Joe Rogan podcast check it out The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day all right we're good Mr huberman how are you s 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 orig from wolves but then dog selection has been twofold mainly for phenotype like morphology the shape we call it and then temperament right so there's this chart how might be a little hard to find online um 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-1 which makes sense grow hormon but kind of wild right like you we got some big humans and some smaller humans but not like dogs not like dogs and chihuahua and then what are those enormous uh Shepherd dogs those um what are those ones those insane dogs they used to fight off wolves what the [ __ ] are those things called those gigantic ANC hairy things you know what I'm talking about we've talked about them before they're terrifying looking dogs yeah I mean just the what's it called oh my goodness oh yeah those things what the [ __ ] is that thing what is that called again doesn't I don't know it doesn't say it's just like but we've we've seen it before doesn't it say the name of the dog I don't know why it's not saying it well find the name of those dogs cuz there's Brian call knows all this [ __ ] right so I have a colleague at Stanford sumac Connell who Joo Joo 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 lbs look at that puppy that's seven weeks old that's so crazy wonder how many they have in a litter how could they have very many yeah there got to be just a few poor poor mama so I this colleague at Stanford Sue McConnell she's one best in show at some of the big events for uh py um she breeds horses and she's into that hole what's up py the pulley are the ones that look like rosarian dogs you know their eyes are covered they're they're amazing they're amazing and um she had this chart on her door I was going to meet with her about something she handles a lot of undergraduated 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 essentially shows up in the following way the dogs that are more sight and scent right and with longer snouts like a shepher like a Shepherd have more heav dosing of the wolf jeans still in them then you get to the shorter snout kind of snubnose 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 but wait a minute but they all start off as wolves so they have some genes that relate to the wolf origin origin lineage right but over time they've been bred for instance the English Bulldog right but but all dogs originally come from wolves all of them that's my understanding as well even Mastiffs that's right that's my understanding but then as they were cross spread with different dogs right so for instance like the English Bulldog that line came from the crossing of essentially pug like short snout right but with Mastiff with Mastiffs or with dogs with heavy Mastiff genetic dosing why well the idea was the short snout gives them a a good lever for holding on to things right and the Mastiff genes lead to and we know this for sure both the the droopiness of the face it also relates to less uh presence of pain receptors in the front of the body okay so if you've ever had a bulldog but you know their feet can be really sensitive but their face you can hold on to those gels my Bulldog costell would go picking up stuff at the beach and he occasionally get a fish hook in his mouth and it looks super painful and he's like you know so not not very many pain sensors in the face they have a they have a disruption and or mutation in the gene that controls the elasticity of skin that's why they have the droopiness and they are brachy spalc short snout that's why they're not very good breathers and they essentially have sleep apnea that's why they have a bunch ofs they snore like a [ __ ] they do so they do snore a lot I can attest like girl does it's crazy and 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 sheep dogs or great herders this kind of thing but when people essentially designed bread up and cross sprad to get the English Bulldog or the old English bulldog which doesn't have as much of an under white 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 pitbull looks more like a pit 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 uh to their protector and then basically then it was for it was to rile up the bull right for bull fighting so you can still find some of this stuff online um 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 boy breeds quote unquote designed for or bred for they were basically designed to sit next to you some of them will seek out you know like the terrier breeds will find verman right they'll go find rats they're they're really good ratters actually Jack Russells are great Jack Russells are great ratters the um the West Highland Terriers The Westies um the Ken Terriers they're always they're really great hunters L for little things right and the amazing thing is that when you start looking at the different breeds it was basically human 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 um a guy that I think was on your podcast a long time ago uh Sam Sheridan yeah yeah in a Fighter's heart there's a great chapter where he talks about uh I think it's dog fighting 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 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 12 round fights but also when the corner man or the coach was the parent and so and so it gets into this very complicated psychology I actually think that's a really terrific book um because I think it it speaks to a lot of really interesting aspects of bonding between humans bonding in that case between animals and humans of course dog fighting 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 um that's a bit of a tangent but um I don't know maybe it's possible to find that chart I don't want to say you on a ridiculous Expedition but if you just say so jeans simple that's a simple one okay um this one the one I'm thinking about is a vertical one um uh that was in Science magazine or Scientific American um but it's wild um again I don't want to send you on a on an expedition that has us paused but same thing yeah sorry about thator no worries but it's just we get a rough understanding of it all yeah so 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 than a mastiff breed um are you can ask an owner how good is their Vision are they a sight hound or a scent hound and of course that're 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 [ __ ] hound breeds are amazing I've always wanted a redbone [ __ ] hound their ears wafted 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 the the chase oh amazing I I read um this uh incredible description of why dog scent and sense of smell is so much better than ours there's a guy named gome soel who's been on my podcast he's over in Israel who claims that human old faction is just as good as dog old faction but how do they 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 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 10 or 20x the exposure to the scent in the old factory 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 gnome has done these crazy experiments when he was back at Berkeley where he had people 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 Ines below the ground what yes and you can see this this you can find if you say uh a tracking sorry Jamie my goal wasn't to come here and send you on these do these people have a nose like AR shafir uh of what [Laughter] or Adrien Brody oh oh my um if you say uh kind of Berkeley chocolate uh tracking soble 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 um yeah and if 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 probably sent through the grass yeah if you go images and then I'll lay off the track sense so if you go to images uh damn it and you just say a Berkeley just say there it is right so they compared the tracking of a scent Hound of a of a Blood Hound to human tracking of a scent buried uh in the case of the The Blood Hound 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 are their nostrils and there 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 Nome he said no no they buried the chocolate scent and people were able to track it like a like a hunting dog tracks how do 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 one 1,000th or something of the number of factory receptors that's that's total [ __ ] really total [ __ ] 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 depart 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 okay what percentage of things that you find in medical textbooks basic and advanc 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 he and then Rick said and yep and then Rick said I know I was wideeye 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% WR 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 let me say something cuz I know that bears have insane senses of smell that are many times stronger than a blood hounds and uh famously can smell people from 100 200 yards away like there's got to be levels to it and I just can't imagine that a blood hound doesn't have a better sense of smell than a person right so they absolutely have a better sense of smell in uh 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 fobia towards the center of your eye and actually towards the periphery you could anyone can just do this you wiggle your fingers out here in the periphery and you can't see any detail right as you move that forward you can see detail okay so and that's because the density of pixels so to speak in the retina is much much higher near the fobia near the center than it is at the periphery okay so what he's saying what Nom sobel's laboratory has found and others have found is that the number of pixels the the the the potential for olfactory resolution in humans and in blood hounds is essentially the same this is his argument but that blood hounds sniff much more so it's the equivalent of having their eyes open much more right in the example um so to speak they have these vortices that are created by the structure of their 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 old factory receptors they have relative to a human or a blood hound but that the um the bear is likely spending a lot more time and can pull more air perhaps we I don't know but is using the the mechanical aspects of the olfactory system differently in fact and here's uh now I'm recalling the experiment that led to this conclusion that humans have exceptional ofaction 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 uh outrageously small like skunk spray like skunk spray um 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 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 consciously as well as a blood hound or as well as a bear but that we have a tremendous capacity for old faction that you know 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 um uh orientation as well and so the idea is that you know we have an amazing Al Factory 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 they don't realize it people don't realize this and they just do it subconsciously yeah map I think merap also known as the how do you say that theol where is it suoc containing organic compounds with a strong unpleasant owner they are colorless yellows liquids it can be flammable mer Captain are found in nature and in living organisms as a waste product of of metabolism and in oil and gas they're also present in certain foods such as some nuts and cheese and in decaying organic matter and marshes right so we're probably sensitive to the odors that 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 o odor plumes that we you know that we we smell ourselves a lot of times per day that's actually very normal behavior 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 a 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 I'm not a 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 uh I don't know what this question represented but she said um do you think that when you become unattracted to somebody the um the taste of their mouth um becomes bad to you or the other way around when you become unattracted attracted I guess she might have been dating somebody and like maybe they had fallen out of favor and she was kind of not attracted and she was sort of noting that um The Taste mou their mouth no longer like it tasted kind of reversive now as supposed to before I bet that's in your mind I bet you don't like them anymore cuz if you're really in love with someone you don't even care if they have bad breath you still want to kiss them that's true because you just love them you don't care true yeah that's true too yeah 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're like uh right you [ __ ] stinky [ __ ] this this is a a mule deer skull so you know this is uh 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 cuz 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 CRI plate the CRI form plate is a bunch of Swiss cheese like thin bone and the olfactory neurons which basically sit like right behind your the back of your nostrils they uh they send axons their low wire light connections back into the brain and when somebody gets hit hard on the head that cior 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 mamalian 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 SOC called neurogenesis new neurons but the olfactory neurons even though they're central nervous system neurons 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 axon excuse me um they regenerate now under conditions like uh we saw this a lot uh during covid where people were complaining about loss of smell um 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 um there are a few things actually I think I recommended it to a couple of friends of ours now this there very little data on this but I will say and I'll 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 lpoic acid at 600 milligrams per day during the time when You' starting to lose your smell might rescue some of that smell someone's getting covid and they start to lose their sense of smell if they 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 um there are influenza viruses that do this now I know as we're saying this that some people say in fact gome soel told me that he felt that the data about alpha lpoic 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 yeah 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 of water I was like I was like oh goodness like I I don't there are worse things Co that you lost your smell with it was and I did the smell training which has also been shown to work because these old factory 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 you know your coffe 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 thefactory neurons but scent in other words the behavioral training works there are the alpal Loke acid thing is debated the thing about alphalipoic 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 I don't I want my smell back so I took 600 milligrams of valal lpoic acid and I was doing the the scent training I was like sniffing lemon sniffing coffee sniffing parmesan cheese sniffing anything that was pent that I could recognize and my smell came back in a couple of days but then again I don't know cuz I didn't run the control experiment what 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 well guess what do we have some we've got some right here i' be willing to try are they legal before I do something illegal all right yeah these are totally legal all right I'll give it a shot uh these are the one this is ah this is uh Juju muu who is a real athletic freak who who uses these we I don't know him but uh shout out to him because this is the strongest [ __ ] we have ever tried I will just this one's sealed too so this I'll just do a I'll just try a little bit oh you're going to get all up in there come on this like the co plch this is I got a funny story about the cold plune to tell you later but uh uh that relates to you but we'll get to that 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 going to kill my old factory neur no you'll be fine it's uh so strong that even though it's sealed in this bag like I have to rip this bag open and uh oh my God damn my hands are slippery got a knife um okay it's so strong that I broken the Seal of this bag just slightly look it's still kind of sealed look you could smell through the bag try the give a sniff oh yeah yeah right okay this bag is still sealed I haven't even cut the bag yet so 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 learn to waft it you learn to the bottle the bottle is it's not even out of the thing 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 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 lot little out of hand yeah 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 going to 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 sayal it's totally legal and vice right yeah all right so what do I do uh unscrew the cap look it's my initials ah unscrew the cap all right put it about 6 inches from your nose take a big sniff get in there all right yeah baby let's go now imagine if you had co wait wait wait wait hold on let me just kind of experience that for a second yeah yeah take it in I'm going have you know whatting or wouldn't be fair you know what's interesting oh oh the fresh ones are so powerful I feel it in my eye because the sinuses run oh now would imagine if you had Co you can smelled over there huh I imagine if you had Co 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 cuz I like that thrill for whatever reason we have in the GRE I actually enjoyed that thank you we have in the Green Room of the mother you prompted me did take several new experiences uh that we can talk about um but one other thing before I forget um I know I I go down these like nerdy rabbit holes here but when I did the smelling salts a moment ago I I sniffed with both nostrils but it came in mainly through my left nostril right and so I asked n soel what's the deal with this left nostril right nostril stuff you know you have the the yogis the switching the nostril things here's what's Wild this is so wild it turns out that every two hours or so the dominant breathing nostril switches now really 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 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 uring sleep so this whole thing with the yogis of you know through one nostril or the other nostril look it's 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 W and um and the last thing is you said why would Bears or blood hounds have such better smell well in the case of a bear the size of the old factory 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 you know the the brain of a uh let me think of like a turtle it's mostly movement they have very low cerebral cortex maybe that's not the best example but certainly in a senent Hound the olfactory bulbs are much bigger than they are in a sight hound and both of those have old factory bulbs that are much much bigger than Jim's Bulldog over there those guys sniff all the time but they're mostly snorting trying to get sense in their smell sense of smell is much much worse than Marshall's than your dog because Marshall's a retriever yeah yeah that makes sense cuz 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 as ball you know yeah yeah incredible so so what 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 old factory they can smell when somebody's not feeling right 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 [ __ ] 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 right we know this right that's why like if somebody takes a stimulant pupils will get huge there's a thing that people do when they're full [ __ ] 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're they counter punch they're well they're selling it they they they say it and they're like does he buy it like you feel the does he buy it and like oo you're full of [ __ ] oh interesting you know let me think about this so you are able to sense the their anticipation of your response it's like they've got uh queued up some counter some uh evaluating where you're whether you're going yes no or maybe yeah but it's not reliable like I I just be to 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 uh it's not 100% sometimes people are full of [ __ ] and you don't you're not sure or you have your defenses down I mean I've been badly badly manipulated before it happens yeah especially if you like someone you know that's part the problem you don't want them to be full of [ __ ] 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 and those tend to be unique things like that you can't get out anywhere you know and boy uh 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 right but you know you know I'm saying it just can't be seduced by m um and then there 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 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 or 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 uh well listening to a really good book that a really smart person suggested to me um called five types of people that will ruin your life and um 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 um and it cuts across all the standard labels of like narcissist and borderline and all that like they include some of that but they 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 psychologist he's worked a lot on conflict resolution over the years courtroom type Stuff Etc 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 you know basically harm and then the other 5% are very like 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 woses 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 um 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 I'm realizing like oh yeah like we always hear this like most of our problems come from a very small set of people in things most of society's problems and so who are these people so we tend to call them narcissists or sociopaths or psycho you know but those labels while very useful in the clinic I think have been overused in the general public and like we're not clinicians we're not diagnosing anybody and so but difficult people that can ruin your life abound but it turns out it's only about 10% so and it has some very specific Protocols of how to deal with the people who are more outwardly aggressive versus play victim Etc very useful book I think sucks that you have to think that way though um can you just enjoy someone enjoy their if they're in if they're in the 90% yeah but that's the problem you could Zig when you should have zagged and you run into a 10center take a year yeah 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 which could be a real issue oh I've definitely experienced that and it's um and again I think we are often I you mentioned that the relationship between uh 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 like somebody like I 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 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 uh you know the 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 15 16 you're moving on in the world you're hitting puberty you're starting to date a bit whatever now let's like 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 uh a set of algorithms in circuitry that were designed for one thing in a very different context that's interesting that's probably makes sense why a lot of men with like very overbearing mothers seek overbearing wives yeah yeah I you know I uh I've learned so much recently about just how it is that you know we can um lose our our our vision of like other people right like we and I think this 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 it 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 right 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 you know people quote unquote trying to get their needs met often times like the worst ones sometimes it's 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 on to them because like they're healthy and and they could and You' say well the healthy person should be able to spot all the landmines but if somebody's 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 you know well acclimated person with the best parents or whatever upbringing which most people aren't but you know some people do have that and still fall kind of you know into this uh fog that is like gosh like you want to be with this person but it's but it doesn't feel good you know that that mish mash and I think the thing I've learned clearly is that when you feel that trepidation run don't walk like 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 exactly just run 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 know i' I've seen that before both with uh people choosing the wrong friends and people choosing the wrong Partners yeah that certainly hasn't been my pattern um not that I had the hardest upbringing but it was E I always say easier than some harder than others but I always had great friends great friendships but my threat sensing um 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 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 and cuz I think people always or often default to sex like it's all about sex depending on who you are like sex is either more or less readily available to you right like 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 um you know overbearing or or complicated childhoods or abusive childhoods sometimes they're set to perceive danger at way too high a threshold right right so their perception of what's dangerous is like 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 excited in there's some some conflict some something there's there's fights and breakups and then makeups which are exciting you know 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 um like excitement and adventure and are super curious but like excitement and Adventure so I'm thinking Comics I'm thinking um 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 whove 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 modos and things but someone sent me one that uh 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 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 where 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 like wo 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 keep I've kept it intentionally kept it off the the hands and neck on my hands but it's uh 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 balone good friend of mine he's got a bunch of written [ __ ] 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 yeah you know it's just like they 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 my my one of my childhood Heroes and somehow by the grace of God he's become a close friend of mine Tim Armstrong lead singer from rany has a tattoo of a spiderweb 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 Frederickson from Ranson says skunks on his forehead they're super nice guys I mean they're Travis Barker's super nice guys Tim and tris 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 garly 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 checked out of society completely a mohawk used to be you're not getting a job right a nose ring used 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 right right now I 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's a it is a thing though that you're taking a giant ass Chance by tattooing your hands well a friend of mine who's 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 it's like yeah I don't know 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 Freedman face tattoos so good so good 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 tattoo of 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 th 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' 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 um smelling salt stuff they're powerlifters and they take a big sniff of that stuff before they lift weights why would that help help them adrenaline adrenaline yeah so couple more things about old faction 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 right we know that for instance memories that are associated with smell like the people would say the smell of my grandmother's kitchen or somebody's hands my grandfather's hands that those memories stick with us longer than anything because the olfactory bulb has a direct line to a couple of structures in the brain we 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 getaway quick those tend to go through a really fast line through the old accessory old factory bulb takes us straight to the amydala to the pform cortex that says move your body and facing away from that like I didn't sit there and on those smelling Sals like boom get away it's it's like a reflex it's fish this called M neuron where you tou 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 detect sounds and things and vibrations in the water the sensing Electro sensing in a distance and these mou 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 it's so it's a reflex for safety the olfactory syst 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 the accessory old factory bulb straight to the amydala which is associated with threat detection and other things straight to the pform 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 hm let me Explore More sniff in more versus a as opposed to aversive behaviors like get get me the hell away and the these brain areas are among the more ancient brain areas now I say ancient people nowadays start picking apart at like well it's not just lyic and cortex the cortex is part of lyic 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 uh like looking around as much as I did last time like things 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 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 me there's basically only three motor responses to anything yum yuck or me now there's a there's a matter of degrees like you might see somebody you really like you want to I know Joey Diaz or something you know you see him like you want to run over see him right so there's an repetitive circuit moves you towards it see something that's a little odd you might pause I don't know what that is or something aversive like something happens in the 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 forward pause or Retreat okay I was playing with Jam's dog out there before I was like can I couldn't get him to back up that's what's kind of cool about the Bulldog right you charge him and he just goes I'm like 20 times his size but he's just like but he's also never experienced anybody being mean to him so every except a 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 play with him right so you said about why the the smelling salts and adrenaline so here's the deal when we have this aversive respon resp 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 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 nor adrenaline nor epinephrine same same molecule so 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 a area in the brain called the locus cerus 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 okay olfactory certain olfactory neurons cue that to the accessory Ola Factory bulb bam straight to the amydala amydala sends a signal down to the to the adrenals at top the kidneys they release adrenaline sends a believe it or not a signal up to Locus cerius 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 in the middle of the night they're going to wake up yeah like like a you know like a gunshot went off they used to give it to boxers when they got hurt in the corner they' give them smelling salts and wake them up yeah cuz one of the best uh uh painkillers is adrenaline m 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 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's just just shuts everything off it's real weird your body just shuts off I've seen these uh 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 Tiding up and 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 a like sharp pain and a delay and then everything just shuts off it's very weird 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 PR because they know one more shot there and they're [ __ ] 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 that is Islam makev 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 just hiding this like slow you see the leg come up and it's very hard to rec there's a kick called the 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 into a roundhouse kick pull up uh glob fosa glob fosa was the best at it so much so that a lot of people started calling it the Brazilian kick because this guy was a K1 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 cuz to this day I don't know anybody who can kick as good as him with that kick um like to this day he has the the best highlight there's a lot of people that are really good at that kick but glob 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 that 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 I'm always amazed how people can kick standing so closely oh yeah Will glob was it's just flexibility of the hips it's leg dexterity but the way he could do it man it's just he the finest question mark kick of all time I mean here's knocking out semi schil who was seven feet 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 glob used to fight I mean this was like K1 there's Israel atna had a really good one too it still has a really good one look at this one WAP 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 glob 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 uh these Firs eyes it's amazing to me like uh years ago I saw uh Mayweather fight and um it was obviously on pay-per-view and um and he was just getting paid for sure right that was his thing but um it was always amazing me in the slow-mo like where he would slit 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 uh really good Fighters one of the 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 down loading 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 in 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 counter punchers in the history of the [ __ ] sport he was so good at like staying in the pocket so he was an elusive guy yeah slipping pattern recognition pattern recognition so he knows that left Fook 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 um it's conscious you know I'm obsessed with this notion of unconscious gen 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 uh 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 cuz there there's like a conscious and Wess of how you do it guess what I'm I think this notion of pattern recognition it's interesting because earlier we were talking about pattern recognition for finding people who are lying right you have this pattern recognition thing that you know you're not saying it's perfect but like 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 was 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 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 Counterattack or an attack so well that's where drills come in okay so you do drills and you do drills constantly and one of the things that may Mayweather's father was a great fighter Mayweather's father fought sugaray Leonard back in the 1970s when Sugar Ray was in his prime and gave him a hell of a fight and his brother uh 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 in sparring you're not just SP 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 Ms well they'll throw a hand at you and they'll slip and and counter here let me show you this this's this guy Ilia Toria and Ilia Toria is uh one of the absolute best fighters in the world he's the current UFC um featherweight champion and the dude is just [ __ ] phenomenal but when you and one of the thing that's phenomenal about him is his technique his technique is 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 says I sent it is it on Instagram no I yeah it's on Instagram I sent it to you though uh on a text message really I sent it twice you got it okay um elot toor like I said um 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 mov and the speed man the [ __ ] speed of that look at the hand look at the hand speed [ __ ] 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 and just phenomenal technique but see how those Pun It's like they they're not even talking so when he's throwing the MS at his head to get him to duck there not 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 wasting a lot of energy and you can't Counterattack 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 [ __ ] hit him that's true Mastery of space and true Mastery of technique he was he's in my opinion he's the best boxer that's ever lived yeah I mean I'm I'm not qualified to to to rank people but I 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 a um 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 like bunch of people jumped in the ring it was crazy because they stopped the fight because they were talking too much [ __ ] 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 and this fight was even crazy too because the referee was the first referee was terrible and the the referee called Floyd said Floyd Mayweather 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 they he stops the bout he's like get the [ __ ] out of here get out of here he's the promoter also well I guess I mean also it's Floyd Mayweather like what's the referee gonna do [ __ ] you you know I'm going to stop the fight like also they're in Mexico City like you could get killed like just get out of the ring buddy so Floyd throws this punch and he's 100% correct the punch land at the side of the head it's a right hook it's a perfect punch and the the referee was saying watch the back of the head he's like what the [ __ ] 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 was it was insanity and Floyd won it was an exhibition it's kind of a [ __ ] money grab honestly so this is you see the punch that's the punch right there it's just a right hook he's saying back of the head like so Floyd's like get the [ __ ] out of here just get out of here [ __ ] you get out of here he's like get the [ __ ] out of here and if anybody's qualified to say get out of here it's [ __ ] 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 [ __ ] 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 let's see it again we can see it one more time it's a counter right hand let's do it 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 in exposed area of the head is 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 crazy 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 uh very good upand cominging MMA fighter so 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 them 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 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 [ __ ] and he's like look at my million-dollar watch look at my [ __ ] 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 show up I bring out the big boy and it brings out this watch is covered in diamonds it's like [ __ ] $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 running in the middle of the night yeah 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 2: a.m. have his bodyguards drive the car and he would run in front of the car for hours run home 2 o'clock in the morning run five six miles and did it all the time just always did it was always fit Always In Shape never got fat never got lazy always was ready and so never really experienced Decline 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 un undefeated bye 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 them and one of them he was walking around with a [ __ ] a card a ring card he took it from The Ring card girl and he started dancing around so he's like under no threat whatsoever he's enjoying life well people like to be angry um 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 is a neurosurgeon and he 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 Rous 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's 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 12 times in my life you know just a friend like that's awesome way to go something nice but uh I don't even read comments but I look at pictures I go oh that's cool oh look at that video that's [ __ ] crazy give a little tap double tap give you a little heart give you a little love and they 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 Tik Tok in terms of um it compels you to continue to watch I want to keep going with this but I have to pee so bad I I did the sauna before we got here and I drank 64 liters of water so or 64 ounces rather all right we'll be right back we were uh at people like to get angry and you were saying that you had uh another urge to take another sniff of these smelling salts so I'm observing something interesting about the smelling salts like it's definitely like hits hard and then feel really good afterwards you can feel it in your body feel it in my body and then I noticed there's kind of a a hunger for it right like another hit yeah like maybe in 20 minutes or so just like a cocaine thing oh allegedly I've never tried C me neither good for you um but that's what I hear yeah wonder I doubt that hits the dopamine circuit but a little valuable science tidbit we hear so much about dopamine adrenaline look they three molecules they're called the catacol amines dopamine epinephrine adrenaline and norepinephrine noradrenaline and they are actually bi some are biochemical derivatives of others and they are cousins they work like a little uh like a little clan of molecules to raise alertness and focus and drive I think the great Robert spolski said it best he said dopamine is not about the of pleasure it's about the pleasure of pursuit that makes sense that's why he's Robert spolski yeah it's all about the journey it'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 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' have to look it up and see but I certainly like it it feels good it feels good everybody likes it weird and I and I I like you know that's why I've never tried cocaine or amphetamine like I I like up States as they call them me too same thing I've never tried Aderall either but I've been tempted oh people tell me about like Jesus I've never tried it um organized what 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 um all the different neut Tropics 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 Place controlled study that shows it raises alertness and focus look as much as I believe in science you don't need a double blind placeo control 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 we did double blind placeo control studies for Alpha Brain right right and so they exist and and certainly that's one that I would put kind of high on the tier things for if you want alertness and focus it's certainly more benign than a lot of prescription drugs that create Al is 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 um like 100 to 200 milligrams of theanine will take away the Jitters associated with stimulant which is why it's now in a lot of energy drinks so you'll see Alpha GPC theanine sometimes El tyrosine which is a precursor to dopamine but there were a couple of things on that list including prescription drugs like modafanil 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 a way to prescribe it both okay yeah so it 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 pro vigil right uh 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 the hotel [ __ ] it let me drive home and if I would drive home there'd be that risk of the the Sleep coming on because of the there's a weird thing about being on the highway about those lines they [ __ ] hypnotize you oh yeah it's really weird yeah and the yeah and so for anybody out here listen to this cuz this my manager told me this it's really important if you think you're going to fall asleep there's a great way to mitigate it that's p 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 start oh man I'm can't sleep again wipe that rag on your face you wake right up this is a great one this is a great one and it fits right in with what Matt Walker says to do the opposite to fall asleep will 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 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 to sleep 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 and when you get in the cold the surface of the body gets cold that's kind of a 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-40s that's better getting better uh but I still go into the sauna at 210 220 by the way I don't know if I'm right uh I'm probably wrong um my wife doesn't want she wants to get a second cold punch cuz she doesn't like how cold mine is cuz mine has ice in it yeah you're probably in the 30s yeah it's 34 yeah it's [ __ ] cold as [ __ ] beast mode kind of I've got a new one that I got from morasco for 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 uh you turn up the knob and it'll be like a flowing raging River oh well 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 cuz it's not like you're making yourself like it's not like you're wearing a it 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 10 two times so I count to 20 and I know exactly how long my breath is for it to be 3 minutes I know how to do it so I do it now that's awesome it's a little cheating cheating 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 look rubber ducky and his name is Rogan I'm not kidding I shot a video of this I'll send it to you my producers going to 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 then 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° or if it's any better to be 45° or 50° 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 [ __ ] so that's why I do it as cold as it can get before it freezes solid which is seems to be 34 degrees well this gets to something that uh I know we've talked a little bit about before uh offline not on microphone which is doing hard things translates to an ability to do hard things and probably translates provid it doesn't kill you to a longer life and you've explained that that there's actually a part of your brain that grows there so there's a brain area that most neuroscientists aren't aware of called the anterior mid singulate cortex okay scientists who are in the know know about it it's you know I teach her Anatomy 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 you can't get to everything but in the last couple of years there have been studies of this area the anterior mid singulate cortex that make it super important for everybody to know about not just neuroscientists and here's the deal colleague of minet stand for Joe parvis he's a neurosurgeon he's in there stimulating different brain areas including anterior mid singulate cortex and areas near it inhuman patients while they're awake preparing them for neurosurgery for other reasons stimulates anterior mid singulate cortex and what do all people who have their anterior mid singulate cortex report they feel like there's something about to happen something's kind of looming a challenge a storm somewhere reported as a storm or a physical challenge but their overall sensation is one that they want to lean into it they want to chck challenge it now this area's subsequently been imaged in people who are successful dieters it grows larger in people that fail at a dieting or 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 singulate cortex is larger in volume in a group of people called superagers okay that's a bit of 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 anter mid singulate 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 anid singulate cortex if you love 45° in the cold plunge after an hourong 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 and you that 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 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 you got a lot of dicks in there is like super bad I think here super these are just my one my favorite this is my my journal book notes but my um I but I've actually um I used to post my drawings on Instagram that's how I started really in 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 right and um 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 oh wow pretty good they're not great they're just for fun they're just for fun they're just for fun not bad at all but I I like to use them to teach so they're not listen I'm I'm no Da Vinci but dude that's pretty [ __ ] 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 continum 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 micr RNA that helps you burn fat and then I kind of remind people like there's fat there's a you know so I don't want too much detail but I don't want too little detail that's good like the 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 ey dude that's good eye yeah that's really good you 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 so one of my daughters is insanely good oh yeah well I wanted to be a comic book illustrator when I was young and I 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 uh 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 um people are going to think I'm weird for saying this but I don't care um I am weird I'm going to say it anyway sches the way he moves like how lith he ish and his parents are like dancers and performers right right right also he's a good boxer is he really yeah 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 and there's skateboarder named Jimmy Wilkins who's like breaking every barrier on skateboarding and his 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 Li 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 oh this guy's using his knees on the board so like he does everything not everything but he does a lot of things handsfree at Mock 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 no Jimmy Wilkins is the next is like the next like Tony will say Tony Hawk everyone will say like watching Jimmy look see the the the whole thing here is that Jimmy's skateboarding is like perfect poetry like so the reason but so his back knee is often used to stabilize the board MH cuz he's got that hip looseness that you were talking about earlier and and so his yeah he's 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 uh cuz he loves the nicotine but between why you getting him to quit um like I don't have a problem with people taking nicotine pouches but it is it's a Vaso constrictor 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 they they ramp up the dosage to I like threes like mild three milligram but I Lucy sent me some that are twelves Jesus lisus I can do like half a piece of Nicorette I put that the 12 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 I want to be inol 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 I've taken time off of coffee too just cuz 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 I'll chuggle but at the rate the world's going it's probably going to be illegal well it's 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 warm liquid I love and and since I really got into coffee from doing this podcast really um I drink it black I like coffee I like the taste I look forward to it I have one every morning I look I I like it but I love it in the afternoon but if I thought it was [ __ ] 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 CU at nights you're out with your boys and everybody wants to drink they're all drinking my my friends are all drunks like a good solid doesn't drink no Whitney does not drink but a good solid percentage of my friends drink a lot they they drink all the time they drink at clubs like get ber to quit Bert is not going to quit well he asked me to help him he doesn't he just wants you to talk to him just talk about Bert that's what he want but that's what he wants 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 what Bert likes he's not going to quit well he was doing better with his health and then he posted that photo of himself self in the wet suit mhm come on Bert like get with it did he get fat again he he sent me a picture the other day he was all skinny is he lying no he looking more like a melted candle son of a [ __ ] he he got big at least he got jacked he started lifting weights I feel bad making fun of him but I'm not making fun of him I'm just worried you talking about I'm just worried about his health oh yeah that's not good Bert I'm worried about your health well the thing is Bert is uh on tour right he's got painted toenails too what the [ __ ] are you doing he uh he's on tour so he's on this uh 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 know if they go to water parks you know [ __ ] like that 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 drink saying everybody loves a young drunk But as time goes on it does not look pretty yes but there's curve when it comes back around again you see a 90-year-old guy that's hammered that guy's fun oh like then they're they're wild again you know a 90-year-old guy with like a [ __ ] straw hat on and a gun he's drunk yeah I must say like HR Thompson when he was before he died oh man I must say I thoroughly enjoyed your uh com your Live Comedy onx 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 cuz uh they offered me to do it live and I was like [ __ ] 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 [ __ ] live that's C who [ __ ] 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 um like Green Day rants all these 90 band SM 90s bands Smashing Pumpkins are out on tour like stadiums with 990,000 people C it's crazy it's crazy I went out cuz I like you know big rancid fan and I like the other guys too but I'm a big big ranid fan I was like holy cow like people love this stuff again anyway we watched it again there and then I've watched it again uh 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 and I was like wait wait wait I remember that very differently cuz I remember things 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 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 life 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 right they're not fulfilled people are trying to politicize something or 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 uh there's they this has gotten so popular that my [ __ ] 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 tulsy gabard and they edited it up and made it look like I was saying great things about KLA Harris wait what yeah they the I mean you and I have been mashed up on other stuff and Ai and I don't want to like you said we don't want to draw attention that that they got taken off the internet thank goodness but it was [ __ ] it was like it was Ai and and mashup 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 telsey gab and then I was talking about that the media behind KLA 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 KLA Harris and saying a bunch of things that aren't even true about her like I was talking about tulsy gabard 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 KLA Harris did it's something Tulsi gabber did I was just saying things about her and they put it out there as a clip of me praising K Harris but they don't care about the truth they just want of a a narrative to get out there amongst enough people cuz 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 I got the whole the 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 so like how many people are actually going to watch my Netflix special well 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 going to watch it in the first place put it in front of them like oh that piece of [ __ ] 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 now let's talk about what you're talking about in the world of science you 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 fra Amed plaques thing with there there's certainly some data fraud and and there's a range of of underlying reasons one of the more common reasons that people don't talk about which is something to really strongly inoculate in laboratory against is when a laboratory is known for doing very very good work often times The Graduate students and postto 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 have been a lot of cases in recent years of papers being discovered as having major issues and it's like well do 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 you know ambition is a dangerous thing you know if somebody puts ambition ahead of accuracy okay so there's that kind of thing and then there's outright data fraud I mean there was this nanotechnologist guy from some years back I think his last name was shown um who had like 20 papers in science and nature in two years and it turns out he wasn't even bothering to um 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 way he got caught what it turned out is that I mean I'm juggling CU 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 oh wow eventually lazy so he was particular he was particularly ambitious lazy and that was outright fraud there all sorts of other cases and things like that and and you know there's people who make this their sport to 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 pallet of paints that is the words that are spoken by anybody on the internet yeah especially be with podcast 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 ping trip is no you know know ping trip ping trip is hilarious he's a guy on uh the internet who takes clips of podcasts and creates narratives of things that are totally not happening oh yeah I've seen this one recently me and Tucker Carlson are having an argument I haven't seen that one it's it's good uh somebody sent it to me who [ __ ] sent it see if you can find it I remember one of you and Elon um several perhaps um yeah so I know that pink trips no it's a dude okay his name is p so here it is Ping trip so it's ible 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 it I get another [ __ ] lecture from you I'm going to go crazy when did you start having this opinion shut the [ __ ] up [ __ ] you're a [ __ ] idiot don't do that anymore what are you going to do about it [ __ ] what are you going to do about it you are literally powerless yeah I'm just going to do whatever I want what you do about it you could get your ass kicked are you threatening me yeah I think you are a farri white supremacist racist I have no respect for you you're like my dog does it ever occur to you that you're like disgusting just like vulgar it's like a pig if I were sort of narrow down my bigotries it's like people like you I just think you're disgusting I'm so these are actual spoken words clued together yeah yeah yeah about completely different things it's really masterful do you want to die watch if I take a 9mm rter 762 x 39 and shoot you can you catch the bullet you can't do that what are you going to do about it I got a bigger one why would you hide that wrong Fair 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 he makes it like there's a romance between me and 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 KLA Harris to get the the the you know the passive listener the people that are you know the Casual to go oh wow Joe Rogan likes K I've heard you I heard you're endorsing and not endorsing all sorts of people I can't say even say I like somebody without it being an endorsement and people getting mad but I think the mag of 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 um 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 a real lie and it's a lie that changes other people's opin you take what's perceived to be an influential person and you distort their views in either way to shame them make them look bad or to promote someone else like that's a real lie that's a dangerous lie it's a it's a real offense and I think that there's no laws against that right now it's except liable law I mean you can take someone to court I guess what but there's 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 in the example you gave and 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 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 uh you know version of that that you can and then you are allowed to State your conclusions but I have 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 that 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 for 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 right because they're old okay okay so they're setting 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 this is my community This Is My Tribe these are my people and uh 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 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 they that little part of their brain that exists when you challenge yourself and do things you don't want to do that [ __ ] 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 [ __ ] now there's young people that are ideologically captured for sure you see that both with rightwing people and with leftwing people sorry I mean do you think that all boom believe in the traditional media like this it's mostly because they grew up with it they're the ones the the kids today they don't buy it at all like gen Z kids and whatever the [ __ ] they what's the newest is this what's the latest yeah gen Z whatever these kids are these young kids coming up today like people in their 20s they don't believe it at all well I'll tell you you know um I'll non reluctantly tell you you know my uh dad and I uh over the years like we had some early issues and we resolve them and we're 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 co-workers 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 uh political camp that um 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's like story of a immigrant who came here and became a scientist dream yeah there wasn't a lot of science to do in uh in Argentina uh 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 that you know and I said you got to record those kind of conversations 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 ation 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 you're allowed to do it for whatever reason you know I have a friend who used to work at New York Times that 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 show like I had the best conversation with this person or my former when I was a kid I grew up skateboarding and I rode for this this brand you know Thunder and spitfire and my team manager was interviewed and and then he called called me afterwards and he said yeah it was kind of weird like I kept telling him the story that you know that they had heard about you on podcast 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 etc etc and he was like I don't get it and I was like listen shugi like that's what we call him Steve rugy 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 why I compare it to science my domain compare it 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 so I age 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 of the pharmaceutical industry nor am I on attack of them but there are certain things that you know push through traditional science you get great information about dosage and safety look at OIC right 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 their depend those are important issues but we learned one thing for sure from OIC monjaro Etc the main cause of the Obesity crisis is people eat too many calories on average about 3,500 calories per day and they don't move enough they don't exercise enough and then we can get into what they eat Etc you know we could have a discussion about seed oils if we really want to cause some cause some friction I don't like seed oils I don't eat them but I'm not aware of any randomized control trial that says that they're bad I just don't like them I like olive oil and butter and I like cting cooking beef and beef fat taste better and I feel better I feel better and that's enough of a reason for some science about why they're bad for you so there's this whole thing about ratios of Omega-3s versus the Omega sixes and you get a lot of Omega sixes with the seed oils and I think olive oil is good for us I think I 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 like I think all the data point to these things I think that the 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 control 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 I when it comes to the The glp1 Agonist right I spent a lot of time on this done two podcasts or more one with an expert one solo Etc 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 glucagonlike peptide 1 that when raised to levels about a thousandfold 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 OIC monjaro eventually by replacing your behaviors you know it's hard to move when you're I've never been big and and overweight but you know the way that goggin talks about it or you know it's got to be uncomfortable like when you're feeling kind of just not great like just 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 Etc but also don't get badly hurt yes that's a huge one that nobody talks about oh yeah and the number one way in my opinion to get badly hurt is do a workout that a friend suggests without without at at 10 out of 10 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 shoulder is like oh boy you got to build up to that kind of stuff so you know 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 you know dose response curves and um 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 um reflexive option because I think that the basics sunlight exercise you know uh 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 yeah 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 ssris and you're like for goodness sake 45 60 Minutes a week lift some heavy objects yeah you feel better and it literally has better statistical results absolutely than ssris which is pretty nuts and I know you've talked about this recently and I'm you know 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 um 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 what is the hazard of the participant with the the person that's helping them so 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 drug or they didn't and then the other one is during the course of of the trials there were some issues that came up about um improprieties between practitioners and and um patients that like sexual stuff there were Rel my understanding is that there were 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 Gooby 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 there needs to be I think a next phase evolution of the way that we think about things like MDMA assisted um 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 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 it's especially War veterans right with both uh psilocybin and MDMA and ibigan 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 ibigan with the veterans that are taking abigan followed by DMT and those are looking very very interesting MH you know so to me if it's also the the kind of emotional loading of things like MDMA you know when we call it MDMA if I tell you this is MDMA this is a drug that raises 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 I'm awesome how do 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 meth 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 it but let 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 um 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 TC 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 oh people came at me like crazy like crazy so I invited one of the main academics in that area on to 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 experienced with sativa versus indicia strains and he said there's no evidence that there's a different experience from sativa versus indicia strains that's just all Bud tender lore you shouldn't be saying this he doesn't smoke weed that's just not true right so so I said wait here's the paper here's the paper um then there were a couple other things one is I did you agree once he read the paper uh 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 um he really didn't counter with that much there were some issues around CB uh about um CBD biology versus THC but what what is his field of expertise um he's a he's a works on animal models but focuses on cannabis biology so's very knowledge and I don't think he's anti-ab at all but he just was he was cheing me on some things that he felt yeah he from Canada he he's a very nice guy he 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 right like I'm Not Afraid talk science that's what I do like 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 you know there's so much more THC in weed now that's um 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 you know Vape or they or they smoke it or whatever there's he his words are that there's far fewer um 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 right there are cases where people get to genuine freak out in psychotic episodes because they're taking in far too much to quickly because you can eat the edible quickly you don't they not layering in until they hit that plane that they want to be in well it's also the conversion to 11 hydroxy metabolite it's five times more psychoactive than THC I used to do a joke about it that it lets you talk to dolphins this bit I is a true story about Edibles and a dolphin experience but so he was an 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 no listen there's some issues here you should um adjust this we brought him on the podcast he was reluctant to come on the podcast he thought I was going to 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 treat 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 yeah I think only there can we get the overlap in the ven diagram about what the Agreements are and what the disagreements are and move forward and this is especially long form because then you get to understand how a person thinks about things just the subject at hand but maybe other things you get to hear their speech patterns their thinking patterns and I think direct experience is real yeah you know cam H pointed this out recently and I'm I'm not saying this to like uh Focus uh you know the positive energy on us um but it it will uh invariably do that um or inevitably do that excuse me which is he said you know it's kind of interesting that all of the top podcasters like really fit you know like all the people that are like really into their health right like you and you know there's there David's out there like influencers he was saying like there's there's a there's a healthy a health component or a fitness component not always but 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 you know Lex like there's there's a tendency to merge kind of intellectual discourse with physical and I think that's a that's a unique uh theme of podcasting also at least of certain let's just say what it is like a lot of the top podcasts that's that's like aett consistent theme um 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 right if they're or if they've tried things like they're trying to be fit I see Rhonda posting pictures of herself deadlifting now right you know and like Peter is talking about his workouts and he's a physician he's an MD right so I think it's not sufficient to just study something right to just look at the data in papers I think it really helps if you're able to get in close contact with the things that you know you're hearing about but also it helps me to know whether not you have any discipline so there's people that think about a certain thing because it it Comforts their own thoughts about their decisions that they've made and there's certain rationals 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 the physical ability to put in work which requires mental strength and for the longest time for whatever strange reason people have had this uh 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 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 posters down like I've had some unfortunate conversations with older intellectuals that don't take care of themselves and you realize that at 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 the will to to do it anymore yeah you know 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 Ramon kahal won the Nobel Prize in 1906 he was the one who first Define the synapse Etc he carried an iron umbrella to work he lifted weights Oliver Sachs one of the greatest neurologists and writers of our of our time passed away in 2015 had a 600 pound squat okay Jesus yeah he had the state power State powerlifting record at one point just a beast of a guy who was also a neurologist and wrote all these beautiful books about how the mind works the man who Mok his wife for a hat he was behind the movie Awakenings etc etc um uh Don Kennedy former president of Stanford ran into his late 70s and then after that had a hip replacement and then was doing other stuff so Richard Axel as a Nobel prize from Columbia University the first person to find ways to introduce genes to novel genes to cells played racketball I don't know if he's still playing racket you know uh I'll name one more these are incredible people like the guy who essentially defined the uh understanding of the visual system and neuroplasticity my scientific great-grandfather there's uh David hubel and toron weasel toron 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 not an accident this is not just a correlation this is the anterior mid singulate cortex in action and of course cancer a bus or you know a bullet can still take you out but assuming you make it into your 60s 7s 80s 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 inrease 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 milu 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 I tell I could tell you were thinking about it all get in there sir all right I almost yeah there you go now it's to the right nost let's go cuz we alternated remember alter let me see if I alternated I don't remember which one got me the first time it was left before it's definitely right God oh man makes your eyes water a little bit but boy it does shock your system wow a little adrenaline now you can lift more well I told myself I wasn't going to cry on this podcast CU I cried on a podcast recently of mine we kept in but like now I'm crying but these are tears of related to the smell yeah this is tears just chemicals rot in your brain you're supposed to not do that more than twice a day but we've done it many times so it's just the this thing neuroplasticity like that does it really that's from your sinuses my I'm you have some skulls around here like the sinuses run from you know here and through to the that's why when you you get a sinus infection or clear ear yeah yeah yeah so but neuroplasticity is the most impressive feature of the human brain it can rewire itself but when you're kid you rewire in response to a passive experience for better or worse as an adult you can rewire your brain but you have to create the millu 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 in does many things in the brain and body but God that stuff's strong but it there's a brain area called nucleus specialis 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 that's what nicotine's doing unless you take so much of it every day that those your kind of Baseline levels of of acetylcholine either drop or become kind of um regulated to the point where you're not getting that spotlighting anymore which is why people then are taking more and more but as our you know uh your former guest and my colleague uh Dr Anna lmy has said the worst thing you can do when you're in a trough of dopamine is try and boost dopamine again you just got to 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 uh who would Terrence mikenna 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 long time off so that your body's completely desensitized to it and then take as much as you can stand in like one dose like that's he was interested in it as a psychedelic yeah you know 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 Baron wrote that book uh tell your tell your parents or tell your children tell your children that's all about about that about that there needs to be some recognition about 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 I know people that's happened to yeah and I covered that in my solo episode on cannabis then this person um this researcher from Canada who's I don't think he's Pro or anti-cannabis but had differing views came on my podcast and then what's his name um Matt Hill and and I he's a respected researcher in this area and I thought his stance was was very very nuanced and then after he came on the podcast other people um not baronson necessarily although I haven't checked my DMs that closely contacted me he 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 and 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 person working the only person working on something you want that it's it's something that you know 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 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 you 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 I would love to put this to rest once and for all every couple of weeks 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 here's the deal zero is better than any a little bit's probably fine especially if you do other things to offset the Sleep loss and microbiome stuff if you're going to drink probably should be doing other healthy behaviors anyway no one's saying it's terrible I'll have a drink every once in a while I'm not an alcoholic if you're not if you're a non-alcoholic adult one or two I I love a like a good um uh White tequila with with soda and lime so good but you know I don't really like alcohol enough to be to be able to comment past that but and I haven't had 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 cancer RIS this is never going to stop it's a field now we have enough data people can make their decision right 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 okay sleep deprivation is bad but you're not going to get Dementia or die from a couple bad nights sleep that's all so 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 to shine light on the field that is psychedelics the field that includes cannabis the field that includes things like weight loss and OIC 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 reason people don't like that it's like it's like the brain needs like a black and white thing it 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 it's a unfortunately one of the things that happen 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 a 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 about uh Rick Ruben I seem he seems to come to mind a lot to me uh but you know he once said to me we're 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 aw with Rick it was wild and by loves that [ __ ] well they're jumping around on in the ring and they'll stop every once in a while and look and go hey Rick Ruben 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 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 your opinion is 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 with win the discussion they they attach whatever the AR whatever the discussion is whether it's uh 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 jiujitsu 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 recognized that especially earlier in my life before I started recognizing patterns in podcast 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's saying so when someone's considering what the other person's saying and then re 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 well and they get in this [ __ ] 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 but I don't want to say that so I so I've attached myself to this thing and now I've connected my and when I'm engaging with someone I 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 like you're not even considering these other possibilities because you're 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 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 freedan the best podcasts 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 my perspective I might be wrong I might be right who knows but this is just how I feel and it's 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 think like maybe you and a buddy had a disagreement about something you say well what did you think like 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 and you thought that I should have just known like come on man that's crazy like you're just like attributing all these negative things to a person and then you could work things out you could talk about things and you could if long as 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 tick TCT 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 could tell you the stupid [ __ ] thing that I did and you go oh my God I did that too like ah and then you know but when a person goes well I would never [ __ ] do that I'd have figured that out long time ago I wouldn't have done it that way like oh well that guy's a dick you know like he's not 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 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 I'm friends with that are way smarter than me you included and it's I'm not smart it's just different form of intelligence I will 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 GE or by this stage um 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 that I would die I'd watch the Steve Jobs commence speech at Stanford where heal 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 like non-s sleep deep rest yoga needra Med I like go do a long exhale and like someday it's going to just be last exhale and I'm 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 does 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 that like you said like this game all day long of like not that I was in that mode or I didn't think I was but this need to win right it's sort of like being an Explorer I'm I'm a brain Explorer I've been a brain Explorer for a long time I love biology love animals like 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 and what you're you're about uh 57 all right so you're years old than me um it's you know I've gotten way better at it over time I don't I I wouldn't want to like sit and figure out when I figured it out but I I I figured steps of it out along the way you know um I remember uh being 21 and watching a comedian uh go on stage and I wanted him to bomb and uh I realized that there was a terrible weakness and I was embarrassed that I had that feeling so interesting I will say um we know how we feel about people when we see them succeed cuz I think there's this natural reflex like when you hear like oh that like that really shitty person that you nobb in school like they got pancreatic cancer everyone just goes oh like that sucks that sucks but when you hear hey you know that person that you used to really dislike or that you had friction with and like they just like ipoed like they're doing great you know you know immediately do I like that person or not right because if you're happy for them presumably you like them right you know rarely is it neutral either I mean I can't think of anyone that I'm like don't want to see succeed except maybe a few individuals I think are actually 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 I'm competitive with myself but like you did com combat sport yeah right I did skateboarding play 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 [ __ ] up way to develop your mind if you do develop like this insane kind of hyperco competitive because it's so 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 highlevel problem solving you're you're you're literally doing combat hand toand combat with your body with someone who's an expert at it which is so crazy like so you're fighting a black belt is so crazy the 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 you develop this hyper competitiveness because you're you're also developing at an accelerated rate when you're a teenager right so when you're when I was a teenager I had no bills I had no problems I lived at home uh I didn't have any real like an adult type stress you know bills family to feed uh 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 like all there neuroplasticity involved there's until 25 your brain is a plasticity machine it's there to to map according to your experience I mean like literally come into the world baby flopping like you know like little bug move move move move neuron neuronal connections are being removed by the thousands tens of thousands by the day so that you get fine-tune 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 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 the ventromedial hypothalamus the specific neurons and the animals will mate they'll Mount or they females will go into low doors dosis 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 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 theim one just stop wow little robots our brains have these circuits as Yung 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 your wife to create a slight bias towards looking at the world in a particular way an artistic sense something about Aesthetics 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 that's a big thing she draws 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 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 [ __ ] with them they're just too good their nervous system was shaped in in fighting the same way tiger woods' nervous system was shaped golfing that's why when Floyd sees those punches coming he knows knows all he has to do is this and it's just going to just barely touch his chin and then he fires back like he knows he's 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 like I don't know what people should do and I you know 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 animal and fish tanks and biology I want 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 some you know nurture stuff as well I went up to I'm a big track and field fan um 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 um earlier that summer I ran into a guy named Cole Hawker he shorter guy for a runner he runs the 15 00 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 [ __ ] amazing if you need Mo 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 go it's one of these like Prefontaine moments right now here's what's crazy in 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 were we got great seats right and I gifted him because I'm very grateful to cam for okay here's Cole right Cole's a USA in fifth position all right um I don't know where this is in there's a fairly long race so so there he is going on the outside uh no so you might want to just uh go a little further cuz this is a long this is the guy with the man bun CU he's the man with the man bun he but he's man with a with a capital man I'll tell you what you'll see um super nice guy too so this guy from Norway Inger bitson he and his brothers have like a reality TV show they're like famous over there he's world record also great Runner but cocky he's like talking a lot before us so check this out so um I don't know how far along we have to go before uh damn they're running fast [ __ ] for a mile that's so crazy that they could run at that speed this is right final lap so watch this so so he breaks from fifth position after they box him in to win wow I don't know if you caught that but basically they're he's fifth position so he kicks at the end and takes it all at the end against the world record holder now here's where it gets even oh here we go I just skipped back he was just way back there yeah so he's way back and then they box him in later and he wins how what do you mean by boxing Bo you'll see what happens so it seems like he's going on the 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 Inger briten went out really fast in this race fastpaced so now he's trying to come around right so now watch this so so now he's trying to this is the boxing you'll see he's trying to take the inside track and these two guys don't want him to do that right exactly he actually touches Inger britson he actually touches him on his back hip with the outside of his arm there it is he sees if there's space in Brit's not going to let him in and so he goes you know what 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 you kind of fit two people in the lane and they try to keep you from they boxed them in they boxed them 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 8 years old holding a medal where was running the 1500 and he's doing like 4 minutes and change that's a mile he's a mile as a kid running four in 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 Ming that's a nervous system that Miles I'll tell you you can also walk and talk can eat cuzz I've met him but that's a nervous system that was shaped around running the 1500 mile so when you see it like the top 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 20s 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 a maybe a genetic probably a genetic leaning do you think there would 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 NE science today absolutely I think because of the online learning platforms I think of uh because of um I even like the sport that I grew up which unfortunately wasn't very good at or maybe fortunately who knows I was was skateboarding right so many of my friends went on to write 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 like so frustrated it was unbeliev so I went in 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 ree 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 900s and 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 we're selecting earlier we're pulling from a larger pool so you're going to get the genetic freaks the pul valter guy keeps winning world records or beating his own world record I saw him get the at the Worlds at Eugene last uh about two years ago broke the world record he keeps beating the world record this guy's been pull vating his whole life he's been play that little kid so the earlier you get him the more the nervous system can 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 so you're the only one that's tough that that's an Ecentric 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 you're never going to find out if the going gets tough he's going to [ __ ] you up like it's not even going to be hard for him you don't even understand what you're saying like there's 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 know a lot of men have that a lot of men have that bizarre thing the problem with with if you have an incredible drive an incredible discipline but you didn't start striking into your 26 if you have a tie boxing fight against like a guy like uh there's a guy right now who's one of the best in the world name is tawanchai and he has this insane left kick his 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 it into the guy's arms slams into the guy's legs and he has his 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 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 hundreds of a second here and there he's so good you're not going to catch him so even if you're the baddest [ __ ] dude in the world in your mind this is Talan chai let me hear some of this but go for the beginning go to the beginning so you can hear the volume of him hitting the pads this is not it's not what you were looking for exactly this was like a highlight re yeah but it's fine like go to the beginning where he hits the pads oh it's just get a music over it oh okay it's just music over but this guy is [ __ ] 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 can do everything the guy does everything but his left kick is so [ __ ] 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 he's 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 Bruce 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 the 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 the yeah it's a crazy left hook it's so goddamn good it's so much better than most peoples 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 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 Devon 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 and catch him and [ __ ] him up in these weird angles it's uh I don't want to watch this this dude's left liver shot right 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 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 woo Fade Away left 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 it'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 Devon Haney he was like Devon Haney's like he's only a left hook whatever that's like saying towan Shai only has a left kick it's 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 just freakish it's freakish [ __ ] right there so so if we look at this through the lens of uh nervous systems you know I know that they been conversations that uh you've had here and elsewhere like would uh 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 right 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 that got into in their 20s and 30s versus the person that comes started off young you're talking about two different nervous systems you look 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 more maybe more space allocated to it maybe less space but 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 an extra extra cylinders you're talk 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 in any domain they're able to see that difference and give people really good advice whereas what the person themselves they can't see that it's like we look the same he trains I train 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 a Cole Hawker win over a world record uh holder is impress as is the other stuff we were just watching incredibly impressive because you say he's in fifth position and you know 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 he won the 5,000 Inger britson won the 5,000 but Cole's just like pulls something out like they're very close in terms of 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 metals from from people from Kentucky it's almost like in a complete country really I don't know what's going on in kenty there a great program there or something 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 uh how are they in Neuroscience uh I have a friend who just retired as chair of the uh of the neurobiology department is actually neuro Anatomy there my friend Bill Geo um at University of louville isn't it unfortunate though that like kuy's not associated with intellectual prowess not so much but it's a great Department you're trying to defensive no no no bill gu is a great he ran a great Department there I'm sure someone else is McCall does great vision research there so I I one of the great things about being a scientist was you know my lab now has 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 uh St Louis had one of the best meals in my life I don't think I'd ever go to St Louis but I was visiting Wu you know and then 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 Paduka Kentucky okay guy's name was Buddy Hall The Rifleman like to this day one of the all-time grades and great horses oh yeah horse races yeah great horses like I've been learning more about horses cuz you know it's like dog selection and horse selection is that I mean the the genetic breeding and the selection of horses for particular traits like this whole warm blood thing you know I don't know much about it not enough to comment on it but these people have been around horses their whole lives stud horse is worth millions of dollars right they know that that F that's the one that and they put tons of money on it like they 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 in the family starts up young he's got great genetics the whole deal yeah where the William s like that movie The King James movie MH Tiger Woods yeah or Tiger Woods or the 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 him when he was a little kid he would waddle the board felt like looked bigger than him and now grown up he he's so good he's he's kind of in my generation so he's kind of like in the late 40s thing he still just kills because he developed his devel he grew up with it went through all the trials and tribulations and this has been public you know got you know had his issues then got sober and came back to skateboarding and just skateboard of the year for Thrasher which is a huge deal you just see like the young Danny Way Tony Hawk grew up skateboarding his body his nervous system is skateboarding yeah and I love this aspect to people um 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 all the time but forgive me Rick has always said the key to being really great great at something is to just be you and I'm like that sounds like about as mystical wrapped in a riddle as possibly I can hear it in his voice when he say 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 you know Rick's superpower uh is his ability to get close to things people music Etc and feel it he can feel that thing and 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 a lot I go over there to spend time with him he's he's out of the US right now and we it was the weirdest visit ever I go over to visit Rick and we we try to 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 cuber Lab podcast but rock and roll like super nerdy long like you know drawn out there are a few podcasts like that like Founders podcast I love that one m is 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 going to do he's like let's just like sit and we would just sit with eyes closed and I was like all right and we have launch 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 i' and that's when I was like oh my goodness because my first guest on my podcast was a guy named Carl di Roth 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 and 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 realize 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 days experiences why 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 diero Einstein there 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 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 just started this kind of interesting in in light of creativity but the other thing and and this goes to what you were saying before you know Rick came up through punk rock punk rock and Hip-Hop right and I I love punk rock music grew up on it that era in their 80s punk rock and in New York is amazing like but the whole thing like Bey boys he was close with the Ramones Joe Strummer all this and then pop 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 um the defiant ones um with About Dre and uh I think it's Jimmy iven about uh beats but it's really about the energy of hi 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 documentaries 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 this kind of a consistent theme over and over 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 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 podcasters 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 and be like I'm going to start the cman Lab podcast I was like I've just got all this stuff in me that I want to tell people CU 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 trit but Rick is like exactly and the biggest mistake is to take the feedback back the comments whatever the hit pieces whatever and to change who you are 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 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 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 what we're going to talk about before whereas when you go out there and you and you see these like highly over produced 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 became produced right and let's be real honest if you 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 like 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 Basia movie right with B Del Toro and Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walker and David Bowie like why was he so amazing is cuz jeam Michelle Bas was just being himself until the fame got to him an article got written about how he was uh you know uh warhol's lap dog they called him or something like that and you can see him obsessing about it and there's this amazing riff I I uh some if people haven't seen it they should just look up on YouTube like um how long does it take to get famous from the movie bosia and it's bonio 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 uh 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 has keeps saying and most of our conversations end with him just saying like yeah man just 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 mess 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 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 people love that like I 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 Bastard you know who that guy was yeah yeah well 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's 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 was purely himself that day with no concern about how you would perceive him right 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 like like they're they're and so there's something so beautiful about the energy of something really pure like a Ryan Garcia left hook it's the or early beasy boys right or later be whatever or uh podcasting my and my my work now is so much about like you said like don't read the comment 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 in the dumps too telling him you're taking in too much negativity bro I know and that but 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 it's you know if he didn't drink he wouldn't be Mike you know maybe maybe maybe Mike shouldn't be drinking every day you know what I mean it's like they're destructive aspects I mean it can go too far right it can like there's a there's a great quote in the Oliver Sachs 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 Road 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 Ron like it was like and um and it was just a spectacular like I 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 around like the you know New York punk rock that 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 a con like Cur like genuine curiosity in people and things and 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 was just being him and I I don't I don't know I um 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 a as a writer and he would write all of his own narratives all the 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 and he loved people he loved people he loved being around people he did not love being famous though man that that that guy got [ __ ] up by Fame he did not like it it was very uncomfortable and that thing that you were talking about bosot experienced I think everybody experiences you get there's a Temptation towards audience capture there's a there's this desire to um appease those and please those who love you maybe at uh at the expense of your own self-esteem and your own perspective cuz you 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 uh painfully self-aware that you you lose your ability to just be yourself what Rick's talking about to 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 and I 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 [ __ ] time I'm voluntarily uncomfortable most of the day so regular uncomfortable it's like yeah whatever it's not 196 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 going to die hard you're going to 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 going to die of heat is a real thing this 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 does things for alleviating anxiety and I know there's a lot of studies that have been done on weightlifting and about uh strength resistance training and alleviating anxiety and I I 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 the it you if you can swim into the point where you know you do laps in the pool and you do laps to the pool where you're like I don't know if I'm going to make it to the end of that [ __ ] 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 2 type cardio which is a walk which is very good for you very good for you by the way I do Zone 2 cardio I I will put I will get on the assault bike and not go very fast 50 minutes and watch television you know I will do that but I also do Tata sprints on that [ __ ] where I do 20 minutes sprinting 10 second rest excuse me 20 second sprinting 10c PR 20 seconds 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 I like to walk or hike I I use one of these vests I don't have any relationship to them but aoro makes these ones that are really like close to the body yeah and uh so I use that because you can really move easily in that I don't like like a heavily loaded military vest it doesn't doesn't feel right to me and if I load from the back like a Ruck I feel pitched forward so I like that like how how smooth yeah nice smooth uh um feel and then I'll I'll walk far that way but then I'll do the same thing except I do a little different I'll go 10c Sprint um 20 second rest do that eight times that's my Friday morning hit 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 longdistance endurance type Sport and they seem to again not a scientific study they seem to get and stay sober yeah 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 I've challenges with drugs and alcohol and they've gone the way of just weightlifting and they've been like multiple relapsers now that's 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 right 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 pout I don't really run so the longest distance I've ever run is only a few miles I I did a 5k once my friend C well cam H you know cam cam had a 5k uh 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 uh what is it 3 point something miles yeah he's a sicko he's he's got a broken foot right now uhhuh and he's still running on it uhhuh and yeah he's got to get surgery but he can't have surgery right now because he has lunic season coming up he was on his way to Alaska when I last text him he he sent me some uh some some meat which I'm very grateful for it's delicious he um he told me that I said you know what's the pain level in that foot because he showed the X-ray it's still very broken yeah and he I said you know 10 out of 10 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's 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 Sonic C punch I love it when people just spontaneously come and stay Lex is come and stayed and I wake up and this is literally 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 to the post and cam Hanes 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 you know so he's a wild man I love him hitting Bull's eyes 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 I know and I keep trying him to get him to do some of the what I know to be very useful things like bpc 157 Etc which yes there isn't any clinical data for it's all animal data but but so many people will report feeling better it's very hard to get but he's got a gap in that broken foot yeah that he needs to mend that thing yeah they need to put some screws in that [ __ ] but he would run on stumps guys like him and goggin will run on stumps gogin got another knee surgery recently yeah he's had a B I mean his he's bone on bone and he's essentially getting surgeries to shape his bone so his bone on bone is flatter 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 P 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 20s 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 an avvy seal Etc 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 20s his 20s right so it runs 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 where he couldn't move his legs for whatever reason maybe just had surgery so he's was running on his hands on the treadmill yeah you know with his feet position kind of like plank position yeah he's a ridiculous person it's amazing super inspiring he's he's he's like a noun and a verb you know 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 yeah or other or other other biomaterials I think they're close they're real close there's been some studies recently that regenerate cartilage you know and so I think 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 things yeah exosomes are exciting bpc157 while only animal data it's very clear you know has the propensity to encourage fiber blast which these cells that you know make up things like you know tendon and cartilage Etc and can really repair tissues I mean I mean you know and I certainly have experienced 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 that unfortunately are not regulated correctly yeah sucks well my wish I mean I have no plans to to go to Washington but 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 pineline which can help with regeneration of the Pineo sites are incredible for Sleep potentially like we need these things explored and everyone for a while was like pep peptides oh it sounds really kind of gry Market weird and it can be but let's face it gp1 Agonist ojar 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 can be made by virtually any laboratory and it's probably going to cut back on Orthopedic surgeries right and that's the gross the the gross reality of a lot of this stuff a lot of this stuff is going to cost company's 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 [ __ ] up because the Health Care 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 the most costeffective way in terms of for the 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 on back health and strengthening the back and back pain we had Stu mill on and it was wild I've never received emails and stuff like that like PE of the people or more saying this the mill big three helped me so much might stabilize my back this 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 60s incredible incredible shape um chops wood he's up in Canada so um he basically is giving behavioral tools to stabilize and strengthen the spine and deal with back pain and then the other half we're like what is this you know you can't treat back pain Pudo science and but then everyone telling me how much benefit they got out of Mill's big three and then the war among the physios like the physios that's an ugly field I'll tell you and I asked someone why is this field of you know exercise physiology so brutal I asked Andy Galpin I asked and 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 uh livelihood right so you know to say nothing of the pain treatment world we had a guy on our podcast named Shawn Mackey he's an mdp she 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 um 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 so I totally agree with you people like there is no replacement for selfcare 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 cuz 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 and uh 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 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 coal plunge a little colder I me sniff smelling salt all of it you know I might be wrong about the cold I don't know no 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 I appreciate you too all right bye everybody he [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]