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All day. All right, we're good. Mister Huberman, how are you, sir? Good to see you.

Good to see you.

So what were you just saying about dog breeds? That, like, we're talking about Carl, like, the little bulldog breeds have more mastiff than wolf.

Yeah. So?

So mastiff is a different thing.

Well, so don't they all come from wolves? Yeah, they all originate from wolves. But then I. Dog selection has been twofold, mainly for phenotype like morphology, the shape, we call it, and then temperament. Right. So there's this chart, it might be a little hard to find online about the dosing of wolf versus mastiff genetics, essentially. And there's a bunch of other things woven into dog genetics. First of all, cool point. Dogs are among. I don't know if they are the most, maybe whales are the most, but they are among the greatest variation in body size within a given species. You think of Chihuahua and great. And it looks like it's dosing of the genes controlling igf one, which makes sense, but kind of wild, right? Like you, we got some big humans and some smaller humans, but not like dogs. Not like dogs.

Chihuahuas. And then what are those enormous shepherd dogs? Those. What are those ones? Those insane dogs that used to fight off wolves? What the fuck are those things called? Those gigantic hairy things? You know what I'm talking about? We've talked about them before. They're terrifying looking dogs.

Yeah. I mean, just a.

What's it called?

Oh, my goodness.

Oh, yeah, those things. What the fuck is that thing? What is that called again? But we've. We've seen it before. Doesn't it say the name of the dog? Well, find the name of those dogs. Cause there's. Brian Callum knows all this shit, right.

So I have a colleague at Stanford, Sue McConnell, who. Jozo.

Jozo dogs. No, that's not it. There's a name for them, though. Oh, Tibetan Mastiff.

Tibetan Mastiff, yeah.

They're really furry and they're like 250 pounds of. Look at that puppy. At seven weeks old. That's so crazy.

I wonder how many they have in the litter.

How could they have very many?

Yeah, there's got to be just a few.

Poor mama.

So this colleague at Stanford, Sue McConnell, she's won best in show at some of the big events for poolies. She breeds horses and she's into that hole.

What's a poolie?

The poolies are the ones that look like rastafarian dogs, you know, their eyes are covered. They're amazing. They're amazing. And she had this chart on her door. I was going to meet with her about something. She handles a lot of undergraduate education at Stanford. And I see this chart. And the chart essentially shows the dosing of kind of the original wolf line genes versus more mastiff heavy genetic background. And there are a lot of breeds on this chart, but it essentially shows up in the following way. The dogs that are more sight and scent, right. And with longer snouts, like a shepherd. Like a shepherd, have more dosing of the wolf gene still in them. Then you get to the shorter snout, kind of snub nose, like the french bulldog, the english bulldog, and some mastiff breeds pugs, right. And the amount of wolf in them is like nil to none. And then what's happening?

Wait a minute. But they all start off as wolves.

So they have some genes that relate to the wolf origin, lineage, right. But over time, they've been bred, for instance, the english bulldog.

But all dogs originally come from wolves.

That's my understanding.

Even mastiffs.

That's right. That's my understanding. But then, as they were crossbred with different dogs. So, for instance, like the english bulldog, that line came from the crossing of essentially pug, like short snout, but with mastiffs. Or with dogs with heavy mastiff genetic dosing. Why? Well, the idea was the short snout gives them a good lever for holding onto things. And the mastiff genes lead to, and we know this for sure, both of the droopiness of the face, it also relates to less presence of pain receptors in the front of the body. Okay, so if you've ever had a bulldog where, you know, their feet can be really sensitive, but their face, you can hold onto those jowls. My bulldog, Costello, would go picking up stuff at the beach, and he'd occasionally get a fish hook in his mouth and it looks super painful. And he's like, you know, so not very many pain sensors in the face, they have a disruption or a mutation in the gene that controls the elasticity of skin. That's why they have the droopiness. And they are brachycephalic. Short snout. That's why they're not very good breathers. And they essentially have sleep apnea.

That's why they have a bunch of.

Problems like a motherfucker.

They do. So they do snore a lot, I can attest, like Carl does. It's crazy. And so what were dogs being selected for? Well, unless you're showing dogs, dogs were selected for the kind of work they were capable of doing, like sheepdogs or great herders, this kind of thing. But when people essentially designed, bred up and cross bred to get the english bulldog or the old english bulldog, which doesn't have as much of an underwrite. So I had an old english bulldog. So whereas the english bulldog is elbows out, so inward rotation, the thing we're all supposed to not do and underwrite the old english bulldog looks like this.

It looks more like a pit bull.

Looks more like a pit bull. And they were originally used for bull baiting, for grabbing onto the nose of the bull, getting the bull super aggressive, and then being able to let go and get called off and coming back to their protector. And then basically, then it was to rile up the bull. Right, for bullfighting. So you can still find some of this stuff online. You can find some old descriptions, in some cases, even some old videos. But of course, now bull baiting with dogs is not allowed. Right. Dog fighting, everybody looks down on. But then if you start asking about the toy breeds, what were the toy breeds, quote unquote, designed for or bred for? They were basically designed to sit next to you. Some of them will seek out, like, the terrier breeds will find vermin. Right? They'll go find rats. They're really good ratters, actually. Yeah.

Jack Russell's are great.

Jack Russells are great ratters. The west highland terriers, the westies, the cairn terriers, they're always, they're really great hunters for little things. Right. And the amazing thing is that when you start looking at the different breeds, it was basically humans selecting on the basis of mostly behavior and phenotype shape and thinking, oh, like, I want a smaller dog that will just sit near me, or I want a small dog that will, that will, like, kill rats and sit near me. No, I want a big dog that's going to guard. So you start breeding for pain tolerance, start breeding for loyalty and aggression. And a guy that I think was on your podcast a long time ago, Sam Sheridan. Yeah, yeah. In a fighter's heart, there's a great chapter where he talks about, I think it's dogfighting in the Philippines, and he talks about how brutal that sport is, which indeed it is. But he talks about the love between the owner and the dog can predict. And of course, the dog and the owner, it's reciprocal. One presumes that the strength of that relationship predicts how hard the dog will fight for the owner. And he uses this as kind of a parallel construction for why and you tell me if this is true or not that many of the fatalities in boxing were the consequence of, sure, 15 round as opposed to twelve round fights, but also when the corner man or the coach was the parent.

And so it gets into this very complicated psychology. I actually think that's a really terrific book because I think it speaks to a lot of really interesting aspects of bonding between humans. Bonding, in that case, between animals and humans. Of course, dogfighting. Like, I don't know if there are many things that people look down upon as much as they look down upon dog fighting, but he speaks to the relationship between the dog and the owner as a loving one, which was super surprising to me. Anyway, that's a bit of a tangent, but I don't know, maybe it's possible to find that chart. I don't want to send you on a ridiculous expedition, but if you just say jeans, that's a simple one. Okay, this one, the one I'm thinking about is a vertical one that was in science magazine or scientific american, but it's wild. Again, I don't want to send you on an expedition that has us paused, but. Yeah, sorry about that.

No worries. But it's just we get a rough understanding of it all.

Yeah. So now when I see, like, okay, like, a collie. Like, I see a collie down there, I think long snout. So probably has a better nose than a mastiff breed. You can ask an owner, how good is their vision? Are they a sight hound or a scent hound? And of course, they're both. But some dogs, like, I'm really interested now, in part because of you and Cam Haynes and others, about dogs that hunt or go on hunts. And, like, the coonhound breeds are amazing. I've always wanted a red bone coonhound.

Their ears waft up smell. That's why they're so long. Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah. The reason why they have those long, floppy ears is as they're running, their ears are wafting up smell, and it gives them a better sense of the chase.

Oh, amazing. I read this incredible description of why dog scent and sense of smell is so much better than ours. There's a guy named Noam Sobel who's been on my podcast. He's over in Israel who claims that human olfaction is just as good as dog olfaction. But how do they outdo us? The frequency of sniffs, and this is really cool. You know those little notches on the side of the nose? Like, our nostrils look more or less symmetric. They have those little notches, they create little vortices for the dog so that the scents stick around. They're actually getting longer exposure to a scent. So when they. They're getting something like ten or 20 x, the exposure to the scent in the olfactory bulb and are able to assess both. Directionality, they can do right nostril, left nostril, they can sense odor plumes to steer in one direction or another. But Noem has done these crazy experiments when he was back at Berkeley, where he had people's hands mitted, eyes covered, so they can't sense touch, they can't see everything's covered, and they can follow a scent of chocolate buried seven inches below the ground.

What?

Yes. And you can see this. This you can find. If you say tracking. Sorry, Jamie, my goal wasn't to come here and send you on these.

These people have a nose like Arashfir.

Oh, boy.

Or Adrian Brody.

Oh, my. If you say kind of Berkeley chocolate tracking, sobel or something like that, it should come up. So he would do these aerial views of these people, tracking these scents on the ground, and it turns out people are really good at this. They can track a scent.

Yeah, sniffers show that humans can track scents and that two nostrils are better than one.

Okay, so if you. But if you go images, I think.

You'Ll probably through the grass.

Yeah, if you go images, and then I'll lay off the.

They will attract sense.

So if you go to images, damn it, and you just say Berkeley, just say, there it is. Right. So they compared the tracking of a scent hound of a bloodhound to human tracking of a scent buried. In the case of the bloodhound, it wasn't buried.

So that person, what, do they have a mask on?

Yeah, they got a mask on. Their hands are covered with thick gloves. They can only use. The only thing exposed are their nostrils. But that line, that yellow line is not a line with a bunch of chocolate on it. It's buried below the surface. I always thought it was above. And then when I talked to Noam, he said, no, no, they buried the chocolate scent and people were able to track it like a hunting dog track.

So how did they bury it if it's grass?

I think they cut a trench and then they covered it up.

Oh, wow.

So he insists that this thing that you see in all the textbooks, which is that humans have, you know, like 1000th or something, of the number of olfactory receptors, that's total bullshit.

Really.

Total bullshit. In fact, our friend, who, by the way, wanted me to say hello. Rick Rubin turned to a good friend of mine who's the chair of neurosurgery of a major medical school department, not Stanford, I promise. And said, what percentage of the things in medical textbooks, okay, this is Rick asking this chair of neurosurgery, what percentage of things that you find in medical textbooks, basic and advanced, do you think are false based on your understanding of what we actually know now compared to when the textbooks were written? And he said, 50%. And then Rick said, and yep. And then Rick said, I know, I was wide eyed too. And then Rick said, and what is the extent of impact on treatment of patients modern day? And his answer was one word, incalculable.

Oh, my God. 50%.

50% in currently used medical textbooks, meaning that the literature has been updated with new understanding, new scientific papers, but it has not yet been incorporated into the medical education.

Let me say something, because I know that bears have insane senses of smell that are many times stronger than a bloodhounds and famously can smell people from 100, 200 yards away. Like, there's gotta be levels to it. And I just can't imagine that a bloodhound doesn't have a better sense of smell than a person, right?

So they absolutely have a better sense of smell under the definition that they use it. They use the same number of receptors differently. In other words, the resolution of your vision and a mouse's vision is dramatically different. The resolution of your vision is very sharp at the fovea, towards the center of your eye and actually towards the periphery. Anyone can just do this. You wiggle your fingers out here in the periphery, and you can't see any detail. As you move that forward, you can see detail. That's because the density of pixels, so to speak, in the retina, is much, much higher near the fovea, near the center than it is at the periphery. So what he's saying, what Noam Sobel's laboratory has found and others have found, is that the number of pixels, the potential for olfactory resolution in humans and in bloodhounds is essentially the same. This is his argument. But the bloodhounds sniff much more. So it's the equivalent of having their eyes open much more. Right. In the example, so to speak, they have these vortices that are created by the structure of their nose and nostrils, so they have longer exposure.

And in the case of the bear, for instance, I don't know how many olfactory receptors they have relative to a human or a bloodhound, but that the bear is likely spending a lot more time and can pull more air, perhaps, I don't know, but is using the mechanical aspects of the olfactory system differently, in fact. And here's now I'm recalling the experiment that led to this conclusion that humans have exceptional olfaction, which is that there's a particular compound that when introduced to a swimming pool, people can detect a difference in the smell of the water at a dilution that is outrageously, outrageously small.

Like skunk spray?

Like skunk spray. Forgive me, because I'm not remembering the name of the chemical, but he said, you can essentially add a drop of this to a swimming pool, and then people can smell the difference between the water. And so his argument is not that humans are walking around sensing all these smells, smells consciously, as well as a bloodhound or as well as a bear, but that we have a tremendous capacity for olfaction that the chocolate tracking experiment exemplifies. But it requires some removal of our most dominant sense, vision and hearing, our second most dominant sense, and in that case, tactile orientation as well. And so the idea is that we have an amazing olfactory apparatus. In fact, he, he makes the argument, and there's evidence for the fact that as soon as people meet and they've done these beautiful experiments, people meet, they shake hands, and, you know, the next thing they do, they tend to, within about a minute, they wipe the scent of the other person on their face. Typically. I guess I wasn't paying attention.

And they don't realize it.

People don't realize this, do it subconsciously. Yeah.

Mercap, I think mercaptans, also known as theol. How do you say that? Theoles? Sulfur containing organic compounds are the strong, unpleasant owner. They are colors, yellows, liquids. It can be flammable. Mercaptans are found in nature and in living organisms as a waste product of metabolism and in oil and gas. They are also present in certain foods, such as some nuts and cheese, and in decaying organic matter in marshes.

Right. So we're probably sensitive to the odors that matter that can kill us. That can kill us. He also has this idea that I think is starting to take hold in real data, that we are constantly sensing our own odor plumes that we, you know, that we smell ourselves a lot of times per day. That's actually very normal behavior.

Right.

You know, there are all sorts of ways people do that that nobody talks about.

Yeah, you check a sniff.

People check their sniff, and it's an indication of hormone status, immune status. When you have babies or puppies, like, you know, you're looking at like, oh, is a good poop or a bad poop? You know, you're also paying it people. Some people will smell the poop. I'm not a proponent of that. But we're constantly sensing the scent and taste of, for instance, our partner, saliva. Right? Actually, an ex girlfriend of mine wrote to me recently. I don't know what this question represented, but she said, do you think that when you become unattracted to somebody, the taste of their mouth becomes bad to you or the other way around when you become unattractive? I guess she might have been dating somebody, and maybe it had fallen out of favor, and she was kind of not attracted, and she was sort of noting that their mouth no longer tasted kind of aversive now, as opposed to before.

I bet that's in your mind. I bet you don't like them anymore, because if you're really in love with someone, you don't even care if they have bad breath. I still want to kiss them.

That's true.

Because you just love them, you know?

Yeah, that's true too.

You don't care if they smell you don't care. You just. You love them. But if they're gross and then they smell you, like, ugh, right? You fucking stinky asshole. This. This is a mule deer skull. So this is not as extreme as an elk, but you get a look at the internal. If you look inside of that and.

You see, oh, yeah.

Because they can wind you from 100 yards away, easy.

So see this spongy stuff? I don't know if they can see it on video. There's this spongy stuff there. That's something called the cribriform plate. The cribriform plate is a bunch of swiss cheese like thin bone. And the olfactory neurons, which basically sit, like, right behind the back of your nostrils, they send axons, their little wire like connections, back into the brain. And when somebody gets hit hard on the head, that cribriform plate shears it. And that's why people become anosmic. They lose their sense of smell.

Yeah, look at that picture.

Now, what's amazing about the olfactory neurons is that they are among the very few neurons in the human and other mammalian nervous system that regenerates throughout the lifespan. So there's a little area of your hippocampus where there's some neurons that everyone makes a big deal of that, frankly, don't do a lot to regenerate throughout the lifespan. So called neurogenesis, new neurons. But the olfactory neurons, even though they're a central nervous system neuron, just like your retinal neuron or your cerebral cortex, they can regenerate throughout the entire lifespan, and they do every time somebody takes a head hit or there's some, you know, shearing off of these axons, excuse me, they regenerate. Now, under conditions like, we saw this a lot during COVID where people were complaining about loss of smell. We see this when people age. Some people are thinking that loss of smell may be a correlate, not the cause, but obviously, but a correlate of age related cognitive decline, dementia and Alzheimer's, things like that. There are a few things, actually. I think I recommend it to a couple of friends of ours. Now, there's very little data on this, but I will say, and I'll catch heat for this, but these days, I catch heat anyway, so I don't care.

There are good data, in my opinion, small amount of data, but let's call it decent enough data to explore that. Alpha lipoic acid at 600 milligrams per day, during the time when you're starting to lose your smell, might rescue some of that smell.

If someone's getting Covid and they start to lose their sense of smell, or.

Any viral infection where they are losing the sense of smell.

What other viral infections cause a loss of sense of smell?

Well, anything that clogs the sinuses, certainly, but there are influenza viruses that do this. Now, I know as we're saying this, that some people say, in fact, Noam Sobel told me that he felt that the data about alpha lipoic acid were kind of on the weak side. But when people are losing their sense of smell and taste, it's really scary. I mean, it's one of those things where, you know, you kind of feel like so much of pleasure in life, unbeknownst to us, is merged with food. Oh, I'll never forget when I got a viral infection and I took and I lost my sense of smell, and I ate a handful of blueberries, which I love, and it just tasted like bags of water. I was like, oh, goodness. Like, I don't. There are worse things in Covid that.

You lost your smell with.

It was. And I did the smell training, which has also been shown to work, because these olfactory neurons, this is amazing. Their survival is activity dependent. They require electrical activity driven by sniffing and smelling. It is true that the behavioral tool of taking a lemon and really just, like, getting it close to that nostril and just really trying to get whatever little whiff of lemon, you can. And then taking your coffee and getting that little whiff of coffee, whatever little remnants of smell that you can get in there, has been shown to improve the survival and eventually the durability of not just the olfactory neurons, but scent. In other words, the behavioral training works. The alpha lipoic acid thing is debated. The thing about alpha lipoic acid is diabetics and people with blood sugar issues probably shouldn't take it. It can kind of reduce blood sugar a little bit. But when I had that happen, lost my sense of smell. I was like, listen, I want my smell back. So I took 600 milligrams of alpha lipoic acid, and I was doing the scent training. I was, like, sniffing lemon, sniffing coffee, sniffing parmesan cheese, sniffing anything that was pungent that I could recognize, and my smell came back in a couple of days.

But then again, I don't know, because I didn't run the control experiment, whether or not it would have come back anyway.

Is it only positive smells, or what about if you use smelling salts or something, like, really intense?

Well, smelling salts I've never used, but, uh.

Oh, well, guess what?

Do we have some?

We've got some right here I'd be.

Willing to try, I think. Are they legal before I do something illegal? All right.

Yeah, these are totally legal.

All right. I'll give it a shot.

These are the one. This is.

Ah, Jamie's laughing.

This is Juju Mufu, who is a real athletic freak who uses these. We. I don't know him, but shout out to him, because this is the strongest shit we have ever tried.

I will just.

This one sealed, too.

So, yeah, I'll just do a lit. I'll just try a little bit.

Are you gonna get all up in there?

Come on. This is like the cold plunge.

This is.

I got a funny story about the cold plunge to tell you later, but that relates to you.

But we'll get to that in a moment. But you're about to get your mind blown here, son. So this stuff is so strong that it's sealed in this bag. Wait, wait.

Is it gonna kill my olfactory neurons?

No, you'll be fine. It's so strong that even though it's sealed in this bag, I have to rip this bag open and. Oh, my God, my hands are slippery. Got a knife? Okay. It's so strong that I've broken the seal of this bag just slightly. Look, it's still kind of sealed. Look, you could smell it through the bag.

Well, let's try the gnome. So let's give a sniff. Oh, yeah, yeah, right.

Okay. This bag is still sealed. I haven't even cut the bag yet.

So as somebody who had a laboratory with chemicals in it for a long time now, we we run clinical trials on humans, but. So no more chemicals in my lab.

Okay, now take a sniff.

You learned to waft it. You learned to. It's not even out of the.

No.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The bottle still sealed. Oh, this is just the beginning.

You know when you go to a park and you go into a public bathroom at a park that has a.

Pool, you're getting nervous.

Yeah, I'm getting nervous. You know, I'm no Elon Musk, but I saw what happens when people do substances on this that was legal in.

The state of California, and I think everybody's getting a little out of hand. You got in trouble.

You're like, we're down here in Texas, so.

Okay, now, again, this is totally legal. Now, what you're gonna do here is take this.

Isn't it amazing that the word legal, when said fast, sounds like illegal?

Yeah, legal.

And then you go, wait, what did you say? Legal.

It's totally legal.

And vice versa. Right?

Yeah.

All right, so what do I do?

Unscrew the cap.

I think it's my initials.

Ah. Unscrew the cap. All right, put it about six inches from your nose. Take a big sniff. Get in there.

All right.

Yeah, baby. Let's go. Now, imagine if you had Covid.

Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. Let me just kind of experience that for a second.

Yeah, take it in. I'm gonna have to.

Well, you know what's interesting? Or wouldn't be fair, you know what's interesting?

Oh, man, the fresh ones are so.

I feel it in my eye because the sinuses run. Oh.

Now what? Imagine if you had Covid. You get smelled over there, huh? I imagine if you had Covid and you lost your sense of smell. Like this might be the key to getting it back.

As long as it's not killing olfactory neurons.

I don't think it's killing it. You can smell everything after it.

I mean, that's true my own.

I'm obviously biased. So because I like that thrill, for.

Whatever reason we have, I actually enjoyed that. Thank you.

We have him in the green room at the mothership.

You prompted me to take several new experiences that we can talk about. But one other thing before I forget. I know I go down these nerdy rabbit holes here, but when I did the smelling salts a moment ago, I sniffed with both nostrils, but it came in mainly through my left nostril. And so I asked Noam Sobel, what's the deal with this left nostril, right nostril stuff? You have the yogis, the switching of the nostril things. Here's what's wild. This is so wild. It turns out that every 2 hours or so, the dominant breathing nostril switches. Now, now, that could be interesting, or that could not be interesting, right? There are a lot of things in biology that happen, but like, what is the meaning? Turns out it's a direct reflection of a shift in your so called autonomic nervous system from parasympathetic dominant to sympathetic dominant, meaning from more relaxed to more alert. And this is happening periodically throughout the day, like a seesaw and during sleep. So this whole thing with the yogis of breathe through one nostril or the other nostril, the olfactory bulbs, there's a lot of crossing over of information at later stages and even some early stages once the information gets to the brain.

So that whole thing is probably a little bit like weak sauce. But this idea that you're breathing easier through one nostril or the other is reflecting an underlying brain state and body state. That is absolutely true, he tells me.

Wow.

And the last thing is, you said, why would bears or bloodhounds have such better smell? Well, in the case of a bear, the size of the olfactory bulbs and the amount of brain real estate devoted to processing that information is much more so. We have a huge visual cortex. Most of our brain, frankly, is devoted to vision and to movement. Whereas the brain of, let me think of a turtle. It's mostly movement. They have very low cerebral cortex. Maybe that's not the best example, but certainly in a scent hound, the olfactory bulbs are much bigger than they are in a sighthound. And both of those have olfactory bulbs that are much, much bigger than Jamie's bulldog over there. Those guys sniff all the time, but they're mostly snorting, trying to get scents in. Their sense of smell is much, much worse than Marshall's. Than your dog. Because Marshall's a retriever.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense, because he can smell his ball. Like, if I throw his ball and he misses it, he just starts doing a circle and then he finds it with his smell, which is crazy.

Yeah.

Smells his ball, you know?

Yeah, yeah. Incredible. So what Noam is saying is not that humans have smell that is as good, but that when you push the conditions, you can reveal a heightened sense of smell that most people don't think humans have. Now, as I say this, there are a lot of people out there, and it's usually women who are like, oh, no, I can smell everything. I can smell the subtlest difference. And so it might be something related to maternal behavior. It might be something related to estrogen. It might be something in the y chromosome that suppresses that. We don't know. But some people are very olfactory. They can smell when somebody's not feeling right or when they're not feeling right. But it's absolutely the case that we're constantly taking the chemicals off other people through shaking hands, through hugging, rubbing them on ourselves, analyzing our own smells unconsciously.

I always say that I can smell bullshit.

You probably can, but I don't know.

If I really can smell it. But when someone's lying, I feel like there's a smell.

There could be the stress. It could be a certain. You know, we talk about stress as one thing, but stress is the dosing of different levels of cortisol, epinephrine. People that are pathological liars, they can probably do it without evoking those things. Then you have things like pupil size, bigger the pupils, more arousal. Right. The more stressed somebody is. We know this, right? That's why, like, if somebody takes a stimulant, pupils are. Get huge.

There's a thing that people do when they're full of shit where they're anticipating your response in a different way. Like when someone's telling the truth. Like, if you tell me the truth, you seem relaxed to my response, like you're telling. Even if it's something that you're not proud of, you're telling me the truth. This is the thing. When someone's lying, it's almost like they're waiting to see how you buy it.

So that it's like their defenses are up. They counterpunch quickly.

Well, they're selling it. They say it, and they're like, does he buy it? Like, you feel the. Does he buy it? And like, ooh, you're full of shit.

Oh, interesting.

You know what I'm saying?

Let me think about this. So you are able to sense their anticipation of your response. It's like they've got queued up, some counter, some evaluating where you're. Whether you're going, yes, no, or I.

Maybe, yeah, but it's not reliable. Like, I just be. To be completely honest, I've been bullshitted before, but I think I'm better at it than most. And I think maybe that's because I've had more conversations with people than most people have. But it's not 100%. Sometimes people are full of shit and, you know, you're not sure or you have your defenses down.

I mean, I've been badly, badly manipulated before. Yeah.

Yeah. Especially if you like someone you know. That's part of the problem. You don't want them to be full of shit.

Yeah. And some of the best manipulators, certainly in my experience, are people that have really figured out the combination lock of the things that, like, that I have felt deprived of. And they come in and those tend to be unique things like that you can't get out anywhere, you know? And, boy, somebody said that to me recently. Like, there are certain categories of humans that I just. I can't be seduced by. I'm not talking about just sexual seduction. I'm saying it just can't be seduced by. And then some people just are able to get past that force field. And so I consider myself pretty good at threat sensing, except in that domain where, like, my threat sensing is like the equivalent of a stuffed animal.

My friend Tony always says that erotic and psychotic are so close to each other that, you know, like, it crosses over back and forth. And I think there's something to that, too. That some of the craziest people are also some of the sexiest people for some weird reason. Like you. You want to be with them even though you know they're dangerous, like they're crazy. Like there's some weird thing going on there almost like you want wild kids because wild kids could survive better.

That's an interesting one.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, I mean, I think that the. Well, I'm listening to a really good book that a really smart person suggested to me called five types of people that will ruin your life. And I only wish I had read it years ago. And here's the main takeaway, that there are about 10% of people out there, and it cuts across all the standard labels of, like, narcissists and borderline and all that. They include some of that, but they depart from that and they just focus on what. This is a guy who's a psychologist. It's written by a guy who's a psychologist. He's worked a lot on conflict resolution over the years, courtroom type stuff, etcetera. And he says in this 10% of people, they are high conflict people. But within. They like conflict, they feed off it. They like drama, they like conflict, they like creating it. But within that category, it's pretty evenly divided, he claims, between women and men. And then there's a further division where about half of them play passive and victim but are highly manipulative. They use other people to try and basically harm. And then the other 5% are very aggressive and abrasive.

And so he has this great set of protocols. I love protocols that are essentially like, don't move in with, marry, or get engaged to, or have a child with somebody in the first year. And this cuts in both directions. Just don't make that agreement in year one, as well as for any behavior that kind of cues those senses, gets your spidey senses up, like you were describing. Ask yourself, would 90% or more of people do that behavior? And if it's a no, like, you have to pause. In other words, what he's saying in this book is that most people are actually pretty healthy, but that most of the woes of the world are created by about 10% of people, which he calls these high conflict people. But they don't always come out high conflict, like screaming and yelling. They're often very tactical and manipulative and very vindictive. They'll leverage victimhood. They'll leverage a lot of different things, and, again, cuts across men and women equally, he claims. And again, I don't know the data behind this book, but the book itself just feels like a very useful thing that everybody should know about. So I'm enjoying reading this book, going, oh, my God, I wish I had this book years ago.

Plus realizing, like, oh, yeah. Like, we always hear this. Like, most of our problems come from a very small set of people and.

Things and most of society's problems.

And so who are these people? So we tend to call them narcissists or sociopaths or psycho. These labels, while very useful in the clinic, I think, have been overused in the general public. And we're not clinicians. We're not diagnosing anybody, but difficult people that can ruin your life abound. But it turns out it's only about 10%, and it has some very specific protocols of how to deal with the people who are more outwardly aggressive versus play victim, et cetera. Very useful book.

Sucks that you have to think that way, though. Can you just enjoy someone?

I enjoy their career if they're in the 90%.

Yeah, but that's the problem.

Yeah.

Zig, when you should have zagged and you run into a ten percenter, take a year. A year is a long time, though.

Yeah.

Also, people can learn, like, what you tolerate and don't tolerate and hide certain types of behavior from you.

Yes.

Yeah, it can be a real issue.

Oh, I've definitely experienced that. And it's. And again, I think we are often. You mentioned that the relationship between erotic and manipulative and crazy or just erotic and crazy, I think there's also that when we finally receive the sorts of, I don't know, love or affection, it's not always sex, it's not always sexual. Right, right. Like, somebody, like, I don't like rubbing your feet or paying, you know, paying a little extra attention to what you say or something. For some people, that's intoxicating.

It's. A lot of it is paying attention to you. A lot of it is like listening to what you have to say or asking you questions about your thoughts and your feelings, which a lot of people are unaccustomed to. And that's intoxicating to people because a lot of people just want to talk about themselves. So when someone wants to talk about you and really is asking questions about your feelings, you know, that can kind of manipulate you in a weird way.

Yeah. It almost feels like a parental type of care that we're probably wired to look for. I mean, I always marvel at this and also just kind of shake my head and go, why? Why did God design us this way? But, you know, the circuitry in our brain that creates infant child attachment is the same circuitry that is repurposed for all other relationships in adulthood. It's not like you get your, like, your childhood attachment stuff, and then you go, okay, well, you know, you're like, 1516. You're moving on in the world. You're hitting puberty. You're starting to date a bit, whatever. Now let's work with a different set of mechanics, a different set of algorithms. No, it's the same set of algorithms repurposed. We know this based on the studies of infant child. Infant parent attachment and on the basis or infant caretaker and on the basis of studies of romantic love, it's the same circuitry. So you're using a set of algorithms and circuitry that were designed for one thing in a very different context.

That's interesting. And it probably makes sense why a lot of men with, like, very overbearing mothers seek overbearing wives. Yeah, yeah.

You know, I've learned so much recently about just how it is that, you know, we can lose our vision of, like, other people. Right? Like, we. And I think this thing that we hear, like, manipulation, it often sounds like, oh, it's like, really, like, tactical. Someone's rubbing their hands. I think the really tricky part about is I do think that most people in the world are just, like, doing their best to feel safe, to get. To get their needs met. I think there are very few evil people, but in this sort of pattern of repurposing childhood attachment patterns and then people bringing that forward into their adult attachment patterns, I think what ends up happening is that people, quote unquote, trying to get their needs met oftentimes, like the worst ones, sometimes called trauma bonding. But they kind of go lock and key, or somebody identifies somebody that's really healthy and they're like them, I'm going to latch onto them because they're healthy. And you say, well, the healthy person should be able to spot all the landmines, but if somebody is able to really tap into, like, something you didn't have or something that just feels like oxygen, right?

Goodness gracious. Like, you could be the smartest, most well acclimated person with the best parents or whatever upbringing, which most people aren't. But some people do have that and still fall kind of into this fog that is like, gosh, you want to be with this person, but it doesn't feel good, that mish mash. And I think the thing I've learned clearly is that when you feel that trepidation. Run. Don't walk. Like, it's not like the gray zone is actually the thing to just exit fast. Gray doesn't mean, like, hover and check it out and, like, run some experiments here.

Ticking bomb.

Get out. Yeah, yeah.

Run.

Just run. Yeah, just run.

It's also, I think there's some people that are very sheltered and they've been well taken care of, and they're not accustomed to manipulative people, and they're not accustomed to dangerous people. And so they don't. I've seen that before, both with people choosing the wrong friends and people choosing the wrong partners.

Yeah, that certainly hasn't been my pattern. Not that I had the hardest upbringing, but it was easy. I would say easier than some, harder than others. But I always had great friends, great friendships. But my threat sensing wasn't always great in romantic relationships, for sure. I've also had some great relationships. I think what tends to happen is that if we're very busy, we have this tendency to be easily manipulated by certain things that are unusual, that we just. That really feel like extra oxygen to us or just feel so nourishing. Because I think people always will, often default to sex. Like, it's all about sex. Depending on who you are, sex is either more or less readily available to you. Right. I think that for some people, it's nurturing, like, a certain form of nurturing, and then there's also this thing of, we know how to survive certain things so they don't feel as dangerous. So people who've had, like, very overbearing or complicated childhoods or abusive childhoods, sometimes they're set to perceive danger at way too high a threshold. So their perception of what's dangerous is way too high. And so they walk into even still dangerous situations, but they don't think of them as dangerous, and they're like, oh, I can navigate this.

They're good at navigating difficult people, or they're good at navigating, you know, borderline people or something like that.

I think it's also exciting, which is part of the problem, that people like excitement. And if you have a boring life and a life that doesn't have a lot of stimulation in it, and then you find someone, even if they're bad for you, but they're exciting. There's some, some conflict, some, something. There's, there's fights and breakups and then makeups of which are exciting. And so then you get locked into this stimulation pattern, which is, I've seen that multiple times with people. It's a real problem.

Do you think it's more of a problem with people that like excitement and adventure and are super curious, but, like, excitement and adventure? So I'm thinking comics. I'm thinking people who like high intensity sports that they seek relationships that are higher intensity, because, you know, I've received great advice from people like Rick, who've said, you know, your relationship should be a sanctuary. That should be where peace is, you know? And actually, I don't pay a lot of attention to Instagram kind of little mottos and things, but someone sent me one that I was like, yes, that feels so true. Which is that men eventually settle where they feel peace.

Yeah, I think that's probably the healthiest way to do it. But I think people, like I said, I think people like stimulation, and I don't think a lot of people are stimulated by their day to day existence. I think they're bored. I think a lot of people are just, like, trudging along every day. And then when someone comes along, that makes you excited in your life, you know, with someone who's just a little wilder, a little crazier, maybe some lady's got a bunch of tattoos, like, look at her, you know?

Whoa.

You know, people get excited by people that are a little bit dangerous.

It's this idea that anything could, like. Like, anything could happen. They could do anything.

They're risky people, you know, someone's got tattoos on their hands. Like, Jesus, what is she doing?

Yeah. You and I both have a lot of tattoos, but I've kept it intentionally, kept it off the hands and my hands.

But it's. The face is a real problem. Like, that's a little wacky. But I have a lot of friends. Like, jelly rolls. Good friend of mine, he's got tattoos all over his face. Post Malone. Good friend of mine, I think tattoos, he's got a bunch of written shit all over his face. Yeah, I mean, they're the nicest people. The thing about, like, jelly roll and post is, like, once you talk to them, once you're talking to them, you don't see the tattoos anymore. You just see the human. You know, it's just like, they're wearing a shirt. It's like, no, it's nothing. You know, it's normal.

And things have changed a lot. Like, I was born in 75, right? So I'm heading towards 50 quick.

Back then, tattoos on the face was crazy.

Oh, yeah. One of my childhood heroes, and somehow, by the grace of God, he's become a close friend of mine is Tim Armstrong, lead singer from Rancid. Has a tattoo of a spider web on his head and a spider on his neck. And I remember seeing him when I was a kid at a show and be like, that dude's scary. And Lars Fredrickson from Rancid says skunks on his forehead. They're super nice guys.

I mean, they're Travis Barker's super nice guys.

Yeah, Tim and Travis do the transplant. Yeah, Tim and Travis do transplants. And, like, you see those guys, you're like, whoa. Now, I think it shifted a little bit, but back then, I remember thinking, like, that's gnarly. That's a tough guy.

Yeah.

You know, and certainly Lars is a tough guy, and Tim, too. But the, you know, I remember seeing it, like, you only saw it on bikers and, like, gnarly punk rockers, people.

That had checked out of society completely.

Mohawk used to be, you're not getting a job, right? Yeah, a nose ring used to. Remember when a nose ring or an eyebrow ring cover, you go into Starbucks and the person would have it covered up, you know, like, because they weren't. They weren't allowed to have it.

Right.

Now I see medical students with. With eyebrow rings and nose rings and stuff. So things have definitely changed.

Yeah, we're a little bit more open minded to decorations. But it is a thing, though, that you're taking a giant ass chance by tattooing your hands.

Well, a friend of mine, who admittedly is a psychologist, said, you know, tattoos are largely an expression of what you feel on the inside, put to the outside. And I was like, that sounds good. Yeah, sorta. Yeah.

I don't know. It's just art. It's. I like art. I like art on my walls. I like art on my arms. I like art.

There's some Rogan tattoos out there. I saw lex Friedman face tattoo.

There's a bunch of lex Friedman face tattoos.

He just had a birthday. Oh, you did too. Happy birthday.

Thank you very much.

And lex, happy birthday.

Yeah, there's a lot of. That's the weirdest one is tattooed of people's faces on your body forever. And there's, I don't know how many of them are me. There's thousands of them. I mean, I used to post them on instagram all the time, but then I thought I was encouraging people to get my face tattooed so that they can. I'd put it up on my instagram, but it's kind of crazy.

There might be some reward loop circuitry.

Going on there 100%. Before I forget this, can I ask you this? The people that are into this smelling salt stuff, they're powerlifters, and they take a big sniff in that stuff before they lift weights. Why would that help them?

Adrenaline.

Adrenaline, yeah.

So a couple more things about olfaction. And by the way, I love this stuff. This is so wild because it's the most primitive part of our brain and nervous system. We were chemical sensors before we were light sensors, right? We were sensing chemical environments. Is this a safe chemical environment? And we evolved from that. We know that, for instance, memories that are associated with smell, like the people will say, the smell of my grandmother's kitchen or somebody's hands, my grandfather's hands. Those memories stick with us longer than anything because the olfactory bulb has a direct line to a couple of structures in the brain. So we have an olfactory bulb, which is the main thing for smell. Then there's something called the accessory olfactory bulb. It sort of divides into primitive smells that are like aversive get away quick. Those tend to go through a really fast line through the accessory olfactory bulb takes us straight to the amygdala, to the piriform cortex that says, move your body and face away from that. Like, I didn't sit there. And on the smelling salt, it's like, boom. Get away. It's like a reflex. It's like in fish, there's this thing called the malverneuron where you touch on one side of the body.

What does the fish do? Goes the opposite direction. Big, huge neuron hardwired circuit.

Well, they have those lateral lines that detects sense sounds and things and vibrations in the water.

They're sensing electrosensing at a distance. And these mouther neurons are incredible. You touch, boom, the fish heads the opposite direction, doesn't go like, oh, are you another friendly fish? You want a mate? They go, I'm out of here. Oh, and then they check you out, right? And so it's a reflex for safety. The olfactory system has these two pathways, the olfactory bulb for kind of like, oh, is this black rifle coffee, you know, and then there's the smelling salt, one that goes through the accessory olfactory bulb, straight to the amygdala, which is associated with threat detection and other things, straight to the piriform cortex, and then to a motor circuit. Boom, turn the head the other way. Get out. Exhale. Don't inhale. More aversive. Okay. So the thing about smell is that, you know, it's got these very hardwired components, okay? And they're set up for either appetitive, like, hmm, let me explore more. Sniff in more versus, as opposed to aversive behaviors like, get. Get me the hell away. And these brain areas are among the more ancient brain areas. Now, I say ancient people nowadays start picking apart it, like, well, it's not just limbic and cortex.

The cortex is part of limbic. That's all true. But if you look at our brains and you look at the brains of, like, a turtle or even a snake, all the stuff we're talking about right here are all. They're not exactly the same, but they're all present. When you get to humans, what you really add is a lot of cerebral cortex for the thinking and association stuff. Like, you know, I've been here before, so I'm a little bit less, you know, like, looking around as much as I did last time, like things that, you know, not context dependent learning, context dependent stuff. Whereas all the highly reflexive stuff is going to be hardwired circuitry you find in every animal, every person, and you need to divide things into three different responses in humans, okay? In order to survive. Yum, I'm going to move toward it. Yuck. I'm going to move away. And meh. There's basically only three motor responses to anything. Yum, yuck. Or meh. Now, there's a matter of degrees. Like, you might see somebody you really like. You want to, I don't know, Joey Diaz or something. You know, you see him. Like, you want to run over see him, right?

So there's an appetitive circuit, moves you towards it. See something's a little odd. You might pause. I don't know what that is, or something aversive, like, something happens in the parking lot, and you're like, I'm getting the hell out of here. So the brain, as complex as it is, needs to divide things into one of three different motor responses. Pause or retreat. Okay. I was playing with Jamie's dog out there before. I was like, I couldn't get him to back up. That's what's kind of cool about the bulldog. You charge him, and he just goes, I'm like, 20 times his size. But he's just like, well, he's also.

Never experienced anybody being mean to him except a little. Few dogs, apparently. But most of his experiences are play. Like, he knows he can just run up to you and bite you, and you'll play with him.

Right? So you said about why the smelling salts and adrenaline. So here's the deal. When we have this aversive response, the move away, the yuck response, get me away. There's a parallel response in the brain and body of the release of epinephrine, adrenaline. It's the same thing. Sorry for the dual naming.

Epinephrine and adrenaline are the same thing.

Same thing. Long, complicated, boring history as to why it's named two things. Noradrenaline, norepinephrine, same molecule. So let's just call it adrenaline. For sake of simplicity. Adrenaline is released from the adrenals in the body, and it's released from an area in the brain called the locus coeruleus, which sends out a bunch of little wires, axons, to sprinkler the brain with adrenaline. And both systems work in parallel. So when you smell something aversive, it goes inhale. Ugh. Okay. Olfactory. Certain olfactory neurons cue that to the accessory olfactory ball. Bam. Straight to the amygdala. Amygdala sends a signal down to the. To the adrenals atop the kidneys. They release adrenaline, sends a, believe it or not, a signal up to locus coeruleus. It sprinklers the brain with adrenaline, and you just had, within a couple hundred milliseconds, you just got a parallel adrenaline response in brain and body that allows you to do what more easily move to move. Now, you're ready for motion, you're ready for movement. In fact, I'm sure if you put that under the deepest sleepers nose the middle of the night, they're gonna wake up. Yeah, like. Like a, you know, like a gunshot.

They used to give it to boxers and they got hurt in the corner. They'd give them smelling salts and wake them up.

Yeah. Cuz one of the best painkillers is adrenaline.

Mmm.

Well, you've been hit hard before. Isn't it amazing how little it hurts when it happens and how much it hurts later?

Yeah, it's kind of crazy.

It's crazy.

That's the thing that's weird about fights. Like while they're happening, your shins are getting battered, things getting hurt you don't have. You don't really feel much.

Yeah, adrenaline.

Unless you get kicked hard to the body, the liver shots. Doesn't matter how much adrenaline you have pumping. There's something about getting hit in the liver, the liver. When you get hit, like right here, if you get kicked or punched right here, it's a crazy feeling. It just shuts everything off. It's real weird. Your body just shuts off.

I've seen these images of like somebody just like melt. It looks like they melt and it looks like they take a few paces and they're like ready to counter punch or something. And then it hits slowly. I don't know.

Well, some shots go away. So like some pain, like if you get punched in the gut and you're, you know, you're. You're tidying up in anticipation. It still hurts. It hurts. But then you move a little bit and then you're okay again. But the liver is the opposite. The liver, you get hit and then there's this like sharp pain and a delay and then everything just shuts off. It's very. It's very hard to fake. And that you're fine and move away. You see like telltale signs. Like one thing guys will do all the time, when they get hit in the liver, they drop their right arm down and they pin it to their body. So maybe they're fighting like this. They're moving. They whack the liver. And you see them do like that and they're still moving. But they can't help it. They have their arm pressed because they know one more shot there and they're fucked. So they barely can keep a poker face and move around. But there's telltale signs that you see that are just instinctive. You see them just drop their hand and a lot of times, guys will use that to set them up with a head kick, so, like, they'll hit you a bunch of.

A good example of that is Islam Makhachev and Alexander Volkanovski. He hit him with a left kick to the body multiple times in that fight, and then fired off one to the head and knocked him out.

So it's like they're just hiding.

This slow leg come up, and it's very hard to recognize. And there's a kick called a question mark kick, and it's called a question mark kick, because in taekwondo, we used to call it a fake front kick, roundhouse kick. And what it is, is you're lifting the knee up as if you're kicking to the body in a straight line, and then you whip it over and go like that and turn it to roundouts kick. Pull up. Globe. Fitosa. Globe. Fatosa was the best at it, so much so that a lot of people started calling it the brazilian kick, because this guy was a k one champion who had the most flexible hips and the craziest question mark kick. And he would literally bring it up and down over the guard. So your hands would be up this. Like you think your hands are protecting your head. He would bring it up around like this and drop it down on your head and knock people out. It's so wild. Cause to this day, I don't know anybody who can kick as good as him with that kick. Like, to this day, he has the best highlight.

There's a lot of people that are really good at that kick, but Globe had a very unusual flexibility of his hips. Watch this. Look at this. Well, that's just a regular one, but he's got some of them that go over the. This is some of his highlights. Like, look at that. See how it does that? See how it just goes up and around?

It almost looks like his knee just kind of.

Yeah, watch this, watch this. He's going to do it in slow motion. Watch the whip of it. Look at that. That's so crazy. So you don't even know. It's. Look how he just whip it down and it's just, there's a lot of people that are good with that. But he was the best at it. I mean, the best. It was just weird to see how he could do it.

I'm always amazed how people can kick standing so closely.

Oh, yeah. Globe. It's just flexibility of the hips, it's leg dexterity. But the way he could do it, man, it's just the finest question mark kick of all time. I mean, here's knocking out semi schilt, who is 7ft tall with it. I mean, it was bizarre to watch that kind of flexibility. And also bizarre that no one else seems to have really kind of captured that technique as well as he did. And Galave used to fight. I mean, this is like k one. There's Israel. Adesanya had a really good one, too. It still has a really good one. Look at this one. Wow. But that's a little bit more straightforward. I mean, that's like straight to the chin and it's a beautiful kick. But the way glam used to do it, it would go over the top and down. See, that? Like, that is so crazy. I can't do that. I've been throwing kicks my whole life. I can't throw it like that.

I'm always watching their eyes and these fires eyes. It's amazing to me, like years ago, I saw a Mayweather fight and I was obviously on pay per view, and he was just getting paid for sure. Right? That was his thing. But it was always amazing. Me in the slow mo, like, where he would slip punches by, like centimeters. And they may think that, like, his depth perception and the depth perception of fighters must, successful fighters must just be exquisite because, I mean, like, slipping at that distance with just a chin movement.

That'S one thing, but it's also pattern recognition. You've been doing it so many times and, you know, so really good fighters, one things that you see is they don't just charge out in the first round. The first round is like a feeling out process. So you're, you're downloading a lot of data points, you're downloading foot movement. And a lot of guys watch tape and they download it from that, but then you don't really know until you're in there with a person. So they're downloading positions. They're downloading what a guy does. Like, if you, if you pivot to the left, does he move forward? Does he move back? Does he throw the left hook? Does he throw the right hand? What does he do? And how good is he at closing distance? Does he try to fire from where he's at? Or does he skip forward and fire? Does he give any telltale signs? Does he telegraph? So there's a lot of things that a fighter looks for. Mayweather had some of the best counterpunchers in the history of the fucking sport. He was so good at, like, staying in the pocket. So he was an elusive guy there.

Yeah, there's, he's slipping pattern recognition. Pattern recognition. So he knows that left hook is coming. And so look how straight he throws that right hand. See how straight he threw that? So Canelo is throwing these big, wide punches, and Floyd is just cutting him off at the path and then moving his head out of the line of those hooks that come his way.

So do you think it's conscious? You know, I'm obsessed with this notion of unconscious genius. Like, you know, like different domains of super high performance where the people don't exactly know how they do it, but they do it well.

You know how you do it, but you've also done it so many times in the gym and in fights that it's second nature. So you're not thinking of it as you're doing it. One of the things about countering people is, and I used to, when I was in my prime, when I was fighting all the time, I would throw kicks and they would land before I even knew I was going to do it, because someone would do something. And as they would do something, I instinctively knew because of pattern recognition, there's going to be an opening. Like, say if some guy lifts his left leg, if he's standing with his left leg forward and he lifts his left leg and he's coming towards me with his left leg, I know that he's balancing on that right leg and that the left leg is coming this way. And if I spin and catch him, I can catch him as his momentum is going this way and I'll catch him that way and it'll double the power of the punch or the kick.

Did somebody teach it to you? Because there, there's like a conscious awareness of how you do it. I think this notion of pattern recognition, it's interesting because earlier we were talking about pattern recognition for finding people are lying, right? You have this pattern recognition thing that you're not saying it's perfect, but you can sense something. There's things that. And so it's a combination of things that we aren't always aware of. That's the unconscious part of the unconscious genius thing that I'm referring to. And so there's this idea, like, our brains are pattern recognition prediction machines. And so do you think, like, in other words, two questions. Do you think Mayweather was ever pulled aside and said, listen, pay attention to their left shoulder and keep your eye on his right eye? I'm just 100% okay. And were you ever told, hey, if his left leg comes up, that means he's balancing on his right? So you need to prepare a counter attack. Or an attack.

Well, that's where drills come in. Okay, so you do drills, and you do drills constantly. And one of the things that Mayweather's father was a great fighter. Mayweather's father fought Sugar Ray Leonard back in the 1970s when Sugar Ray was in his prime and gave him a hell of a fight. And his brother, or his uncle, rather, his uncle Roger, was Roger Mayweather, the black mamba. He was a great fighter. So he grew up as a child around some of the best boxers in the world, and so he was constantly seeing the successful motions that they did and constantly seeing them exploit weaknesses in other fighters and then constantly sparring. So insparring. You're not just fighting when you're sparring, but you're sort of downloading data. You're downloading data points for a real fight, and then you're doing drills where a guy will, you know, some guys, they'll do it with mitts. Well, they'll throw a hand at you, and they'll slip and counter. Here, let me show you. This is guy Ilya Tapuria. And Ilya Tapuria is one of the absolute best fighters in the world. He's the current UFC featherweight champion. And the dude is just fucking phenomenal.

But when you. One of the things that's phenomenal about him is his technique. His technique is perfect. There's, like, no fat in his technique. There's no wasted movement. So when an opportunity presents itself, everything is so fast because the technique is so streamlined. But, like, look at how he hits the pads, and when you watch how he hits the pads. And Mayweather is a great example of that as well. Did I send it to you? No, didn't go through. I totally sent it.

Hold on.

So they sent it? No. Yeah, it's on instagram. I sent it to you, though, on a text message. Really? I sent it twice. You got it? Okay. Eliot, deport. Like I said, one of some of the best hands in the sport. Current UFC featherweight champion and knocked out Volkanovski, who was maybe the greatest of all time. Watch him hit the punches. Look at this. See how he's moving his head when the guy throws punches? Just slipping just slightly, it's like, total economy of movement. And the speed, man. The fucking speed of that. Look at the hand. Look at the hand speed. Fucking incredible. I mean, if you know how difficult that is to do and do it that fast. Give me that sound again. Let me hear this. I mean, these are like five, six punches a second.

Yeah, it almost sounds. It almost looks like it's sped up by one, one and a half times, but it's not.

And just phenomenal technique. But see how those punt looks like they're not even talking. So when he's throwing the mitts at his head to get him to duck, there's no communication. He just sees that hand coming towards him and he's ducking. He sees this hand coming towards him and he's ducking. It's all like slight slips away and it's slight motions, which is all you need to get away from a punch. Right. You just. You don't want to move too far. You're wasting a lot of energy and you can't counter attack. One of the best things about Floyd and one of the most brilliant things about him, he's one of the most elusive fighters of all time. But he didn't move around. He stood right in front of you and you couldn't fucking hit him. That's true mastery of space and true mastery of technique. In my opinion, he's the best boxer that's ever lived.

Yeah. I mean, I'm not qualified to rank people, but I watched when he was making that ascent towards it. Ended up being 50, you know.

He just fought last weekend. This weekend. Yeah, he fought. He fought a match against John Gotti's grandson, which is crazy.

That's scary for a lot of reasons.

Yeah, for a lot of reasons. Right? This is the second time they fought. The first time they fought, it ended in a brawl. Like, a bunch of people jumped in the ring. It was crazy because they stopped the fight because they were talking too much shit to each other and holding on to each other too much. So the referee stopped the fight for whatever reason. I don't know. And this fight was even crazy, too, because the referee was. The first referee was terrible. And the referee called Floyd, said, floyd mayor weather hit him behind the head. Absolutely incorrect call. Floyd threw a right hand and it caught him on the side of the head. And the referee claimed that it was behind the head. So Floyd fired the referee in the middle of the bout. He stops the bout. He's like, get the fuck out of here. Get out of here.

Because he's the promoter also.

Well, I guess. I mean, also it's Floyd Mayweather. Like, what's the referee gonna do? Fuck you. You know? I'm gonna stop the fight. Like, also, they're in Mexico City. Like, you get killed. Like, just get out of the ring, buddy. So Floyd throws this punch, and he's 100% correct. The punch landed the side of the head. It's a right hook. It's a perfect punch. And the referee was saying, watch the back of the head. He's like, what the fuck are you talking about? That wasn't the back of the head. And so he kicks the guy out, and they bring in a different referee who finishes the fight. It was insanity.

And Floyd Wondeh.

It was an exhibition. It's kind of a bullshit money grab, honestly. So this is, you see the punch? That's the punch right there. It's just a right hook. Seeing back of the head, like. So Floyd's like, get the fuck out of here. Just get out of here. Fuck you. Get out of here. He's like, get the fuck out of here. And if anybody's qualified to say, get out of here, it's fucking Floyd Mayweather, the best boxer of all time. He's 100% correct. That referee made a giant, stupid error. He's like, get out of here. Get out of here. He's like, get out of the fucking ring.

This is his domain.

Yeah, it's, and he's right. Everybody watching it is right. No one thinks it's a bad punch. If you, let's see it again. We can see it one more time. It's a counter right hand. Let's do it. And we can see it in slow motion. So he throws the punch. Boom. It's just a perfect right hook. It's a perfect right hook. What it does is a punch that goes over the top of the guard and catches him. An exposed area of the head of is the perfect punch. And for the referee to interfere there. And also, it's like, it's literally like someone who probably doesn't know how to box at all, telling the greatest boxer of all time that what he's doing is wrong, which is just bananas. So he got rid of the guy in the middle of the fight, but he's still doing these bouts at 46 years old, still boxing these young kids again. This John Gotti III, who is a very good, up and coming MMA fighter. You know, he has all the weapons, takedowns, submissions, kicks, all that jazz, but he's choosing to fight Floyd in a boxing fight just for money, just like Conor McGregor did.

It's really a trick. He gets these people to box with him. They have no business boxing with them. And he's making millions and millions of dollars doing this way after his competitive career is over, which is, I guess.

He'S earned that right.

Hey, man, he's a genius. He really is a genius. He's a genius in figuring out a way to keep making money. And one of the reasons why people watch him fight is not because he's like, Mike Tyson just goes out and destroys people. They like watching him fight because they hate him, because he talks so much shit, and he's like, look at my million dollar watch. Look at my fucking jet. Look at my house. Look at this. He's, like, constantly showing you all these things that he has. Like, he'll lay out watches in a hotel bed. Like, this is a million dollars worth of watches. This watch goes for $2 million. And they're like, this is my small watch that I take sometimes, but I want to show you. When I show up, I bring out the big boy, and it brings out. This watch is covered in diamonds. It's like fucking $5 million. And so you hate him. People hate him.

He creates envy.

Yes. Yeah, he creates envy. And you want him to lose, but he's not gonna. He's not gonna. He's too. He's so good. But the other thing is discipline, right? You don't, he's not just this cocky guy who's, like, really good at boxing. He also has incredible discipline.

I've seen clips of him running in the middle of the night.

He would go to a nightclub with everybody else, be drinking water, everybody's partying, having a good time. Floyd would leave the nightclub at 02:00 a.m. have his bodyguards drive the car, and he would run in front of the car for hours, run home, 02:00 in the morning, run five, 6 miles, and did it all the time. Just always did. He was always fit, always in shape, never got fat, never got lazy, always was ready, and so never really experienced. Declined, and then decided at a certain point in time, like after the Conor McGregor fight. Okay, I'm done. Done. Did it all. Beat everybody. Undefeated by. And now he just has these, these demonstration fights where they're, they're weird little exhibitions where he's just beating people up that have no business in the ring with him. And one of them, he was walking around with a fucking. A card. A ring card. He took it from the ring card girl, and he started dancing around. So he's like, he's enjoying no threat whatsoever.

He's enjoying life. Well, people like to be angry. I'm always calling to mind a study. I'll keep this really brief, but there's a famous study by a guy named Robert Heath, who was a neurosurgeon, and he put a bunch of stimulating electrodes into the brain of some humans. Getting neurosurgery and he offered them the opportunity to stimulate any area they wanted. And he stimulates some areas, and they'd feel happy or giddy or drunk or sexual arousal or whatever. You know, the one area that all. There were only three subjects, but for human neurosurgery, that's not a terrible subject number. The area that all three of them preferred vastly over the other areas to be stimulated evoked the sense of anger and frustration.

Really?

Yeah. People like to be angry, which is.

Why Twitter is so popular.

Yeah. And to some extent, Instagram and I don't know.

Sure. But Twitter is the one the most, because it's mostly just talking or mostly just text. Instagram is photographs, and you could just. I don't comment on people's photo very, very rarely. I might have commented on photos twelve times in my life. You know, just a friend, like, that's awesome. Way to go. Something nice, but I don't even read comments, but I look at pictures, I go, oh, that's cool. Oh, look at that video. That's fucking crazy. I'll give a little tap, double tap, give you a little heart, give you a little love, and then move on about my day. But in Twitter, I'm constantly just engaging with people's thoughts and arguments and debates. And that's why I think Twitter is the most addictive of all the social media platforms in terms of engagement, but not as addictive as TikTok in terms of. It compels you to continue to watch. I want to keep going with this, but I have to pee so bad. I did this on before we got here, and I drank 64 liters of water, or 64oz, rather. All right, we'll be right back. We were at. People like to get angry, and you were saying that you had another urge to take another sniff of these smelling salts.

So I'm observing something interesting about the smelling salts. It's definitely like brack hits hard, and then you feel really good afterwards. You feel it in your body. You feel it in my body. And then I noticed there's kind of a hunger for it.

Right, like another hit.

Yeah, like, maybe in 20 minutes or so.

It's like a cocaine thing. Oh, allegedly.

I've never tried cocaine.

Me neither. Good for you. But that's what I hear.

Yeah. I wonder. I doubt that hits the dopamine circuit, but a little valuable science tidbit. We hear so much about dopamine, adrenaline. Look, there are three molecules. They're called the catecholamines, dopamine, epinephrine, adrenaline and norepinephrine, noradrenaline. And they are actually, some are biochemical derivatives of others, and they are cousins. They work like a little clan of molecules to raise alertness and focus and drive. I think the great Robert Sapolsky said it best. He said, dopamine is not about the pursuit of pleasure, it's about the pleasure of pursuit. Mmm.

That makes sense.

That's why he's Robert Sapolsky.

Yeah. Talk about the journey.

That's right. So you combine motivation with adrenaline, which gets your body in a position to move better, and noradrenaline, which kind of works in between those two. It's a little more complicated, not worth going into, but they work as kind of like a gang of three to raise alertness, directional motivation, and go. And so I wouldn't be surprised if there was a little bit of a dopaminergic aspect to those smelling salts. I look it up and see, but I certainly like it. It feels good. It feels good. Everybody likes it. You know, that's why I've never tried cocaine or amphetamine, like I like upstates, as they call them.

Me too. Same thing. I've never tried Adderall either, but I've been tempted. Oh, yeah, people tell me about Jesus.

I've never tried it organized. I'm trying to think of that. There's some, you know, there was a chart out on Twitter. We were just talking about Twitter, where all the different nootropics, or let's not call them smart drugs, but things that can enhance alertness, things like alpha GPC, as you know, 600 milligrams alpha gpc. I don't care who it is. That's like, where's the double blind placebo controlled? That shows it raises alertness and focus. Look, as much as I believe in science, you don't need a double blind, placebo controlled study to know that swift kick in the shin hurts. And that 600 milligrams of alpha GPC is going to make you more alert. Is it?

Well, we did double blind, placebo control studies for alpha brain.

Right, right. And so they exist. And certainly that's one that I would put kind of high on the tier of things for. If you want alertness and focus, it's certainly more benign than a lot of prescription drugs that create alerts.

Theanine's also really effective for that, too, and I don't know how many studies there are on that.

Not as many. Theanine takes away the jitters, like 100 to 200 milligrams of theanine will take away the jitters associated with stimulants, which is why it's now in a lot of energy drinks. So you'll see alpha GPC, theanine, sometimes l tyrosine, which is a precursor to dopamine. But there were a couple of things on that list, including prescription drugs like modafinil, for instance, which was originally designed for the treatment of narcolepsy.

Was it designed for that, or was it designed as a performance enhancing drug, but they needed way to prescribe it.

Both.

Okay.

Yeah. So, for the treatment of narcolepsy, it also has been shown to improve alertness and cognitive function in sleep deprived individuals. So you can imagine military finding that very useful.

That's new. Vigil and provigil, right?

Correct.

I took that stuff for a while. I was taking it, and you know what? I would really like to take it. Like, say if I had a gig in San Diego, and I was done with my gig at, like, 11:00 I was like, I want to go home. I don't want to stay in a hotel. Fuck it. Let me drive home. And if I would drive home, there'd be that risk of this, the sleep coming on because of the. There's a weird thing about being on the highway, about those lines. They fucking hypnotize.

Oh, yeah.

It's really weird.

And they're.

Yeah. And so for anybody out here, listen to this, because this. My manager told me this. It's really important. If you think you're gonna fall asleep, there's a great way to mitigate it that's pain free. Get a rag, like, a washcloth and some ice and some water, and have, like, a little thing next to you with a cold, wet rag, and just wipe that rag on your face, and then you're good for, like, five more minutes. Reach in there and start, oh, man, I'm just gonna sleep again. Wipe that rag on your face. You wake right up.

This is a great one.

Pain free.

This is a great one. And it fits right in with what Matt Walker says to do the opposite, to fall asleep. When you wash your face with warm water, take a hot shower. I go in the sauna, or go in the sauna. Everyone says, well, you're heating up your body. You need to cool down to fall asleep. But you heat up the surface of your body, and the medial preoptic area of your hypothalamus, which is your brain's thermostat, says, hey, the surface of the body is heating up. What should I do? Cool down my core temperature, and that puts you asleep.

Would it be bad to do sauna and then cold plunge and then try to go to sleep?

I do that. If I'm late in the day and I'm tired, it's not a problem. But I end with kind of a warmish shower. If I want to be alert, I end on cold. If I want to go to sleep, I end with warm, which is why.

I start the day with cold.

To wake up, get in the cold. The surface of the body gets cold. That's kind of a no brainer. And the core body temperature goes up because the medial preoptic area, your brain's thermostat, says, wait, the surface of the body is cooling down. I'm going to heat up. And waking up in the morning is largely the consequence of body temperature going up. So why do you wake up more quickly in the cold? Well, body temperature goes up more quickly also. Big shot of adrenaline from cold water. Nobody escapes the adrenaline from cold water, at least upon getting in, as long as it's cold enough. And last time you picked on me about how warm I'm keeping my ice bath can't even be called an ice bath. So my cold plunge is now set at mid forties.

That's better.

Getting better. But I still go into the sauna at 210, 220, by the way, I.

Don'T know if I'm right. I'm probably wrong. My wife doesn't want. She wants to get a second cold plunge. Cause she doesn't like how cold mine is. Cause mine has ice in it.

Yeah, you're probably in the thirties.

Yeah, it's 34. It's fucking cold as shit mode, kind of. I've got a new one that I got from Morosco. We have two, so we have one here at the gym. That's a blue cube. That's. This one's insane because you can crank it and you turn up the knob and it'll be like a flowing, raging river.

And the flow breaks up the thermal layer on the outside of your body. When you're sitting in the cold plunge, I always say those stoic things where people are in the cold plunge real still looking tough. Tell that person to sift their arms around. Let that cold water get in your armpits. Well, what's happening is you're breaking up the thermal layer that keeps you a little bit warmer. This is why we huddle in there, because it's not like you're making yourself like. It's not like you're wearing a jacket. If you move or if the water is moving, much more effective.

It's painful for me to just check my watch to see how much time I got left.

Sucks.

Yeah. I have a system now. If I count slowly to ten two times, so I count to 20, and I know exactly how long my breath is for it to be. Three minutes, I know how to do it, so I do it now.

That's awesome.

It's a little cheating.

You know what I do, man? I can't believe I'm going to admit this publicly. You know what I do? I got two little rubber duckies in there. One's a tougher looking rubber ducky, and his name is Rogan. I'm not kidding. I shot a video of this. I'll send it to you. My producer's gonna kill me. But then there's another one, and that's Huberman, and it's you basically teasing me about what a wuss I am. And I do that for the entire time I'm in the cold plunge. So I forget that I'm in the cold plunge. And at the end you go, okay, you can get out now. And I'm like, okay, well, here's what it is.

I don't know if the cold is any. It's. If it's any better to be 34 degrees or if it's any better to be 45 degrees or 50 degrees, but what I do know is that I don't like 34 degrees. So that's why I do it. Because if I feel like I can get away with making it a little bit easier, I feel like a bitch. So that's why I do it. As cold as it can get before it freezes solid, which seems to be 34 degrees.

Well, this gets to something that I know we've talked a little bit about before. Offline, not on microphone, which is doing hard things, translates to an ability to do hard things and probably translates, provided it doesn't kill you, to a longer life.

And you've explained that there's actually a part of your brain that grows.

So there's a brain area that most neuroscientists aren't aware of called the anterior mid cingulate cortex. Scientists who are in the know, know about it, it's, you know, I teach neuroanatomy, medical students at Stanford. It's an area that we cover in passing, but there are a lot of brain areas you got to get. Can't get to everything. But in the last couple of years, there have been studies of this area, the anterior midsingulate cortex that make it super important for everybody to know about, not just neuroscientists. And here's the deal. A colleague of mine at Stanford, Joe Parvizi, he's a neurosurgeon. He's in there stimulating different brain areas, including anterior mid cingulate cortex, in areas near it in human patients while they're awake, preparing them for neurosurgery for other reasons, stimulates anterior midsingulate cortex. And what do all people who have their anterior midsingulate cortex report? They feel like there's something about to happen. Something's kind of looming. A challenge, a storm. Some will report it as a storm or a physical challenge, but their overall sensation is one that they want to lean into it. They want to challenge it. Now, this area has subsequently been imaged in people who are successful dieters.

It grows larger in people that fail at a dieting or nutrition program, it gets smaller. People that embrace a new form of exercise. And here's the key point that they don't want to do. This area gets bigger. People that are just doing things that they enjoy doing does not change in shape or size. Now, here's where it gets even more interesting. The anterior mid cingulate cortex is larger in volume in a group of people called superagers. Okay, that's a bit of a misnomer because it implies they age faster. They actually age more slowly as it relates to cognitive decline. The slope of cognitive decline is not as steep in these people, meaning they're holding on to cognitive abilities longer than other people into older age. And the universal quality among these superagers is not just a larger anterior mid cingulate cortex, but that they challenge themselves to do things that are challenging and they kind of don't want to do or really don't want to do. So when we hear, oh, you know, people should do crossword puzzles to maintain their memory, probably good to keep some cognitive flexibility going. But if you love crossword puzzles, you're not going to grow your anterior mid singular cortex.

If you love 45 degrees in the cold, plunge after an hour long run in the hills, which I do, probably not going to do much to grow this area. If you really don't want to do something and you do it, this area gets bigger. And it's got inputs and outputs from all of these different brain areas that make all of this make sense, like the dopamine system, like the learning and memory system, like the areas of the brain that say, no, I'm going to retreat from that. It's aversive but you push yourself to do something that you don't want to do. This area gets bigger. And the best part is it translates to an ability to do harder things elsewhere. This, to me, I get obviously super excited about because it's nested in human data and animal data, in real world examples of dieting and exercise and aging and longevity and all of that. And it speaks to much of what you've talked about on this podcast for years and years, which is do hard things, it will give you an ability to do other hard things. But if you love doing deadlifts, honestly, even sets to failure on those deadlifts, enjoy them, benefit from them.

All the wonderful things that come with doing deadlifts, great. But you should probably also do something that you don't enjoy doing if you have an interest in the kind of benefits that we're talking about.

Well, it completely makes sense that your brain would have to develop an ability to continue to do difficult things, that ability to not hesitate and push through, the ability to not procrastinate and go forward. And that that thing is probably like all things. It's like cardiovascular endurance, muscular endurance. Like, you develop an ability to do more of it because of that.

Right.

Because your brain recognizes this is something that we're going to have to deal with. Let's figure out how to respond to this.

Right. And movement itself, like physical movement or cognitive movement, if you're learning new things, like comedy, preparing new things, or learning poetry or drawing. Like, I used to draw a lot. Started drawing again. Carry around this notebook everywhere. I'm not going to show the drawings. They're just for me, but pushing myself to do something that I enjoy but that, like, there's a barrier there. Are you any good? I mean, I do anatomical drawings.

Let me see what you got. I got a lot.

I think here. Sorry. These are just my personal.

My favorite, actually.

Just my journal book notes, but my. But I've actually. I used to post my drawings on Instagram. That's how I started, really. 2019, I wasn't thinking about having a podcast. I was just posting pictures of the retina, talking about the.

When did we meet?

So, 2019. I started posting on Instagram. 2020. I came on this podcast for the first time. Okay, but you were in LA at that time, right? And. Yeah. And then I went on Lex's podcast a little bit later, and then he goes, you should start a podcast. So I started January 21.

Yeah. Okay. So here's some of. Wow, pretty.

They're not great. They're just for fun. They're just for fun. They're just for fun.

Not bad.

But I like to use them to teach, so they're not. Listen, I'm no da Vinci, but, dude.

That'S pretty fucking good, actually.

But the point, I'm obsessed with this thing that somewhere between perfect accuracy and total representation of biology, like a brain or a set of cells, and at the other end of the continuum, like ball and stick, there's, like, a perfect sweet spot for teaching. And so what I'm doing there is what I do in the classroom. I go, okay, listen, we're going to talk about how muscle releases a microrna that helps you burn fat. And then I kind of remind people, like, there's fat, you know? So I don't want too much detail, but I don't want too little detail.

That's good. Like, the anatomy of the hand is dead on. That's really good.

So I'm trying. I'm trying.

No, that's really good.

And, of course, that's not anatomically correct. Like, the nerves don't spit out of the tip of the finger.

Right.

But when you're trying to teach.

Dude, that's good eye. Yeah, that's really good.

Yeah. Like, I'm just trying. I'm not. Again, I'm not trying to be da Vinci. I just want people to learn the information.

One of my daughters is insanely.

Oh, yeah?

Yeah. Well, I wanted to be a comic book illustrator when I was young, and I always wonder, like, how much of talent gets passed on to kids.

It's hard to separate nature and nurture there. But honestly, I think there's something there.

There's something there. Because there's certain people that, like, if their parent was a singer, like. But then you go, well, maybe they were singing around the house a lot when they were growing up.

People are gonna think I'm weird for saying this, but I don't care. I am weird. I'm gonna say it anyway, scholes. The way he moves, like, how lithe he is. His parents are, like, dancers and performers.

Right, right. Also, he's a good boxer.

Is he really?

Yeah.

Like, just his movements are so atypical and, like, he's. He's like. It's. It's like watching him is. Is cool. Like, he looks cool. The way he moves. He's free. Yeah.

Yeah.

And there's a skateboarder named Jimmy Wilkins who's, like, breaking every barrier on skateboarding, and he actually uses his knees to contact the board and move the board while his hands are free. And he's a smaller guy, real small, real lithe, super loose ankles. And I said to him, like, what do your parents do? And he goes, my mom's a ballerina and my dad's an orchestra conductor. This guy's using his knees on the board. So, like, he does everything. Not everything, but he does a lot of things hands free at mach speed. For people in skateboarding, they probably just want to see flips and 900 varials, and that stuff's cool. But he makes everything look so good. I mean, Jimmy. For those that are in the know, Jimmy Wilkins is the next. Is like the next, like, Tony will say. Tony Hawk. Everyone will say, like, watching Jimmy. Look, see, the whole thing here is that Jimmy's skateboarding is like, perfect poetry. Right? So the reason. But. So his back knee is often used to stabilize the board because he's got that hip looseness that you were talking about earlier. And. And so his. Yeah, he's doing.

That's incredible.

He won X Games last year. Not this year. This year he took third.

So those guys get banged up, though. Those guys get a lot of concussions.

Yeah, he's big on the. The nicotine. I'm trying to get him to quit the nicotine, so he. Because he loves the nicotine. But between.

Why are you getting him to quit?

Like, I don't have a problem with people taking nicotine pouches, but it is. It's a vasoconstrictor. Raises blood pressure as long as you're healthy. In other ways. I just think that I see people go from, like, one pouch to a canister a day.

Oh, yeah. It's just they ramp up the dosage. I like threes, like, mild three milligrams. But Lucy sent me some that are twelve Jesus Louisas.

I can do, like, half a piece of Nicaragua.

I put that the twelve in my mouth for, like, 30 seconds, and my body's like, get it out of here.

That's a lot. I mean, it seems like you're good at keeping things in that useful but not excessive domain.

Yes, well, I'm a control freak in that way. I know I want to be in control. I don't ever want to be out of control. Like, I've never been addicted to a sub other than coffee, I guess. But I've taken time off of coffee, too, just because I know that I like it too much. But coffee doesn't overwhelm me. Right? So if I felt like coffee was overwhelming me, or if it was difficult to acquire or illegal, I probably would quit coffee.

A chuckle but at the rate the world's going, it's probably going to be illegal.

Well, it's always good. The reason why coffee is legal and is the reason why they created meth, really. Because it's good for productivity. Like coffee keeps you from getting tired. It's good for productivity. It's also enjoyable. People like a nice warm liquid. I love. And since I really got into coffee from doing this podcast, really, I drink it black. I like coffee. I like the taste. I look forward to it. I have one every morning. I look. I like it.

I love it in the afternoon.

But if I thought it was fucking with my life 100%, I would quit.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, I've had times in my life where I was drinking too much, where mostly because of comedy, because at nights you're out with your boys and everybody wants to drink. They're all drinking. My friends are all drunks. Like. Like a good.

Whitney doesn't drink.

No, Whitney does not drink. But a good, solid percentage of my friends drink a lot. They drink all the time. They drink at clubs.

Like to quit.

Bert is not going to quit.

Well, he asked me to help him quit.

He doesn't otherwise want you to talk to him. Just talk about Bert. That's what he want, but that's what he wants.

So let's talk about me.

Let's talk about me, about how I have to quit. Come on, talk to me about me. Let's make it all about Bert. That's a Bert likes. He's not gonna quit.

Well, he was doing better with his health, and they posted that photo of himself in the wetsuit. Come on, Bert, like, get with it.

Did you get fat again? Send me a picture the other day. He's all skinny. Is he lying?

No, he's looking more like a melted candle.

Son of a bitch. He got big. At least to get jacked. You started lifting weights.

I feel bad making fun of him, but I'm not making. I'm just worried about. Worried about his health.

Oh, yeah. That's not good, Bert.

I'm worried about your health.

Well, the thing is, Bert is on tour, right? He's got painted toenails to fuck you doing. He. He's on tour. So he's on this fully loaded tour. He's doing all these arenas with all these friends, and they're doing activities constantly. They go to water parks. I don't think a water parks, you know, shit like that.

Can I bring in a kettlebell or something?

They do that, too, but he gets drunk every night, and it's not just like, a little bit of beer. It's a lot of beer. It's a lot of. They have a vodka company now. That's not good. Now they have their own vodka. So he's.

What's that saying? Everybody loves a young drunk, but as time goes on, it does not look pretty.

Yes, but there's a curve when it comes back around again. You see a 90 year old guy that's hammered. That guy's fun. Like, then they're, they're wild again. You know, a 90 year old guy with, like, a fucking straw hat on and a gun. He's drunk.

Yeah. I must say, like, kind of rest.

Thompson when he was. Before he died.

Oh, man. I must say, I thoroughly enjoyed your comment, your live comedy.

Oh, thank you. Thank you very much.

Watch it three times.

Thank you. That's another, that, so that one was another example of doing something I didn't want to do because they offered me to do it live, and I was like, fuck that. Like, I want to be able to edit mistakes out. I want to have, you know, have four shows and pick the best one and do that. I don't want to do it fucking live. That's cr. Who fucking needs that pressure?

It was so good. I watched the first one with my girlfriend. We watched it as it was happening. Then I watched it with my friend Tim out when he was out. He's out on tour like green day rants. All these 90 bands, nineties bands, smashing pumpkins are out on tour, like, stadiums with 90,000 people.

That crazy.

It's crazy. I went out because I, like, you know, big rancid fan, and I like the other guys, too, but I'm big, big rancid fan. I was like, like, holy cow, like, people love this stuff again. Anyway, we watched it again there and then. I've watched it again. I will say it felt very cathartic to me. I don't know how it felt for you, but it felt really cathartic.

Oh, the subject matter.

The subject matter, and also, like, the next day was pure, like, delight and just baffled and shocked all at the same time. When on Twitter, I see a clip taken completely out of context about a bit about taking things out of context. It's like life had, like, looped back on itself. You were talking about things being taken out of context, and they were taking it out of context. They had, like, cut it.

Yeah.

And I was like, wait, wait, wait. I remember that very differently because I remember things that I hear pretty well, and I was like, went back and I was like, wait, he's talking about things being taken out of context, and they're taking it out of context.

Yeah, they don't care. But there's always some people that are just. They're not. This is not in good faith. Everything they're doing is just trying to find something wrong with everything you're doing. And it's usually people that their life is a mess. There's no one who does that, who is a healthy, accomplished person who has great relationships in their life and is doing really well at some skill or chosen profession that they enjoy very much. They're not fulfilled. Right.

People are trying to politicize something, or they're trying to get clicks off your name.

There's a lot of that for sure. So there's a business in that. And then there's also people that are doing, like, MSNBC did this recently, and there's they. This has gotten so popular that my fucking stepdad contacted me to tell me he's happy that I'm suing MSNBC. I'm like, I'm not suing MSNBC, but this is what MSNBC did. They took a clip of me talking about Tulsi Gabbard, and they edited it up and made it look like I was saying great things about Kamala Harris.

Wait, what?

Yeah, they.

I mean, you and I have been mashed up on other stuff, and AI and I don't want it. Like you said, we don't draw attention that they got taken off the Internet, thank goodness. But it was bullshit. It was like, it was AI and mashup.

Yeah, they did that about with us.

They did that about politics.

Yes, they did it about politics, but they didn't do it like AI. They just deceptively edited the things that I was saying, took it completely out of context, where I was talking about, first of all, I was talking about Tulsi Gabbard, and then I was talking about that the media behind Kamala Harris, all this surge and all these people deciding that she's good, she could win. And they put the two of those together and made it seem like I was praising Kamala Harris and saying a bunch of things that aren't even true about her. Like, I was talking about Tulsi Gabbard being a congresswoman for eight years and about how she served overseas, two deployments in medical units, dealing with people who are blown up from the war. Like, that's not something Kamala Harris did. It's something Tulsi Gabbard did. I was just saying things about her. And they put it out there as a clip of me praising Kamala Harris. But they don't care about the truth. They just want a narrative to get out there amongst enough people. Because most people are just surface readers, right? They read a headline, and I'd be guilty of that.

Many times you read a headline, oh, I know what that is. And then you shut your laptop. I got it now. I got the whole. So if you read an article that says, you know, Andrew Schultz is a liar, like, oh, he's a liar. I heard he's a liar. And then you just start repeating, he's a liar. It doesn't have to be real. And so all they have to do with how many people are actually going to watch my Netflix special? Well, it was a lot, but compared to the amount of people in the country, not a lot. You know, small percentage. So all you have to do is take something out of context from someone who's never gonna watch it in the first place, put it in front of them, like, oh, that piece of shit. Can't believe he said that. Even though I'm literally talking about things being taken out of context.

The part about this is so frustrating to me is that, like, at some point, especially as a scientist, right? Like, that's data selection, right? Like, if you look at data and, like. And you look at scientific experimentation, starts with a question, you generate a hypothesis, you collect data, you publish the results, and you get to state your conclusions. Now, let's talk about what you're talking about. In the world of science, I don't think there's a lot of outright data fraud, but a lot of experiments that don't work, people come up with excuses to eliminate.

But there is some data fraud, right?

Oh, there certainly is some data fraud.

The amoled plaques thing with.

There's certainly some data fraud, and there's a range of underlying reasons. One of the more common reasons that people don't talk about, which is something to really strongly inoculate in laboratories against, is when a laboratory is known for doing very, very good work. Oftentimes the graduate students and postdocs that get there, that go there, feel like they need to give the boss the result. So sometimes it's unbeknownst to the person running the lab. There've been a lot of cases in recent years of papers being discovered as having major issues. And that's like, well, did you go after the lab head, or do you go after the person who did it? Lab heads are responsible for everything in their lab. AI is helping with this, because you can scan data and look at things, but ambition is a dangerous thing. If somebody puts ambition ahead of accuracy. So there's that kind of thing, and then there's outright data fraud. There was this nanotechnologist guy from some years back, I think his last name was Schon, who had, like, 20 papers in science and nature in two years, and it turns out he wasn't even bothering to.

He was fabricating data. The papers were all retracted. And I don't know what he's doing now, but the noise plots, the random noise plots in these papers were the way he got caught. What it turned out is that. I mean, I'm chuckling because it's like he was so lazy, ambitious, but so lazy that he didn't even bother to use new random noise plots from one paper to the next. So somebody said, wait, random. Random should be random. Why is it the same in these two papers? Boom. And then the whole thing unraveled eventually.

So lazy.

So he was particularly. He was particularly ambitious. Lazy, and that was outright fraud. There are all sorts of other cases and things like that, and, you know, there's people who make this their sport to talk about. Most scientists are trying to get the correct answers. I do believe that most scientists have good faith. They're trying to get the answers. But it's hard. Science is hard. Now, what you're talking about, to me, sounds like people deliberately grabbing from the palette of paints, that is, the words that are spoken by anybody on the Internet, especially people with podcasts, you or me or anybody else, and then literally cutting and pasting things together to create a story which is fiction.

Do you know who pink Trip is?

No.

You don't know who pink Tripp? Pink Tripp is hilarious. He's a guy on the Internet who takes clips of podcasts and creates narratives of things that are totally not happening.

Oh, yeah?

I've seen some one recently. Me and Tucker Carlson are having an argument.

I haven't seen that one.

It's good. Somebody sent it to me. Who fucking sent it? See if you can find it.

I remember one of you and Elon. Several, perhaps. Yeah, so I know that. So pink trip is trips.

No, it's a dude.

Okay?

His name is Piggy. So here it is. Pink trip. So it's visible.

What? No.

Space is real. Are you joking? You're a science denier.

What? Stop.

The. The bodies of science have bestowed the truth.

If you ignore, I get another fucking lecture from you, I'm gonna go crazy. Shut the fuck up, bitch. You're fucking idiot.

Don't do that anymore.

What are you gonna do about it, bitch? What are you gonna do about it? You are literally powerless. Yeah, I'm just gonna do whatever I want.

You could get your ass kicked.

Are you threatening me?

Yeah. I think you are a far right white supremacist I have racist respect for.

You're like my dog. Does it ever occur to you? You're, like, disgusting, just, like, vulgar. Just like a pig. If I were to sort of narrow down my bigotries, it's like, people like you. I just think you're disgusting. So these are actual spoken words. Kludge together?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. About completely different things. It's really masterful. Do you want to die? Watch.

If I take a nine millimeter rounder, seven, six, two by 39 and shoot you, can you catch the bullet?

You can't do that.

What are you gonna do about it?

One.

Why would you hide that?

Isn't that funny? But this is funny, right? He does that with a lot of stuff, like people pretending to be in love with me. Makes it like there's a romance, which mean different people. But it's. That's funny. He's doing. That's art, right? He's making a story that doesn't exist. It's really funny. Right? But there's people that do it just to either. In this case, it was to promote Kamala Harris to get the, you know, the passive listener, the people that are, you know, the casual to go, oh, wow, Joe Rogan likes Kamala Harris.

I heard you're endorsing and not endorsing all sorts of people.

You can't say, even say, I like somebody without it being an endorsement and people getting mad. But I think the MAga people are happy now that Robert F. Kennedy is now with Trump.

So I think they've unified. They've unified the belts.

Yeah. I think we're in a very weird time with the media. And I think truth is super important, and I think someone that's willing to do something like that, that's a real offense. It's a real offense. It's not a small thing. It's a real lie. And it's a lie that changes other people's opinions. You take what's perceived to be an influential person and you distort their views in either a way to shame them, make them look bad, or to promote someone else. That's a real lie. That's a dangerous lie. It's a real offense. And I think that there's no laws against that. Right? Now, except libel law. I mean, you could take someone to court, I guess, but it's a real bad thing. It's a real gross lie, and it's used right now to manipulate public opinion.

Yeah. Completely out of context. In the example you gave. Certainly. I'm familiar with examples where context is completely cut off at the point where it leads to a false conclusion.

Oh, sure.

Like where the story is completely different. The reason I gave the counter example of science is, you know, when you're trained as a scientist, you're trained to try and parse what's real and what's not real and give the best, you know, version of that that you can, and then you are allowed to state your conclusions. But I have a question. At what point do you think the general public will come to understand that this is the way that a lot of things that they see out there are constructed to some degree or another and stop actually believing it?

It depends on who the public is. This is the issue right now with boomers, right? Old liberals in particular. All they do is watch the news and read the newspaper. And whatever is printed, they believe. And it's very difficult to get them to consider, like, hey, maybe someone's lying. Maybe there's propaganda campaigns. Maybe there's, like, this widespread media narrative that they're pushing because corporations are behind it and advertising is behind it, and they're figuring out a way to manipulate the public opinion on things. It's very hard to get old boomers to believe that because they're old. Okay? So they're set in their ways. Their mind has formed around, you know, I am a liberal, I am a Democrat. I've been a Democrat my whole life. This is how I feel about these issues. This is my community, this is my tribe, these are my people. And the news says this, and I'm with them. And, oh, great, we're up in the polls now. And for them, it's like they're on a team. It might as well be the dolphins versus the raiders. It's the same kind of mentality in their head, and they don't want to be challenged.

That little part of their brain that exists when you challenge yourself and do things you don't want to do, that bitch is shriveled up to almost nothing, and they're real boring, and their lives are entirely excited by political discourse.

Do you think it's all boomers?

Yeah, it's mostly boomers. I think young people are way less likely to buy into bullshit now. There's young people that are ideologically captured, for sure. You see that both with right wing people and with left wing people.

Sorry. I mean, do you think that all boomers believe in the traditional media like this?

It's mostly because they grew up with it. They're the ones, the kids today, they don't buy it at all. Like Gen Z kids and whatever the fuck that. What's the newest? Is this jet? What's the latest? Whatever these kids are, these young kids coming up today, like people in their twenties, they don't believe it at all.

Well, I'll tell you, you know, I'll non reluctantly tell you. You know, my dad and I over the years, like, we had some early issues and we resolved them, and we're good now. But when some not so kind press came out about me, they interviewed a lot of people. They interviewed a lot of people from my high school class and friends and coworkers and then cherry picked for the story they wanted to create. But they talked to my dad. Okay. And I would not put my dad into the political camp that you described, or any camp, really. But he's a first generation immigrant, moved here from Argentina, did his PhD under a scholarship from the. From the Navy. You know, it was like. Story of an immigrant who came here and became a scientist.

Dream.

Yeah. There wasn't a lot of science to do in Argentina. There's not a lot of funding for it. Right. So came here. I would say that when they reached out to him, he was like, oh, yeah, reporter was super nice. You know, they asked me all these questions, and then he called me. He was like, I'm shocked. I didn't say that. That was completely flipped and twisted and.

You know, you gotta record those kind of conversations.

And I said, it's okay. You know, it's okay. In fact. And that changed his perception. I can't speak for him, but based on conversations we've had since, changed his perception. He was like, I can't believe this. That they would sort of leverage this for a false narrative.

You're allowed to do it for whatever reason, you know, I have a friend who used to work at New York Times said they were encouraged to do it. They were encouraged to just try to take someone down. Like, that was the whole idea of a piece.

Yeah, well, that was made clear by the fact that many people reached out. The best conversation with this person or my former. When I was a kid, I grew up skateboarding. I wrote for this brand, Thunder and Spitfire. And my team manager was interviewed. And then he called me afterwards. He said, yeah, it was kind of weird. Like, I kept telling them the story that, you know, that they had heard about you on podcasts over and over and they kept poking and probing trying to get me. And he said, that's what happened. Andrew called me that day and said, help me. I need to get out of this place, et cetera, et cetera. And he was like, I don't get it. And I was like, listen, shrugi, that's what we call him, Steve Rugi. I go, listen, like, thanks for talking to her. But, you know, it's just the way it works. It's not about like, they weren't really interested in the truth. They were interested in pulling out certain language. An ex girlfriend of mine said the same thing. Like, I talked to her and I told her like, what a great relationship we had.

And then like, what she printed kind of alluded to something kind of slightly different. And I just said, listen, you know, thanks for talking to, you know, like, the goal is to collect a bunch of data. Like this is where I compare it to science, my domain, compared to take a bunch of data, cherry pick only the things that could work if those only were true and some of them are just outright lies and then publish that. That is data fraud. Pharmaceutical studies, like many, like many. And at the same time, you know, like, we're enjoying nicotine here or you are, because I will say I'm not in defense of the pharmaceutical industry, nor am I on attack of them, but there are certain things that push through traditional science. You get great information about dosage and safety. Look at Ozempic. I get asked about this all the time. I don't know how this became politicized. I will say if you do things to offset the muscle loss for certain people, reducing their appetite with it might be a useful tool. It's expensive. Is there dependence? Those are important issues. But we learn one thing for sure from ozempic, Manjaro, etcetera.

The main cause of the obesity crisis is people eat too many calories. On average about 3500 calories per day. And they don't move enough, they don't exercise enough, and then we can get into what they eat, etcetera. We'd have a discussion about seed oils if we really want to cause some friction. I don't like seed oils. I don't eat them. But I'm not aware of any randomized controlled trial that says that they're bad. I just don't like them. I like olive oil and butter and I like cooking beef and beef fat tastes better and I feel better. I feel better. And that's enough of a reason for me.

Is there science about why they're bad for you?

So there's this whole thing about ratios of omega three s versus the omega six s. And you get a lot of omega six s with the seed oils. And I think olive oil is good for us. I think I will conclude that I think drinking less alcohol or no alcohol is good for you. I think I'm of the belief that high quality meat is good for you. I'm also of the belief that fruits and vegetables are good for you. I think all the data point to these things. I think that there isn't an abundance of data yet that says seed oils are bad. And I think Lane Norton would support that statement. And he's kind of my go to in terms of what the randomized controlled trials say. Right. But in my experience, I feel better when I'm not eating them. So I choose personally not to eat them. And frankly, there may be something to it, right? I mean, now we're hearing all about microplastics. We're hearing about all that. But when it comes to the GLP one agonists, I spent a lot of time on this, on two podcasts or more, one with an expert, one solo, etcetera.

You know, of all the peptides that broke through, you know, we've talked about peptides. We talked about more. There's this one peptide, glucagon, like peptide one that when raised to levels about 1000 fold over normal levels, leads to massive suppression of appetite. And people lose weight, which for some people is an emergency situation. They're really fat and there's nothing they can do to lose the weight. And they're getting sicker and sicker. My hope would just be that those people would also try and eat correctly and exercise. And so the debate has become, is it good for you? Is it bad? Well, there's muscle loss, so offset the muscle loss. But let's be realistic. Most people won't offset the muscle loss.

Right. If you could do both, it'd be better.

Yeah, or come off the Olympic manjaro eventually by replacing your behaviors. You know, it's hard to move when you're, I've never been big and overweight, but, you know, the way that goggins talks about it or, you know, it's got to be uncomfortable. Like when you're feeling kind of just not great to move, you can get injured easily. I would say one of the best ways to get and stay in great shape your whole life is, yes, exercise, eat right, et cetera, but also don't get badly hurt. Yes, that's a huge one that nobody talks about. And the number one way, in my opinion, to get badly hurt is do a workout that a friend suggests without at ten out of ten.

Well, especially with heavy stuff.

Right. Or go to one of these boot camp things, like, I want to sweat a lot. You go in, you do a bunch of circuit training for an hour, and two days later, your shoulders, like, oh, boy.

So you got to build up to that kind of stuff.

So I think there are a lot of themes here, but I'm not opposed to certain pharmaceuticals. I think certain people need drugs for ADHD, a lot don't. And dose response curves and lethal dose analysis. And that kind of stuff is super valuable. What I don't like, because I don't think it's necessary, is when people default to the most expensive side effect, risky kind of reflexive option. Because I think that the basics, sunlight, exercise, cardio and weight training, I mean, we're in a. Like, these things work. They work so well. They've always worked well, and they'll always work well. And I also think there's great data emerging that they transform mental health. I mean, the data on resistance training two or three times a week, and mental health is striking. I mean, you compare that to what people get from certain SSRI's, and you're like, for goodness sake, 45, 60 minutes a week, lift some heavy objects, you feel better.

And it literally has better statistical results.

Absolutely.

Than Ssri's. That's pretty nuts.

And I know you've talked about this recently, and I'm kind of, like, hitting a bunch of things here, but I think a lot about this relationship between traditional science, FDA, NIH. I reviewed grants for the NIH for years. Until very recently, I was a regular study section member. I understand the process. I understand the limitations and the benefits. And I also understand that, like, in the cases recently where the FDA decided to not approve MDMA for the treatment of PTSD, you go like, whoa, what's it going to take? I think, you know, I had a lot of feelings about that ruling. I think it's unfortunate, given the really strong data that support the use of MDMA for the treatment of PTSD. I mean, more than 60%, you know, successful in air quotes, plus some people just go into total remission. But the hazards are there, and if there aren't safeguards in place for the practitioner patient relationship, which is one of the major concerns, if those aren't there, well, then it's never going to be legalized.

So what is the hazard of the participant with the person that's helping them?

So there were two major issues, plus some others, but the ones that I'm most aware of is that lack of an adequate control group. People don't know if they got the drugs or they didn't. And then the other one is, during the course of the trials, there were some issues that came up about improprieties between practitioners and patients that, oh, like sexual stuff. My understanding is that there certain things may have arisen that kind of, like, pricked up, you know, people's ears. But the major issue was, this is a person who's under the influence of MDMA in a position to advocate for what they need during the course of the session. Right? Like, are they in a quote, unquote, truly safe space? But the same thing could be said of psilocybin trials. So the solution there is, my understanding is that you have two therapists there. It's not one therapist, one patient. You have two therapists, that there are safeguards in place. The same way that, you know, when somebody, a brain surgeon does a brain surgery, there's an anesthesiologist there and multiple nurses and staff to get things and hemostats. And, you know, so I think that.

But there needs to be, I think, a next phase evolution of the way that we think about things like MDMA assisted treatment for PTSD. Because I do think, by my read of the data, and I've looked closely at these data, despite a few retractions, there's still a body of data that really point to how powerfully helpful it can be for certain people under the right conditions. It's just striking.

And there's a tremendous amount of anecdotal data, just people who haven't been in a study but talk about the benefits they've had from it and how much, especially war veterans with both psilocybin and.

MDMA and ibogaine, the work that veteran solutions is doing with a guy at Stanford, Nolan Williams, in our department of psychiatry, he's been doing brain imaging before and after ibogaine with the veterans that are taking ibogaine, followed by DMT. And those are looking very, very interesting. So, to me, it's also the kind of emotional loading of things like MDMA, when we call it MDMA. If I tell you this is MDMA, this is a drug that raises serum serotonin dramatically, raises dopamine dramatically, opens neuroplasticity, and allows people to rewire their brains, if adequately supported, to feel relief, if not remission from PTSD, you'd say, awesome. How do we move this forward safely? But if I start using words like ecstasy, I start using now, I call it what it really is. MDMA, methylene dioxy, methamphetamine. You hear methamphetamine, you hear ecstasy, you start hearing a bunch of stuff that start shifting your brain towards, okay, this is like a party drug. They want to use it. Same thing was said about cannabis. I've done multiple episodes about cannabis. I'm not anti cannabis. I think there's case studies where. Excuse me, that's a specific thing in science.

Use cases where or examples where people with a propensity for psychosis should probably not be doing high THC cannabis. I learned something really interesting, by the way, about this. We brought on an expert, brought on in part where there was a little bit of a Twitter battle. I put out a solo episode about cannabis years ago. No one had a problem with it. Put a clip on x. People came at me like crazy, like crazy. So I invited one of the main academics in that area onto my podcast. He eventually agreed.

What was his disagreement with?

He didn't like a bunch of things I said, but mainly three statements. One was that I said that there was evidence, because there is a published paper must say this. There is a published paper looking at the differences in subjective effects that people experience with sativa versus indica strains. And he said, there's no evidence that there's a different experience from sativa versus indica strains. That's just all bud tender lore. You shouldn't be saying this.

He doesn't smoke weed. That's just not true.

I said, wait, here's the paper. Here's the paper. Then there were a couple other things. One is I.

Did he agree once he read the paper?

He said he would like to see more evidence. When he came on, he was very gracious, offered a lot of useful knowledge, but he really didn't counter with that much. There were some issues around CBD biology versus THC.

What is his field of expertise?

He works on animal models, but focuses on cannabis biology. So he's very knowledgeable, and I don't think he's anti cannabis at all. But he just was. He was checking me on some things that he felt that I. He's a very nice guy. He was checking me on some things that he felt I had not gotten correctly or that weren't adequately supported. So my response was, I did this publicly, come on the podcast. Like, I'm not afraid. Talk science. That's what I do. Let's go. And not in a combative way. He agreed to come on the podcast. We had a great discussion, and one of the things that he said was the whole idea that there's so much more THC in weed now leading to all these problems. Like the weed of today is not the weed of yesterday. He said, when people inhale, they take it by vape or they smoke it or whatever. His words are that there's far fewer cases of people taking in more. They're able to reach that point that they want to be at without going too far. However, even though it's higher potency, however, when people take it by edible, there are cases where people get to genuine freak out in psychotic episodes because they're taking in far too much too quickly.

Because you can eat the edible quickly, you don't. They're not layering in until they hit that plane that they want to be in.

Well, it's also the conversion to eleven hydroxy metabolite. It's five times more psychoactive than THC. I used to a joke about it that lets you talk to dolphins. It's a true story about edibles and dolphin experience. But.

So he wasn't anti cannabis. And in fact, I think it was a case where. Maybe this brings us back to Twitter, where Twitter was a very valuable tool. So I put out something. I was going off the literature that I cited. He said, no, no, no, listen, there's some issues here. You should adjust this. We brought him on the podcast. He was reluctant to come on the podcast. He thought I was gonna, like, set him up for a fall. We've never done that. Comes on the podcast, got the information out there, and then it all just kind of went to like a quiet simmer or nothing. And in the end, I think that's the way that all of this stuff should be handled. Whether or not you're talking about one medical treatment or another is, and this is the way you've done it. And this is the example you've laid out for me and for others. Right, which is talk about both sides. Talk to vegans, talk to carnivores, talk to omnivores, talk to people who are pro cannabis, anti, and worried about psychosis, and not talk to people that are really pro MDMA for the treatment of PTSD.

Talk to people who are very reluctant. I think only there can we get the overlap in the Venn diagram about what the agreements are and what the disagreements are and move forward, especially long.

Form, because then you get to understand how a person thinks about things, not just the subject at hand, but maybe other things, to hear their speech patterns, their thinking patterns.

And I think direct experience is real. Cam Haines pointed this out recently, and I'm not saying this to focus the positive energy on us, but it will invariably do that, or inevitably do that. Excuse me. Which is, he said, it's kind of interesting that all of the top podcasters really fit all the people that really into their health, like you and David's out there, like influencers. He was saying there's a health component or a fitness component. Not always, but I think most of them. I think he may have said all of them. He may have said many of them. But, you know, Chris Williams and Lex, like, there's a tendency to merge kind of intellectual discourse with physical. And I think that's a unique theme of podcasting also, at least of certain, let's just say what it is. Like a lot of the top podcasts, that's like a pretty consistent theme for the female podcasters, too. Like Whitney works out, she does her podcast, like there's a kind of merging of those things. And I think that when it comes to the discussion about anything, about health, it also is beneficial if people are engaging in healthy behaviors or if they've tried things like they're trying to be fit.

I see Rhonda posting pictures of herself deadlifting now, and Peter's talking about his workouts, and he's a physician, he's an MD. So I think it's not sufficient to just study something, to just look at the data and papers. I think it really helps if you're able to get in close contact with the things that, that you're hearing about.

But also, it helps me to know whether or not you have any discipline. So there's people that think about a certain thing because it comforts their own thoughts about their decisions that they've made. And there's certain rationales that people make. They rationalize certain aspects of their life and certain things that are going on in society to sort of make up for the fact that they haven't done the work that they probably should have done in the first place. So when I see a guy that's built like Chris or Lex, or someone who I know, or yourself that I know, stays very physically fit and takes care of their health, then I have more respect for them because I go, okay. I have more respect for this person's opinion, because this person is doing difficult things on a regular basis. And confronting their own hesitations, their whatever, procrastination, discipline issues, and the physical ability to put in work, which requires mental strength. And for the longest time, for whatever strange reason, people have had this mutually exclusive notion that a person who is physically fit is probably stupid, and a person who doesn't care about their body and only concentrates on the mind for some reason that is admired, that this person has no ego at all and doesn't care to, that I think that person's a fool, because you don't have as much energy to think, because your physical body that you have, you've let decay to this terrible point where your posture's down.

Like, I've had some unfortunate conversations with older intellectuals that don't take care of themselves. And you realize that at a certain point that they've gotten lazy physically and they don't have the energy to engage. And so they sort of just sort of repeat things that they've said over and over and over again. And when you ask them to think on the spot, they almost don't have the will to do it anymore. Which sucks.

Yeah, it does suck. And there's a direct correlation between this ability to continue moving your body and your intellectual ability. I mean, you have to still go and learn and read and acquire knowledge and try hard things. You just can't just work out. But I can think of a number of key examples that are historical. The greatest neurobiologist of all time, supernatural levels of ability, was a guy named Ramoni Cajal. Won the Nobel Prize in the 1906. He was the one who first defined the synapse, etcetera. He carried an iron umbrella to work, he lifted weights. Oliver Sacks, one of the greatest neurologists and writers of our time, passed away in 2015, had a 600 pound squat. Okay, Jesus. Yeah, he had the state powerlifting record at one point. Just a beast of a guy. Was also a neurologist and wrote all these beautiful books about how the mind works. The man who mistook his wife for a hat. He was behind the movie awakenings, etcetera, etcetera. Don Kennedy, former president of Stanford, ran into his late seventies, and then after that had a hip replacement and then was doing other stuff. So Richard Axel has a Nobel Prize from Columbia University.

The first person to find ways to introduce genes to novel genes to cells played racquetball. I don't know if he's still playing racquetball. You know, I'll name one more. These are incredible people. Like the guy who essentially defined the understanding of the visual system and neuroplasticity. Scientific great grandfather is David Hubel. And Torrenson Wiesel. Torrenson just turned something like 95 or something. Maybe it's 93. He still runs. He runs slowly, but he still goes, and he is mentally sharp. So this is not an accident. This is not just a correlation. This is the anterior mid cingulate cortex in action. And of course, cancer. A bus or a bullet can still take you out. But assuming you make it into your sixties, seventies, eighties, movement, movement. Movement is the way to stay mentally strong and to continue to have the capacity to learn. I mean, just to kind of weave these two things. If we're talking about MDMA, psilocybin, or some other agent that raises serotonin and dopamine, or we're talking about movement, all we're really talking about are ways to increase these neuromodulators, like dopamine, acetylcholine, serotonin, epinephrine, and they create the opportunity for neuroplasticity.

They don't create plasticity on their own. They create a milieu that's very much like the young brain, where it's like, okay, what's new here? This is why adrenaline is such a powerful tool for plasticity, probably. I'm not going to suggest people use smelling salts to try and do better on their exams. There are other ways to do better on their exams. I probably will take another one. Okay.

I can tell you were thinking about it. All right, get in there, sir.

All right, almost.

Oh, yeah.

Now it's to the right nostril, because we alternated.

Let me see if I alternated.

I don't remember which one it was left before. It's definitely right.

Makes your eyes water a little bit, but, boy, it doesn't shock your system.

Wow.

Little adrenaline. I could lift more.

Well, I told myself I wasn't gonna cry on this podcast. Is it cried on a podcast recently of mine. We kept it in, but, like, now I'm crying. But these are tears of. Related to the smell.

Yeah, this is tears. Just chemicals rotten your brain. You supposed to not do that more than twice a day, but, okay, we've done it many times.

So it's just the. This thing, neuroplasticity, like that, does it really? That's from your sinuses. You have some skulls around here. The sinuses run from here and through to the. That's why when you get a sinus infection or you clear your.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So. But neuroplasticity is the most impressive feature of the human brain. It can rewire itself, but when you're a kid, you rewire in response to passive experience. For better or worse, as an adult, you can rewire your brain, but you have to create the milieu, the environment that the brain wants to rewire itself. So these neuromodulators like adrenaline or dopamine or serotonin, they need to be spiked. And nicotine, what you're now taking in another one is we know, comes does many things in the brain and body, but God, that stuff's strong.

Yeah, man.

But there's a brain area called nucleus basalis, which sits in the base of the brain, and it can serve as a spotlight by releasing acetylcholine. Onto what? Onto nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in certain circuits and provide focus. So thats what nicotine is doing unless you take so much of it every day that your kind of baseline levels of acetylcholine either drop or become kind of regulated to the point where youre not getting that spotlighting anymore, which is why people then are taking more and more. But as our, you know, your former guest and my colleague, Doctor Anna Lembke, has said, the worst thing you can do when you're in a trough of dopamine is try and boost dopamine again. You just gotta wait for it to come back. So if people want nicotine to continue to work, they should use it sporadically or when they feel like it's not working anymore. Take a break.

That's what McKenna used to say about cannabis. McKenna, who would, Terence McKenna would freely admit that he had a problem with cannabis because he was like a daily cannabis user. But he said the real way to take it, he said, is to take a long time off, a long time off so that your body is completely desensitized to it and then take as much as you can stand in, like one dose. Like that's, you know, I mean, he was interested in it as a psychedelic.

Yeah.

You know, and then especially if you do that in edible form, it just, it is, it is a very, very potent psychedelic. But there is that concern, and I think this is a very important thing to bring up. It's not benign and certainly not to everybody. Nicotine, marijuana, oh, everybody has a different reaction to it, and some people have a terrible reaction to it.

Psychosis.

Yes. And I don't understand it because I don't get it. It doesn't happen to me, but I also know that it's real. And to deny it as a zealot and to say oh, marijuana is just great. Everybody should be high. Like, no, no, no. Everybody shouldn't eat peanuts either. You know, some people have a weird reaction to things and there's a certain, I mean, Alex Berenson wrote that book, tell your, tell your parents or tell your children. Tell your children. It's all about that, about, there needs to be some recognition, but there's a certain percentage of people that have a tendency towards schizophrenia or maybe psychotic breaks and they can get triggered by high doses of cannabis for sure.

No question.

You know, people that's happened to, yeah.

And I covered that in my solo episode on cannabis. Then this person, this researcher from Canada who I don't think he's pro or anti cannabis, but had differing views, came on my podcast. And then what's his name? Matt Hill. He's a respected researcher in this area and I thought his stance was very nuanced. And then after he came on the podcast, other people, not Berenson necessarily, although I haven't checked my DM's that closely contacted me, said, no, I have counters to that guy which just told me everything I already know, which is that science is a field with people with differing opinions. Right. Which is good, which is great. I mean, you don't have a field until you have differing opinions. You don't want to be the only person working on something. You want that. It's something that you can tell. I get really impassioned, smelling salts or no about this because somehow in the media version of is cannabis good, is cannabis bad? And honestly, the, the political aspects to it, like I wasn't tracking the fact that cannabis was just about to be approved for more legalization right about the time that that clip got, you know, amplified.

But I wasn't saying it should or shouldn't. I'm just giving you the information, same as I did for alcohol.

Right.

We, I would love to put this to rest once and for all. Every couple of weeks or months, you're going to see media outlets say some drinking is good for you, others will say some drinking, any drink is bad for you. Heres the deal. Zero is better than any. A little bit is probably fine, especially if you do other things to offset the sleep loss and microbiome stuff. If youre going to drink, probably should be doing other healthy behaviors anyway. No ones saying its terrible. Ill have a drink every once in a while. Im not an alcoholic. If youre a non alcoholic adult, one or two. I love a good white tequila with soda and lime. So good. But I dont really like alcohol enough to be able to comment past that. But, and I haven't had a drink in years, but the reality is that one study after another saying, moderate drinking is good for you, no, drinking is better for you, cancerous. This is never going to stop. It's a field. Now we have enough data, people can make their decision, right? Everyone knows sleep is important. There's no field to be had except how to figure out to get sleep better.

In my opinion. Sleep deprivation is bad, but you're not going to get dementia or die from a couple bad night sleep. That's also true. So it's almost like the way things have split politically has become the way that health information has split. And I'm fighting tooth and nail, and I know you are, and other people are as well, to try and continue to shine light on the field that is psychedelics, the field that includes cannabis, the field that includes things like weight loss and ozempic, but also exercise and all the other good things. And somehow, and maybe you can tell me, because I'm new to the. More to the media thing, newer than you. Certainly for some reason, people don't like that. It's like, it's like the brain needs like a black and white thing. It's like they can't seem to just deal with the fact that, like, look, you'll find evidence for and evidence against. You just got to make it the best decision for you.

Well, there's also people that write articles with a specific narrative because they're gamifying the social media algorithms, they're gamifying clickbait.

So it's business.

Gamifying clickbait is real. I mean, that's a.

Right.

Unfortunately, one of the things that happened in journalism is people stop buying newspapers. And when people stop buying newspapers, the only way someone can, you can get someone to go to your website and click on a link. So you have to have some sort of inflammatory headline, something that excites you, something that angers you, something that, like, gives you some information, some secret information that wasn't available before. Oh, let me click on that. I didn't know that.

But science to me is about facts, and I totally agree. I just, you know, I think that Rick Rubin, he seems to come to mind a lot to me today. But, you know, he once said to me, we were in discussion, I discovered a bunch of lies in somebody's life. And I was like, oh, my God. And he just said, very calmly, he said, look, it's all lies. And I'm like, what do you mean? I'm like, that's the problem. I'm realizing it's all lies. And he said, listen, it's all lies. Back to nature. That's the only truth. And I'm like, yeah, that's why I became a scientist. And then he said, oh, wait, and professional wrestling, because everyone knows that's made up, so it's real. And I actually went to the AEW with Rick. It was wild.

He loves that shit.

Well, they're jumping around in the ring and they'll stop every once in a while and look and go, hey, Rick Rubin. Like, it's wild. Like he's that much of a fixture. It's so great. He's there with his red light, with his red lens glasses and the whole thing. He does the sunlight. He's gotten much healthier. He looks great. He takes really great care of himself. But I think he's right. I think nature has a truth. It has an order to it. Science's job is to try and unveil that truth to the best of our abilities. But wrestling, admittedly, everyone agrees it's made up, so at least we agree on that. Whereas I think so much of what we've been talking about today is, like, the media, like, at what point do we realize there are portions that are true? There are portions that are made up.

Of, well, they're making themselves obsolete. And this is what I believe. I believe that human beings should be able to differ on opinions, but I should know that you're being honest and you're telling the truth. So as soon as you write something that I know is biased and twisted and you've distorted things and taking things out of context, well, I know that you're not in the truth game, so your opinion's nonsense. Whatever you say is horseshit. I want to talk to someone that's trying to figure out what's right and what's wrong, not someone is trying to win, and everybody's trying to win, this is a real problem, and it's a real problem. Win the discussion. They attach whatever the art, whatever the discussion is, whether it's weightlifting is more important than cardio or you should be a vegan versus you should be a carnivore. They attach whatever this argument is to their own sense of self worth, and it's very important to them that they counter your arguments and win this little chess match. And that's what it is. They're playing a little game. I play games, so I don't like playing games. When I talk to people, I like playing pool.

I like, to. The game is like making people laugh. The game is jiu jitsu. How do I get your back? Like, these are games. I like. I like games. So when I communicate, I don't like games. But I recognize that, especially earlier in my life, before I started recognizing patterns in podcasts. Like, what don't I like when people are. I don't like when someone's biased. I don't like when someone is talking over people. I don't like when someone's misrepresenting someone's words or someone. Someone's trying to win rather than considering what the other person saying. So when someone's considering what the other person is saying, and then you get this beautiful sort of sharing of ideas without ego. And the real problem is the ego. The ego getting attached to winning a conversation and being correct. Yeah, well, yeah. And they get in this fucking frenzy where they can't even communicate anymore, and they're completely attached and married to their ideas. The best thing, the best advice I can give people on this is don't be attached to your ideas. They're just ideas. Examine why you believe them. There's many times in my life where someone has hit me with some facts, and I thought about my.

I go, oh, you know why I believe that? This is why. Because I thought this. And then I was, I was saying, well, if you believe that, then this has to be untrue. And I don't want to say that. So I've attached myself to this thing, and now I've connected my. And when I'm engaging with someone, I am not just engaging in this pure intellectual sharing of ideas and a discussion of merit. Discussion of merit. I'm now in a win lose situation. I'm trying to win, and I could win by deception. And you see people do that all the time. And it's so gross when you catch people doing that on a podcast, when you realize you're not even considering these other possibilities because you're dismissing them without any consideration, because you just want to achieve a goal of victory, just want to play checkmate. And that's all they're doing. And that's why the media is going to make themselves obsolete, because that's not happening in podcasts. In the best podcast, whether it's Chris Williamson, whether it's Lex Friedman, the best podcast, are a true conversation. And I want to know why you think the way you think.

And when I get that in my head, I can consider it, and then I can say, well, this is why I don't think that's true. Because I think this way, this is my perspective. I might be wrong. I might be right. Who knows? But this is just how I feel. It is when you can do that and learn how to do that. And it took me a while to learn how to do that. It makes all conversations better. It makes all friendships better. Like, you get to really understand why a person, like, maybe you and a buddy had a disagreement about something. You say, well, what did you think? I thought you were going to do that. Like, I never said I was going to do that. Why would I do that? Like, I thought you were going to do that. But we didn't talk about that, did we? No. So you're mad at something that you didn't even talk to me about. Like, you thought that I should have just known, like, come on, man, that's crazy. Like, you just, like, attributing all these negative things to a person, and then you can work things out.

You could talk about things and you could, if the longest, the person's not bullshitting you. As soon as you got people in your life that are bullshitting you, it's like, oh, you're not even having real conversations. You're playing a stupid game of tic tac toe all day long with your friends when your friends can open up to you. And this is one of the reasons why people like sharing embarrassing information with friends, because I know I can trust you. I can tell you this stupid fucking thing that I did, and you go, oh, my God, I did that, too. And then, you know, but when a person goes, well, I would never fucking do that. I would have figured that out long time ago. I wouldn't have done it that way. Like, oh, well, that guy's dick. You know? Like, he's not. He's not willing to be vulnerable with me because he always wants to be, like, socially a step up. He wants his status to be in a position of, this is the guy that doesn't make those mistakes, which is crazy.

That's crazy. Especially among friends. I've always been blessed that there's been very little, if any, hierarchy of my friends. We knew who was better at certain things than us others, you know?

And this should never be, we're just human beings. There are people that are way better at certain things than I am, that I'm friends with, and that's how it should be. There's people that I'm friends with that are way smarter than me, you included, and I'm not smart.

It's just different form of intelligence. I will say, and I'm not just saying that, you know, with each passing year, and I've looked forward to, like, approaching 50, because I'm like, now I can say things, like, with each passing year or by this stage. But I also realized the other day, I lived a long period of my life where I didn't really have a sense of the fact I would die. I'd watched the Steve Jobs commencement speech at Stanford 2005, where he talks about this notion that we're going to die is so critical, and I couldn't get in touch with it recently. I'm like, oh, like, time's going to come up. Every time I go down for a meditation, I do this non sleep, deep rest. Yoga needs your imagine. I, like, go do a long exhale. I'm like, someday it's going to just be last. Exhale. And I'm not looking forward to dying. Lord knows I'm not looking forward to dying. But I realize, I'm like, this is great. It's very freeing because I had this realization the other day in a meditation. No psychedelics involved in this one. And I realized, like, I can continue to just be curious and explore.

And, like, I think it's that ego, detachment, a little slice of that. Like, this is bad, this is good. I'm learning from this. This was good. This was hard. I learned a lot from that. I learned what I needed to change from that and just be moving forward. It's this removing this thing of, like you said, this game all day long. Not that I was in that mode, or I didn't think I was, but this need to win, it's sort of like being an explorer. I'm a brain explorer. I've been a brain explorer for a long time. I love biology, love animals. I'm an explorer. And I think the definition of curiosity to me is that you're not attached to the outcome, right? You just want to know what's real, right?

But too many people are attached to the outcome, and I think that's a tremendous trap, and that's why I wanted to talk about it, because it's something that I had to learn, because I was always attached to winning an argument. If I got into discussion, a disagreement with someone, I was always attached to being the one who is correct.

When did that fall away for you?

You're about 57.

All right.

So, you know, I've gotten way better at it over time. I don't. I wouldn't want to, like, sit and figure out when I figured it out, but I figured steps of it out along the way, you know, I remember being 21 and watching a comedian go on stage, and I wanted him to bomb, and I realized that that was a terrible weakness, and I was embarrassed that I had that feeling.

So interesting. I will say we know how we feel about people when we see them succeed, because I think there's this natural reflex. Like, when you hear, like, oh, that really shitty person that you noob in school, they got pancreatic cancer, everyone just goes, oh, like, that sucks. That sucks. But when you hear, hey, you know that person that used to really dislike or that you had friction with, and, like, they just, like, ipo'd like, they're doing great, you know? You know, immediately, do I like that person or not?

Right, right.

Because if you're happy for them, presumably you like them, right?

Yeah.

Rarely is it neutral, either. I mean, I can't think of anyone that I don't want to see succeed, except maybe a few individuals I think are actual evil, but those are extremely rare. But I think it sounds like you're also a competitive person. I didn't do a lot of competitive sports. I'm very curious about this. Like, I'm competitive with myself, but, like, you did combat sport.

Yeah.

Right? I did skateboarding, played a little soccer, did some swimming, running, weightlifting. You know, like you. Like you. Your brain was weaned in fighting a lot of the time.

Well, it was also how I developed as a child. I mean, I went from all my puberty years competing, so that, like, from 15 on, that's literally what I did all day long.

And your goal is to knock the other guy out?

Yeah. It's a fucked up way to develop your mind if you do develop, like, this insane kind of hyper competitive, because it's. The consequences are so grave. You know, I always say about MMA that it's high level problem solving with dire physical consequences. And that's really what it is. It's high level problem solving. You're literally doing combat, hand to hand combat with your body, with someone who's an expert at it, which is so crazy. So you're fighting a black belt is so crazy. This is a person who's dedicated their life to kicking people into the shadow realm, and you're deciding to try to kick them first before they kick you, which is just nuts. It's a nutty way to live. But the negative aspects of it are you develop this hyper competitiveness because you're also developing at an accelerated rate when you're a teenager. So when you're. When I was a teenager, I had no bills. I had no problems. I lived at home. I didn't have any real, like, an adult type stress, you know, bills, family to feed, dealing with the community, work problems. I had nothing. So my entire focus was just on this one thing, martial arts.

And you can get way better when you're a kid. It's all this neuroplasticity involved.

Until 25, your brain is a plasticity machine.

Machine.

It's there to map according to your experience. I mean, like, literally come into the world, baby's flopping. Like, you know, like little bug. Move, move. Neuronal connections are being removed by the thousands, tens of thousands by the day, so that you get fine tuned movement. It's like you're a plasticity machine. And then you're thinking and your notions about. About boys and girls and teachers and parents and good things and bad things and what that means and what that means and who's a hero and who's a villain. Like, the brain is just placing things into boxes and symbols. It's like, it's an unbelievable phenomenon, and it's happening when you're a teenager. Then you throw hormones into the mix. People often don't talk about this. Then you add hormones, and now you're adding the drive. That is hormones related to, like, really hardwired, evolutionarily selected things like reproduction, fighting. Right? We all have brain circuits for fighting. There's a brain area. David Anderson's laboratory at Caltech has studied this. I think we've talked about before. You stimulate this little region of the ventromedial hypothalamus, the specific neurons, and the animals will mate, they'll mount, or females will go into lordosis.

They'll arch their back to expose their genitals. You stimulate other neurons in that exact same area, ventromedial hypothalamus. You know what happens? They go into a rage. They want to rip apart the other animal. There are videos of this online. You can put the mouse in there with a plastic glove filled with air, stimulate these neurons, and the animal will just attack that thing. And then you stop the stimulation, and the animal just, wow, little robots. Our brains have these circuits. As Jung said, we have all things inside of us. The extent to which we learn to suppress or exacerbate depends on experience, its nature, and nurture. But we come into this world hardwired with the capacity for most any of these behaviors to emerge. Your daughter fortunately got very good at drawing right. That probably is handed off through some slight genetic bias, handed on through you and your partner, your wife, to create a slight bias towards looking at the world in a particular way, an artistic sense, something about esthetics. Pay attention to curved corners versus square corners, whatever it is. But what we do feeds back on that circuit. So if you draw more, you get better at drawing.

This is, this is the, that's a big thing.

This is the nature of the.

All day long. And she's been doing it since she was really little, but also, like, going back to Floyd Mayweather. Floyd Mayweather started boxing when he was a little kid. And there's a thing about striking, and it's not a hard, fast rule, because there's some freaks out there, some athletic freaks, and there's some people that come from other sports that have incredible speed and dexterity and an understanding over their body that allows them to pick up striking better than other. But there's something about people that learn when they're young that are always better than everybody, no matter how good you are. There's certain guys like Anderson Silva, or there's certain fighters that learn at a young age, and you just can't fuck with them. They're just too good.

Their nervous system was shaped in fighting the same way Tiger woods nervous system was shaped golfing.

That's why when Floyd sees those punches coming, he knows all he has to do is this, and it's just gonna just barely touch his chin. And then he fires back like he knows he's been in those patterns for his whole life. And his body evolved. It literally developed in those patterns.

This is why when people say, like, what should I do? I always think, I don't know what people should do. And I took a formal education path eventually. But if we look back to the things that really delighted us and that we naturally oriented towards when we were young, there's often information there. For me, it was animals and fish tanks and biology. I wanted to understand things right and parse things through an understanding of some structure, because the world just. That's what it pulled out of me. My dad's a scientist, so it's probably some genetic thing and probably some nurture stuff as well. I went up to. I'm a big track and field fan and went up to the Olympic track and field trials in Eugene, Oregon. I love the town of Eugene. I go to every trials I can for the last, gosh, four Olympic trials. And earlier that summer, I ran into a guy named Cole Hawker. This is shorter guy for a runner. He runs the 1500. So it's about a mile, right? And he took the first position there. So he got. He went off to Paris and he came from.

It's an amazing race. If you didn't watch the 1500 race at this year's Paris olympics, it's fucking amazing. If anyone needs motivation, you should get it from the inside, is my belief. But if you need to look outside, which we all occasionally do, check out this race. Cole comes from, like, fourth or fifth position against the world record holder. He's shorter. He doesn't have the stride that these other guys have. And they box him in, and he goes out and around and beats them all. Takes the gold. It's one of these, like, prefontaine moments right now. Here's what's crazy and relates to what you're saying. He's posting on instagram afterwards. I happen to know him a little bit. Cam and I went watch the trials together, which is a real pleasure. And Cam's, like a legend. These Olympic gold medal winners were coming up to him running. We got great seats, right? And I gifted him a seat because I'm very grateful to Cam for. Okay, here's Cole, right? Cole's at USA in fifth position. All right. I don't know where this is. And there's a fairly long race, so.

So there he is going on the outside.

No. So you might want to just go a little further because this is a lot.

This is the guy with the man bun.

Because now he's the man with the man bump. He's. But he's man with it with a capital man. I'll tell you what. You'll see. Super nice guy, too. So this guy from Norway, Ingrid, he and his brothers have, like, a reality tv show. They're, like, famous over there. He's a world record, also great runner, but cocky. He's talking a lot before us. So check this out. So I don't know how far along we have to go before.

Damn, they're running fast as fuck for a mile. That's so crazy that they can run at that speed.

Right? Final lap. So watch this. So he breaks from fifth position after they box him in to win.

Wow.

I don't know if you caught that, but basically he's fifth position. So he takes it off the end against the world record holder. Now here's where it gets even. Oh, here we go.

So just skipped back. He was just way back there.

Yes, he's way back. And then they box him in later and he wins. How?

What do you mean by box?

So you'll see what happens.

So it seems like he's going on the outside now.

No. Right. So he wants. He knows he's got a great kick.

So it's like calculating when to go 100%.

So Ingrid Brits and went out really fast in this race. Fast paced. So now he's trying to come around. Right? So now watch this. So. So now he's trying to. This is the box in. You'll see. He's trying to take the inside track.

And these two guys don't want him to do that.

Exactly. He actually touches Ingridson. He actually touches him on his back hip with the outside of his arm.

It's weird.

There it is. He sees if there's space, Ingritzin's not gonna let him in. And so he goes, you know what? I'm. How about this instead? How about I come out, he doesn't come. Sorry. He stayed inside track and he breaks through.

So it's just like they try to keep you from kind of fit two people in the lane and they try to keep you.

Boxed him in. They boxed him in. So here's what's wild. So afterwards there's a bunch of posting on instagram. Then they show a picture of Cole Hawker when he's like eight years old, holding a medal where he was running the 1500. And he's doing like four minutes and change. That's a mile. He's a miler as a kid running four and some change as a little kid.

That's crazy.

So this brings it back to your point, which is like, nowadays we're seeing the selection of people who are probably have a genetic bias towards something. A love of it, like running. Right. Plus immense amounts of experience and their nervous system. Like, he was shaped mildly. That's a nervous system that miles, I'll tell you, you can also walk and talk and eat because I've met him. But that's a nervous system that was shaped around running the 1500 miles. So when you see it, like the top, top 1%, it's so different than like my field where you can't go to graduate school to get a training in neuroscience until you're in your twenties, unless you're a phenom. So you can't go to school for this. And so I think when people look at what they naturally oriented to when they were young and they stayed with that, that's the thing that you had a. Maybe a genetic, probably genetic leaning toward.

Do you think there'll be maybe a shift today because there's so much more material that's available to young people? Like if somebody has an interest in science. Oh, absolutely neuroscience today.

Absolutely. I think because of the online learning platforms, I think of, because of even, like, the sport that I grew up, unfortunately, wasn't very good at, or maybe fortunately, who knows? Skateboarding, right? So many of my friends went on to start companies, became pro skateboarders. A lot of them didn't. But I didn't have a propensity for it. Kept getting hurt. Broke my foot three times. I was so frustrated, it was unbelievable. So I went in a different direction, went in the science direction. Turned out to be my thing. But now the little kids, literally little kids, boys and girls, like this girl, Reese Nelson. She skates with power on vert, not like a little kid going. She's got power. And technical, and guys like Tony Hawk are like, whoa. It's because they have all this exposure to tricks and ramps, and there's just way more people feeding the pool of potential professional skateboarders. So when you look at the Olympics or the X Games now, you're getting a much greater selection of the huge pool, bigger sample size, feeding into it. You're getting the genetic gifts. Her mom travels with her everywhere. She dedicates near 100% of her time to this.

So it's a lot of what you were saying, like, we're selecting earlier. We're pulling from a larger pool. So you're going to get the genetic freaks the pole. Walter guy keeps winning world records or beating his own world record. I saw him get the worlds at Eugene about two years ago. Broke the world record. He keeps beating the world record. This guy's been pole vaulting his whole life. He's been pole vaulting a little kid. So the earlier you get him, the more the nervous system can be shaped.

Well, this is a problem that I see in combat sports, because in combat sports, you have guys who have a championship mentality. Like, they could have been a champion, but they didn't start early enough. And even though they have this extraordinary mind, so do the people that started when they were four. Like, this idea that you're tough, or you say you're the only one that's tough. That's an egocentric idea that a lot of men have. And it's a very bizarre conversation to have with these men. I don't think he's tough. I think if the going gets tough, you're never going to find out the going gets tough. He's gonna fuck you up. Like, it's not even gonna be hard for him. You don't even understand what you're saying. Like, just. But there's the mind, the ego plays this, like, cruel trick on you that doesn't allow you to accurately assess your abilities. So you have this bizarre notion that you are exceptional for no reason whatsoever. And there's a lot of men have that. A lot of men have that bizarre thing. The problem with, if you have an incredible drive, an incredible discipline, but you didn't start striking until you're 26.

If you have a thai boxing fight against, like, a guy, like, there's a guy right now is one of the best in the world. His name is Tawan Chai, and he has this insane left kick. He's like, so left kick dominant. Like, most of his game is his left kick, but it's so goddamn good. He just slams into guy's arms, slams into the guy's legs, and he has this snake like movement of his ability to just slide out of the way and then counter and then slam you with a hard left low kick. He's terrifying. And I don't care how tough you are, you don't have that ability, and you probably are never going to get there. Like, the margins, the differences of tenths of a second, hundredths of a second here and there, he's so good, you're not going to catch him. So even if you're the baddest fucking dude in the world, in your mind, this is Taiwan chai. Let me hear some of this. But go for the beginning. Go to the beginning so you could hear the volume of him hitting the pads. This is not what you were looking for.

Exactly. This was like a highlight reel. Yeah, but it's fine. Go to the beginning where he hits the pads. Oh, it's just good. He's got a music over it. Oh, okay. It's just music over. But this guy is fucking nasty. But he's all left kick. Like, it's like 80% of his game, man. It's crazy how much of his game. I mean, he'd do everything. The guy does everything. But his left kick is so fucking powerful that every time it hits you, your power bar goes down. If he hits your arms, if he hits your body, it's just like all left kick, bang, bang, bang. And it's so smooth. He's so good, man. He's so good. So if you're a guy and you're some badass Navy SeAL dude, and you're 30 years old, and you make it to the muay Thai gym, and you decide, hey, I'm only 30. I'm going to fight pro. You don't have enough time. There's not enough time in the world for you to get to where he's at, and he's going to get better quicker.

Yeah. That guy's brain has a circuit. I'm willing to wage my entire career on this. That is a left kick circuit. Like, the same way that, you know, a tool like a. Like a bow is designed for a specific thing. That circuit is, like, left kick loose.

Lee had a saying that don't fear a man who knows 10,000 kicks. Fear a man who's practiced one kick 10,000 times. That's. There's a thing about a guy who's got this one thing that's so, like, Ryan Garcia has this nasty left hook. It's super fast. It's a crazy left hook. It's so goddamn good. It's so much better than most people's that everybody who fights him doesn't understand what he can do until he does. Fast, powerful, fast, powerful distance management angles that it comes from. It comes up, it comes around. It just hits you faster than you know it's supposed to get there. It's so much quicker and has so much pop on it. It's so dangerous and every like, he fought Devin Haney, who is one of the best pure boxers in the sport. He's so good, but he just didn't have the understanding yet that a guy can whip that left hook so fast.

I.

And catch him in, fuck him up in these weird angles.

It's.

I don't want to watch this dude's left foot here. There's his liver shot. That's. It.

Melted.

He melts a lot of guys, that liver shot. See, if you could just see. Give me a highlight of Ryan Garcia's knockouts. He's got one of. I'm sure there's some of those online, but it's all left hook. He's got a right hand, but so left hook dominant, and it's so much better than most weapons. He's got a nasty left jab, too, but it's just, he's got distant distance management and timing and just the ability to just uncork a shot, like, right there. Whoo. Fade away.

Look, he can outtime it.

Well, his speed is just different than other guys, so you don't know that he can, like, look at that. My goodness. Look. He's a fade away left hook. It's so perfect, and when he connects, everybody goes night night. It's really extraordinary, and it's extraordinary because it's that one weapon that's so good, and when he fought Devin Haney. He was like, Devin Haney's like, he's only a left hook. Whatever. It's like saying Talon shy only has a left kick. It's so good.

You got only a left hook that always that wins.

A left hook. That's so much better than everybody else's. He's got a right hand, too. But that left hook is just freakish. It's freakish bink right there.

So if we look at this through the lens of nervous systems, you know, I know that there have been conversations that. That you've had here and elsewhere, like, would crocodile versus a gorilla? These kind of, kind of crazy things. We don't need to reignite that. But I think when we're at the discussion around true peak performance, like somebody grew up running miles, who grew up throwing left hooks, who grew up slipping punches. Yes, they're both homo sapiens. They're both humans. But you're talking about two different animals. When you're talking about the person they got into in their twenties and thirties versus the person that comes, that started off young, you're talking about two different nervous systems.

Yes.

If we were to look at their brains under magnetic resonance imaging, you'd see a lot of things that are similar. The breathing centers, the stuff that controls the heart rate. Everything is mostly in the same place. But I'd be willing to bet everything that you look at Ryan Garcia's brain, you go that left hook. If you were able to throw the left hook in the thing, you see it light up, you'd be like, wow. Either more efficient, maybe more space allocated to it, maybe less space. You know, the speed of transmission is just faster. You're talking about a different nervous system, which is just a different way of saying a different person. But it's more meaningful in my view, because what you're talking about is cars with extra cylinders. You're talking about a race between two different vehicles. And so I think if somebody is very educated in the fight game or is educated in any domain, they're able to see that difference and give people really good advice, whereas with the person themselves, they can't see that. It's like we look the same. He trains, I trains, I train harder. I'm driven. It's like, no, it's not the same.

And I think that's why to me, something like a Cole Hawker win over a world record holder is, as is the other stuff we were just watching, incredibly impressive because you say he's in fifth position and he's got a shorter stride and the other guy's got all this world record stuff under his belt and he's done great as well. I think he won the 5000 Inger Brits and won the 5000. But Colt just, like, pulls something out. Like they're very close in terms of their abilities. They're the same, roughly the same species. Right. You know, in the context that we're talking about. And then somehow through sheer will is able to out kick him.

Sheer will, numbers, there's a lot of things going on, like what kind of conditioning he went through as opposed to the other guy, like what edge he got.

And he's from Kentucky. I've never been to, I've been to Louisville once, but someone told me, I don't know if this is true or not, but they're more. If you looked at the number of medals from people from Kentucky, it's almost like in a complete country, really. I don't know what's going on in.

Was there a great program there?

No, not just in track and field, like across the summer Olympics. If you look at the number of, like, american versus chinese medals, it, like, tears out. But you go like, Kentucky was a pretty good quote unquote, country.

Well, wasn't Muhammad Ali from Louisville?

Yeah.

Yeah. There you go.

There's something about people from Kentucky are doing very well in the, in the.

How are they in neuroscience?

I have a friend who just retired as chair of the, of the neurobiology department is actually neuroanatomy there. My friend Bill Guido at University of Louisville.

Isn't it unfortunate, though, that, like, Kentucky's not associated with intellectual prowess?

Not so much, but it's a great department. No, Bill Guido is a great, he ran a great department there. I'm sure someone else has taken great. Maureen McCall does great vision research. So one of the great things about being a scientist was, you know, my lab now is run much smaller scale and, you know, but for years I just traveled the country. These places I would never think to go to. Right. I had a great argentine meal in Louisville. I went to, in st. Louis. I had one of the best meals of my life. I don't think I'd ever go to st. Louis, but I was visiting wash. Um, and then there are certain cities that you hear terrible things about, and they're true.

One of the greatest players in the history of the world came from paducah, kentucky. Kentucky.

Okay, guys.

Name was buddy hall, the rifleman. Like to this day, one of the all time greats.

And great horses.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Great horses.

Horse races.

Yeah. Great horses. Like, I've been learning more about horses because it's like dog selection, and horse selection is that. I mean, the genetic breeding and the selection of horses for particular traits, like this whole warm blood thing, I don't know much about it, not enough to comment on it, but these people have been around horses their whole lives.

They stun. Horse is worth millions of dollars, and.

They know that that fold, that's the one. And they put tons of money on it. Like, they have this unconscious genius based on all this life experience.

Right? So it's almost like they're selecting the same way. Like, someone, if you wanted to build a Floyd Mayweather, you would select, you know, great father was a great boxer, uncle's a great boxer. Boxing. The family starts up young. He's got great genetics, the whole deal.

Yeah, or the Williams sisters, like that movie, the King James movie.

Or Tiger woods.

Yeah, we're Tiger woods. Or the kids that I grew up with skateboarding. Like, there's this kid, you know, guy Mariano, like, grew up when he. I knew when he was a little kid, he would waddle the board, felt like, look bigger than him. And now grown up, he's so good. He's kind of in my generation, so he's kind of, like, in the late forties thing, he still just kills because he developed his body.

Developed. He grew up with it, went through.

All the trials and tribulations, and this has been public, you know, had his issues, then got sober and came back to skateboard. And just skateboard of the year for Thrasher, which is a huge deal. You just see, like, the young Danny Wade, Tony Hawk grew up skateboarding. His body, his nervous system is skateboarding. And I love this aspect to people in sport because we see it, but it's, you know, I think I remember listening to, like, and hearing conversations like this and thinking, yeah, but, like, if you're not into that, where is it? And this is where, man, I just keep thinking about it all the time. But forgive me. Rick has always said the key to being really great at something is to just be you. And I'm like, that sounds like about as mystical wrapped in a riddle as possible.

I can hear it in his voice.

When he said it, but what he's saying is what he's saying, and I finally got it. It's like, what are the things that really pull that energy out of you? What did that when you were young? And if you're fortunate enough to get into something young, that's a beautiful thing. And Rick's superpower is his ability to get close to things, people, music, et cetera, and feel it. He can feel that thing, and he encourages them to do more of that thing as opposed to the thing they think they should do. And then what's also remarkable about him is he's able to disengage and just be Rick again. Like, he has this, like, empathy, but it doesn't, like, take him over.

Right?

It's so wild. The guy that grew up in music and did all the things he did for music, you know, he's never had a sip of alcohol or done a drug. How many people hang around musicians to pull that off?

Well, he's just a fascinating guy, period. But I think what he's locked on to is getting out of your own way. And there's a lot of self chatter that comes in whenever you're creating something where you're, instead of engaging with the idea, you're thinking about, how can I make this better for me? What would people like more? What would get a better response? And you lose the magic. The magic is in the individual thought, 100%.

And this is all right. So I've been spending. I go over there to spend time with him. He's out of the US right now, and it was the weirdest visit ever. I go over to visit Rick, and we'd tread water in the morning, and we listen to this podcast, a history of 100 songs, 100 rock and roll songs by Andrew Hickey. It's sort of like Cuba and lab podcast, but rock and roll. Like super nerdy. Long, like, drawn out. There are a few podcasts like that. Like founders podcasts. I love that one. Mine, that's, like, super nerdy, right? About a given topic. So we do that, and then we would just, like, sit around, and I'm like, what are you gonna do? He's like, just like, sit. And we would just sit with eyes closed. And I was like, all right. Then we have lunch, and then he was like, what a freak. Let's just sit. And then at one point, I'm like, rick, what are we doing? And he's like. And he's like, well, when you keep your body still and your mind is really active, amazing ideas come forward. And that's when I was like, oh, my goodness.

Because my first guest on my podcast was a guy named Carl Dysroth. He's the world's best bioengineer. He's a psychiatrist. He raised five kids. He's a phenom. He'll probably win a Nobel prize. And he told me. His practice of coming up with ideas is, after his kids are asleep at night, sits down, and he keeps his body completely still, and he forces himself to think in complete sentences, keep his mind super active. And I was like, wow. And it turns out that if you look historically, a number of scientists have talked about this, a number of creatives have talked about this. And then it. I don't have any studies to support this, but then I realized, what is the state of our brain or time when the brain is very active and our body is still and our mind is coming up with all sorts of ideas? It's rapid eye movement sleep. We're paralyzed. During rapid eye movement sleep, we have sleep. Atonia. And everybody knows, based on dream studies and studies of creativity, that during rapid eye movement sleep is two things happen. There's a removal of some of the emotional load of previous day's experiences, which is why rapid eye movement sleep is so critical for emotion regulation afterwards and for the regulating depression and things like that.

But also, we come up with new configurations. And so Carl Dysroth, Einstein, there are reports of this, of him walking and then closing his eyes and stopping and describing his mind moving forward while his body was still very kind of subjective. Rick has this practice, and I thought to myself, like, wow. So I've started trying to do a sort of meditation where I forced myself to be very bodily still with my mind very active. I can't. You know, I just started this kind of interesting in light of creativity. But the other thing, and this goes to what you were saying before. You know, Rick came up through punk rock. Punk rock and hip hop, right? I love punk rock music. Grew up on it. That era in the eighties. Punk rock in New York is amazing. Like. But the whole thing, like, BC boys, he was close with the Ramones, Joe Strummer, all this, and then hip hop. What he understands, and I can't speak for him, but what he understands is that there's this energy in an early field, let's say, of music where they're not thinking about making money doing it. Like NWA, those guys were just being themselves when they were making music, right?

I watched that movie on the defiant ones about Dre, and I think it's Jimmy Iovine about beats, but it's really about the energy of early hip hop. And then they talk about Eminem and a bunch of other things. Or you watch Rick and I at night, we'd watch Ramon's documentary or clash documentaries, and it's like. It's the energy of something that's new, where people are just being themselves and they're not thinking about making a ton of money on a record. A really great producer comes in and captures that energy and rolls it forward. And usually what ends up happening is then the general public falls in love with it, and then a bunch of things happen to those people, and then whatever dysfunction exists in their world gets amplified, and then we hear about it. There's kind of a consistent theme over and over, and. But it's like, and then one of the things that came up when I was visiting Rick is I was like, you know, I feel like I came up through skateboarding, punk rock music. I'm not a musician. That incredible energy. I don't know much about hip hop. I was like, science had that when I first got into neuroscience.

Like, no one talked about neuroscience. It didn't even have a name. We're just like brain explorers, cutting up brains, figuring out what to do, trying to figure out what these structures did and all this stuff, and then podcasting. It's like, I really feel like the podcaster, at least some of us, right? It's like, it's like punk rock. It's like hip hop. Because we're not thinking about. I wasn't, didn't sit down and like, start my podcast. I'm going to start the women Lab podcast. I was like, I've just got all this stuff in me that I want to tell people because I think it's super cool. And a lot of it, I think, might also be really useful to them.

Right.

And you're just being you. So when Rick or Lex is just being Lex and or Chris Williamson is just being Chris Williamson or Whitney Cummings is just being Whitney Cummings. So when, when a podcast works, I think it's because you're just being you. And it seems so obvious, it's kind of almost trite. But Rick is like, exactly. And the biggest mistake is to take the feedback, the comments, whatever the hit piece or whatever, and to change who you are right now, there is sometimes useful information that comes back to us in ways we could do better in life, and certainly I am doing that. But the point is, at its essence, it's like the things that, the thing that makes podcasting beautiful to me is that I think we're right now, thanks in large part to you and some of the other early, you know, entrance guys, guys that paved the way, is that it's, it's a real thing. It's a real discussion. Like, there's no script. We didn't talk about. We're gonna talk about before. Whereas when you go out there and you. And you see these, like, highly overproduced or like media infused podcasts, like, it's not like real.

It's not real. It's like, got an angle. They have a story they want to tell.

It's not independent anymore. It can't produce.

Right? And let's be real honest. Look, you are consistently, this podcast is consistently miles and miles ahead of everybody else in terms of the amount of consumption of it. Why? Because it's a place where people immediately and consistently go, oh, it's like Joe's just being Joe. It's just like a real thing. And when I say a real thing, this is what Rick means. Like, people just being themselves, which, like, your loves the things that bother you. And so I think that podcasting, to me, it's like skateboarding, it's like punk rock, it's like hip hop. It's like a sport, it's like an art. Like, if you watch the movie, one of my favorite movies, the Basquiat movie, right? With Benicio del Toro and Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken and David Bowie, like, why was he so amazing? Is because Jean Michel Basquiat was just being himself until the fame got to him. An article got written about how he was, you know, Warhol's lap dog, they called him, or something like that. And you can see him obsessing about it. And there's this amazing riffen. If people haven't seen it, they should just look up on YouTube, like, how long does it take to get famous from the movie Basquiat?

And it's Benicio del Toro, who plays the young Vincent Gallo, telling him, here's what happens when you get famous. And it's an amazing clip because it explains the arc of fame and people becoming famous for being themselves and then doing the things that they think they should do to stay popular, and it destroys the whole thing. And so Rick's message is like, Rick's talent is to, like, feel real energy. He can tell what's real and what's fake. That's why he likes wrestling. He knows it's fake, right? And then feel that and encourage somebody to do more of that, less of other stuff.

He's a creativity guru.

He's a creativity guru. Then step back and. But the message, he just keeps saying, and most of our conversations end with him just saying, like, yeah, mandy, continue to be you, you curious adventure. Whatever makes Andrew Andrew, I know what those things are. It's not about me. This is really about hopefully, if, like, people hear it, like Rick is saying in that book and in all his messages, like, we all have some little spark or gift or genetic bias towards something.

Yeah.

And if you feed that, like. And it's a benevolent thing, you become that. It's like it stays real the moment.

You also show a path to other people.

Right, right.

When you can actually just be yourself. People realize, maybe I can be myself, too.

Right.

You know? Like, and they love that.

People love that. Like, again, I don't know hip hop that well, but, like, you don't have to see Eminem very many times or watch eight mile more than a couple of times or listen to his music, understand? Like, there's an energy there. It's not manufactured. That's him.

People love that. They love authenticity. That's why they love old, dirty bastards. You know who that guy was? Yeah.

Like, I'm a huge show strummer fan, and I remember asking Rick, I was like, hey, like, what do you think it was about strummer? The clash were only around for, like, five years. He was like, come and gone, right? And he said, very Rick. He goes, you know, there's something about Joe where everything he said, he brought his entire life experience to that. And I'm like, well, that's about as mystical as it gets. Like, what do you mean? And he's like, he just washing purely himself that day with no concern about how you would perceive him. He wasn't trying to impress you or look punk or not look punk. He just. You know, like, he just was. Strummer fell in love with hip hop. He'd bring out hip hop artists, and the punks would boo, which is when he realized punks aren't even punk. You know? Like. And so there's something so beautiful about the energy of something really pure, like a Ryan Garcia left hooked. It's this or early beastie boys, right? Or later Beast or whatever. Or podcasting. My. And my. My work now is so much about, like you said, like, don't read the comments.

Shut out the noise. You know? Like, Lex wants to go into the darkness and the light. He, like, wants it. He needs it.

Yeah, but that's always why he's down the dumps, too. Telling him, you're taking in too much negativity, bro.

I know, and that. But I feel like if he didn't do that, it would be as weird as him not wearing that. That suit.

Maybe. Maybe there was. You know, if he didn't drink, he wouldn't be Mike. You know? Maybe. Maybe Mike shouldn't be drinking every day.

You know, I mean, it's like, they're destructive aspect.

Yeah.

I mean, it can go too far, right? It can. Like, there's a, there's a great quote in the Oliver Sacks book. They said, he said he had a teacher that said, oliver will go far, provided he does not go too far. And I saw that. I read that right about the point that I recently saw the documentary Roadrunner runner about Bourdain. And I actually had a chance to sit down and talk to Morgan Neville, who made that movie. And I didn't know much about him, but, like, I, what I saw there was just, like, an adventurer, like a super curious person. An adventurer and a punk rocker. Like, he was from that era of, like, Ramones. Like, it was like, and, and it was just a spectacular, like, I don't know why I didn't know more about him. I should have because we have, there's kind of overlap in interest sets or I around, like the, you know, New York punk rock, that era that I've always been fascinated by. I'm a few years behind there. But I was like, wow. Like, I just saw, like, genuine curiosity in people and things. And then I realized, like, the food part was kind of incidental.

It was like, the person, it was just being him. And that's why I think so many people loved him is because he was just being him. And I don't know any more about it, but, like, I feel like people just being themselves is, like, the ultimate in personal development.

Yeah. He was also brilliant as an, as a writer. And he would write all of his own narratives. All the narration was all his writing. And he was just so good at it. So good at expressing his joy for different cultures and trying out their cuisine and what he admired about them as human beings and about their spirit.

He loved people.

He loved people. He loved being around people. He did not love being famous, though. Mandy, that guy got fucked up by fame. He did not like it. It was very uncomfortable. And that thing that you were talking about, Basquiat experienced, I think everybody experiences. You get there's a temptation towards audience capture. There's this desire to appease those and please those who love you, maybe at the expense of your own self esteem and your own perspective, because you see things through others eyes and how they perceive you to be rather than who you actually are. And you're so aware and so painfully self aware that you lose your ability to just be yourself. What Rick's talking about just to be you. And that happens to most people because it is a complicated drug, which is why it's a terrible drug to give to young people. Fame is a terrible drug to give to young people. One of the ways that I mitigate all this stuff is through voluntary adversity, voluntary physical adversity, and then mental adversity, doing difficult things, and that the more difficult things that I do, the easier this weird state that I find myself in is.

And I think one of the reasons why I'm so comfortable with it, because I'm uncomfortable all the fucking time. I'm voluntarily uncomfortable most of the day. So regular uncomfortable. It's like, yeah, whatever. It's not 196 degrees for 25 minutes. That's. I did that this morning before I got here. That shit's hard. That's really hard. That's like, you're gonna die hard. You're gonna die hard. Is so much harder than, oh, somebody doesn't like me. Oh, somebody took my clip and took it out of context, because you're gonna.

Die of heat is a real thing. This is what Rick says. Like, nature is a truth. Like, you heat up too much too long, you can die. And you're playing with that a little bit. It's playing and it's hard, and you do it correctly, and you're good.

And cardio is really important for that. Cardio is one of the very best things for alleviating anxiety. And I know there's a lot of studies that have been done on weightlifting and about strength resistance training and alleviating anxiety, and I think that's a fact. I think that's true as well. But there's something about, I might die cardio. I might die cardio is a different kind of cardio. It's like if you can swim and to the point where, you know, you do laps in the pool, and you do laps in the pool where you're like, I don't know if I'm gonna make into the end of that fucking pool. And when you do get out of that pool, regular life is way easier. Period, full stop, no discussion. I think when people are talking about cardio, they're engaging in maybe zone two type cardio, which is a walk, which is very good for you. Very good for you. By the way. I do zone two cardio. I will put. I will get on the assault bike and not go very fast, wait vest minutes, and watch television. You know, I will do that. But I also do tabata sprints on that motherfucker, where I do 20 minutes sprinting.

Ten, rest. Excuse me, 22nd sprinting, ten second rest, 22nd, sprint. And I do that in sets of four, four, eight reps. So eight reps four times.

Okay.

It's only like 20 minutes.

I do something similar.

I do horrendous.

I like to walk or hike. I use one of these vests. I don't have any relationship to them, but amorpho makes these ones that are really close to the body. So I use that because you can really move easily in that. I don't like a heavily loaded military vest. It doesn't feel right to me. And if I load from the back, like a ruck, I feel pitched forward. So I like how smooth those homorphos are. Yeah. Nice smooth feel. And then I'll walk far that way, but then I'll do the same thing, except I do a little different. I'll go 10 seconds, sprint, 22nd rest, do that eight times. That's my Friday morning hiit workout, and I feel like I want to die by the last one. But I think that I have an observation that's not backed by any formal science. I'd like your thoughts on it. I've known a lot of people who are kind of compulsive, anxious, or even outright addicts who then get really into running or any kind of cardio, long distance endurance type sport, and they seem to, again, not a scientific study. They seem to get and stay sober, whereas I find that while weightlifting is really healthy and I really enjoy it, I've observed that it can create a kind of, like, tension in the body that doesn't, like, release completely, maybe even builds energy into the nervous system, so to speak.

And I do know a number of people who have had challenges with drugs and alcohol. I'm grateful that I haven't had those challenges, but challenges with drugs and alcohol, and they've gone the way of just weightlifting, and they've been like multiple relapsers. Now, that is not a knock against weightlifting. I think people should do resistance training and cardio, but it is kind of remarkable that people that do a lot of cardio seem to successfully beat their addictions. And maybe it's just the time involved. Who knows?

It's a lot of time involved. It's also overwhelming. So it takes over your mind, your body. I think if you're doing a marathon, you're just, you're grinding for hours. You're doing 3 hours if you're really fast.

What's the longest distance you've ever run in a single bout?

I don't really run. So the longest distance I've ever run is only a few miles. I did a five k once. My friend Cam Haines, you know, Cam. Cam had a five k once in Vegas, and it was. I had zero training. I didn't run at all. And I did. I was like, wow, this is hard. And at the end of it, I was like, that's a lot harder than I thought. I thought I was in pretty good shape. I'd be able to run. What is it, three point something miles?

Yeah, he's a sicko. He's got a broken foot right now, and he's still running on it.

Yeah, he's got to get surgery, but he can't have surgery right now because he has l conning season coming up.

He was on his way to Alaska when I last text him. He sent me some meat, which I'm very grateful for. It's delicious. He told me that. I said, what's the pain level in that foot? Because he showed the x ray, it's still very broken. And I said, you know, ten out of ten being max pain, like, excruciating, cannot stand it. He's like, I don't know, maybe a four or five, but he's running. He was like, yeah, he came and stayed. Recently, he stayed at my house a few times, and I've set up some archery in the backyard. And I like, he can use my sauna Cole plunge. I love it when people just spontaneously come and stay. Lexus come and stay. And I wake up and we did a post about. But literally how it happened was I woke up in the morning, I hadn't yet started work, so that was added later, the post, and Cam Haines is on my roof shooting arrows at my targets, which he's moved beyond the fence line. And so the neighbors are like, who's this guy? This is Los Angeles, right? He's a wild man. I love him hitting bullseyes the whole way through just to rub it in.

It's just bizarre that he's running on that foot. He knows he's going to have to get it fixed, but if they get it fixed, he's probably going to have to be off of it for like six weeks or something.

And I keep trying to get him to do some of the, what I know to be very useful things like BPC 157, et cetera, which, yes, there isn't any clinical data for. It's all animals, but so many people will report feeling better. It's very hard to get, but he's.

Got a gap in that. Broken.

Yeah, he needs to mend that. Thing.

Yeah, they need to put some screws in that bitch.

But he would run on stumps. Guys like him and goggins will run on stumps.

Goggins got another knee surgery recently. Yeah, he's had a bunch. I mean, he's bone on bone and he's essentially getting surgeries to shape his bone. So his bone on bone is flattered because, you know, when you have bone on bone, it distorts and grows weird. So what does he do? Does he stop? Does he get a fake knee? Nope, he gets it cut flat and put. He gets a wedge cut in the bone and shifts it down so it's flat. So bone on bone, at least it has the correct geometry.

Like what, he's a phenom? Well, there's a guy where in his, whatever it was, late twenties, took a look at his childhood, was like, well, I wasn't, you know, being, you know, my nervous system shaped to be a great athlete or a navy SeAL, etcetera, looked at everything he had become, and he basically said a big, hard no. He's like, whatever it was that happened before then, he was going to shape his nervous system by putting in endless hours.

So, yeah, in his twenties.

His twenties, right. So it runs counter to everything that we talked about earlier, which is that one has to start early, but he's making up the time and then some. You know, I saw a poster where he was moving, where he couldn't move his legs for whatever reason, maybe just had surgery. So he's running on his hands on the treadmill.

Yeah.

You know, with his feet positioned kind of like plank position.

Yeah. He's a ridiculous person.

It's amazing. Super inspiring. He's like a noun and a verb and an adjective.

I just wish that there was stem cell technology and regenerative technology available now to help his joints stay healthy. Because the problem is that will, that mind, that power, is eventually going to break down his body. And mechanically, it's not going to work anymore.

Titanium is pretty good. This is what the neurosurgeons understand. Like, you know, you take out a little flap of skull, you replace it with titanium, it's a lot stronger, you know? I mean.

You mean titanium knees? Is that what you're suggesting?

Or other biomaterials? Right.

They're close. They're real close. There's been some studies recently that regenerate cartilage, you know, and so I think they're real close. I think if you could just hang in there for a few more years, they're probably going to be able to fix this.

Yeah, exosomes are exciting. BPC 157 while only animal data, it's very clear, you know, it has the propensity to encourage fibroblasts which these cells that, you know, make up things like tendon and cartilage et cetera and can really repair tissues. I mean, you know, and I certainly have experience it can help repair things.

Yeah, it's legit. It's legit and unfortunately the FDA is trying to get rid of it. There's a lot of things that are really good for you unfortunately are not regulated correctly. Yeah, sucks.

Well my wish, I mean I have no plans to go to Washington but my wish is that things like BBC 157, some very interesting, I would say not cutting edge but even further out like bleeding edge. Things like pinealin which can help with regeneration of the pinealocytes are incredible for sleep potentially. Like we need these things explored and everyone for a while was like peptides. Oh, it sounds really kind of gray market weird and it can be, but let's face it. GLP, one agonist, Ozempic Manjaro, that's a peptide that existed for years in the fitness and bodybuilding industry. Now it's probably approaching a trillion dollar.

Industry someday that has a tremendous windfall in terms of the amount of money you can generate from it. BBC 157 could be made by virtually any laboratory and it's probably going to cut back on orthopedic surgeries. And that's the gross reality of a lot of this stuff. A lot of this stuff is going to cost companies money because people won't be taking pain medication, they won't be taking anti inflammatory medication, they won't be getting as many surgeries. And that's where it gets fucked up because the healthcare system, the business of healthcare is really set up. Not looking at people as like what's the best way and the most efficient way and the most cost effective way in terms of. For the actual patient to treat them. No, it's how do I make the most money from this person?

Well, we did an episode on back health and strengthening the back and back pain. We had Stu McGill on and it was wild. I've never received emails and stuff like that. Like half of the people or more saying the McGill big three helped me so much. Stabilize my back. It's like a, you know, he's got his three movements, you can look it up on YouTube, they're easy to find there. But it's all about. And he's in great shape in his late sixties. Incredible, incredible shape. Chops wood. He's up in Canada. He basically is giving behavioral tools to stabilize and strengthen the spine and deal with back pain. And then the other half were like, what is this? You cant treat back pain. This is pseudoscience. But then everyone telling me how much benefit they got out of McGills big three. And then the war among the physios. Like the physios, thats an ugly field, ill tell you. I asked someone, why is this field of exercise physiology so brutal? I asked Andy Galpin, and it turns out it's because it's very hard to get a lot of clients. And the moment that somebody comes out with knowledge that's very useful for a lot of people, they're potentially taking away their livelihood, so to say nothing of the pain treatment world.

We had a guy on our podcast named Sean Mackey. He's an MD, PhD, runs our pain clinic at Stanford, and he talks about the biopsychosocial model of pain. And he's very open minded. Meds work in some cases. So does your emotional or cognitive interpretation of the pain. What does it mean? So do things like meditation, like, he's basically trying to incorporate all these different things. He's very holistic, for lack of a better word. But if you look at most pain docs, they're not that evolved. They're just like, okay, this is what you use. It might be addictive, might not be addictive, but they're not ever talking about strengthening the systems that gave away in the first place. So I totally agree with you. There is no replacement for self care. There's just no replacement. No pill, no potion, no injection, no nothing. There are things that can help, but there's nothing that can replace behaviors because our nervous system was evolved for these behaviors.

Yeah, yeah. Listen, man, it's always a fascinating conversation with you. I appreciate you very much. I'm really glad you have your own podcast and that it's so popular, and I love it. I listen to it all the time. Thank you. And you put out a lot of great information, man. I really appreciate you.

Well, thank you. I really appreciate you. You've been a great friend to me and a great source of support through a bunch of different aspects of podcasting and supporting the discussions about health and exercise and forcing me to make my cold plunge a little colder. I mean, sniff, smelling salt, all of it.

You know, I might be wrong about the cold.

I don't know, but really right back at you. You know, there are very few places in the world where you can have a real discussion about real things from all the angles and know that the person sitting across from you is being truly open minded about it. So, really appreciate you.

My pleasure. Appreciate you, too. All right. Bye, everybody.