Dr. Rhonda Patrick just had Andrew Huberman on her show and she posted on the Andrew Huberman subreddit that she got to the bottom of how Andrew Huberman deals with the social media, mainstream media backlash, and that immediately piqued my attention. somebody who sometimes writes for the mainstream media. Because one of the last times I spoke with Andrew, he told me that he never likes talking to reporters because he doesn't like the fact checking process.
And instead he goes on show after show after show. or show of other sort of, you know, peer influencers. And, well, Rhonda Patrick is someone who I've generally respected over the years. I think she's actually pretty measured.
She just came out with this piece about AG1, how AG1 really doesn't crack up to being all that great of a supplement, and I respect that. And then when I saw this show, I figured I had to go dig in, and then I saw it was three hours long, and I figured, well, if I'm going to talk to you about the show, you're probably not going to want to sit through her analysis and then make a statement. my analysis.
So what I've done is I've condensed it to just eight minutes. And then when I'm talking over, it's going to be a little longer. But let's go into exactly what the show was about. And I think there will be some interesting insights here. Here goes.
Okay, so her podcast starts off with the normal podcast introduction. Here goes. ...Huberman, who is a professor of neurobiology at Stanford University... True....and a phenomenal science communicator, has the wildly popular podcast, Huberman Lab Podcast. True.
Pretty normal intro. Okay, so now let's go into our first question. I was wondering if we could kind of just start by talking about what dopamine is and why it's so important for our everyday life.
Dopamine is a great place to start because everyone in the podcast does fear. likes talking about dopamine because we all sort of understand what it's about and what its real purpose is. What the real purpose of dopamine is, is to get clicks on the internet. Note, however, that Huberman does not go straight in to talk about dopamine, but instead goes right back at Rhonda Patrick.
I love your podcast. I've been a fan for a very long, long time. So for me, it's a dream come true to be here as a guest on your podcast.
I know you've been a guest on mine. I'm so great. We're all so great. Not too distant future.
And also. I want to point out what should be obvious to everybody, but in case it's not, that anytime people say... Okay, so there's one thing that I learned after talking with Dr. Kate Balistrieri a few weeks ago on a different show that I did, is that one thing that people in the mainstream media and psychopaths share in common is that they love reinforcing each other.
They like saying great things about other people, other psychopaths, like psychopaths, top people in the media, like top people in the media, because... it adds to their overall power regardless of the content of or their desires like likes like and it enhances someone's particular clout. So you will see, I know because I've watched this, that Rhonda Patrick doesn't really push back on Huberman on much of anything. With respect to public science communication in the realm of podcasting, people will say, who was the first man in? And I say, actually, it was a woman.
Her name is Rhonda Patrick. She does have a PhD in biomedical sciences. And yeah, she's been in the podcast game for a long time and prefigured Huberman for sure. Absolutely true.
Andrew Huberman, First advanced-degree scientist to step into the public-facing education arena and to do it in podcast format at scale with your own podcast on Tim Ferriss'podcast, Joe Rogan's podcast, and of course, you continue to do that. So the important part here is that Rhonda Patrick came up, and then she started working with all of the other top people in the podcast industry. They all sort of fed into one another, and now we have the potential for a me la culpa with Andrew Huberman.
How will this show go? I just want to say thank you for being first one in. So at this point, we go right into the content of the show.
I mean, it's some decent advice. Like none of this stuff is going to be shocking. Here we go.
Dopamine that follows effort is generally good for us. one would hope that effort is in service to our own goodness and i mean dopamine that follows effort is good for us i agree with that you put it like like cheap stuff doesn't really work uh and and wait what do you say next goodness of others but that's generally true large amplitude peaks. This could be why he worked so hard to have elaborate cheating models. Just spitballing here, maybe all of the effort that he put into his affairs was actually paid off because it was so hard to schedule all those women.
I don't know, but I think we found a dopamine cheating protocol here. Dopamine that don't require effort are dangerous. If cheating was easy, man, it wouldn't be worth it. Next piece of advice, alcohol is bad. And to me, it's...
It's clear that if you care very much about your brain, that more than two drinks per week on a consistent basis. probably not a good idea. Okay, so now we've gotten the working hard is good for you and don't drink a lot of alcohol out of the way.
For the next three hours, it's sort of the same thing. It's like ocular stuff, go look at the sun, we've got a little dopamine hacking, you know, don't do stimulants. Like the basic stuff that Huberman talks about a lot and we're not going to go debunk anything.
We're just, you just know all of that stuff already. And then here's the second, the end of the second to last question. Where there's a little bit more name dropping, here we go. The other day I saw for the first time in a long time Brian Johnson, who's, you know, he's a whole lot like...
Okay, Brian Johnson, you know him as the wellness vampire. You know, he's trying to live forever, he's invested a lot of money. And the thing, the reason why I cut this piece out is because where did Andrew Huberman meet Brian Johnson recently? Well, it didn't take me long to figure out. It was at the YPO Summit.
That's the Young Presidents Association, which is... If there was an association like the Illuminati on the world, and I'm not saying that there's an association like the Illuminati, the organization that has all of the top business leaders in the world coming together to talk together and socialize might be a candidate. And look at the lineup that was there.
I just clipped this out from their social media profiles. We've got Jay Shetty. We've got Peter Attia. We've got Dr. Mark Hyman. There's Jay Shetty.
Jim Quick, Ben Greenfield. Brian Johnson and of course Andrew Huberman. So again, all of the top people, all of the power players in the world come together and this is where he meets Brian Johnson.
It's a big giant handshake going on with all of the wellness people in the world, all of the business leaders. This is why the power structure remains as it is. Okay, maybe I'll go into that later but let's go into her final question which is the reason why you're here. One last question.
It's kind of... How do you, I'm just interested because I experienced this, you know, because we are on, you know, we put ourselves out there, right? We're in the digital world. How do you balance the negative, you know, the negative, you know, parts of it, right? Like getting people being mean.
Okay, just look how hard, like, she is trying so hard not to ask a hard hitting question. Like, she's, she's just beating around the bush. being like, oh, how it's, you know, I've talked to you for three hours. The entire audience has hung out with you for three hours.
And now, please, Mr. Huberman, can I ask you just this? Why are people mean to you in the media? And how do you use all of your willfulness and your techniques to be okay with it? This is why we need journalists in the world. This is like the very reason why Huberman loves going on to influencer podcasts and why he does not want.
to talk to journalists. It's easy for people to be mean. How do you balance that? Yeah, so... And he's just taking it so seriously.
Yeah, good question. It's hard for me to do this, but... Okay, I'll do it, Rhonda.
To be fair, you know, I'm a professor. I'm still a professor, despite what you may say. I'm still a tenured professor at Stanford.
Still tenured. This is true....as of walking in this room anyway. I teach a few. He used that same joke on the Jack O'Wilnick podcast.
I bet it's like his go-to joke now. And it's not a bad joke. Lectures in the winter and I'll teach more in the spring starting next year.
My lab has been shrunk down as a consequence of the podcast and my interest in moving away from animal research towards. Yeah, so he's now a public intellectual. Like his lab is basically non-existent.
Fine that he did that, but like he's not really a in-practice neuroscientist. Human research still involved in clinical trials, which are done remotely. mostly in collaboration with psychiatry and ophthalmology. So that was my life for the longest time, plus the lab life, you know, and people running experiments.
And I was just a very private person. Then 2019 started posting on Instagram, 2020 started going on podcasts, 2021 launched the podcast. Yeah, all basically.
Now I knew Huberman back in like 2018. So I saw this ramping up. And at that point he was like talking, he was like name dropping, like David Goggins and like all of these people that he knew, but he hadn't quite break it, broken through. And then he broke through.
Correct. So let's answer the question. In three years, you know, it's, you know, I'm quite grateful for this, but it's grown a lot.
And I'm, you know, humbled and honored. Like, truly, it's such an incredible honor and privilege to be able to teach to so many people and to get the feedback. The negative stuff comes in a couple different forms.
Some are negative comments and news articles that are really. Negative comments on the internet are somehow like equated with news articles as if they're sort of like produced in the same way. As someone who has commented on the internet and worked in the newsrooms, they're produced in very different ways.
Continue Andrew. In the form of the comments, I think people working out their stuff, you know, I don't know if they're drinking, they're angry, they're... People who comment on me are drinking or angry. dealing with a psychotic issue, or they maybe are just kind of having fun, or they're angry because there's a misunderstanding. All right, which one am I?
In terms of press, you know, as the podcast has grown, our name, my name, and face have become... a source for generating clicks. Okay, test time.
How many clicks does this video have on it? Is it my most popular video or not? Answer down in the comments. In response to things that contrast with people's preconceived.
notions of what I might be about. So I understand that relationship. When you put yourself out there, you make yourself subject to that as you're popular. Okay, great, great. I like the fact that he admitted the fact that once he is a public figure, he now has to agree that he is under public scrutiny.
That's actually very mature, I think. He increases the potency of attacks as a source of clicks, increases. I also look at it.
Oh, it's not because he is a public figure. It's just Only people will talk about it if they're self-interested. So criticisms of Andrew Huberman are clickbait. But if they're fawning, like Rhonda Patrick is also having this interview with Andrew Huberman for clicks. All of this is clicks.
The Brian Johnson is clicks. The Joe Rogan is clicks. They're self-reinforcing. But now there's this negative side. If somebody actually criticizes you, it's bad.
As much as I can through the lens of not just how it makes me feel, but like. Like what's meaningful in coming back here that I can pay attention to and might want to adjust my life? Is he adjusting things? A delivery of information or anything else in life too.
It gets frustrating when it's personal. You know, I think that, you know. Now, the personal things, obviously he's talking about his sex life. He might be talking about people like me coming forward who knew him before.
Or his various, the various women who have been trying to raise awareness about, you know, getting HPV from Andrew Huberman. and the cheating on them. So he had all these girlfriends and he cheated on them.
Some people will say that's not important. I would contend that someone's personal life is reflected in their online life. Like if they're a really bad person personally, then some of that will play out in their public communications. Continue. I mean, I'm not gonna beat around the bush here.
I think there've been some personal attacks that have been quite public. Not to say what they are though. Let's just, you know, their personal.
attacks, but you're just talking about how I deal with the suffering of being so famous. And I've talked about those. I talked about those a little bit on a Jocko Willink podcast recently. I can summarize it.
Yeah. I cited a video responding to that video. It looks like this video.
If you like me in a box with Andrew Huberman talking, there's that. Okay. Okay.
You get it. You know, pretty simply by saying, you know, I'm of the mind that personal matters should be settled personally and not publicly. Oh, he's not going to like this one. So just really believe in trying to have those conversations privately because both people understand context.
You know, in articles, context is lost. Wait, wait. In articles, context is lost? The Carrie Howley article was like 5,000, 8,000 words.
There was a lot of context that happened in it. I mean, you know, say what you want. Like, context is all about length and, like, detail.
There was a lot of detail. It took her months to write that. Like, how can you say there was no context? context in it, maybe not the context you wanted.
I also worry not so much about direct or indirect interpretation of things as much as kind of like certain narratives getting exported and kind of like the runaway train of those. I wish he was more specific on which narratives he was talking about because then it could be specifically addressed. Just talking about narratives that may or may not exist is a problem because we don't really know. know what he's addressing specifically. And there I will just kind of leave it at that and just say that, you know, obviously I, like everybody else is flawed.
I struggle in certain ways. I have certain things I'm better at and worse at. I'm always striving to be the best version of myself I can be and to try and.
So the best version of the person. Yeah. I mean, like we're all striving to be good people. And actually, you know, let me be fair to him here.
I actually think he does sometimes respond to things in a good way. Like he has issued some corrections to errors that were sort of like glaringly obvious and he got like a score he hated on social media for. There is a mechanism in Andrew where he tries to correct the record. And that shouldn't be just like omitted. Right?
We all try to be good people, but it's like when he gets things like really wrong, there is no correction of that record. You know, do that on a personal basis when it's personal and when it's public in terms of relationship with the public to, you know, communicate as much as possible without, you know, just trying to convince people. But hey, that I'm here to try and learn, organize and distribute information. that I think is really useful to people. They can take it or leave it.
I really do that. It is a labor of love. I really do love doing it.
And I know that I can't do it perfectly. I've certainly made mistakes. We correct those in the show note captions. People definitely point them out.
It's always embarrassing. It hurts. And yet I try and just... I mean, it is embarrassing to show corrections. I agree with that.
But what about like sort of like really big ethical problems? Now, sorry to interrupt this program. I just wanted to say just for a moment, and...
that I have a Substack and I would love you to go check it out and get a weekly newsletter for deep dives into serious investigative journalism, some like reaction videos, but also long-form interviews and hardcore investigations that take me weeks to put together. I do my best work on Substack and you can be part of the journey and help keep this sort of journalism on the air. So without further ado, back to the show. People are going to say this is all about Andrew.
Rubin's sex life. I don't give a rip about Andrew Huberman's sex life. I care about how his presentation of science has eclipsed other experts in the field. Like he's gotten so famous and that's not his fault, but it is something that he benefits from.
But he has basically taken over the mantle of science and sort of big foots, which means sort of steps on other people who are experts in the field. And presents oftentimes very fringe views as if they are established science. And sometimes he takes scientific studies and extrapolates them ad nauseum.
And in at least one or two cases, manipulates science that gets published in order to create a more popular result for his podcast. That's particularly with Susanna Soberg, which I've done this whole series on. Take it. Okay, what can I learn from this in my private life?
make those adjustments as best I can. In my public life, make those adjustments as best I can. I published a correction recently on, you know, by saying, hey, I made a math error in this thing.
It was actually, I made a joke about it in the episode that didn't make clear that there was a, you know, it didn't make clear the or clarify the misunderstanding. So in any case. Anyway, that was sort of funny.
And I found his correction totally fine. Other people dunked on him, but I thought, you know, sometimes we do make mistakes. That one was a-okay.
He basically added up a bunch of percentages with fertility. Like if a woman has sex like 15 times over the course of a month, she has 150% chance of getting pregnant. Okay, whatever. He corrected it, it was wrong, but people dunked on him a lot. It was mildly entertaining.
I said, okay, here's the deal. Here's what we do. I guess the short answer is I like to think there's always learning there.
Take the Jocko Willink, like good mindset of, okay, good. Given that it happened, you say, good, what can I learn from it? I think a big part of being… All right, so let's put this in context of the cheating.
You want to talk about science, look at my interview I did with Andrea Love or the Soberg stuff, but let's talk about the cheating. He is a serial cheater and cheated on these women for years and years and years, particularly Anya, and has this stable of women he cheats with, and he goes, apologizes, it never happened again. Then he says, well, you do IVF with me. and they will have a baby together, but then he cheats on them again, and over and over and over again. Like, he's not correcting that record, right? And just for, if you're still here, Anya, the lady he was with, you know, did have, like, this fraud investigation that Rogan talked about on her, and Andrew Huberman broke up with her two years after that investigation came out.
So it wasn't the cause of the breakup. Sorry to digress. Here we go. An adult and being a human being is learning when to stand one's ground and say, okay, you feel that way, I feel this way, we're going to agree to disagree.
That wasn't that way or I feel differently, okay. But the other half of being an adult is saying, ah, like... Oh, I could have done better there.
Or, wow, I screwed up. And apologizing. Or making the effort to remedy it going forward. And it's always hard to know exactly where that is.
Yeah, I would actually really like to see I think he needs to have a conversation with an actual journalist, actually. I think that's what needs to happen. He doesn't like having people press him with real questions.
He likes people just accepting what he has to say. But I think that he has to have a conversation. Maybe not me. Maybe he doesn't want to talk to me.
But he should talk to somebody who is a real, actual journalist who understands the full magnitude of what he does and address the pseudoscience allegations directly. Because I don't think I've ever seen him address that stuff directly. I've seen him beat around the bush. and then say, oh, these are personal attacks and they don't really matter. And let's be all the adults in the room.
That's not really the right way to deal with it, in my opinion. Instead, he goes on these podcasts and he just gets affirmation from the fact that he's having a conversation with Rhonda. I have been saying one thing in particular lately, which no clinician has challenged. me on yet, which is that when I go online, I generally assume, especially social media, that I'm dealing with essentially a borderline organism. Borderline is not bipolar.
Yeah, I dug this. Actually, this is a good explanation of dealing with the internet in general. Okay, borderline is, you know, the classic. But not the press, not people who actually fact check things.
Definition is weaving back and forth between a healthy mind and psychotic. You know, a borderline person splits by telling you at one moment they love you, they adore you, and then at the next moment that they hate you and all the. Oh, that's Andrew. He just explained himself. Like, at one second, you know, personally, he's like really into you and will tell you all these great things about you.
And. And then like five minutes later, he will tell you you're the worst thing in the world and like try to like verbally assault you and beat you up. He's actually also describing himself. Fascinating.
Reasons why. And I look at engaging on social media like engaging with a borderline person. So I now expect that when I go there.
And I could go on and on. But what I'll say is, you know, this stuff thickens your skin. The good stuff feels good.
The bad stuff feels bad. And then over time, it all kind of neutralizes. sexualizes. And I'm also blessed to have a great team around me to help me with op and lots of money, dicks and clarity. And I have great people in my life and but it's not fun all the time.
And there are days where you go, Hey, I'm trying to help people. I'm out there trying to do this. And don't they see it's not about supplements. It's about these behaviors, not about supplements, although he sells a tremendous number of them.
I would like to just remind you he makes between between eight and $20 million a year selling supplements, particularly Athletic Greens, which if you've seen my other videos on that, Athletic Greens was founded by this notable scammer and criminal from New Zealand who scammed tons of people out of their homes and then fled to America to found AG1. And this is the kind of people that he's getting in bed with and making his money from. And the supplements help, but they're not the focus.
They're not a focus of part of his show, but another part of the show, the main part. All about the cold plunges. There's always this desire.
A plunge is what he's also a sponsor for. He's a sponsor for and part owner in the company Plunge. To try and explain oneself, that never works. So I've decided I'm here. I'm doing this.
I know I'm doing it with the real intention of trying to give people the best information at zero cost that I possibly can. Zero cost. Yeah. Programs with advertisements in them are zero cost.
NPR is. zero cost to you, but there are, you know, Fox News is zero cost, but there are fucking advertisements. There's a whole business model behind it. Let's see if he says that he's not getting paid.
I'm human. I'm going to make mistakes. I will adjust as best I can going forward. And people also have the opportunity to tune out or tune off. And, you know, live and let live is my philosophy.
My graduate advisor, Barbara Chapman, used to say, listen, tolerance has to go in both directions. So. Yeah, never easy for the hard stuff. Very gratifying for the positive stuff. One of the best sources of feedback I received when people say, I can't believe this is free.
Like you're giving us this information. I'm like, yeah, and I love doing it. It's free-ish, right?
I mean, when you don't pay for anything, you are the product, right? You are the thing that is being sold. So he is selling your attention in order to divert that into revenue. streams that are intensely profitable.
So he's acting like he's this big saint of freedom, but it's not. It's a normal business model, right? It's a normal capitalistic business model, and he is profiting immensely from it.
And so he's sort of acting like, yeah, I'm being such a good guy. But you need to acknowledge that we are all in a system. Everyone is in this system.
So that fills me in. I'm planning to keep going. It's very clear.
I mean, it's very clear. love doing it and I've certainly learned a lot from you and you know especially on a lot of the topics that we talked about today where I was really diving deep all right so there we have it that is Andrew Huberman and Rhonda Patrick talking now I posted a comment online in her video being like look I really wish you pressed back on Huberman I think that you should have talked more about how his private life does reflect in the in the mainstream media and how you know you he has been involved in like manipulating directly. the science publications, especially with Susanna Soberg, probably in other things as well.
He gets paid to have Whoop put by, he gets paid by Whoop to have Whoop put in his studies, which gives all this sort of credibility to Whoop. And she said that she thought I was stretching. I'll just post her comment right here.
Wait, I'll just move over here. Whoop. I guess I'll just post her comment right here.
You could read it. I actually do appreciate that she got back to me on it. I mean, the takeaway is this, is Huberman is benefiting from this sort of like cyclical affirmation from other influencers.
People like Rhonda Patrick come to him and have him on her show because it's going to drive a lot of clicks. And so it's in her incentive to say only fawning things about him because he doesn't want to go on a show where he is challenged. And then Rhonda Patrick goes on other shows and she's not challenged. And then Ferris and then Rogan and then Audrey Marcus and blah, blah, blah, blah.
We have all of these people who are not journalists and whose only job is to affirm what the other person is saying on screen. Like the ethic of challenging, the ethic of fearless journalism and fearless truth despite pushback. And if you look at the bottom, if you look under my face here in the comment section of this video, there are people who are vitriolic.
There are people who say I'm a hack journalist or that I'm owned by Big Pharma or any number of the Illuminatis coming George Soros, whatever. I don't know what it is. Well, you will see them down there. And it's because they only want to hear the positive story. And I would love to be in a world where there are only positive stories.
But the thing is, the world has people who are incredibly self-interested and who are willingly manipulate and change the science. and change reality for their own benefit. And Huberman is one. And I think if he were less popular, it wouldn't be such a big deal. But because he is still in the top 20 podcasts and millions of people live and die by his advice, well, it's a problem.
And my one request, I don't think Huberman will watch this, but my one request is he needs to sit down across from an actual, credible... journalist, somebody who has a long track record of ethical journalism and is not afraid to ask him serious questions. If you're just responding to this stuff on other podcasters who will never press you back, you're never going to get to the truth. And as a scientist, if you are a scientist, Andrew, truth matters. All right, from Pokey Bear LLC in Denver, Colorado, this was Scott Carney Investigates.
I appreciate you being here. Thank you so much to all of my supporters on Patreon and on Substack who make this work possible. If you want early access and get your name on the honor roll, please check out those links down below.
And, you know, it just means the world to me that you're here. From PokeBear LLC in Denver, Colorado, this was Scott Carney Investigates.