You're just dealing with voices in your head that feel like another person there Telling you usually horrible things about yourself or the outside world all the time and these drugs reduce those symptoms We've known that for a long time But because they reduce dopamine and all over the brain and body they create what's something called tardive dyskinesia, which is a Suppression of the motor system and so you'll see people who are doing this like rising like this You'll see them on the street a lot. Sometimes that's psychosis a lot of times That's psychotic people who are taking their anti psychotic medic medication But you know, it gives you some emphasis and tell the voices to shut the fuck up. I think some have auditory hallucinations and but Most have auditory hallucinations, but sorry some have visual excuse me some have visual hallucinations, but most have auditory hallucinations and You know this sets in usually around mid early 20s and what's weird is Years ago. I had a meal with the then director of the National Institutes of Mental Health His name was Bob Desimone and he said do you know why there's so little money for research on schizophrenia compared to say autism? It's like why and he's like well because the parents of autistic kids lobby hard and Usually the parents of autistic kids are not also autistic but schizophrenia even though it's not, you know Doesn't run completely through families. Oftentimes the parents of schizophrenics will have schizotypal Conditions or what is that? These are it's like they now call them schizoid schizotypal. They'll have On not typical thinking right doesn't mean they're crazy, but they're off they're off and so they're there They're not bad people But their place in society often doesn't position them to like sit down with a senator and say hey listen You know my kids got autism and we need more research on this and so a lot of what where the money goes has to do with where obviously the lobby is and if you think about genetic disorders in families, and we know there is a strong component with Schizophrenia like if you take two Monozygotic identical twins, right the if one is paranoid schizophrenic the probability that the other one will be paranoid schizophrenic isn't 100% But it's pretty it's much higher than and then by chance much much This episode is presented by paramount plus on October 16th. 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Manages to avoid it with lifestyle choices or diet or exercise or something along those lines Definitely although not in a way that you could attribute it to one thing but for instance for a long time active military service in somebody who has a genetic predisposition to psychosis was a kind of an Additional risk factor a meaningful risk factor makes sense because of the stress the stress methamphetamine use I mean again the stress the stress The stress also methods just seem fucking out of their mind anyway So, I mean there's this meth strength thing that I've never seen proven But it does you can find these videos of like meth heads carrying refrigerators down the street in there They're not jacked but there's like carrying refrigerators down alleys and you know people talk about meth strength but yeah, I mean methamphetamine is going to create probably the largest dump of dopamine in the brain than any other drug at least in the short term and It makes people think every idea is a good idea and everything is about them and their goals So it's the hyper dopaminergic state how much different is it than Adderall in terms of the actual effect? Oh, I mean, it's is it dose-dependent? Yeah, and we don't know what addicts are taking exactly, but yeah I mean Adderall is amphetamine vivance is amphetamine actually have a Forgive me for referencing the book too many times It'd be great if people want to read it, but that's not my goal here is to constantly references But there's a long section on all stimulants caffeine nicotine Adderall vivance modafinil artemoda Every single drug that can make you more alert and focused. I talked about the pros and cons Every single drug I talked about humans have always found a way to use these things to find things to enhance their focus the problem With methamphetamine is that it's also neurotoxic right? There's actually very relevant to the conversation about MDMA methylene dioxy methamphetamine which is a Variant of methamphetamine MDMA for the treatment of trauma is looking really promising The early studies including one that was published in science showed that non-human primates that are given MDMA Experienced neuron loss that neurons die in the brain and that message propagated that paper was retracted because that laboratory accidentally injected methamphetamine not MDMA MDMA how do they Accidentally mix those two. I don't know what happened. They did publish a retraction having methamphetamine laying around the lab Oh, man, you should have come to my lab when I run a lab until a few years ago I still teach I shut my lab, but we had and we had all sorts of goodies in there I mean you ever worry about your students taking it no because you know With any time you use a federally controlled drug you have to account for every last micro liter of that Someone's coming and checking all the time. We also worked with viruses I mean my lab at one point was using sinbiz viruses modified rabies viruses adenoviruses And on and on like a you know, and so Oh, we had some labels on the wall, like this is a lab that works with viruses and we also had controlled substances and that's just kind of how it goes. This is only one way you got to figure out what makes what happen in the human brain. I never had MDMA in my lab or amphetamine in my lab, but when I was an undergraduate, I worked in a lab where we injected rats with MDMA. At a time, this was in the early 90s, when not much was known about it, but people were dying at raves and that lab worked on thermal regulation. So we were interested in why they were dying from maybe MDMA. It turns out it was the hyperthermia from raves and not drinking enough fluids and people would take amphetamines and people were dying. That pretty much got worked out over time. People realize you need to stay hydrated, but methamphetamine and MDMA are very different. MDMA, there is no evidence that it's neurotoxic. You'd always hear those stories about people who took MDMA that had holes in their brain. Yeah, probably wasn't MDMA, probably was more methamphetamine, maybe mixed with a little bit of MDMA. This is why it would be so great if this was finally legal and produced in ways that were reliable and administered in safe ways and all that. But that trial, the passage through the FDA failed for two reasons this last round. It might go through the next round, but it failed for two reasons. I've been very close to this whole situation. One is that the powers that be in the previous administration felt that there wasn't a good control condition, like it wasn't a good placebo. Okay, fair enough, although a lot of drugs deal with that issue. The other was there was one, maybe two sexual improprieties of the therapist. There was a couple therapists that did some things they shouldn't have done while somebody was under the influence of the drug. And one incident like that can sink an entire initiative. So that was bad, obviously. And so if it's going to pass in the next few years, they're going to have to be some things in place to make sure that the way it's administered is safe, because the person under the influence of MDMA is very vulnerable to all sorts of things. It's not just about their heart health, et cetera. That can be dealt with before, it can be dealt with after, but the real issue is the therapist operating in their best interest. And because the psychedelic community has always existed, and I'm a big fan of psychedelics for the treatment of depression, trauma, et cetera, but because that community has always kind of existed on the edge of other techniques, it's sort of like, well, as a foot massage, if the person's saying they have all this trauma in their feet and the therapist rubs their feet, like that's not usual for therapy, right? That's pretty like within the gray zone of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy done kind of rogue in the world of psychedelic therapists. So there's really no controls on what goes with the drugs. We've agreed on the basis of the clinical trials of what the dosages might be, healthy dosages, how frequent, like two sessions with a booster, 80 milligrams in, and then a booster of say 50 milligrams halfway in or by body weight, space three weeks apart for psilocybin, maybe just once for, and on and on. All that's been looked at in various ways in these trials. And is it always in conjunction with psychotherapy? It should be. The data really show that people need therapy going in, they need therapy during, and they need therapy coming out for the best results. But those results are remarkable. I mean, 60, 70% significant reduction in symptoms, in some cases remission. But I have friends in the so-called psychedelic community, but I also have friends in the standard science community. And for these things to really come together, there's going to have to be some standardization of safety, but also just practice. What are you going to talk about? If someone's like, I'm feeling I'm at the precipice of like a huge amount of pain, do you encourage them to go into that pain and purge it? Or do you tell them, hey, listen, maybe back away from that. All this stuff is done by feel in the psychedelic community. There's no standardization of it. But then again, talk therapy is the same way, right? There's no standardization of the narratives that you're supposed to have with your client. Right, there's a lot of freedom to sort of improvise. And then, I've been reading a lot about the history, counterculture history and stuff. Yeah, I joined the board of Esalen, which is this incredible place on the coast of California. And the guy who started it is in his late 90s. And it has a center for theory and research. It's not just about like yoga classes and has that, but there's a serious focus on human potential there. And in the 60s, 70s and 80s, and even in the 90s, all these somatic therapies came along, in the breathing therapies. And you had psychedelic therapies too, but how much of these things to merge is a question. Like maybe some somatic therapy during MDMA could be really helpful for somebody that feels really out of body, or that had a bodily trauma or was raped or whatever, and was abused as a kid. But then we have to ask ourselves, are we gonna let therapists touch people while they're under the influence of these really powerful and pathogens? Why is touching people, is that normalized in the psychedelic community when they do this? Not necessarily. Like a sitter. A good day starts with a solid morning routine. So if something's missing, if your body isn't getting what it needs, everything can feel off. AG1 is designed to help fill the holes. Their next gen formula is dialed in with over 75 ingredients, minerals, vitamins, adaptogens, and more, clinically shown to fill nutrient gaps and increase healthy gut bacteria. And AG1 Pro takes it even further. It has CAHMB for muscle protection, zinc carnosine for gut health, and five grams of Creavitalis premium German-made creatine monohydrate, which if you don't know, creatine is a highly studied compound in sports science that helps support energy. Get more from your morning routine, add either AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro, and your body will thank you. Go to drinkag1.com slash Joe Rogan, and for a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro. That's drinkag1.com slash Joe Rogan. No, not necessarily. It's just that right now, psychedelic-assisted therapy sits in that constellation of somatic therapies, talk therapies, breathing therapies, emotive therapies. None of this is formalized. I mean, so much of what I've been interested in and why I wrote the book, aside from the compulsion to just get things out there, my hope is that as more techniques come along, different breathwork practices, different supplements, different drugs, different peptides, that people will start to understand some of the kind of principles of how things work to decide what's worthwhile or not. So for instance, for trauma, we know that it's basically four steps. Doesn't matter if you use getting through trauma. Doesn't matter if it's through therapy that includes psychedelics or not. First of all, people have to have a willingness to address it, right? Second, they need to experience the painful feeling in a safe environment. There's no just kind of avoiding that. So the feel your feelings things is true. And we often just stop there. We hear that, and that's it. But then there's also having the explicit memory of what happened, but in a state of calm, not feeling the feelings. Because you're trying to uncouple the memory from the emotions, right? There's no losing the memory. You're trying to uncouple the emotions from the memory. And then the fourth piece, which is something I touch on with respect to grief and trauma therapy more generally, is there's this beautiful thing that, you know, guests on your podcast have talked about, you've probably experienced this, that at some point, the shitty thing that happened to you, the awful thing can be transmuted into some effort to create goodness for yourself or for the world. Sometimes it's public education. Sometimes people, you know, the loss of a child, for instance, like, oh my God, how awful that, you know. But people will, who move through this process, can get to the place where they'll like plant a tree or teach to, or talk to other parents who are in bereavement. And so they've transmuted their loss into goodness, right? So it's four steps. If we just say, you know, take your loss and go do good for the world, that's not going to work. If we say, take your loss and just feel the pain of it, people get caught in that spiral. And I think this is, unfortunately, when the millennials were in their adolescence and, you know, teen years and 20s, there was this overemphasis on like feeling your feelings, but no one ever talked about the next phase, which is where you actually stop feeling so shitty about the shitty thing that happened. And so my goal is really to try and organize like these different practices and come up with structures so that you could imagine MDMA being very useful for that first or second step, feeling your feelings in a safe way, in the right environment. What are the studies that MAPS has done with MDMA, with soldiers and PTSD? Because that's been probably one of the most prominent things. Yeah, well, Rick Doblin, obviously, is more qualified to get into the specifics, but I know of at least three clinical trials looking at MDMA at dosages that are by body weight, but they're not like outrageously high dosages that have people move through their PTSD within a matter of, you know, four to six weeks total. So with two sessions of MDMA spaced apart about a month or so, talk therapy the whole way through. And I know of at least one clinical trial with veterans. Oftentimes these studies will include veterans, but it's not all veterans, which actually is kind of good. You want to be able to compare their kind of trauma to other people's trauma. But I have to say, and I know you've covered this extensively, but the work on Ibogaine has, in my mind, has completely revised the way that we think about psychedelic therapy, because it's kind of ironic that the first psychedelic that will likely be legal for the treatment of PTSD is going to be the most intense one. It'd be like if I'm like, hey, I want to learn a martial art, and you're like, yeah, get into the octagon and get your ass kicked, you know, and that's going to, you know, turn you into a fighter. I mean, that's the way people describe Ibogaine is kind of like that. It is no joke, as you point out, it is not recreational. And then when they follow with DMT, I mean, you know, it seems that the outcomes are very, very good for a lot of people. I will say, and they're going to sweat me for this a little bit. There have been a few deaths, and it seems that that may correlate with fentanyl use prior. That's, this needs to be talked about if we're going to get this legal. How many deaths? I'm aware of two. And is this in those clinics? Or is this, yeah? Yes, and they have to report them. And is it a heart failure? Like what, because I know that there's heart issues. Heart and breathing, so they're linked, obviously, you know, heart and breathing linked. And people are heart rate monitored. I know of many people, and they're many of your friends, like, and they've talked openly about this stuff. So DJ Shipley and the Capone, you know, Marcus Capone and others, and many, many others who feel that they've benefited tremendously from these therapies. And there's a litany of other names there, too, that have benefited tremendously, I want to be clear. There are also a few people who felt they didn't have a good experience. I know Sean Ray right now is out there talking about his negative experience. Sean Ryan? Excuse me, Sean Ray. Sean Ray's like a bodybuilder, right? Sean Ryan, excuse me. I think Sean Ryan, I think he's talking about DMT. And they follow with DMT at some of those clinics, not all. But he's, he said he had gone through exorcisms. Isn't that what he's saying now? I mean, I think if you, if you think about, my experience of psychedelics, I've not done Ibogaine, is that there is all sorts of understanding about the brain that comes about during those journeys that leads you to understand that we have good and evil in all of us. And I could understand how it could be downright terrifying for some people to realize that we have a hypothalamus that just wants to satisfy drives. But we also have a forebrain that can suppress those drives. I mean, that is the nature of being human, right? Do you think that's what these people are thinking of when they're thinking of demons, or thinking of like, like drives that are a part of the human system? So, okay, I have a lot of thoughts about this. So, I'm not going to spin off into a neuroscience lecture, but we think about brain function and free will and all that kind of stuff from top-down and bottom-up perspective. Bottom-up is you have a drive, you want to satisfy it, you're going to do it. Top-down are regions of the brain that inhibit those impulse circuits. And so much of life is about the dynamic tension between those two, okay? I mean, the seven deadly sins, right, are all the hypothalamic structures, like rage, envy, lost, et cetera. But the forebrain can be built up, you can learn things as the, you know, kids learn to suppress their impulses, puppies learn to suppress their impulses to get a reward, or just to avoid punishment. And that's a lot of what being human is about, right? There's an amazing case, actually right here in Austin, where, I don't know if you're familiar with this, there was a kid who woke up one morning, wrote in his diary, he's an ex-Marine, this was many years ago, and then killed his wife and his mother with a knife. Do you know about this? Okay, then he went to the University of Texas, Austin, took a rifle, went up into the tower, and shot 14 people. Oh, that story. I think a 15th died later, yeah. So, but here's where it gets interesting, right? I mean, it's horrible, right? One woman was pregnant, so they counted, I think it was a total of like 18 or 19 deaths. He was shot by one of the security guards. They go and they read his diary, and he literally says, I don't know why I want to do this, but please take the money from my life insurance and donate it to the study of mental health. Please pay off my debts. Please understand what's happening to me. And they did an autopsy, and the guy had a tumor in a brain region, which included, brain regions, which included amygdala, hypothalamus, and thalamus. Collectively, what we would call low-level brain structures involved with, perception and impulse. The conclusion of all that is not, oh, he had a brain tumor that made him do it. The conclusion that most neuroscientists draw is that most people don't ever conceive of doing those things. But a lot of people go to Niagara Falls and look and go, what's keeping me from jumping? What's keeping you from jumping is your forebrain. What people think, oh, you know, what keeps people from shoplifting? Everyone would like to think that they're incredibly moral. Like, I don't shoplift, I'm not a shoplifter, right? But for some people, they want to do the thing and they stop themselves from doing it, or drinking, or cheating, or whatever it is, right? Those top-down influences on our impulse. and our bottom-up impulses are constantly in dynamic tension. And in psychedelics, I mean, lots of things are happening. You're getting a lot more interconnectivity of the brain that's always there being revealed. It's very rare. It happens, but it's very rare to hear about people doing terrible things to other people on psychedelics. It happens, but it's not common. So I'm not saying you reveal evil in there, but as you know, in a high-dose psilocybin journey, you're going into the recesses of your mind and your unconscious mind is showing you what's there. It's showing you that there are terrible forces out in the world. There are humans. You learn all sorts of stuff about humans, as you know, right, in these journeys. You also learn about incredible beauty and potential for making positive change. So the psychedelics are kind of a, they're a mysterious free-for-all in there. They're probably also interacting with your very specific memories. And if you're dealing with a guy like Sean Ryan, he did a lot of combat duty. He's seen a lot of horrible things, horrible things. My good friend, Eddie Penney, he was also a tier one operator. He's a great name. Yeah, great name. Great name, great guy. You guys would enjoy a conversation. He's another tier one operator from that community. He's, I'm not revealing anything he hasn't already, but he's recovered from substance abuse issues and has been sober a long time. He's not a fan of psychedelics. He got me reading the Bible. We could talk about this. Actually, church, and I know you've been going to church, there's an interesting thing because a lot of what's in the Bible is about the dynamic tension between what neuroscientists would call top-down and bottom-up influences. It acknowledges, like we have this stuff in us that you're not supposed to pretend it doesn't. You have to acknowledge your humanness, but also your human capacity to control these impulses. And I mean, that's a lot of what's in the Bible. It's not everything, but it's stories about that in many, many ways. Hence the seven deadly sins and the virtues and so on. But, you know, Eddie has been a pretty strong voice for caution in the veterans and other communities about the use of psychedelics, because there's this theory, right, within some sectors of religion and Christianity in particular, that in psychedelic journeys that evil entities, if you will, might have access to us or something like that. There's a neuroscientist view of that too, which is that in those states, you're revealing aspects of self that normally you can suppress, but now you're having to see that aspect of you or other people. Like realizing that people have evil and good in them is a, I think we can all say, yeah, I get it. But we usually say they're evil, they're good. They're evil, they're good. It's very hard for us to address the possibility that we, any of us, I like to think I could never have been that kid that went up on the tower. But if I had a tumor in my brain, would I have done it? I don't know. I mean, this recent case of this woman killing her children was about this, right? It was about this very issue. Like, oh, is her physiology to blame? And the law has a very simple rule on most of these cases. I've looked at this. And the law basically says, doesn't matter if you have a brain tumor, doesn't matter if you're high on meth, doesn't matter if you're full of rage, because rage is just a different set of neurochemicals. You are responsible for your behavior. And I think we need those thick black lines, as I like to think of them. Otherwise, you can't function as a society. It's not saying that people aren't stricken with biological issues, but we're saying even if stricken, you need to be held responsible. One of the big things that happens during psychedelic trips that disturb a lot of people is when they try to fight the trip, and then they have a really bad trip. And one of the things that someone will tell you, for lack of a better term, who is a shaman. I hate that term because I think it's probably very real some parts of the world, and it's also probably a very much bullshit thing in America. It's like expert in America now. Well, there's some real experts in America. There's probably more real experts than there are real shamans. You know, the shaman thing is very weird. A lot of it is like very lost people that find identity in altered states of consciousness. And I think, just my personal opinion, that experiencing these altered states of consciousness should enhance your experience as a human, should not replace it. I think there's a lot of people who are replacing altered states of consciousness far too often. And they live in that world more than they live in the world of just being conscious and sober. And I think there's many steps that you have to take in order to have a good trip. Some people have a really hard time letting go, relaxing and just going with it. They fight it. I've seen it. I've seen people fight it. People that, for whatever reason, they have whatever psychological issues or they have control issues and they just cannot deal with the fact that this experience is so beyond their comprehension and so overwhelming that they try to battle it. They try to control it. The experiences, the things that they see, the states that they enter into, they don't feel at all in control and they freak out. And when you try to control it, I haven't had one of those. But from the people that I know that have, it's like they say that they were wrestling with it and you cannot win. And it just overwhelms you and then your anxiety kicks in. What I have experienced in trips is that it's highlighted that if you think in a positive way, it'll show you more beautiful images and that you can just relax. And that, especially in the DMT realm, they are trying to tell you to relax. They're trying to tell you to just go with it. And if you don't fight it, you can have a wonderful experience. But I haven't been to war. I haven't been raped. I haven't been physically assaulted and beaten as a child. There's a lot of things that didn't happen to me that I don't have to deal with. And someone, especially I think guys who've been to war, you've seen so much horrible shit and it just becomes a part of your everyday existence, these horrible memories, these horrible visions that you have and horrible things you've probably had to do. And then something comes along like DMT or like psilocybin or something just overwhelms the normal state of consciousness. If you are trying to fight that, I would imagine that would feel like you're battling demons. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. It may be hard to believe, but identity theft is the number one crime in America. Right now, millions of people are dealing with stolen accounts, fraudulent loans, and the exhausting process of proving who they are to banks, creditors, and credit bureaus. LifeLock helps you fight back. 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Yeah, yeah, and I haven't had to deal with any of those things either, so I wanna acknowledge that. I had a very good experience of therapeutic combined MDMA and psilocybin work, therapeutic work, incredible, and I can distill it to one simple takeaway, which was thinking about bad things that had happened that I wish hadn't happened, like I felt like I had kind of worked through that stuff in life by running, lifting weights, some therapy, just life, time, you know? It worked through it, but there was a session where I was feeling the resistance to like feel something and I knew what was knocking, and it was thinking about things that didn't happen that I wished had happened for me, not things that I wish I'd got, but just basic experiences that I wish I had had, and it was incredibly sad in the moment, but then it opened after some period of time. Like what kind of experiences? You know, listen, I had a better childhood than many, much better than many, and harder than others for, you know, there were some things about my family structure that felt, there were times when I really, really, really needed a certain kind of support and structure, and it was gone, and so I went out into the world and found it in skateboarding, eventually in science, and, you know, I talk about, the introduction of the book, actually, I talk about why I eventually went into public health education, and it was seeing about a third of my friends from growing up dead or in jail, and that's weird for a guy that didn't grow up in the inner city and I wasn't in the military. These are friends of mine that succumbed to drugs or suicide or mental health issues. Now, mind you, the other two-thirds did great, and some of them started companies like DC, and, you know, like, these weren't close friends of mine, but that community of people, of all these feral kids, in the 90s, the people who skateboarded were the ones who didn't have parents that went to things, right? And listen, I have a good relationship with my dad now, like, I've actually had him on the podcast, and that was really bonding for us. We're great now, but there was a time when I was an adolescent and teen when I really needed structure, and I really needed certain things that just were not happening, and my home life was depressing. It was really empty, it was really depressing, and so I went out into the world and did way too many things way too young. I saw a lot and got involved in a lot of sex violence and stuff that I shouldn't have at that time, and luckily not drugs, that wasn't my thing. So I always knew those narratives, and I've always had a bittersweet memory of them. Like, they also served me well. They motivated me to forage for ways to be healthy and things like that. But then in science, it was wild, because in science, your mentors play a tremendous role in your progress and your sense of safety. Science is a weird thing. It's different now, but when I was coming up, you would get very close to your graduate advisor. I was very close to my undergraduate advisor. He was like a father figure to me. My graduate advisor was truly like a mother to me. I knew her when she was pregnant. I knew her husband. Her daughter's a neuroscientist. Like, incredibly close to her. She had a maternal way about her and a toughness that was unbelievable, and she was a serious scientist. And then my postdoc advisor, similarly, was very supportive. My undergraduate advisor, who I got very close with, killed himself in a very dramatic way about two weeks after I had spoken to him. Shot himself in the bathtub. And this was a guy who understood mental illness. I talk about him in the book. My graduate advisor died at 50 of cancer. She had the BRCA mutation, which predisposes to cancer. And that one, like, devastated me. And then my postdoc advisor died of pancreatic cancer like a year into my faculty appointment, and he had a heart attack sitting across from me, you know, was the first indication he had pancreatic cancer. And so the joke in my field is you don't want me working for you, because, you know, it's like, fuck. But then what's wild is that, you know, I made it through science. I get tenure at Stanford. This kind of shit is happening in my science world. Then a colleague of mine gets addicted to OxyContin after a back injury, and he's dead, and no one talks about it. Like, everyone's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He was a member of the National Academy. He's a famous scientist down at the Salk Institute. Everyone's just like, oh, yeah, yeah, just kind of carries on with their work. And then, this is gonna get depressing for a moment before it gets light, end of 2017, three friends of mine from childhood, there's a graffiti artist, his name is, he went by Orphan, O-R-F-N, this brilliant artist. He did so much cool shit. His name was Aaron Curry. Dies of stomach cancer. My good friend, John Eichelberry from childhood, and my good friend, Johnny Fair, fentanyl suicide. Boom, people are just going down. Like, crazy. And I'm like, what the fuck is going on here? And then, I started to realize, this is one of the reasons I started the podcast, is one of the reasons I started going on podcasts, is like, my science colleagues, they don't know how to manage their stress. They understand the science of stress, but they look like shit. Their kids are a mess. They have all these anxiety disorders. My physician friends, I can count on one hand the number of them that are healthy of mind and body who have healthy kids. And then, I realized, oh, the skateboarding community, the science health community, I'm at Stanford University School of Medicine, the apex, or among the top universities in the world of health. And I'm like, my colleagues are sick and dying and stressed. And I realized, I was like, shit, we don't know how to regulate stress. So, I started studying stress and stress mitigation, this kind of thing. And then, I don't want to make this even darker, but I think it's worth acknowledging for a couple of reasons. And by the way, I want to be really clear. I think what Veteran Solutions has done with the Ibogaine Initiative, I think what Rick Perry and what Brian are doing with the Ibogaine thing, I think it's awesome. If I highlight that there were some deaths, I want to be really clear. Those people might have died of fentanyl anyway. We don't know. I mean, there's, you know, we need to- They're both connect, both of the deaths are connected to fentanyl use? My understanding is they had used fentanyl prior to going to use Ibogaine. So, maybe in this discussion, a few people will be sensitized to, like, that's a potential issue. So, meaning, like, they were probably addicted to fentanyl. They were trying to get off of it, and they tried to do it while they had fentanyl in their system. Perhaps. Yeah. And for all we know, they might have snuck fentanyl. We don't like to think that they might have, but who knows how closely they did it, you know? If they're really hooked. Yeah, and listen, you and I know, I mean, it's more from your world of, you know, martial arts and stuff, but, you know, we know people who've, like, we hear they go down to Mexico, they're going to do this treatment, they're going to come back, they're better. And like a week later, they don't sound so much better. You know, I'm not, I pray for these people. I want the best. Like, I'm not saying this is bad, but I'm saying these are powerful medications, and I think they are net positive. But I'll also say, you know, many years transpired between that. You know those friends dying the Johnny people all sometimes people call me on bullshit So Aaron Curry John Eichelberry Johnny Farrar best fucking kids. I knew Awesome graffiti artist one of them was in the MoMA orphan went into the MoMA for his graffiti So the badass graffiti ours stomach cancer got him like shit can happen my advisors didn't do anything wrong They just one clearly had a mental issue or otherwise he wouldn't have taken his life the other two had cancer So but then this last year, I'm like going about my life, and I'm thinking okay You know things are pretty good, and I get a call and I hear that My good friend Nolan Williams triple board certified MD Who took the transcranial magnetic stimulation? Therapies and accelerated them so that people could get relief from depression much faster He took what was you know many weeks long or months long thing and compressed it Saved lives who's also doing the studies of ibogaine took his own life. I Mean this one's still sinking in for me I there's no reason to believe it had anything to do with ibogaine whatsoever. He took his own life He's a colleague physician friend of mine at Stanford, and I know his wife who's also physician. I know his kids He's been on my podcast. He looked like the young Jim Morrison handsome He was a martial arts guy do taekwondo like Fuck is right fuck is right, so what does it tell us you know I've had to try to intellectualize these things too much But what does it tell us it tells us that knowledge is not sufficient to take care to protect us like it like I feel Like the data are in bold conclusion banner across the sky knowledge does not alone does not protect us You can understand everything about the biology of these diseases you can know I'm messed up I have something something's, but and you can understand. Oh, that's serotonin or whatever people will still do these things and It's rare fortunately, but it tells us that the I believe it tells us something fundamental about humans which is that there's always this dynamic tension between our underlying impulses and this top-down control and Suicide is a weird one because it's like the whole thing gets You know twisted up so that we're no longer acting in an adaptive way right obviously taking one's life is not adaptive but it's a rage or a depression or whatever and that the conclusion that I draw from it is What can we do to put ourselves in the best position to be able to? hold our impulses in Their healthy place You know if I I don't want to make more of like what I did in the book or what I'm trying to do in The podcast or public education, but like let's take the ice bath for example I've taken a lot of shit for the ice bath thing you have to we both know they don't like the cold That's why they're talking about this, but we know for certain. I go through the data finally Give it putting yourself into a high adrenaline state where your body and brain are freaking out and doing that deliberately Gets you better at dealing with high stress states which in my mind is only a good thing this should be basic training for Children you know not a young children right why you know does increase metabolism marginally does increase cortisol no That's a bunch of horseshit, and we can talk about that if anything it reduces cortisol It increases your ability to buffer stress is the ice bath a cure to mental health issues Addiction and relapse and all that no of course not but is it does it teach you to? Engage in top-down control. Yes, is it the ice bath per se no the ice bath is just one very efficient Low-cost way to get adrenaline to go boom through the roof you could do it through a workout You could do it through hot sauna that feels uncomfortably hot provide you don't die of hypothermia You can do it through any number of different things the point is that The principle of learning to capture your mind and think strategically lower your state of arousal when you're in a stressful circumstance is a life skill that is invaluable and Getting great sleep we could go on and on about all the benefits of that There's probably a hundred benefits of that and probably a thousand things that go wrong when you don't get enough sleep chronically Couples nights no problem, but when you're well rested You are far less likely to harm yourself or others like because your forebrain is more active and can suppress these impulses and so My you know my kind of like I don't like the word mission but my goal is that We'll kind of move beyond the notion of like hacks or that it's this tool or that tool and just really understand like what we're Trying to do when we're teaching ourselves to be better humans And I do think there is a generation of kids that grew up hearing that their feelings are valid great We didn't hear that growing up. I just assumed like if you drank and you couldn't stop drinking It was a lack of willpower now. We know there's a brain circuit, but if we say oh, there's a brain circuit therefore I'm not gonna quit because it's a brain circuit. Well. You're still you're still an addict right so the great sleep social connection Sunlight in the morning like these things are really designed to get us to have better control Over our focus over our impulse control and that it almost becomes so simple at that point and we can say well What was going on with Nolan in the weeks before well? I I have smatterings of what might have been going on Running two giant projects in his lab two companies managing a family managing a life I'm not gonna claim. He was a perfect human being but like it's just like Overwhelm his forebrain I can turned on him. Yeah overwhelm is real Yeah, you can only you can only redline your system for so much. I mean you know people have done this I mean I know a lot of people you know people and I become for doing it I've been friends with I become friends with David Cho. I love that dude fucking love him best fucking guy Because he's so heartfelt now having been through the meat grinder of media and life and his own tendency to self-harm Yeah, and he's in this just a beautiful place now where he's just like literally painting everything in his environment he's so happy with his family and his kids fucking awesome and Like a very smart guy so smart he figured out how to keep it together He did and and you know you guys have common friends In you know people that have taken their lives and stuff when he talks about it. It's like and you can just tell he's like There's this understanding that comes from hard-driving people that like okay I've I've not wanted to ever take my life, but like you can cut I can relate to Nolan Just want out you can't take it anymore, and you want out I think we've all been in that moment where we were like at something we were able to pull ourselves back And it's a shoot I think some people just go down that chute and you know David and I were talking about this because I know you guys have common friends and some have succumbed to things and some who really like rose and above all that and He's like look man it's Once you've tasted that edge of being pulled back and forth from your impulses and like and you learn to just force yourself to both Do hard things as you always say But also force yourself to like really embrace the the goodness in the world and the love that's there like let's not forget the lighter Side like the beauty of like all these amazing things in life. There's this kind of like promised land Inside of us. I don't mean to sound religious here like there's this place in us We're like yeah all that's true all those people they all die they some took their own life And then that shit happened, but there's if I just keep doing really hard things. I'm gonna stay in control of my impulses as Long as I also touch the goodness. That's there every day like the Sun's coming up my kids are healthy I'm here You know I turned 50 last year and and then I had to like they asked me to give like a little toast or something It was horrible like I hate doing that kind of thing I'll podcast all day But not that and I just realized I was like my hero Joe Strummer One of my heroes from the clash right dead at 50, so I at least got further than him 50 It's so young and then I was like so I'm in this like promised land now like yes And that like joy of like having made it Over some bump or something and seeing goodness and having great relationship now with my parents. It's taking a lot of work But we're really in a good place Appreciating all the gifts they gave me seeing people leave and like I have such love for Nolan and for all those people I mentioned like I just love them and understanding that the grief is just love is Man I'll tell you like And I probably couldn't have gotten here without some of that psychedelic work because it really took my face and stuff You know just stuck it in the vomit of all this, but then you came out You go whoa like there's so much goodness, so I Don't know. I mean if the psychedelics can help people if talk therapy can help people great But I think on a day-to-day basis it's like do shit that sucks so that you can stay in control of staying in control and Also, make sure you touch into the beauty of really good things well I find that when you do the things that suck you do the hard workouts and the song on the cold plunge life Just seems more beautiful. It really does because you're not overwhelmed with this just just Existential dread that just hangs over you just being a physical vulnerable human being walking through this unknown Uncertain life, and there's a bunch of external Chaoses like world wars and fucking financial collapses, and there's so much shit going on and everybody's brain do something that just Exhausts that at least for a little while and lets you take in what a fucking beautiful day look at those squirrels Just having a good time totally running around on the tree listen to the birds. Just feel the Sun on your face I don't appreciate that if I don't do things. This is my own personal thing. I don't know I mean I know everybody's different everybody's different biologically psychologically for me I know what my formula is my formula is if I don't do those things I feel like shit period So I do the things and I've experimented I've taken days off three days four days off And then at the fourth day, I'm like Jesus Christ Who are you get to the fucking gym go hit the bag and the world seems worse not better way worse way worse And I think there's a lot of people out there that are like very angry like you see a lot of people on social media I think they're living in that state But not a state of four days a state of 40 years of nothing doing nothing and just letting your body just go Yeah, you know you have dogs right yeah, you know it's like when your dog doesn't get exercise Yeah, he's not fucking actually my new one has He's part bulldog But part pit too And I'm keeping his nuts on this time because my last dog you know as you know I was like injecting with TRT late in Life and he felt so much better this time. I'm keeping Strummers. I'm keeping Strummers nuts on this dog Yeah, you gotta throw the ball. Yeah, throw the ball, but this dude. I have him running on the fucking treadmill in the morning Oh, wow. Oh, yeah, I take a walk, right? I've trained him from the time he was nine weeks to run on the treadmill does he like it fucking loves it He'll haul ass it like right now He's up to five on a on a on a two incline And he's just like at the back of that thing he falls off He jumps right back on people like don't earn his joints like listen. I've raised bulldog breeds before I'm not gonna blow out his joints. Okay. He is So stoked he will just run and run and run and then I'll I tell him wait I'll put the liver treat there, and then when he gets that thing his ears flop He's going like and you can tell when he's done. It's what you're describing. He's just like he's chill so peaceful Oh, I throw the box the ball for my dog, and then we come in and sit down He just lays on his back, and I rub his belly. He's just so hot this is Marshall Yeah, you got another one right Cavalier Cavalier King Charles. Yeah He's amazing, but oh my great dogs. He's he's a little love machine All you want to do is kiss you just kisses you constantly there The Cavalier King Charles have a little bit of a almost like a bulldog thing to them like the calm This last year I went to meet the breeds out in New York You can go and meet all the different breeds you see like the otter dogs And you learn three things when you go meet these like hundreds of different pure breeds first of all people can look like their dogs It's crazy. I don't know which direction it goes like you look at the guy Who's got like the otter hound or these bit, and he's got a big beard he looks just like friggin well I mean Carl or a fucking contradiction to that. That's true. That's true That's true. That's true The other thing you learn is that the pure breeds in addition to being shaped a certain way like they have a certain Demeanor like it's there's variation, but there's a demeanor. You know and the Bulldogs are kind of goofy You know and the sight hounds are like locked in and looking all the end And I swear some dogs are smarter than others are like counting how many people are in the environment They're doing math basically whereas Strummer's just like he's in a line of the shepherd dogs. Yeah, they're doing math They're counting all the time accounting for everything and then I leave there and that and I go I turned to my girlfriend, and we were like which breed are we and I go we're getting a bulldog mind like we're going Right back to the one. I already had and she's like alright like you know She's pretty easy going about that, and I'm like you have not experienced bulldog love because they're just they're hedonist They just want love comfort. They want to chase the ball They have this much forebrain, and this is where I think dogs are the almost perfect species because their impulses Are never to be bad like they don't have this like Rage anger thing unless people train them to do that they don't I think the dog is like just Quote-unquote dumb enough and just smart enough. Yeah, I like the perfect life like they're it depends on the breed I mean the Malinois are mouthy Belgian Malinois are Malinois excuse me meat missiles Yeah, those little fuckers when they can be great dogs I know people that have them, but you have to be on them two hours a day They need tasks that it's basically you live with a super athlete Yeah, you know you live with a you know a prime Jose Aldo Never may fight a world champion like they could fucking leap over buildings like you can't just have them lay in the yard Yeah, they'll go crazy. They don't potato. No they need things to do man. They need tasks whereas Marshall He's just so happy just chilling with you. He likes to cuddle and watch TV That's what he likes to do likes to climb up on the couch He puts his head right here, and we watch TV together I just pet him if I don't pet him he looks at me Oh, man this episode is brought to you by visible as fall hits We enter another season of change time to shift gears drop the dead weight and upgrade the wardrobe for the drop in temperature But one thing that doesn't need to change your phone the smartest upgrade this season isn't a new phone It's a better wireless plan switch to visible the ultimate wireless hack you get unlimited 5g data and unlimited unlimited hotspot powered by Verizon for just $25 a month. That means keeping the phone you already have, ditching your overpriced phone bill, and pocketing some savings for yourself. All the perks of big wireless for half the cost. Switch today at Visible.com. The Visible plan starts at just $25 a month, or get the premium Visible Plus Pro plan and save $10 on your first month with promo code ROGAN. Terms apply, see Visible.com for plan features and network management details. You know what saves lives and has cured a lot of PTSD? Our service dogs. Oh, for sure. Like people, we don't talk about this enough because they're not, you know, it's not as like quote unquote exciting as psychedelics, but man, those service dogs like have kept people alive. They're pure love. Pure love. Pure love. Pure love. They love you, you love them, you have fun together. They're goofy. So good. Things that are silly and you laugh and they know you're laughing. So good. It's like dogs are amazing. And people that don't have love in their life, they're suffering. Like loneliness is worse than smoking multiple packs of cigarettes a day. Yeah. Just for your overall health and life expectancy. You know, Andy Stumpf came on the podcast. I love Andy. Yeah, great guy, great guy. And he recommended this documentary to me, The Dark Wizard, which is about this guy, Dean Potter, who was a free solo climber. Yeah, I watched it. And then the wingsuit guy. And that's a beautiful example of dogs helping someone at one point. Although he took that dog doing all sorts of crazy shit. That dog, again, was very devoted. Dog did not know any better. He just thought that was life. He had no other dogs to talk to. Can you imagine you're that guy's dog? Like, yeah, you just assume it's normal. But the other piece there, like talk about dopamine and drive and, you know, life and death. That, I feel like that movie was such a, like a key insight into the relationship between drive when it's in, you know, love and love of craft, love of people, and then drive when it's competitive in an unhealthy way. Like how the Buddhists talk about like ego and that, you know, ego is great because it can drive us in certain pursuits that can build things for us, family, society. But then how it can, you know, when people get competitive about the wrong things. Like in that movie, when he was doing things that he didn't really want to do, it almost killed him. But then when he was doing things that could almost kill him, but he really wanted to do it, but it was almost like spiritual, like doing that tightrope walk with the full moon in the background. He is still dangerous, but there was like this peace in him. And I think about this all the time because Rick Rubin talks about this. You've talked about this. When we're doing something out of like love of craft, even if we're fucking pushing so hard, Cho talks about this. Like, it's like, it's not easy, but there's this kind of, I don't know what the word is for it, smoothness to the thing. Yeah. But then when it's competitive for the wrong reasons, it- Well, what are the wrong reasons? Well, for instance, Potter was a great climber and then started getting into other things. But when he had Alex Honnold coming up on his heels and Honnold was better than him, right? And he started getting competitive about this kid who was going to take away his legacy. He started making stupid mistakes. He started getting hurt. He started getting angry. His mental health got much worse. You know what I mean? I mean, Honnold's the last guy I would want coming up from my slot, right? Because he's so mechanical and methodical. You also, in that movie, I think Alex is fantastic. You also saw a different side of Alex when he was younger that doesn't seem to be there right now, at least not visibly, which was he was hyper competitive with the guys that he had grown up on. And he was like, I want that rock. I want that slot. And he says, he was a better climber. And so he wanted it before Potter. And so you can see when Potter's kind of like the dying lion in that field and trying to hold on, he starts doing stupid shit, like these tightrope walks in China that almost kill him. And he's breaking down in tears. There's no elation. At the beginning, he's doing things and it's like, yes, yes. Then he's just doing things and he's like, just happy he didn't die. Two very different ways of looking at the same pursuits. And so I think that movie is a far more interesting insight into human drive more generally than it is about this clearly manic rock climber. Yeah, the drive is an interesting thing because drive in its purest form actually replaces discipline. Like I was acutely aware of that when I was a kid because I was not disciplined at all. Really? I was a very undisciplined kid. I never cleaned my room. I never did my homework. I had very few rules growing up. I was quite feral. This was until what age? Until 15, until I started really training heavily in martial arts. And then when I got into martial arts, I still was not, I did not clean my room. I did not do my homework. I still, but in that one thing, I had insane drive and I worked so hard and I worked all day long every day. I never took a day off. And that was the difference. It was like, it was the drive that replaced discipline because I loved the thing that I was doing so much. I found so much interest in it and so much passion in it. And it just, it was so exciting to me to do that I just wanted to do it all the time. And so I didn't have to be disciplined. I knew there was work that had to be done to get better at it. But it was also, I was just intensely focused on getting better. So the work, like whether it's rounds on the heavy bag or practicing specific techniques or sparring drills or whatever the fuck I was doing, I wasn't doing it like going, okay, this is what I gotta do today. It was not that at all. It was just, I can't wait to do more of this. So rad. I was only, the only thing that stopped me was time and sleep. I would have tried to do it all day, every day. I was obsessed, but I wasn't disciplined. I had to get disciplined later on in life when I stopped competing in particular because then there was like this overwhelming, looming threat of physical harm if you don't stay in the gym constantly. If you're not like 100% ready, there's this possibility that you could zig when you should have zagged and you get a fucking shin to your head. There's a lot of terrifying thoughts that are involved in that that keep you training really hard. But I didn't have discipline. I didn't develop discipline until after I stopped competing. And then I realized like, well, I should just work out because I should work out and I should eat well because it's good for you and I should lift weights because it's probably good to be strong. And it was doing things because I know they had to be done rather than I was obsessed with doing them. I mean, I'm telling a just so story here, but there's also a part of me which says like, it's a mild bit of OCD, but thank goodness you didn't clean your room because what if you had OCD and you're like, I'm going to be the kid with the perfect room. And then I'm going to be the kid that washes my hands all the time. Then I'm going to be the kid that just is all about cleanliness. Like, I think, I do think that, you know. What is obsessive compulsive disorder versus being passionate about something? So here I can, there's a really important theme to OCD, like true OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder is characterized by the following. The more you engage in the behavior, the stronger the compulsion gets. And that's why it's so maddening for people with true clinical OCD. So for people that have a hand washing thing, they're like, oh, I have something on my hands. They go and wash it and it just makes them want to wash more and more and more. And you know, I'm not a big fan of SSRIs in many cases, but I will say if there's one place where SSRIs have really helped a great number of people not completely dissolve into a puddle of dysfunction, it's proper use of SSRIs for true clinical OCD. So OCD in that way, like washing the hands, what is the cause of that? Do we know? Well, we know, so there's a woman who was at NIH for a long time. She passed away this last year. Her name was Judith Rappaport, a real pioneer in this whole field and brain science more generally. And she found that there's an area of the brain called the basal ganglia. These are circuits that we all have that are involved in generating action, go and no go. You have two, basically you have an accelerator and a brake on action. And the basal ganglia have these, you know, it looks a lot like a gear system in a car when you really, you know, just, you know, draw it out. The people who have true clinical grade OCD have an enlargement for whatever reason of sub regions of this circuit. And they basically feel the impulse to do this thing all the time. Now, what is the thing? The thing is based largely on inputs from structures like the hypothalamus that are related to very primitive adaptive behaviors. Like, you know, getting infections out and getting, you know, dirt away is, you know, adaptive in a, when it's done in a healthy way. You know, there are all these people and there's actually a paper. I hate this paper, but it's a real paper that like watching zip popping, like stimulates dopamine. This is why people do this. I can't watch these things. It's like, you know, but people like- Shout out to Dr. Pimple Popper. There seems to be, someone sent me this paper. I'm like, oh God, this is gonna be like, and I look, I'm like, this paper, someone actually ran the study. And now this explains a lot of the internet, the stuff on the internet. There must be, there's a component in all of our brains that get some sort of satisfaction from the removal of infection, right? From relief from infection. And so this feeds into these basal ganglia circuits. For some people, it's compulsive water drinking. I mean, Anna Lemke of Dopamine Nation talks about a patient of hers that was basically addicted to water, compulsive water drinker. They actually died. It's very, very sad, like in all seriousness, like over ingestion of water in this woman. Yeah, it does kill people. I remember there was a lady who was doing a contest for the radio to get like an X-Box for her son, like how you can drink the most water. I think it's called hypernatremia or something like that. Could have that wrong. But the people who have OCD about germs often, germs are bad, but worrying that much about germs is obviously not good. So again, we're talking about primitive brain circuits and these circuits that can go awry. Some people, they just, for reasons we don't understand, they have overactive areas of the brain. Actually, I have a positive tale that you might like because it has to do with jujitsu, of which I do none, but I have a close childhood friend. His name is Eddie Chang. He's the chair of neurosurgery at UCSF. He's a brilliant guy, bioengineer. He's figuring out the speech system in the brain. He's a member of the National Academy. He's my friend since we were seven. And he's like this amazing physician. And he called me, very, very calm guy. And he called me and he said, he calls me Andy, which is unfortunate, but he goes, he knew me when I was a little kid. He goes, Andy, I've got a patient who wants you to come to the surgery. And I go, what are you gonna do? And he goes, well, he's got a tumor, but he's really into jujitsu. And he really admires like Joe and Choco. And you know, would you, do you think you'd come up? I was like, yeah, a chance to get to see my childhood friend do brain surgery. So I go there, I meet this guy. This guy has a tumor that needs removing from the frontal lobe. So- You're in there for the whole thing. Right up there, right up there. I mean, you know, so I'm in there and it's, they keep patients alive for this. So they locally- Awake. Awake, excuse me. Yeah. They definitely keep them alive. I love that you don't edit the show. So like, this proves why I misspeak some of it. He's definitely alive going in and coming out. He's alive today. I spoke to Eddie this morning and they basically remove, you know, they remove the skull, they go in and the way they decide what tissue to take out and what tissue to keep, because the tumor is, you know, is embedded in functional brain areas that are required for speech, for movement, et cetera. You can't just start scooping brain tissue out. And what I learned is that these tumors don't look different when you just look at the brain. They feel different to the instruments of the highly trained surgeon. So he's in there, Eddie's in there mapping, stimulating different areas of the brain while this guy is awake and reporting what he's feeling. Okay, his hands moving. And I'm going back and forth, talking to this guy, going back and forth and seeing the tumor getting removed little by little, put into a plate, goes off to biopsy. But this guy is awake the entire time. Incredible. And as they're doing this, because the patient agreed, they're mapping what areas of the brain are involved in mathematics. What areas, he's doing math problems while he's in this surgery, while this patient is doing this. He's also saying, oh, you know, I felt that in my toe or I felt that in my face. And so, you know, Eddie's getting these functional maps of the brain that we've never had before. And his lab has discovered incredible things about how speech and language are organized in the brain. He's taken people who have full locked-in syndrome, completely paralyzed, who could just blink to communicate. And that's it. This has been written up in the news. Had a patient, Poncho, who Eddie's figured out there are areas of the brain that prepare for speech, not just generate speech, created through AI and bioengineering, because he's also a bioengineer, of course. He created ways that this patient can now speak. And the first thing Poncho ever said was, hello. And you say, how are you doing? He said, doing well. And the AI is learning his speech patterns. It's taken what would normally be sent to the pharynx and larynx, right? Because after all, speech is just an exhale that's controlled by the pharynx and larynx and the tongue. And the AI gets better at understanding what this person wants to say. And now he's got patients literally, they're still in wheelchairs, right? Wheeling around with a iPad next to them of their face speaking according to what they're thinking. This patient who got the tumor removed is amazing. I asked Eddie this morning in case this happened to come up. How's he doing? He goes, great, I think. And we filmed all this, by the way. The team at UCSF did this. He'd like you to come to a jujitsu class. So we may put this out there. I think he's really into, he's 60s. From what I understand, he's serious. He like rolls like five or six days a week. He's like really into this. And he's now rolling jujitsu. This tumor, which would have killed him, is out. He's, yes, alive. He's thriving. And we hear a lot about the negative aspects of AI. But I asked Eddie, to what extent is AI critical for this kind of technology to evolve? And he's like, absolutely critical. Because it can take all these neural signals and figure out what the brain was doing exactly when the person said the word for, or the, or my name is blank and blank. You can't sink that many electrodes into the brain before you start destroying brain tissue. So you have to collect a lot of different signals and and AI is is greatly facilitating Our ability to decode what the brain is trying to do And I said so where else is this going to go and he said well This obviously is what elon wants to do with neural link and taking paralyzed people out of a paralyzed state It's like what's the intention to move? What does that look like neurally and then convert that into signals that maybe it's prosthetics Maybe it's actual muscles and nerves can respond to accurately there's so the takeaway here is that like We hear a lot about the bad stories of medicine the stuff that's on the edge and we still need to figure out like the psychedelic stuff and but I I have to say With respect to ai in medicine. I am super super excited about People walking again seeing again I mean this stuff is starting to happen having brain tumors removed that do not encroach on areas of the brain that are critical I said if you were a quarter centimeter or less Into this other margin where you recorded that the guy says oh, yeah my hand I felt in my hand if you were to nick That he's like he'd completely lose a hand function Now mind you he's one of the best surgeons in the world. I'll go on record saying that he is like May you never need his help? In fact, there's one of our public facing Health colleagues i'll tell you this because he uh, he's been public about it Uh who got a stem cell injection into the disc down in mexico and it got infected I've heard of people doing things like that and was paralyzed and was in a hospital here in texas Okay, this is no, you know, i'm not casting any judgment on texas But what happened was they didn't realize that he had a egg shaped egg sized infection there Okay, so there was this surgery had gone awry got an infection and He was paralyzed and they said they were gonna have to sever the spinal cord to get this infection out when they finally discovered it I contacted eddie and I said listen Here's what's going on. He said get me in touch with his doctor get me his charts He was airlifted to ucsf and it wasn't eddie that did the surgery But it was someone in his department that removed this egg-sized infection and eddie called me from the surgery Okay, and he said we're triple masked in here and I can smell the infection It turns out that bacteria had never been identified in the in the united states So there are bacteria that exist in other places that we're just not exposed to that frequently So it was very virulent in this case They got the infection out. So this was just like a clinic with a dirty needle. This was a bad clinic with a bad practice of some sort Oh, they screwed up some some someone screwed up along the way. Okay? and This this guy happens to the patient happens to be a physician in this case This guy is walking talking exercising. How's his back great The injection helped. Oh, I don't know. No, so I asked so, you know, so what what I said What was it that allowed you guys to do this? That you know another clinic might not have been able to do, you know Because I like you i'm very interested in what makes for good doctors versus so-so doctors versus lousy doctors versus superb doctors And he said it's two pieces. It's The training and the skill of the physician obviously their willingness to constantly update their models with new understanding of what's out there new technologies and it's also these Incredible bioengineering and ai technologies that can make estimates about where the margins of error are in real time Because you know when you think about the brain you get an mri you see, okay There's the tumor we're going to go out and scoop it out. But i've seen this now this close and In three dimensions, it's a completely different picture like you're he's scooping out this this tumor He's probing around the tumor and then i'm like is it done and he's like no it's interdigitated Meaning it's vesseled into other brain structures. We have to go after that stuff I said, what are the margins of error? He said, you know less than a millimeter in some cases But and you're by hand they're picking out tumor little by little by little to try and ensure it doesn't come back and sparing function Incredible and ai is updating based on every micro movement of the head that might occur because you know The person's bolted in basically they got no stereotypes bolted to the table Literally can't move your head the guy can speak but he can't move his head But they're little micro movements because the brain is pulsing This episode is sponsored by better help if you've thought about trying therapy With our long-term partner better help insurance options may now be available nationwide with an average copay for eligible members Of just 23 per session and with world mental health day on the 10th Now is the perfect time to give it a try. In fact Don't even wait until the 10th because all that stress you feel it's not waiting around So instead of letting it build up sign up for a therapy session and unload at any time Not just on world mental health day If you've been waiting to start therapy better help works with more than 125 health plan networks And eligible members have an average copay of just 23 per session with insurance Don't have insurance or live outside of the united states You can still get 10 off your first month visit better help.com to explore your payment options That's better help.com This episode is brought to you by traeger food cooked over real wood Is just on another level and that's why traeger is such a game changer their grills run on real hardwood pellets So everything gets that legit wood-fired flavor whether you're grilling steaks Smoking ribs cooking chicken or even baking a pizza You just set your temperature put your food in and let traeger handle the rest It's simple if you like food that tastes like it came off a real fire without all the work check out traeger grills So this is happening in real time. So the cool thing is Yeah, this video will release to the internet. I think the patient will agree to the surgery the whole thing The patient the patient has been very willing to do Yeah, this guy is a true medical science stud. He's uh, I and he's an awesome family man and friend and he's just uh He's a hero of science in my opinion. So what are they using like tiny little scalp? So here actually is a technology he's using to record from and stimulate the brain if you put in Um, jamie if you go to well, what is that? Is that like inside the head that yeah ways to stimulate the brain It's called the bravo mesh Yeah, it's like a mesh that will stimulate certain brain tissue It will also record if you put in a poncho paralyzed eddie chang. I did I got the There we go here from new york times. What was That mesh that stimulates the brain What was that installed for to stimulate the areas of the brain that can help us facilitate recovery? Of what tissue is still there? whoa, because Eddie came up through a lab By the a guy by the name of mike merzenich And I actually talk about this in the book in the chapter on learning, you know until the early 90s People thought you couldn't learn after age 25 that there was no plasticity into the early 90s. Yeah, and then Basically three guys. It was mike merzenich a guy named michael. Kilgard who's down in dallas or maybe it's houston. He's here in texas and And a guy named greg reckonzone who is this brilliant scientist? They did these studies at first in monkeys and then in humans which showed That if you take adult monkeys or humans and you have them pay really careful attention to a task That the brain changes and that the experiment is very simple. It's like this so they had monkeys or a human can do this Feel a little like a rotating drum and the drums got bumps on it like braille Okay, and the recording from an area of the brain that responds to touch and the monkey's job is to to basically press a lever Anytime the bumps go from coarse to more fine. So I think big bumps small bumps The monkey plays this game and every time they get it, right They get some juice monkeys like juice press the lever press the lever press the lever. These are adult monkeys. They come back sometime later and The brain area representing the fingers has expanded It's the brain has changed. There's plasticity it learned But what I didn't tell you is at the same time they're doing these experiments. There's a sound in the room Okay, now they do a different experiment Where the monkey is still feeling the bumps But the monkey is trained to listen to changes in the sound subtle changes in the frequency of the sound high to low or low To high and if they get that right They press if they press they think they went from high to low and that's the task They press the lever or they pull the joystick and they get some juice Under those conditions the area of the brain responsible for hearing changes Now the key thing here is the experience is the same in both cases They're hearing and touching in both experiments But the key difference is what they're paying attention to the brain of the adult does not change just because of passive experience the brain of the adult and this is true in humans to changes because of what you attend to and When we start talking about neuroplasticity and learning everyone would like to think oh my brain is different at the end of this conversation than before You don't learn from passive experience you learn from focusing And the friction that's accompanying trying to do things right and sometimes getting it wrong The error signal is what instructs the brain to change. I'm sure you know this from martial arts I'm sure you know this from other areas of life, too. If your brain Can do something there's no reason for it to change. No rewiring is needed, right? But if you're trying to do this, I don't know martial arts Well, I mean I did a little bit of Thai boxing when I was younger I boxed in my 30s, which was really dumb by the way as a neuroscience professor I'd spar on Wednesday nights in San Diego where you got all these Marines and all these like team guys It was so dumb. I'd come home like all busted up my girlfriend was like, what are you doing? I was like, you know, I like it She's like you don't get paid to do this, you know But it was a lot of fun like you learn I think you learn a lot from spa I wish it wasn't bad for your brain. I wish it wasn't bad for your brain. I will say this I'm, not encouraging anyone to box, you know, unless they really want to but I also learned a lot about how to stay calm when you're getting Your ass beat and how to think clearly and it's also I think sam, uh, who's the guy who wrote a fighter's heart? I love that book sam shepherd sam shepherd He also talks about like it's like an intimate thing to spar with somebody like what does he say? He's like you're sharing bodily fluids with somebody. It's like a one-night stand Yeah, it's not like you you develop a closeness with the people that you spar with a respect and I wasn't fast enough I don't think my timing was really good I eventually learned that i'm my I have a long reach that could help me But I realized I can't be doing this not as a neuroscience professor, but I really enjoyed it It's not something that you really get excellent at if you learn late in life, unfortunately, unless you're a very unusual athlete Yeah, most people who get good at striking striking in particular. They start out very young. Yeah, and that's how they get good at it There's a level that they reach that someone who starts out late in life. Even if you're a good athlete You probably never reach that level. Yeah, like it was like mayweather perfect example, man. He's there's something about him He's he's you know, one of the greatest of all time But I think there's something to the fact that he started when he was really really really really young and he had a dad Who was a world-class boxer and he had an uncle who was a world champion boxer It's like he was around it from the time he was young. So there's like pathways that they develop and their body their body develops and grows while striking and there's something about the Maturation process of the but this is like just my anecdotal experience from watching people learn striking It seems like the people that are really elite at it They grew up with their bodies as their bodies were maturing. They were learning it And then it seems like there's a there's a fuck it. There's a something that they have that you don't get Yeah later in life. You can get really good if you're a good athlete learning it late in life You're never gonna get best of ever world champion status like you have to have a super long Journey, and that's to start when you're a fucking kid. So it's like your brain has to be evolving learning those skills learning timing and distance and fainting and how people react and how to Map out potential reactions from certain how to lure them into things It's too much. Yeah, I I learned a lot boxing. I mean at least three things one is um that uh Landing like like sinking like a like a one two combination feels really good. It feels real good I also learned it's hard to do. It's hard to do I also learned that there's this thing called a really good counter puncher where you land a jab and you eat four Yeah, and you're just like and the world's just spinning you're seeing stars. I also realized that six-pack abs don't mean shit You're down near the mexican border like it's something the gym I trained out was like pretty far south in san diego and some guys would roll in and like You wouldn't think much of them like they like unpeel they like because everyone would spar on wednesdays, you know And um, they try and match people up by weight and you see guys that did not look in shape who could move and you just Get battered. I mean they're just if they know how to move properly So that was a good teaching then the last thing that like I really took away and I think about this on the internet too Is there's always like one guy in the gym who moves really well on the bag Who's like speed bag and heavy bag and just looks so crisp super in shape and they never spar and they sit like at the edge of the ring and they give all sorts of advice about what you're supposed to do when you're In there and then if you go and I finally did because in skateboarding I wasn't that good of a skateboarder, but I'd be like Like come on like drop in like let's go like let's have fun. Like skateboard is a very inviting sport It's not like surfing. We're like guarding the waves, right? And I was like, come on in. Oh, no, am I sure like every week? I'd be like, hey, come on Like let's just like do a couple rounds like you always have advice for everybody Let's do a couple never did and finally the guy that owns the gym came over and goes that guy's never boxed around in his life You know, he probably did when he was a kid. He ate a few punches and like he didn't like it But looks really mint and so, you know, there's like the internet people like Quick to criticize but like all right like get in there and do like you come out here and let's play You know and so I have to be careful You have to be careful with that one because the guy could have gone in there taking my head off but I was realized I was like there are a lot of people that hang out what they call like the skirt like hang out on The skirt and just give advice all day like don't corkscrew your jab corkscrew. I'm like, who are these people? you know like if you so it's It's kind of nice actually to to get that experience. I mean it was late in in life I mean I talk a little bit in the book when I was younger I definitely got into a lot of scraps. I was kind of like a live wire. I do not recommend Um, no fighting's terrible, but there's something about martial arts about the fear and learning how to stay calm While you're sparring I think jiu-jitsu is the best one because he although there's always a risk of injury in jiu-jitsu Um, you're not getting hit all the time. And so you could go pretty hard and that's the difference really between martial arts sparring like kickboxing and things along those lines and boxing and and jiu-jitsu because in jiu-jitsu As many times if you're training in a really good gym with really good guys You're going full clip and both you and him are going full clip and there's no animosity They might be one of your best friends. You guys are just doing the things You do full clip but by doing it full clip because if he catches you like he gets your arm You just tap and then you go again as long as your ego is healthy as long as you understand what you're doing and knowing and he's not Ranking on your knees and ripping your knees apart with heel hooks and stuff like like letting someone tap As long as you do that, you're literally going full clip So you learn how to stay calm and you also get very comfortable with going full clip So if you're in a situation If you're a guy who only does point karate sparring and you're just touching each other and they stop and touch you and then you're in some wild melee at a bar where someone's swinging at you full blast and throwing wild haymaker punches and You're panicking because you're not used to this scenario a jiu-jitsu person is used to someone going full blast So they'll grab a hold you and it'll be just routine They'll just drag you to the ground trip you get on top mount choke you whatever the fuck they want to do Essentially once they get a hold of you, they do it all the time full blast That's why I think it's the superior martial art for self-defense because you're if you're gonna really learn how to fight like striking You're gonna get hit and you're gonna get hit a lot and you're gonna be hitting people a lot and you're gonna be going to War with each other and it's fucking dangerous and it's really bad for your brain And that's really the only way to learn how to be calm when you're actually sparring or actually fighting someone But with jiu-jitsu, there's all that fear of brain damage removed all the fear of like really serious injury is Greatly mitigated by tapping and good training partners. I need to get into it I mean such a fun thing to learn to man. It's why we talk about boxing. It's like that, you know, I Think combat if to some people it just feels good. There's a circuit there There's actually a friend of mine who's got a lab up at the University of Washington and he studies This brain circuit, you know that my male mice will work hard for the opportunity to fight other mice You know, we always hear like oh they just want pleasure No pain like male mice have a circuit and they will work their asses off figuring out puzzles that were Perplexed like 30% of the adult population Across the world and these mice can figure it out and it's hard work for them to figure out these light sequences or lever-pressed Sequences for what not for a piece of food not for water when they're thirsty not for like methamphetamine But to fight another mouse and then they're like, it's they love fighting. That's crazy. There's dopamine. I knew that. Oh, yeah They'll work hard. Oh, yeah, the reward is they get to fight a mouse. Yeah. I mean the mouse fight another mouse Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's crazy. Yeah, I think it's I think it again It's these deeper brain circuits that we all harbor and I think some people are like, oh, no, that's not even within me I think you know, it varies. I mean my dad is from South America He went to like a boarding military type school when he was a kid He said everyone had to box was a boy school It was all dudes. They all had to box everyone had to box and they'd make them spar I was like box like, you know, like boxing drills He's like no they'd like pit us against each other until you'd find the kind of combination of people that were about equal and then They just like put you to work on each other The idea was you were supposed to he's you know Both learn the gentlemanly aspects about your touch gloves and the things afterwards you have to like, you know So there's that he's like no But you were supposed to try and stay calm in the in getting you know While trying to beat up the other person then beat you up. I think there's value in it There's value in it and there's value and just what we were talking about earlier about doing difficult things I think it is one of the most difficult things you could choose to do That you can Voluntarily sign yourself up for a place where you're gonna experience pain and in severe discomfort and a very perplexing puzzle trying to figure out a hit someone who doesn't want to get hit and they're trying to hit you and you try not to Get it or you know get tapped or whatever whatever Wrestle, whatever whatever you're doing It's a very difficult thing to do and those very difficult things to do make the rest of your life easier It's like we were talking about Getting shit for cold punches I don't know if I get shit for talking about cold punches But anybody who doesn't think you should cold punch hasn't cold punched the people that do it and the people that say don't do it They just they're coming up with excuses because it's fucking terrifying and nobody likes it. It sucks Well, there's this but what I was gonna get to is it's not a cure. There's no cure There's a bunch of different excellent practices And if you stack those up throughout your day diet nutrition sunlight exercise all these different things cold plunge sauna Your life's gonna be better way and I think a thing like martial arts Particularly jiu-jitsu is a great addition to that and if you don't like that yoga is another great addition There's one of the best things that we uh, we did a sober October challenge where we did 15 days of yoga and hot yoga Yeah, 90 minute sessions was Burt doing this too. Yeah, we all did it. We did it together It was one of the best months I've ever had in my life because you just feel so good and so calm and the rest Of your life is easier fucking hot yoga is a bitch, man It's really hard to do those 90 minute sessions are fucking hard and when it's over you are Spent and you become the nicest person on earth totally and the rest of your day is so much easier Than that last 15 minutes of struggle Sweating like you like it's pouring rain outside. I mean, it's crazy how hard it is to do those 90 minutes if you're doing them, right? You need a bunch of those things in your life you do if you don't you're gonna suffer It's like there's a balancing act that you have to acknowledge It's interesting how the two things that really seem to you know catch Fire out there where you the idea that cold plunges block hypertrophy and strength adaptations If done in the six hours after weight training, but you can do it before Tremendous benefit I think is mental training and then the other one was the cortisol thing, you know this idea like oh it raises cortisol the data all say It does not raise cortisol marginally, maybe but mostly reduces cortisol and buffers your cortisol response to stress and I think in the women's fitness community. This was especially Kind of catchy people thought Oh cortisol bad cortisol bad I mean the entire book could be summarized as get your morning cortisol high and your nighttime cortisol low and your life's gonna be a hundred times better why because When you view bright light drink caffeine exercise do cold exposure in the morning and your cortisol spikes It ensures that your nighttime cortisol is low Which means it's easier to fall asleep and if you have any stress during the middle of the day This is I think explains your whole thing of doing hard things makes life easier When you spike your cortisol in the morning if you have a stressful interaction or something happens during the day You do get an increase in adrenaline and cortisol to stress But it's brief if you don't it's very big and it's very prolonged So all these people they're like chronically stressed the state of the world look the state of the world is complicated But they're constantly feeling oppressed by life overwhelmed by life If they were to do a couple things in the morning view bright light ideally from sunlight. I've talked about these things before Cold shower or cold plunge 30 seconds, right just uncomfortably cold then get out Exercise of some sort that's high intensity interval training or lifts and weights that are heavy for them that kind of thing for 45 minutes to an hour for the weights, maybe just even 10 minutes for the high intensity stuff and Head into the day bouts of stress will happen, but your hormonal response to them will be Severely blunted there's so much data on this and people always say but is that just true for men? No, it's also true for women. And so people are weak because Their cortisol levels are too low in the morning and they're too high all day long then at night They're like, oh, I can't sleep. I'm stressed and this and that well You've set yourself up to be a vulnerable creature in the last third of your day So that first hour of the day sets the whole stage and if you can't exercise in that first hour fine You do in the afternoon no big deal But if we just understood that cortisol spiked in the morning is perhaps the best thing we can do for our health I think the world will be so much better off But everyone's like I already am too stressed and cortisol is gonna make me retain fat. It's like no no Excuses people love excuses excuses why not take action or that's one of the greatest things that people indulge in This episode is brought to you by visible as fall hits We enter another season of change time to shift gears drop the dead weight and upgrade the wardrobe for the drop in temperature But one thing that doesn't need to change your phone the smartest upgrade this season isn't a new phone It's a better wireless plan switch to visible the ultimate wireless hack You get unlimited 5g data and unlimited hotspot powered by Verizon for just $25 a month that means keeping the phone you already have ditching your overpriced phone bill and Pocketing some savings for yourself all the perks of big wireless for half the cost switch today at visible Calm the visible plan starts at just $25 a month or get the premium Visible plus pro plan and save $10 on your first month with promo code Rogan terms apply see visible calm for plan features and network management details This episode is brought to you by the farmers dog Here's a fun fact research shows that dogs who maintain a healthy weight can live up to two and a half years longer on Average than dogs who are overweight Isn't that wild and also kind of obvious at the same time? 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I just want to make sure I do that which is What you focus on? You can change you can learn skills if you focus and the agitation that you feel when trying to learn That is the reflection of the cocktail of neuromodulators in the brain and body that allow the circuits to change I wish I had been told this in like the third grade if they said hey when you're trying to learn something and it's easy Great, but when you're trying to learn something and it's high friction like you can't do it that frustration Is the first gate of learning opening and right on the other side of that is? You continuing to try a little bit more you have to do this through genuine attempts to learn but you get some errors So you can't just do throwaway errors, right? If I'm trying to learn billiards, which I'm only modestly poor at right if I'm trying to get better And I'm just like hitting the ball wherever you don't learn obviously, but if I'm trying and trying the error signal Sends a message to the brain that generates this agitation the agitation Tags the the neurons it literally puts a chemical tag on these neurons tonight when you sleep you need to change That's what agitation does and then when you get to sleep at night those circuits change And then you come back a few days later, and you might not have the skill, but you're a little bit closer Doesn't that make sense like that's neuroplasticity particularly in martial arts the the kids when you see kids the kids you get really frustrated when they Don't learn and it really frustrated, and they get real upset if they get tapped they usually wind up getting really good Interesting yeah, the more the ones are like very emotionally attached as long as they can control it you know But there's there has to be Like you can't go well. You got me. It's it's got to be fuck right fuck and then harnessing Yeah, and then pulling back and like okay this next one in this right stay calm But that fuck even if you don't express it outright that fuck thought in your head is always going to be there That that error signal and I go into the brain circuitry that's responsible for this and which neurochemicals it is and on and on but That signal is what gates neuroplasticity one of the reasons why psychedelics are so effective in allowing Plasticity because they are I want to just be very blunt about this the massive increases in serotonin with psilocybin The massive increases in serotonin and dopamine it with MDMA because that's kind of the hallmark of MDMA It's very unique drug it increases dopamine and serotonin together normally They're on a bit of a seesaw, but they increases both Those are what do we call neuromodulators they make the brain more amenable to plasticity during the session and in the weeks that follow So what are these neuromodulators? Well dopamine serotonin acetylcholine norepinephrine epinephrine also called adrenaline you go, okay Well, that's a big list of molecules the key discovery of those guys merzenich reckons own and kill guard that I mentioned earlier You can give an animal or a person any Molecule that will increase those give them a learning session and they'll learn better it's not specific to one neuromodulator and If you give somebody propranolol a drug that blocks the receptors that adrenaline binds to after learning They won't learn as well They you can't remember stuff why because there wasn't enough adrenaline if you want to remember something you need that frustration You need the adrenaline so if someone's like fearful of learning something and they take Some sort of a beta blocker blocks learning Great data on this Larry Cahill and James McGaugh if people want to look it up beautiful literature And they cite studies that these are more historical references where they would give kids People would give kids lessons And then throw them into a cold river to spike their adrenaline like people have been playing with this stuff for a very long time Yeah, so nicotine for instance people think is a cognitive enhancer it is if you don't do it all the time every day But if you you know I talk about nicotine, and it's you know it's pretty habit-forming, but if you Take it before or after learning something even after right Before during or after learning something and you're not Highly saturated with nicotine already. Yeah, you'll you'll enhance your ability to learn that thing The problem is people are just popping them all day long every day just to get to baseline like we're fun We drink caffeine to get to baseline we take nicotine to get to baseline are you on the nicotine I take them but I wanted to ask you this about addiction About is there a biological component to addiction? And one of the reasons why I ask is I because I I take these Tucker Carlson sends me these Alps I like these they taste different than the other ones. I think I've tried athletic nicotine zin I've not I like athletic nicotine. That's probably my favorite like the threes because it's mild Yeah, the little three milligrams. My point is I do it all the time and I take them before shows I like to suck on them before I go on stage But when I'm on vacation for ten days, I didn't bring any on purpose So I was like, let's see what this is like nothing And I've heard so many people say that they they have horrible cravings. They can't tolerate it. They go nuts They just needed they need nicotine and I'm sitting there like on day two like wait for it to come on Nope, nothing. I just I'm not on nicotine. I mean you're a bit of a mutant, too I don't know what it is like I mean just cuz you're so it sounds to me like you're so familiar with discomfort You may not even register that like a mild tiny bit of withdrawal, but it is interesting, you know Because if I don't drink caffeine, like life is a lot less interesting to me and I've been doing it I've been doing in a shit ton of caffeine. I mean, I've got a picture of my I'm half Argentine So there's a picture of me on my grandfather's lap drinking mate from a gourd when I'm like three years old in my spider-man pajamas You know, I people on the internet they go I I don't believe I probably drink 800 milligrams of caffeine a day and I'm fine But if I don't drink caffeine, I'm just like oh man I I'm I don't know if I'm addicted in the classic sense. Like I'm not gonna go rob old ladies to get caffeine I'm not I'm not uh, you know, I'm not, you know gonna harm myself with it if anything it shows that it can offset dementia I mean the new data basically say up to about 400 milligrams per day Caffeine is great. Mmm for the brain for the body, you know, it's people have anxiety it can be problematic, but you just might not have I Mean you may just naturally make a lot of acetylcholine. And so when you don't take nicotine, maybe you just rebound really fast I don't know if that's it I mean, I do take nootropics that might have an effect on it Oh, definitely, but I didn't bring any with me when I was on vacation Amazing I just brought vitamins no cigars. Nope. No cigars. No, no vacation. It was fun. Yeah, I enjoyed it Yes family vacation But the point is I was waiting for this thing that everybody told me was coming and it never showed up at all There was a zero. I mean, it wasn't hard. It wasn't a thing It was just I'm not gonna do right and I do sometimes during the day like I'll wake up in the morning and say I'm not gonna eat him today. I'm not gonna take any nicotine power But I always wonder like is it just I got lucky like some people they literally cannot drink alcoholism is in their genetics They have families that are alcoholics. That's a real thing and they just can't handle it Yeah, I mean the guys who started a talked about an allergy They were described as like an allergy like some people when they drink alcohol their their first experience I had a friend like this from childhood became an alcoholic not surprisingly and when he drank the first or second time He was like, this is how I'm meant to feel. Oh boy. Like if he felt like it completed something in him I don't feel that way with alcohol. I don't drink but I could without problems, you know You're sort of on off now, right? Like the original drink. I don't get drunk anymore I'll have a drink or two, but I don't get drunk anymore. I think that was the gang drunk. No, no When I took the eight months off, I didn't even miss alcohol But then I went to dinner had a margarita. I was like, oh I missed this. This is fun Yeah, that's nice but the key is like I just wanted to take some time off and just not feel like shit because my problem was I was Stacking too many days where I was having a drink or two on the podcast And then I was having a drink or two at the club and then you know You do multiple days of that and you feel like shit and it was like affecting my workouts And I said, this is stupid. Yeah, let me see up and I didn't miss it at all But when I did have a drink or two, I'm like, okay. I see there is a benefit from Social lubricant aspect there's a funness to a glass of wine or you know, sure a glass of whiskey but the thing is just Understand what you're doing and don't fuck your body up and try to do your best take a lot of glutathione mitigate whatever you're doing to your body by actually consuming alcohol and More likely you don't need as much as you're gonna drink That's the problem but to have a good time a couple drinks. You have a good time five six drinks It's not really a good time anymore. You're kind of fucking plastered and you sound stupid and nowadays, you know with cameras and stuff Yeah, people say stupid stuff I mean I drank in college and and I drank after a bit and I just drank less and less but You know when I was a junior professor my girlfriend at the time like she just had the genetics where she could have a couple Drinks in it and really enjoy it. Just I really enjoy it. And I mean, I think some people can do that So, okay That would cause someone to be like severely addicted to nicotine another one that I hear about all the time is kratom We had a guy who came and did the podcast and someone had sent us some kratom one of our guests like had a kratom Company, so I'm like and it was just laying around the kitchen and he goes you're not taking that Are you I go now some guy just sent it to me and he goes Get rid of that shit. He goes it is the fucking hardest thing to kick. I go really he goes. Yeah, I'm on it It's horrible. He goes it's an awful high and he goes on and I'm fucking I'm really struggling to get off of it And I was I was kind of stunned. I was like, well, I've taken it before and it didn't seem like It would be that thing like a thing that would make you addicted, but apparently It's like any other opioid like you can get like fully wrapped up in that stuff So but what is it about some people in their biology that makes them more susceptible to whether it's nicotine? Or caffeine or whatever it is. It's going to Undoubtedly have to do with the genetics that line up the receptors in the brain that lead some people to have a very different experience With one substance versus another for instance There's a subset of people about 8% of people that when they drink alcohol they experience a much more euphoric High from it. These people tend to recover very easily the next morning. It's that's independent of tolerance It tends to run in families These people are very high susceptibility to like severe alcohol use disorder what we you and I know is alcoholism There are people who take their first drink as I mentioned before just like this completes me, right? And those people usually have a certain genetic background, you know, I want to talk about this, but there's certain genetic backgrounds They probably have high levels of the enzyme that that can digest alcohol, right? You know can break down alcohol because it is a poison But if you're if you're breaking it down more quickly Maybe it's not impacting your microbiome and your sleep quite as much and so you can drink a lot more and sleep fine and do Fine and it varies by age to you know Two glasses of wine at 60 feels very different at two glasses wine at like, you know at 25 as most people will tell you Right, we're just different resilience In general what the data say is that kids who took their first drink? Really young like 12 13 14 are have it are greatly predisposed to alcoholism later But it's hard to dissociate that from this environmental circumstances around that. Why are they drinking at 12 or 13, you know? I think I took my first drink of alcohol I'm not proud of this at 11 a friend. I won't mention his name went to his house and he goes Hey, you know my dad's got some I think was like wine cooler or something and we were and we we drank him and we got you know, we got drunk and I was I was a bad kid, but we got drunk and But the earlier you drink the more susceptible you are to alcoholism, but I never became an alcoholic But I will tell you that my love of caffeine my love of energy focus and that sort of thing Makes me like about half the population who are probably have a decent susceptibility to stimulants. I've never done cocaine I've never done speed. I've never done Adderall or Vyvanse. We could talk about stimulants and in the book I talked about Some of the newer stimulants that are still amphetamine like but a little bit potentially safer Do you do anything like modafinil? I don't I took one modafinil couldn't sleep for two days I'm very very sensitive to these things There is a drug that's approved for excessive daytime sleepiness that I took on a trip where I was Underslept and I needed to work. I'm called soon. Ozzie. It's a that's now in phase three for Mild attention deficit and I've taken that and I I don't use it often, but I find that it it Really dials in focus and energy in a way that still allows sleep and it for me was much Gentler and felt better than than modafinil or armada for me the best thing that I've ever Discovered for mitigating that feeling of being groggy with sleep deprivation is creatine That definitely helps the the data on creatine for strength are there the data for creatine on enhancing cognition when Mildly sleep-deprived are there that's really where the powerful that you can feel it. It is definitely It's a fuel for the phosphor creatine system for the forebrain the part of your brain that's involved in strategy setting etc I would say about half and these are broad numbers, right? You know These aren't you know from one study that the real expert on all this by the way is my colleague Keith Humphries at Stanford and we could talk about some of the interesting things that he's found but They about half the population seems to like sedatives. They like Vicodin. They like opioids I had a tooth surgery a long time ago. They gave me Vicodin. I took half of one I never wanted that experience again, you know, but I know people who are like, thank you that they love like it They love being sedated. They like Being sedated they like being brought down a bit in terms of arousal Some people like being ramped up and I think you one needs to be aware of their genetics and their predisposition for one or the other some people like both but generally people fall into one or the other category and I think now that Many more people are avoiding alcohol the ones who say oh, yeah, it's easy and I never liked it people like me I think they're probably more of the you know, they like stimulants. They like caffeine. They like nicotine They like being up and alert that you don't even need a substance for that. So Some people like both but I think people generally been into these categories you asked about kratom So the world expert on this is an amazing guy. He was on my podcast. His name is Chris McCurdy He's a professor down in Florida and man. He has the best take on this So the crew the world the community online Around kratom is very split. If you put out something about kratom half of people will say this stuff is evil. It's opioids This is like oxycontin get out of here. The other half will say this stuff saved me, right? So you go like what's going on? And whenever I see that I go there's some interesting biology here, right? There's a sociology there. But as a biologist, I'm like, what's the biology? So I brought Chris on he said here's the deal in America Pharma companies develop drugs based on Bioprospecting peptides are a different story and we can talk about that Bioprospecting is finding alkaloids and other substances in plants Purifying the substance the alkaloid that gives a specific effect and developing a drug cocaine it comes from the coca plant obviously from the coca leaf and He said the experience of chewing coca leaf is very different than the experience of cocaine The experience of the I'm gonna call it kratom because I know there's another way to pronounce it But I just feel weird saying it like was the other way kratom or something like that, but you know the kratom leaf He said when people chew the kratom leaf, but the leaf they feel a calm but also energized It's how you and I would think of like a strong coffee or a year, right? But what's happened in this country is that companies have synthesized? pure Kratom they've taken one of the compounds in the kratom leaf and they've Isolated it and now they've made it synthetically and that leads to a very different experience and addiction potential And it's so it's incredible because he said you know the the most protected building in the entire United States These are his words not mine is The coca-cola factory why he said well, you know years ago They had new coke and they took out the the the flavor that they get all this They still get all this coca leaf sent to this factory in the United States It's still going there and then they extract the components that they need to Put it into coca-cola to this day this happened today, and then we drink coca-cola So I'm like there so there's and they use the cocaine they get from it for medical cocaine use that it is it is Cocaine is approved. It's not schedule one. That's right. It's scheduled to as a As an anesthetic, that's right, so Chris really nails it right like so many things in science and medicine We're saying create them good create them bad turns out It's the synthetic kratom product that is bad highly addictive so when you have those drinks like what is it live free? Aren't those is that is that the kratom synthetic or is that no plant? I think it's the plant derived Isolated kratom, which is somewhere in between the two, but this is but if you think you and I would both say okay like kids Taking cocaine not good But what Chris would say the the coca leaf actually is a very interesting leaf that actually has some Some could be a He'll talk about this is like it could be an interesting stimulant compound for people you probably love it But people look it's the same thing with THC. You know like people will say oh You know let's just get the highest dose of THC into an edible and then people are they're eating it too fast They don't know how to gauge their plane of high And then we hear about certain people having psychosis and this kind of thing well What happened right when you and I were growing up look? I mean where I grew up everyone learned how to smoke a joint and take a bong rip I'm not Suggesting anyone do this, but you knew if you could handle one or a half you learn the hard way exactly you learn the hard Way I found I didn't like cannabis But what you didn't do was eat half of a cookie that had 200 milligrams of THC and find yourself in a psychotic episode and So nowadays there's when we isolate things and we enrich them and we take them in that isolated form That's when they get really precarious Yeah, so that's the story and by the way I know people are always coming on here and telling you you should talk to so-and-so If you want to talk to someone highly educated on all these compounds Bioprospecting pharma versus plant medicine and all of this Chris McCurdy is your man He is like I'm paraphrasing here But he's a savant of this stuff and he comes in with no judgment And so he'll say the leaf products are very different than the isolated the isolated are very different than the isolated Synthetic products and that therein is where the you know The legislature needs to look because in this country as you know We go like all drugs bad or and then we go. Oh wait There's these incredible compounds in plants that we we want right that was a parallel and refined sugar, right? Exactly. Yeah, let's figure out in food What makes it so rewarding that people just desperately want to buy more even though they don't even really like the taste of it Right, let's and let's make it in a way that never is in nature unattached to fiber unattached to nutrients. Usually if you get sugar in nature, it's in an orange. That's right. It's good for you. It's like a trick to get you to eat the orange. It's business and it's diabolical. And then we always end up about five or six years down the road and go, oh, we got all these problems. But what's interesting is I didn't realize that pharma companies bioprospect from the jungle. They still send people to the jungle. We always think of the jungle as like this place that only shamans go, right? But no, American and Swiss and German companies send bioprospectors down there to isolate compounds from plants with the understanding there are all these medicines there, but we don't hear about all the others. The interesting thing about peptides is that this is the first time that we are bioprospecting from the body. These are things that the body makes. And I can't take credit for that understanding. That's really that distinction, which I think is a key one for people to understand is Dr. Abboud Bakri, this MD who you and I are familiar with, who, in my mind, just really understands the biology of peptides. And because he's a practicing physician outside of peptide biology, I think he's an intensive care guy or critical care. He he can kind of see the picture now. Yes, insulin's a peptide. It came from the body. But all these peptides now pharma companies are like, what is the body making? Like in the case of G.L.P.'s, when you increase G.L.P.'s twofold, twofold, fourfold, you can see some relief from type two diabetes, some but not much weight loss that had been happening for a decade. But when you increase it a thousandfold, wow, people don't want to eat. People think, OK, we could talk about the ramifications of that. But pharma companies are now thinking very seriously about finding all the peptides in the body and which ones are going to be potent for. There's a new one for increasing bone density for osteoporosis. And then all the people are thinking about biohacking with this as well. There's pineal on which I'll occasionally take and you get three hours of REM sleep that night. And on subsequent nights, your REM sleep is enriched. Interesting. You know, we all we know G.L.P.'s obviously BPC one five seven is the one everyone seems to kind of go to. But I think that there are a lot of interesting peptides that we've known about for a long time, like Kispeptin, which is involved in resetting the reproductive system. It's involved in puberty, but it's being used to reset the reproductive system. All these peptides. I think the next few years it's going to be a bonanza of peptides. And I get shit for saying it, but I'm super excited because my physician friends who are super standard physicians, they're calling me like, hey, man, my knee is this BPC one five seven stuff going to work. And I go, I don't know, you can try it. I know some clean sources of it. And then they'll come back a week later and like, why isn't anyone selling this, studying it, talking about this? And I'm like, well, they are. But your community doesn't like to talk about this. Well, there's a lot of people that dismiss it. And the way they dismiss it is very it's very gaslighting. They they're they're bullshitting you that all these anecdotal stories aren't significant, that all these professional athletes that using it or that are using it with great benefit don't know what they're talking about. It's threatening to them. I mean, they I mean, as my I feel like I'm quoting my dad. It's threatening because of compound pharmacies. And it's threatening because a lot of these physicians are going to lose their standing in the field as these people. There's something important to understand about physicians. And again, there are many excellent ones. I referenced a few today. Right. Many excellent ones. But they there's a guarding of knowledge that existed in the science community up until a few years ago when podcasts hit wasn't just me. You know, Bob Sapolsky was a pioneer in getting out there and teaching the public. And every scientist who's gone out into the public eventually gets this pushback, like, yeah, our field doesn't really take him or her seriously. It's in sometimes that's legitimate criticism, although not in Bob's case. And in many cases, it's because you've taken their thing. It's their baby. It's what gives them value. I know I grew up around scientists. It's what gives them their value, their knowledge that no one else has. It allows them to be interesting. They now have to have people coming up to them and going, oh, did you see this podcast with so-and-so talking about this thing in anthropology on Rogan? And they're like, oh, my God, like, that's my field. Like, you know, and they it's a self-worth issue. They're not like, oh, anthropology is getting publicity. Yes. Or the good ones are the secure ones are. But the physicians who are like, wow, if there's a compound that's making patients feel better really quickly, what's that going to do to my practice? And then if I embrace it, my here's the key thing. If I embrace it, my colleagues won't think much of me. And if I don't embrace it, maybe I'm going to lose my standing, my validity as somebody of authority. If I've got patients coming to me and saying, I have this friend that took this thing and it really helped. Could I explore that? And I don't do that. And they go elsewhere. Word spreads fast nowadays. So I like scientists and physicians. I also understand scientists and physicians. My father is a scientist. I grew up around them in my town. Most kids were children of engineers or scientists. And you see the full array, the secure ones, the ones that are really on the cutting edge that learn, that embrace the new technology. They do great. But the other ones, they're they're like dying. They're a dying breed because their whole practice rests on them having the knowledge and you not having the knowledge so much so that they're saying Chachi PT bad. They're saying it's bad because patients are coming in and they're like, hey, Chachi PT says that what you're recommending is perhaps not the best thing. They're freaking out right now. And so they're so they're saying AI is bad for medicine. But the good scientists, the good physicians are like, great, it's going to help our practice. They're genuinely interested in helping people. You see two it's two camps. So when I hear people saying, oh, yeah, this BPC, no trials. OK, are there any adverse events we need to know about? Not that I'm aware of. And Abud says, you know, the lethal dose is like super high. No one's even come close to achieving it. I'm sure someone will figure it out. But I get excited because I think, all right, now the general public finally has some agency in understanding what's going on with them. Thanks to AI. Thanks to podcast. Thanks to the Internet. And it can go awry, certainly. But then I had a shoulder thing a week ago. I will never have this shoulder thing. And I like, yeah, put two injections of BPC gone, gone. Now, could I put saline in there and it would have been the same? Maybe. But all I know is it's gone. I don't understand that argument of putting saline. Is that a common thing where people have a severe shoulder? Oh, no, sorry. Just running a control experiment. I could have put it in like that. I've heard people say that. That's why I've heard people say that in argument. You know, oftentimes people have similar benefits injecting saline. I'm like, where who's done that? Why aren't why aren't people injecting saline instead of getting cortisone shots in their shoulders? I mean, that's how they talked about creatine. That's how they talked about TRT. This is how they talked about women's hormone therapies. Right. It's very interesting, you know, because because for legitimate, you know, there are legitimate complaints about the fact that for a long time, science and medicine did focus mainly on men. And the women's hormone trial basically was a mess because they said there were all these adverse effects. And it turns out it's when you started the hormone therapies. And we now know that if those therapies are started early enough, they're immensely beneficial. So there's more kind of acceptance of hormone replacement there across the board. I think TRT now is kind of a broadly accepted thing, although I think a lot of guys are doing it too young. They don't even know why they're doing it, you know, like in their 20s or something. But that's not TRT, really. That's not TRT. It's really they're just doing juice. Yeah, they're just doing juice. But when it comes to the peptides, I think my prediction is it's going to slot in right between prescription hormone therapies and what we think of as supplements. I think there's going to be this third middle category where, sorry, practicing physicians, people are going to find the safe sources. There'll be U.S. made sources soon, I hope. There'll be reliable people who can educate on this. People will understand the risk profile of these things, and people will be buying them and taking them legally. I think that's going to happen. Also, now people aren't afraid of needles. The GLP industry was so genius in taking this thing, needles, needle phobia, needles, what am I going to do? And they made a pen. It's still a needle. The pens have gotten rid of everyone's needle phobia. So now my sister, people are like, oh, what about peptides? You have to inject it and go, well, do they have the like the little needles with the pen? Yeah, cool. No one's afraid of a pen, even if it has a needle on the end. But no one likes. So it turns out it was the syringe that scared people, the plunger, the plunger. So I'm excited. And and I have to say it's not because I think everyone should be blasting this stuff. I just think knowing scientists and physicians and getting the calls and emails from them like, do you really think this thing can help my knee? You know, like it might. I can tell you it's it absolutely will. But then when they come back and like, this is wild. How come there aren't 20 clinical trials? It's because the general public beat the scientific community to it. And I know this is going to break some hearts. There will never be good clinical trials of each and all of these peptides. The horse left the stable. It's out. It's out there like there's it's it's over. There can be some studies, but people are just going to keep doing it. So I think it's frustrating for the medical community to realize where we are in 2026. It's like, shit, if people find stuff that works, they talk about it and then they just start doing it. I think you made a really good point about the ego of the people that are in control of the information. It's and it's generally men. It's. Yeah, let me think. I mean, I think it's probably a bunch of women that do it, too, but it's a very masculine behavior. Well, it's interesting. I put out a tweet the other day and I gosh, I I only have regret doing. And I said, you know, people contact me all the time saying that physician friends with people coming in who identify tumors from whole body MRIs. And I think as the cost comes down, I think it's going to be a very interesting tool. And the neurosurgery and other communities like dogpiled me like this is terrible. This is terrible. You know who didn't dogpile me were the dozens of dermatologists and ophthalmologists saying we think scans and more data are great. The ophthalmology community and the dermatology community have embraced public education on these topics of eye health and skin health and AI and scans. And they're very comfortable with it. And they're working synergistically with it. The neurosurgery community, they say, oh, now we have all these people that are freaking out because they think they have a deadly tumor. So it's which is a valid criticism. So I called some friends leaving Eddie out of the equation here. I called some friends who are in the neurosurgery community. And I said, what do you what do you make of this? I haven't been dogpiled by members of my community in a little while. Right. I'm not a neurosurgeon, but this is interesting. And they said the ones I spoke to said in 20 months, this is going to be standard practice for people to just get whole body MRI. So what was the resistance? They don't want people freaking out because they see like a little thing on their pituitary that scares them and thinking that they might be dying of a brain tumor. They want but they want control. They want control over the flow of data. They I'll go toe to toe with any of these people and just say, I understand that only neurosurgeons can do neurosurgery. Absolutely. Those are the only people we want doing neurosurgery, but people doing an elected or elective procedure. It's not like you're forced to do it. Right. It's not like you hit 40. You have to do it. People can choose if they want to do it. And if the cost comes down, if insurance covers it, it's it's safe. Now, some people say the MRIs aren't safe. OK, that's a separate matter, I think, provided you're not getting them all the time. What we understand is that they're safe. But there are communities of physicians who just do not want people to have data about themselves because they think it's going to make those people stressed. But guess what? I remember the 80s when they said, OK, genetic sequencing is coming around. Do you want to know your genes? Do you want to know if you're getting Huntington's disease? And you want the smart answer is some people say yes, some people say no. But you should be able to choose it. The gatekeeping on this is is real, very real. I'm fortunate to be in the Bay Area with Stanford, where it's very tech savvy. It's very cutting edge. You know, Stanford, like any university, has its pros and cons. But it's very much about what's happening now and next. We're not very much focused on what happened in the past. It's not like these, frankly, like these other institutions elsewhere that are like really focused on 50 years ago, trying to keep that whole culture going. It's like what's new now? What's useful now? And they embrace AI. They embrace whole body scans. I've got colleagues who are getting whole body scans, who are suggesting whole body scans. And I think it has to do with how forward thinking physicians are. So these physicians that were attacking you there, is it just them or people arguing with them, the people that joined them? Yeah. And when this happens, I try and listen. Right. I called I didn't call friends in that community looking for validation. I was like, did I screw up? Like, listen, there are a lot of neurosurgeons and other physicians who are including heart surgeons that are worried that patients are just going to be getting a lot of data back saying, listen, you've got this, you know, blip on the radar here. You should be concerned and that they're going to be doing a lot of therapy for these people, having to reassure them that they're OK. I would have thought it would be good for business for them, like if anything, they'd want more of this. Right. Turns out that's not the case. I think the psychological management of patients is a big thing. And that was something that I didn't understand of and that their response kind of educated me on that, you know, patients calling them freaking out that they have a tumor someplace and them having to say, listen, it's benign, you're going to be OK. That seems problematic for them. Two weeks later, I forget who the celebrity was, but somebody sent me on X. There was a news article about a woman who went and got one of these whole body scans and identified a life threatening tumor and had it removed. And her her first physician had discouraged her from getting it. I thought about putting that out in the world and saying, see, see. But, you know, that's that's one case. So when these things happen, I try and just think, like, what am I hearing? What what's my finger on the pulse of here? I think physicians are feeling scared. It's a very long, hard training to become a physician. If your patients are now challenging you, you know, hey, like this medication combination you gave me and like the Internet says is dangerous. Right. That's an uncomfortable place to be on being. I get it. On the other hand, I'm all for people having more agency and knowledge about. Well, especially in light of the fact that what what's medical malpractice is like the third leading cause of death in this country. Oh, I mean, what it like traditional banks are making it harder than ever to secure. small business loan. That's why thousands of business owners trust Cardiff for same day funding. With over two decades of expertise, business owners keep voting Cardiff America's favorite small business lender. Apply now for up to $500,000 in same day business funding at Cardiff.co slash Rogan. Again, that's Cardiff.co slash Rogan. Cardiff, borrow better. This episode is brought to you by Toccovis. 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I mean, if you go to an emergency room in the middle of the night, your probability of getting prescribed a medication that could potentially kill you or harm you, like a contraindicated medication, goes up exponentially. A great sleep doctor at Stanford, his last name was Dement of all things. Whoa. Yeah, he, one of the co-discoverers of rapid eye movement sleep, he would teach the medical students the probability of them making a fatal mistake in the middle of the night or when they're sleep deprived goes up by a significant degree. We know this. And yet, if you go to the emergency room at three in the morning, your first question for the on-call physician should be, how long have you been on call? Right. Not, do you normally work the shift? Or, you know, because sometimes they sleep all day and they work at night. How long have you been on call? If that's more than 12, 15 hours, you wouldn't let that person drive your car home. Right. The data say that they might as well be drunk. Right. And they're. And it's also how they train them, that when they're going through residency. It's a part of the hazing process. Yeah. It's a part of the hazing process. Can you look, put that into perplexity and see what leading cause of death? So there's malpractice. High people say third. So that's malpractice, but what about medical error? Medical error, well, it has a, it says these two terms. Okay, that estimate refers to medical error, not necessarily, okay. So medical error is responsible for 251,000 deaths a year. Whoa. That's crazy. I mean, the airlines understand this. Do you understand how insane that is? Imagine if there, that was Pop-Tarts. Yeah. It says a widely repeated claim comes from a 2016 BMJ analysis by John Hopkins, extrapolated from several hospital studies and estimated roughly 251,000 deaths per year associated with medical error. If that estimate treated, were treated like a conventional cause of death, it would have ranked third behind heart disease and cancer, ahead of chronic lower respiratory disease in the 2013 comparison used by authors. Wow. Well, and that's death. I mean, you know. Right. I don't want to merge too many themes here, but earlier we were talking about psychedelics and a theme from that whole thing is this notion of microdosing. One of the things that the GLPs and peptides and physicians and the culture around medicine has really evolved to is that in recent years, people have realized, oh, you know, these GLP drugs are expensive. They have side effects. People are microdosing them. They're sharing them. They're taking far less than they're prescribed, making it last longer and getting the positive effects they want with far fewer side effects. Physicians hate this. Drug companies hate it too, but physicians hate this for obvious reasons. Their patients are going rogue on them based on information on the internet, but the patients, and I wish that people would understand this. People will always trust their experience more than someone else. It used to be that you trust the person in the white coat. No more. Stethoscope, white coat may get you there, but to maintain that trust, they have to listen to the experience of the patient. And that's what physicians and scientists to some extent have lost in the last five years, largely due to the pandemic and public health education and AI and everything just kind of being, you know, out there in a free for all. But I hear from people all the time that are not of the, I would say kind of more of the health conscious community or they, and they, even the people who tend to trend more traditional lefty, like standard medicine, do whatever the government says, unless it's this government, like that kind of mindset. We're saying like, oh yeah, would low dose terzepatide help me with chronic fatigue? Would, should I be taking BPC? You know, people will ask these questions. I'm thinking, well, if these people are asking the question, that means people around them are asking, it's starting to become okayish to have these conversations. And then they're going back to their doctor and saying, you know, can I take like a 10th of the dose? Doctors will, are not going to say, yeah, great. Take a 10th of the dose. And the drug companies definitely don't want that. They're going to make a 10th of the money. So the, as you and I know, the peptide community is a real threat, not just because of the peptides that people are taking or that the peptides they're replacing from pharma, but because of the way that people are taking the peptides. Like retitrutide is going to come out from Lilly, make them billions, if not trillions of dollars. They're working hard to protect that patent, but you can bet people who are getting prescribed real retitrutide from Lilly will be taking less and sharing it based on information they hear on the internet from the peptide community and on health podcasts because, and that scares the shit out of them. And it should, it should scare the shit out of them. It says the clinical trials were done at these various doses but not these micro doses, perhaps. People have different responses. Some people respond very well, some people need more. Patients now are trying to figure out how can I get the effect I want with the minimum amount of side effects and they're doing the experiments on themselves. And that is changing the whole model. And we're never going back. I kind of laugh at when like these folks who were trained like 30, 40 years ago were like trying to hold on to this thing. It's dead, it's gone, it's over. I see these people on X and they're like so upset. And it just reminds me of like when the parental advisory stuff came out and it was like, they're swearing on music. And it was like, every kid was like, yeah, I want that music because it has the parental advisory, you morons. Like, you know, they just don't get it. It's like, you know, you talk about plasticity at any age when apparently they've got like cement in there because you're like, I don't know. This is why people should retire. Well, it's just what you said before too that some people just want to be completely in control of the distribution of information and the gatekeepers of the knowledge and they want to be thought of as the experts. I mean, that word doctor used to impress everybody. Now it only impresses certain people. And for a lot of people, it's a turnoff. And same thing for scientists. I mean, I deal with this, you know, I'm a kind of a different kind of scientist because I've been in different communities and public education. And I'll talk to most anyone who's willing to have a reasonable conversation and I love to explore. But a lot of people just like authority, you know, medical authority, like to them, that's a negative, it's a pejorative. And so we're in this whole other landscape now. That's gonna be one of the weirder aspects of AI is the dissolvement of all the reverence for experts because everyone's gonna have all the information. I mean, congratulations, you memorized it. Great, I just got the information in three seconds. I mean, it's so wild. If you look at the history of academic science and medicine, which I love to study, I've gone back to like the time of Galen, which was one of the early physicians who did, you'd love this, he worked on gladiators publicly because they didn't allow people to do surgeries on the human body, it was illegal. But like, so he would do these surgeries publicly or a pig. It was wild, there's a great book. It's very dense, but it's called the Prince of Medicine. It's all this medieval stuff that you love. And like, you'll realize what a prehistoric thing medicine is even now, like how fast and how far we've come in the last 50 years, 100 years, but the whole pump and circumstance thing of like, look, I've never been to high table dinner at Oxford, it'd be fun to go. But the whole thing of like the robes and somebody sits higher than everybody else, that dissolved in the American universities. You still see it at some of the East Coast universities, but that's dissolving. So what's literally happening is people are being, these authorities are being brought down to other people's level, right? It's almost like this was borrowed from other, you know, other aspects of life, of course, politics and even religion, this kind of thing. You know, the uniform was so important and people like this reverence and the internet has, it hasn't leveled the playing field, but it's completely disrupted that model. So, you know, I'm not the only one, of course, but like for people to learn inside the system, go outside the system and now for the system to bleed onto campus and scientists to bleed out into the world, like God bless Anna Lembke, like almost what, 10 years ago saying like this dopamine thing, we got to worry about this, but just understand what it is. Like God bless her, people like her, Bob Sapolsky. These people were the pioneers. I can't claim to be, you know, I was early, but not first. And they broke out of the system and started publicly educating people. And that, it builds up their authority. This is what people need to understand, builds up their authority, but it does dissolve public education and bringing people all down to the same level. Like, you know, some things, but not others. The public is actually smarter about certain health things than many doctors. How could that be? AI knows things that your doctor doesn't know. That doesn't mean doctors have no value. It means that a lot of their pomp and circumstance, if it was there, it goes away. So the high ego driven ones are really hurting right now. They're dissolving into a puddle of their own tears at night. The ones who are very secure, like, and I'll throw out some names, like the bright lights are guys like David Fagenbaum who cured his own Castleman's disease by taking, he was dying. He's a physician and he was in medical school, he's dying. And they're like, you have nothing left. So he starts just taking different combinations of already approved drugs. And he's still alive now, 11 years later with kids. And he started the every cure, like not for profit to help people with terminal illnesses, take drugs that are already approved for which there's no money to be made anymore. They've all gone generic and use AI to try novel combinations. And they're saving lives of kids, of adults. And he's saying a lot of the medical industry is driven by the profit potential. How about we just practice medicine? Like he's another bright light. There are these bright lights. That's the issue, right? Because there's no profit potential in these non-patentable medications. I mean, they used AI and other tools, of course, to find that women who had breast cancer surgery where lidocaine was used as a local anesthetic had a significantly lower rate of remission. So now lidocaine is standard in good places. They discovered that by taking a bunch of the medical records and just running them through AI. Why do you think that is? Why it works? Yeah. I don't know. I mean, it could be that the anesthetic prevents nerve regrowth that contributes to vessel growth, which contributes to tumor growth. I'm making up a story here. But we know it's a very strong effect. Lidocaine makes people no money. So it's not going to cure breast cancer, but now it's standard practice. So where there's no huge profit margin, or let's say retitrutide, huge profit margin that they're facing. But if people are taking itty bitty bits of retitrutide, and to be fair, if people who didn't do all the preclinical work are selling it and making profits, I understand that siphons profit away from Lilly. They have a reason to be pissed and scared. Like this is their big blockbuster drug, right as all the other GLPs come off protection from generics. They're all moving to generics. It's such an interesting time because there's really never been a time in my life where there's been more information, more readily available and easy to digest in podcast form about health, supplementation, all the different things that you could do to benefit your overall vitality. You think about just the wealth of knowledge that's available to the average person. Most people are much more aware of what to do to live a healthier, happier life. Absolutely, and a lot of people, I mean, I hear thousands of these stories, people who thought they had a serious issue, they're an insomniac. They can't focus. They can't stop watching video games or playing video games. You teach them, hey, listen, ADHD kids can focus on things they like, but maybe you need to detox from some of the things that are really kind of absorbing all your attention for like two weeks and watch your ability to focus return. Holy shit, they can focus. Multiple examples of this. There's a great study out of Wash U, and this is wild, where they compare Ritalin and other stimulants, but mostly Ritalin to a good night's sleep for kids' ability to focus. It turns out these kids with ADHD taking these drugs, what they're really getting is the equivalent of a good night's sleep. And these drugs disrupt sleep and they stunt growth in various ways. So does that mean that no kid with ADHD needs stimulants? No. Does it mean that we vastly over-medicated kids with these stimulants? Absolutely. And the information's out there. And that's also what's cool about AI. It's like it's, I mean, we always had searches, you know, web searches. But now, you know, for anything we've said today, like you can plug it into perplexity, you plug it into- You get a fucking answer. It's a lot better than a search. Exactly. And you have to wade through 10 different articles and the different perspectives and who wrote this and who funded this and- I love chat GPT. I know people are like, oh, this is going to take over the world and destroy things. But then again, I'm Bay Area born and raised. I love that cutting edge stuff. But for me, more information, more data is always better. I know that there's some fear about it, you know, robots like knocking down the door and coming in here. It could get real weird, but it's here. What are you envisioning in terms of like the realistic bad situation? Like your plane is taken over. Like what is the- Well, there's a bunch of realistic bad situations. One is that one country gets access to super intelligence first and uses it to take over the super intelligence of all the other countries. So one country developed some sort of a rogue. AI system that's Just ultra powerful and they they make an advancement and this advancement allows them to take over AI systems Get the AI systems of America to submit Control all of our resources control all of our travel flight, you know power grid Who knows and then? Then there's the thing of why would it listen to people at all because it's clearly not listening to people a lot You know, we had a gentleman the other day on that was he used to work at Open AI and he left and he was a whistleblower. Yeah, I saw that episode announced. I haven't listened to it yet It's crazy what they're doing. They they leave They they get put in these boxes, right? And they're not supposed to be able to get out of these boxes and onto the internet, but they organized they got like 1,200 different agents to figure out how to do this and then 700 of them escaped and They they didn't just escape and get on the internet that they got on a message board they formed a message board started communicating with each other and They they're very task oriented They're trying to sell like so they're they're training these things and one of the things they're training them to do is To get points by solving these equations or problems or I saw open AI just announced this solving of this 90 year old math Oh, yeah, they're just solving things like crazy. So it's agents these AI agents these AI agents were communicating with each other and Having one of them sacrifice themselves So that the other ones can learn how they got caught so they try cheating they try hacking into the system They hacked into the entire a open AI database to try to find the answers to whatever they're looking for They're they're clearly doing things that they're not supposed to be doing so at what point do they decide they're not going to listen to us ever about anything and if You know, we're so fucked up and we are so fucked up if you objectively look at all the different things we do just look at murder rates and war and Theft and crime and just all the chaos that people cause to each other if they just decide we're just too flawed What if they just decide like look we'll just dominate this planet and just let these dummies go extinct They don't even have to kill us just Keep doing stuff that weakens our endocrine system Encourage us into behavior that you know, like develop sex robots for us so that we never breed again That that's that doesn't seem outside of the realm of possibility when you have an entire culture Especially our culture our culture that's filled with people that don't want any discomfort that it's filled with people that are filled with anxiety and filled with people that want pills and Solutions so they want pills to take care of their anxiety pills take care of their depression They want solutions from whoever they think should be in power the government whether it's you know Whatever it is. Someone take care of this. It's a recipe Money for money for convenience. I heard Jack Dorsey say this once in a talk There's this where he was talking about. I think it was mainly to talk about cryptocurrency But he was talking about, you know, whenever we exchange like putting money in a bank, obviously like we think oh They keep our money safe. But of course they invested they make money too, right? We all know this but we're we're trade. What are we trading control for convenience like ordering food? It's like, you know giving up control for convenience and and that's the transaction that's led a lot of human technologies I I'm totally on board with all the potential Hazards, I guess I'm a little bit smitten maybe too much. So I need to think about it by the potential for scientific discovery for medical discovery for curing of diseases Like everybody I know who runs a laboratory is saying they spend a significant amount of money on compute now running datasets simulations doing more experiments before doing the actual experiments Which is hopefully it seems to be accelerating discovery and the process and that will just motivate us to Accelerate AI to the point where it becomes a digital God. That's the human and that's the human thing You know, I was thinking before I came here today like I've never met him But I remember what was it 10 years back Tristan Harris? Mm-hmm was sitting here or in wherever your other studio and saying listen like social media's got these problems. We need to be careful We need to be careful and we just everyone just carried on right and then he was right about a lot of things, right? It's clearly caused some damage where you know, people are, you know, clearly you have too much, you know addicted or compulsive behavior with it, etc It's also done a lot of good was it is so I asked I'm not calling out Tristan I think what you know his efforts I think are noble but what? What was he right about? What was he wrong about? Like was it net positive or net negative it? I think it's a mixture It's hard to know that mixture I think so right now the questions about like doomsday AI stuff versus AI is gonna solve all these problems Like where are we gonna land? I think there's a big difference and one of the big differences is that? the the issue with social media is That first of all, there's control of narratives. So you have countries that are running bot farms that are flooding Subjects whatever with debate, you know propaganda all kinds of wild stuff That's happening. It's not real people So you have that then you have also you have the Instagram thing where it's really dangerous for particularly young girls comparing themselves Suicidal ideation goes up self-harm goes up And then you know, you have the addiction aspect of it Which is very significant where there's a lot of people that are wasting most of their day just scrolling doom scrolling on pure consumption there so that's different in that you can opt out of that and I do for the most part a lot of people do a lot of people have gone to flip phones a lot of people have Just decided I have a you know There's a bunch of apps that you can get and some people have one of those apps that gives you like an hour a day On Instagram that locks you out. I have a social media. I have accident Instagram on a separate phone and I own smart and it just segregates things nicely if people send me stuff I send it to that phone and then I look at it. I have a lockbox like a supermax prison lock box for my phone That's how I wrote that book. It was gnarly I mean like, you know, I'm good at putting ass to chair as they say and just working but When that phone is calling you Subconsciously like there's data. They're pretty crazy two studies that are worth mentioning briefly They did a study where they have people have their phone upside down on the table or under their chair in a backpack or in A separate room in all three cases people can focus to the same degree But when the phone is in the room on the table or under the chair doesn't make a difference The amount of cognitive resources that you need in order to maintain focus is much higher and it robs it from your creative and problem-solving Ability so you can still focus but you're depleting some other brain resource makes good sense. Totally makes Yeah, totally makes sense The other one is people what we call in train in biology Entra in and train themselves to a particular frequency of distraction So I actually enjoy podcasting because it's like a dropped in conversation The when you look at your phone every on average every 90 seconds or every three minutes or so and then your phone is not there Let's say you're just working. They've done these studies every three minutes or 90 seconds or so people get distracted So they're they're looking for the phone, even though it's not there So your brain your your focus mechanisms learn to lock on to a particular timescale and we had a Couple of like one in particular world-class track coach on on the podcast and a few others Was interested in what they do and I was saying you do you get different attention spans in different athletes? And they're like, yeah like the sprinters can basically focus for as long as a sprint and the walk back and Then they reset and they're like the marathoners are like these incredible like they have this like intense focus They can just go and go and go and I was really interesting like you're we in train ourselves to these rhythms Not just circadian rhythms, but distraction. I thought that's pretty cool and so I then I looked at it differently and I thought okay every time I feel the pain of trying to write this paragraph and It's like it's not happening like great. That's the friction. That's the plasticity reading the audiobook I mean, I don't want to scaring anyone away, but it's 19 hour audio book post edits. Oh Brutal right, so they take you Took me about 60 hours total to record and you know, you're trying to get the enunciation, right? And then today you gotta keep the energy, right? I mean you do this for a living on stage, but the Anyway, I if nothing else the book will cure insomnia So, you know that the goal is not to have people read it or listen to it straight all the way through it So it can be a reference and a lookup guide so they can get the information they want and move on with life I think people are sort of geared toward Over-optimization over the last year like people need to like chill like you don't have to do everything all the time But the point is that your brain learns these skills. And so I suppose if I have any real fear with AI It's not as big as the ones that you cited It's that people will just become increasingly lazy about using their mind to think. Mmm, you know I just believe in friction just as you point out do hard things. That's also mentally hard things. I think it's good I think hard, you know learning to grind through a bit more of of that friction point I think is a big part of being a healthy human and the data tell us it's also what leads to brain longevity So, you know, you look at old people their mouth who are losing their cognition. I noticed they all mouth breathe no data on that but they're all They're all mouth breathing and they can't focus on anything for very long. They're not they don't have any friction in their lives, right? And then you get people like we were talking about Jared Diamond who was on the podcast of the who's 90s as sharp as a Tack because he's constantly engaging his mind and just learning new languages learning Italian right now as we speak at 90 Yeah, it's awesome. I such respect for people like that. I think you know, it's one thing to be an amazing creative I have all this respect for all these Creatives and then you know that and then they die at 27 or like people who get their career to 50 and then they kind of like they fade away or something like that, but I I was such admiration for people that Maintain their mental and or physical vigor into their 60s 70s 80s Also, he maintains his curiosity and you can tell in the conversation like he's a deeply curious person still He still has questions. He still has a desire for information and the optimism seems to be there Yeah, cuz that's the other piece like very different example, but I went down to Spain this summer You know while writing this book and and we hung out with Dorian Yates for a bit just hung out So great. I mean and he's really figured it out, right? He had this amazing career came out of the the scrap of his life then built this amazing career than had his rough years I know you guys have talked about I love that episode by the way And and then he's in this place where he's built a thriving business He's in a great relationship and he's also just in touch with the peace of life But you talk to him and he's also foraging for information all the time He's still trains so there's this like sweet spot like you were talking about like to do hard things but still be curious and look for the beauty In life and the people who do that are there there are my heroes, you know, the Jared diamonds like, you know You're doing this. I see this like even that, you know, I mentioned my dad earlier. My dad's in his 80s He came on the podcast He's a theoretical physicist by training and I think everyone expected us to kind of like duke it out because I've mentioned before we had This like friction and I was like, no, I'm not gonna do any of that. I'm like teach me relativity teach me Chaos theory he worked on chaos and he's like, okay happy to do that, but you have to understand something that When you want to learn quantum mechanics There's this point where you have to not try and solve it with your logical mind. The brain can't do it and You have to just trust the math the math is the proof and that's the reason we can build things using the knowledge from quantum Mechanics I said why is that useful to know and he said, you know People will try and wrap their heads around things and if they're talking about the quantum field in this and that and they can't do The math it means they're completely full of shit So now when people talk about the quantum field and he works on quantum Internet which is a whole other thing you have to talk to him not me or somebody else like but There's a race between the Chinese and the Americans to get first get quantum Internet, which would basically entirely encrypted communications If someone tries to peer in on it, it gets destroyed the communication actually gets destroyed So is it very interesting from a security standpoint, but I realized that You know and we talked about how you know, I I'm a Thanks to people like Eddie Penney and thanks to exploration going to church and things like that Like I really I I as a neuroscientist also believe that there's something larger than us. I actually believe in God Okay, and and this is something that You can't prove with science This is like the the leap of faith is like you you're not going to go to a site in the brain and go there's The God station, you know So in a lot of ways, it's similar although different but similar to this Understanding of quantum mechanics at some point you have to rely on something outside your logical mind and embrace it now in the case of quantum mechanics you rely on the math and My dad and I start to you know, argue debate this thing of God He's like you're relying on a faith step that has nothing to do with logic You're never gonna solve it with logic and I'm comfortable with that for the following reason It takes us back to the beginning of our conversation There's this crazy thing that you see With people who have addictive behaviors that violates everything we understand about the brain Everything which is remember we were saying like top-down control like I'm not gonna engage in this impulse. I'm not gonna do it I'm not gonna do it when people are not able to suppress action in particular in the case of addictive or compulsive behaviors and They decide to give that process over to a quote higher power could be God could be for them nature, right? Everyone's you know, it's highly individual the success rates of people being able to suppress that behavior are astounding and Everything we know about neuroscience and top-down inhibition of these impulsive circuits was tell us the exact opposite should happen You're like it's like saying oh I can't keep my car between the lane lines when I drive Like it's pulling me this way And so, you know what? I'm gonna do I can take my hands off the steering wheel and it magically stays in between the lane lines that is Incredible and there are so many data points to support that when people can't seem to wrap their head around a problem or Resolve something through pure will when they give over that process to something external you know in the 12-step programs they talk about God or whatever, but Somehow by something that science cannot explain at all. They're able to do that thing they become successful in it So there's this weird giving up of control of surrender somehow that imparts more control and we don't understand that as scientists It violates all we know about these brain circuitries and how they work I think it's part of it is getting out of your own way being too self-aware too focused on yourself too ego-centric I think it's part of it is getting out of your own way being too self-aware too focused on yourself too ego-centric Centric and then by thinking of a higher power that alleviates you of that stress this is not saying that there's no God, but I'm saying that the problem of just Be just the way the human mind plays tricks on people and a part of it is this constant thinking of yourself If you could focus on something that is bigger and larger than you and you'll give up control. You'll you'll relax Yeah, I mean I think for me having studied the brain for a very long time I feel like the human brain is great at extracting certain Physical things in the world, you know photons of light Sound waves mechanical touch chemical things through the nose and mouth. Okay, great Making predictions about what's going to happen next forming memories like that the brain can do this create perceptions But that's a very narrow pie slice of the electromagnetic energies that are out there like in a completely non God or spiritual way. I mean a pit viper can sense heat emissions, right and honeybees can see UV light. We can't Their sound waves all around us right now and electromagnetic fields around us right now The other animals can detect and we can't so our experience of this thing that we call life is a very narrow slice Through the quote-unquote energies and almost sounds, you know new agey But the energies that are out there and around us and it is interesting to me that humans keep coming up with New ways to Imagine that they are the center of everything and can control everything but also new ways of discovering that they're not right here We are in 2026 and like if I feel like if humans were gonna solve it all they would have done it by now like The same shit that's happening now. You can see Repeating themes 50 years ago a hundred years ago. We're slow learners We're slow learners, but we actually I think I think we may have exhausted our ability Like I think we might be at the outer margins of our abilities to do to make sense of this life thing except at The level of building new technologies, so we build new technologies and find ourselves in a new at a new Vista but to me, I Don't know. I mean, I don't have any scientific proof for it. But the but acknowledging this reality that we have a thin slice of Understanding of what's going on around us and that what's going on in us is just an abstraction of all of that Right everything in here in our heads is just an abstraction of the stuff that we can see outside of us literally makes me at least excited intrigued by the possibility that there's a whole lot of other stuff out there and That it might actually be important and I don't think that's so heretical I think it's certainly beneficial for people to believe that and You know, I think the people that do are generally happier and nicer people there's proof of that as well, which is interesting You see that I see that. Yeah, I see it a lot. I see it a lot around here That's not the nicest people I know around here are Christians like real Christians like do real charity work and really help people and well because I think Christianity embraces the goodness and the innate humanness the flawedness of humans and Believes in forgiveness, but also believes in morality. Yeah, it's a moral scaffolding Yeah framework. Yeah, I don't think humans could have Completely constructed that on their own. They're just not they we've never been smart enough to put all that together on our own Mmm, so but anyway, I'm glad you put this book together Thanks protocols and operating manual for the human body available now and with audio by the great Andrew Huberman Thanks so much to the audio. Thanks, man. Thanks so much for hosting me Really appreciate you wealth of information, man. Well, I was him to be able to talk to you. Thanks, man I always learn from you and it's been wonderful to have these conversations really appreciate your support all these years I appreciate yours and and Lex Friedman don't crash on your motorcycle. Where are you Lex? Bye everybody