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EPISODE LINKS:
Andrew's YouTube: https://youtube.com/AndrewHubermanLab
Huberman Lab Podcast: https://hubermanlab.com
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Andrew's Instagram: https://instagram.com/hubermanlab

PODCAST INFO:
Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8
RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/
Full episodes playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4
Clips playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeciFP3CBCIEElOJeitOr41

OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
1:15 - Diet
11:20 - Attribution in science
14:02 - Rick Rubin
21:48 - Mental states
36:28 - Controversial guests
49:10 - Karl Deisseroth
53:25 - Difficult conversations
1:00:26 - Big guests
1:14:12 - Academia
1:21:13 - Freedom of speech
1:32:16 - If by Rudyard Kipling
1:39:27 - Music
1:45:06 - Public speaking
2:04:02 - Non-sleep deep rest
2:18:23 - Focus
2:28:43 - Stress and anxiety
2:48:39 - Sauna
3:00:04 - Sex
3:07:57 - Love and relationships

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If you get into the sauna the way I just described, not the 2 hours a day, but 30 minutes, twice a week or 3 times per week, you reduce the likelihood of dying of a cardiovascular event by 27%.

If you do it 4 or more times per week, you reduce the probability of dying by 50%.

Is there any scientific evidence that being naked is beneficial in the sauna?

Well, in certain contexts, it leads to childbirth.

Okay, well, I'll have to read up on that.

I think Dorothy Parker said, The cure for boredom is curiosity.

The following is a conversation with Andrew Huberman, his third time on this podcast.

He's a brilliant neuroscientist at Stanford University and the host of 1 of the best, the best if you ask me, health and science podcast in the world called Huberman Lab Podcast.

Check him out on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.

Most importantly, Andrew is a great human being and has quickly become a great friend.

To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

And now, dear friends, here's Andrew Huberman.

We should talk on each other's podcast once a year.

I was just talking to the guys, there's a show called Louie, I don't know if you know it.

And there's this thing called Bang Bang, which people that are probably watching know exactly what I'm talking about.

It's this worst possible thing you can do in terms of meals, which is you go to a restaurant, do a full meal, and then you go to another restaurant and do a full meal, and you pack.

So they go Mexican, Italian, sushi, pizza, barbecue, I hopped that, that 1 is disgusting.

This kind of thing reminds me of the joy of food.

Last time we were hanging out, we went to see Joe do comedy, and then we went to eat Russian food.

And it was a particularly fun experience to go to a Russian restaurant.

I was the only person there that didn't speak Russian and eat Russian food with you.

Because I felt walking in, they trusted you, they didn't trust me.

Yeah, the funny thing about the people there, they were talking to you in Russian, and then they refused to sort of switch to English, even though they understood you speak no Russian.

This is Russian House in Austin, by the way.

Anyway, by way of question, what's the worst, or the best, depending on your perspective, cheap meal?

Let's call it a pigging out meal, but it could be a cheap meal that you've ever had, or you want to have that's like on the bucket list or something that's in the past, like where you did the something like a bang bang, which is like, you're talking about multiple thousands of calories that you just feel horrible about yourself, but you still keep eating because it's delicious, but also great company.

Something about the atmosphere is just right.

Screw the diet, screw all the things you know, or just like you should be doing, but just throw it all out the window.

Yeah, I don't do this anymore, but the entire time I was a postdoc, so 5 years, and the entire time I was a pre-tenured professor, so 5 years, so I basically followed the Tim Ferriss slow carb diet, which is, you know, people can look it up, but it worked really well.

It was basically some, you know, like good animal proteins, you know, fish and meat and things like that.

Because slow carb is like low glycemic stuff is mostly lentils and beans and things and vegetables.

No dairy, no, anyway, but then 1 day- Is pasta

So it wasn't low carb, it was low glycemic carb.

And I did that and it worked terrifically well just for energy levels, because I want to be able to train and work.

And then 1 day a week, you're supposed to go full cheat day.

And so I would do what used to be 12 hours, but then it became 24, you know, you start to redefine what the day is.

And I would, and that was when Costello was pretty young and we would do it together.

So I would get pizzas and croissants and donuts, and I would just do the full thing.

And by the end of the day, you don't want to look at an item of food.

The only modification I made was the next day I would fast completely, just to avoid the gastric distress of eating anything.

And so I would do them on Sundays and then Mondays I'd fast all day.

And then by Tuesday, I felt pretty good again.

But Sunday and Monday, you just feel like you're sliding down the slope of just blood sugar disaster.

I love donuts, croissants, all that kind of stuff.

What's interesting is after stopping that whole protocol, now I just try and eat well each day.

Now I basically, I do a pseudo intermittent fasting.

I don't, I'm not really strict, but I'll start eating around 11, eat my first meal around 11.

I usually train in the morning, eat my last bite of food somewhere around 8 or 9.

I might have some berries or something late at night.

And then maybe a little bit of snacking on some nuts or something in the middle.

Never done a long fast, except when I was doing the cheat days.

And then, and actually there are a couple different ways to do cheat days that were fun.

Like if you were in a new city, you could try all the restaurants that you wanted.

Yeah, And I think Tim and our mutual friend, John Romanello, did a, I think it was like a cheat day marathon where they did, you know, marathon's 26.3 miles.

They went to 26.3 different locations in New York.

They put it on a map and I never took it to that extreme, but- Wait,

Just a little bit of something at each place?

I mean, there are things that guys do in their 30s that you just shouldn't do in your 40s.

And Now I just try and eat well most days.

And what's interesting is about 12 to 14 months ago, I completely lost all appetite for sweets.

I still love savory foods, so meat and butter and cheese.

I love fruit also, but lost all appetite.

So if you put a donut in front of me or ice cream or something, like I just, it's almost aversive to me.

It says to do maybe- Neuron loss, dementia.

The sugar, the desire for that rush maybe is gone from your soul.

There's a place in Portland, I don't know if it's still open called Little T's Bakery.

And they have croissants that easily rival the croissants in Paris.

People make a lot of the pastry in Paris, but it's really the bread in Paris that's amazing.

We lived there when I was a kid and we did a sabbatical there.

And you know, there they do the baguette morning bake and afternoon bake.

And there's nothing like the bread in Paris or the people.

But if you're in the Pacific Northwest, you can find amazing croissants there.

actually used to, I don't eat them anymore.

I don't have much of an appetite for them, even though they're not a sweet food, but I'm always putting butter on the croissant.

I have to actually be honest about this because people talk about steak and they talk about bread with the butter.

I feel like you're disrespecting the fundamental food by adding butter, because butter, it's like a elite version of ketchup.

because for me, bread is just a vehicle for butter.

Oh, so that's just the cracker and the bread is just texture.

It's just that people look at you funny if you just eat the butter straight, which occasionally I do.

So I put a little piece of bread underneath it, not because I'm low carb, strictly low carb, but just because otherwise you get some funny looks.

That's like pasta is a vehicle for pasta sauce.

It's interesting, but like Indian, non-bread, you have the bread.

I've had a lot of soul searching on which part of Indian brings me so much joy.

Is it the bread or is it all the sauces that come with the bread.

Well, there we diverge again, because for whatever reason, and no disrespect to anyone, but Indian food doesn't appeal to me.

Well, you're a lucky man, because the number of calories in that food, it sneaks, like naan bread, I don't know how naan bread is made, but I think it's just soaked in oil and it just very intensely, like the density of calories is very, very high.

For me, barbecue, I would say is probably the-

Anytime I'm in Austin, I start thinking about barbecue.

I mean, Argentina chorizo sausage is an appetizer before you have steak.

And it's not just, you know, it's not just the men, right?

You see women, sometimes very petite women, eating steaks that are bigger than their skull size.

You know, slowly, they eat very slowly there.

And they all eat dessert too, which is interesting.

And they generally do this sort of 1 meal per day.

That's how I think about it, because I often eat 1 meal a day, especially when I'm traveling.

It feels like a cheap meal, because it gives you a bit of more freedom to just lose yourself in the quantity of the food.

I did the three-day fast, and I ate Chicken breast, like literally chicken breast with nothing else, just grilled.

And it was the most delicious piece of meat I've ever eaten.

And that gives you, the problem is when you fast for 3 days, you really can't pig out.

Well, your stomach will shrink in size already.

Your gut microbiome is almost completely depleted by fasting.

A lot of people think, oh, cleanses and fasts are great for the microbiome.

However, when you start eating again, the microbiome comes back better than it was before your fast.

For people who don't know, Sergey and Todd are on the call.

Phelps with the, I forget how many calories he's eating.

There's some cool physiology around this.

The reason he needed to eat so much is not that he was burning that many calories in pure movement.

It's that when you do exercise in water, even if it's warm water, the heat transfer in water is greater.

And again, here, I'm admittedly lifting that from knowledge that was passed on to me by Tim Ferriss.

But I checked it out and it's absolutely true.

So if you exercise in water, even if it's not really cold water, your caloric needs go way up, which is why you get out of the pool and you're often really hungry.

And for fans of the Human Lab podcast, and if you're not a fan, what are you doing with your life?

You would probably chuckle at the fact that Andrew just cited his sources even on that statement.

Because you're so good at, I don't know how your memory works, but the only person whose memory is better than Joe Rogan's is yours.

Also in science, as you know, attribution is so baked into what we do.

And I think that it's interesting because now spending a lot of time on social media, attribution is not as common.

But in academia, you learn really early on that if you give a talk about your data and you cite all these amazing sources, all it does is make you look better, right?

Whereas in social media and elsewhere in the business sector, It's almost like citing other people.

People feel as if it's gonna take away some of the credit.

All it does is place you in the company of people that do really nice work.

So I have, and I have genuine and tremendous respect for Tim.

He's been about 10 years ahead on a huge number of health-related things and other things, an extremely kind person, very thoughtful person.

So it's also just a pleasure to shine light on other people.

Yeah, yeah, well, I actually, to push back, I know there's a culture of if you write a paper, standing on the shoulders of giants is a powerful thing, but there's also a culture of not giving credit to the strongest idea in your paper and instead say it's kind of, or imply that it's original.

There is a culture of kind of not celebrating others.

I think people get most competitive in all walks of life, but especially in science when they're, the closer they get in exactly the thing they work on.

And so there's this dance, you know, there's a few researchers in each of the individual little things that you work on.

If you're studying a particular kind of ant, you know that other asshole that also is studying that particular ant, and then you're not going to often give credit for the brilliant ideas that that other researcher is doing.

And I think 1 of the things you've discovered and just as part of your nature, which is why it's really great that you have an audience and you inspire others to do the same, is you celebrate that other ant studier.

But that initial instinct to be like, what is it in Borat?

Like my neighbor gets a toaster, I get a bigger toaster.

Yeah, that mindset to, you know, it's not that I'm not competitive in certain domains, but yeah, I get great pleasure from sharing things that I find.

And I think that, you know, at the end of the day, you're as strong as your community and you can build a wonderful community just by pointing out things that you love.

Only rarely do I think, oh, I wish we had done that.

I usually think, fantastic, now I can just focus on something else because they checked off that box.

And by the way, you mentioned PubMed and Barbecue.

I should mention that I got a chance to hang out with Rick Rubin, thanks to you.

He's a friend of yours and you made the connection.

That was a huge gift to my spirit, I guess.

And there's a lot I could say about why he's a special human being.

I'd love to learn how you met him, but I should also just mention on the PubMed thing, it was so interesting talking to him about music, and both on the podcast and privately, and just listening to music together, because when you mention a song, he does this thing where he closes his eyes and he finds that song in the album that we're talking about and he steps through the album.

You could see the brain stepping through individual songs to find that song in the album.

And then he puts himself mentally in that space of like, okay, this is, you know, whatever the album is.

And not just the ones he produced, but all of it.

He's an encyclopedia of music and it's so interesting.

It also, the thing I really love about him is something like a calmness that radiates from him.

That it's okay to close your eyes and place yourself in the place where that album was recorded, in the feeling of that album, and like that silence, let's go there.

It's like Alice in Wonderland, and we'll go there together.

You do a good Rick Rubin, Minus the beard.

You can't fake a beard like that, you know?

Yeah, well, Rick, I'm very blessed to consider a close friend.

Rick and I got introduced through a common friend during the pandemic, And we started doing some FaceTime together and just talking about things related to science and health.

And I'm not a musician, I have no musical ability or talent.

I have a good ability to memorize lyrics and I love lyrics and I love poetry.

So I asked him a lot of questions about musicians that I happen to love that he's worked with and knows.

And so he would give me stories about musicians and I would talk to him about health.

And then eventually we formed a friendship where we would talk about any number of different topics in life.

And then we started spending time together in person when he was in town or nearby.

And as you now know, you know, Rick, in addition to all his incredible accomplishments, has an incredible understanding of how to get the brain and body into state, right?

And as you pointed out, he's willing to do the things that allow him to help these incredible artists get into the best state to do their craft.

And so if he needs to sit there and be quiet with his eyes closed for a minute or 2 or more, he'll do that.

He has routines to allow himself to get into state.

And it's really inspired me to think about states of mind as something that we'd all love to just flip the switch and say, we're focused or we're creative, but to actually ratchet through the challenging steps in order to do that and to figure out what 1 needs to do on a regular basis to get into a proper state.

It's not just gonna come from a cup of coffee, a lamp of a particular wavelength or something.

It's gonna be those things, but it's also going to be really teaching oneself how to get into proper state.

Do you think it's a kind of self-hypnosis?

Because hypnosis is a, you limit the context, you're very alert, and you're very calm.

And he has a number of these different practices, and so we would talk about those.

And then we also have enjoyed a lot of discussions about deep neuroscience.

In fact, I introduced Rick to a friend of mine who's a neurosurgeon and neuroscientist and they've become friendly.

You know, Rick is 1 of these people that he sort of defies definition, incredibly kind, incredibly private person too, so you know, I'm being respectful of that.

But, and then of course, he's a fan of your podcast.

And so when I learned that, I just made natural sense to introduce you.

And I know he really enjoyed meeting you.

And of course, in a positive light, you know, I think his dedication to getting into these states of mind and his willingness to do that has completely transformed my routines around life.

Like for instance, before doing a very long podcast recording, the solo ones, which often take me several hours or more, 6 hours to record, sometimes more, sometimes less.

I realized that there's a certain brain state associated with that.

So I have to really limit the kind of interactions I have for the 2 hours before.

I actually walk and talk out loud through my neighborhood.

I live in a neighborhood where there are a lot of crazy creatives anyway.

Well, at least not institutionally defined as crazy yet.

But, you know, getting into state of mind is something that we'd all, just imagine we flip the switch, but Rick really convinced me, you have to do the work to do the work.

Can you maybe linger on that, elucidate a little bit more your process of how you get in that space?

That's really interesting, because I have to admit, I do everything last minute before a podcast.

I don't know, like there's a lot of anxiety because like whatever, if I have to pack, if I have to set up stuff, you were luckily a few minutes, you showed up a few minutes later.

And on top of that, you look at like a situation with Rick Rubin, I had to set up microphones in front of him.

He's like, how close do you like the microphone to be?

The details really matter right down to your relationship to the microphone, right?

Distance and whether or not it brings out the timbre in your voice.

But of course, this is what he does, he produces music.

But he also said like, you know, he is the professional.

And he said it with a gentleness where I had like an existential crisis where I don't know.

He gave me so much like, wow, like he made me feel like an artist.

Like that the microphone distance is a decision you're supposed to make.

Well, I have to say, and this has actually come up in some of our conversations about you.

And actually Joe Rogan, once I heard him talking about podcasting and the fact that he's always trying to get better at it, you know, and he described podcasting at 1 moment as an art, right?

And it is, it's a certain medium of communication and there's a cadence and a rhythm that when it's working, it really can facilitate the transfer of information.

I mean, obviously Joe, just being himself, has tapped into that cadence that allows, and it's made so many people excited to hear him talk.

Well, in his case and in general, I think part of the art is refusing the world as you get a bigger audience, change who you are.

that I've seen out there where he says, you know, I'm like the, talking about himself, he says, you know, I'm like the fish that got through the net.

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Andrew Huberman: Focus, Stress, Relationships, and Friendship | Lex Fridman Podcast #277