#585 - Andrew Huberman

Andrew Huberman is a Stanford University neuroscientist and host of the “Huberman Lab” podcast which focuses on health, wellbeing and science. Andrew Huberman joins Theo to talk about how we can optimize our daily routines for the better, the science behind strong romantic relationships, and the powerful connection between dopamine and addiction. Andrew Huberman: https://www.instagram.com/hubermanlab/?hl=en ------------------------------------------------ Tour Dates! https://theovon.com/tour New Merch: https://www.theovonstore.com ------------------------------------------------- Sponsored By: Celsius: Go to the Celsius Amazon store to check out all of their flavors. #CELSIUSBrandPartner #CELSIUSLiveFit https://amzn.to/3HbAtPJ DraftKings: Pick 6 from DraftKings is the most fun way to play fantasy sports. Download the DraftKings Pick Six app NOW and use code THEO. That’s code THEO for new customers to play $5, get $50 in bonus picks. Better payouts. Bigger wins. Only with Pick6 from DraftKings. The Crown is yours. https://draftkings.com Moonpay: Head over to http://www.moonpay.com/theo to sign up Shady Rays: Go to http://shadyrays.com and use code THEO to get 35% off polarized sunglasses. Amra: Go to http://tryarmra.com/THEO or enter THEO to get 15% off your first order. ShipStation: Get a free trial at https://www.shipstation.com/theo. Thanks to ShipStation for sponsoring the show! Sonic: Head to Sonic to try the Sonic Smasher. LIVE FREE EAT SONIC. http://www.sonicdrivein.com/menu ------------------------------------------------- Gambling Problem? Call one eight hundred gambler. Help is available for problem gambling. Call eight eight eight seven eight nine seven seven seven seven, or visit c c p g dot org in Connecticut. Must be eighteen plus, age and eligibility restrictions vary by jurisdiction. Pick6 not available everywhere, including New York and Ontario. Void where prohibited. One per new customer. Bonus awarded as non-withdrawable Pick Six Bonus Picks that expire in fourteen days. Limited time offer. Terms at pick six dot draftkings dot com slash promos. ------------------------------------------------- Music: “Shine” by Bishop Gunn Bishop Gunn - Shine ------------------------------------------------ Submit your funny videos, TikToks, questions and topics you'd like to hear on the podcast to: [email protected] Hit the Hotline: 985-664-9503 Video Hotline for Theo Upload here: https://www.theovon.com/fan-upload Send mail to: This Past Weekend 1906 Glen Echo Rd PO Box #159359 Nashville, TN 37215 ------------------------------------------------ Find Theo: Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend Twitter: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheoVonClips Shorts Channel: https://bit.ly/3ClUj8z ------------------------------------------------ Producer: Zach https://www.instagram.com/zachdpowers Producer: Trevyn https://www.instagram.com/trevyn.s/ Producer: Nick https://www.instagram.com/realnickdavis/ Producer: Colin https://www.instagram.com/colin_reiner/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Theo Von?

  You ever realize that you spent your entire morning thinking about lunch? It's 9 a.m. and somehow I'm already in negotiations with myself about how I'm gonna spend $20 on a sandwich at noon. And then I eat it, or you eat it, or somebody eats it, and then an hour later, you're just standing in the kitchen worrying about what you'll do for dinner. And that's one reason why I've been into Huell. The Black Edition Powder is a complete meal you have instead of food, not a shake on top of food. Their powder starts at less than $3 per meal, has 40 grams of protein, and mixes with water or milk in about 30 seconds. I like Huell's shakes because they're clean and it's quick.

• 0:41Theo Von?

  I just want to make sure I have everything I need to keep going the way I want to keep going in a healthy manner. So with Huell, basically, lunch went from a daily logistical problem to a thing I can solve in about 30 seconds. Make healthy eating simple. New customers get an exclusive offer of 15% off online with my code WEEKEND at huell.com/weekend. That's H-U-E-L dot com slash weekend. Thank you to Huell for partnering and supporting our show. Today's guest is a neuroscientist. He's a professor, he's a podcaster. He hosts one of the biggest shows in the world called Huberman Lab, where he focuses

• 1:24Theo Von?

  on helping us to become our best selves and get the most out of our bodies. I believe that he's one of the people who's responsible for bringing health and self-evaluation into the mainstream. I'm grateful for the chance to finally link up today with the one and only Andrew Huberman.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  Whitney's been amazing to me. Since I moved to LA, she kinda ushered me in. I didn't really understand LA. I moved to Topanga during the pandemic, set up there with my bulldog, started doing the podcast in a closet and she, she kinda taught me about LA and I'd never done anything public facing. So yeah, we can talk, I mean, I think we should mention how, what a cute baby Henry is. That kid is so cute.

• 2:29Theo Von?

  Oh, the baby is beautiful. I think, bring up Henry, bring up Henry Cummings. I don't even know if it has a stage name. I have no idea if the baby has a front name or last name.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  I'm pretty sure it's Henry Cummings.

• 2:42Theo Von?

  Oh my God, that's beautiful. Oh yeah, look at him.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  No, he's got your haircut.

• 2:47Theo Von?

  Wow, he does dude. And you can tell he cuts it himself too.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's a, you know, I've met him and he's just such a good natured kid.

• 2:56Theo Von?

  He looks AI right there. He looks like Dermot Kennedy a little as well there.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  He's a, he loves animals, which is great because she's, you know, surrounded herself with animals. Are you trying to attack a resemblance there?

• 3:10Theo Von?

  I'm just saying the child has a slight resemblance to the remarkable crooner Dermot Kennedy. And look, whoa, hold on, whoa, whoa, bro. I'm gonna have to call my sponsor, dude.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a great photo.

• 3:26Theo Von?

  That is super cool.

• 3:30Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  I think that last shirt says, I think that shirt says, single mom. Yeah.

• 3:35Theo Von?

  Ooh.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  It's like a rock and roll. Whitney's a punk rocker. We have a lot of friends through the punk rock community.

• 3:41Theo Von?

  Oh yeah?

• 3:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And she sometimes posts with Chris Cole, who's a guy grew up watching skateboarding. He's a, I think he's in the Tony Hawk skateboarder game.

• 3:49Theo Von?

  Is he? Bring him up, bring up a picture of Chris Cole. I've heard of Nat King Cole and I've heard of Cole.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  There he is. Um, yeah, he's a beast, famous for doing Trey Flip Down Wallenberg, which in the Bay Area, Wallenberg School is famous for stair, huge. So he, you know, he's a black.

• 4:10Theo Von?

  It's a staircase?

• 4:11Speaker 01

  It's a school and so they call it Wallenberg for skate. I grew up skateboarding and there it is. Wallenberg's the third one down there, right?

• 4:17Theo Von?

  Oh yeah.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  So this is like, um, This is one of the things that made Chris legendary. That and he always had those silly wristbands on, not wrist guards, wristbands. This is a long time ago. That's a lot bigger than it might look.

• 4:33Theo Von?

  No, it's.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  And you actually have to, now they build roll ins, but you, back then you would push in down the avenues.

• 4:44Theo Von?

  This is so sick. It's just him trying it over and it's so cool.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  Over and over and over.

• 4:47Theo Von?

  Oh. And you can kind of start, even just watching this, you start to gain the.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  There it is. And it's all bolts, as they say. He lands perfect.

• 4:59Theo Von?

  God, it's just so crazy. How many times, it's just such a little piece of perfection. It's like just such an organized, specific moment, like the point of a pen when they, uh, when they land those things.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  Super satisfying to watch. It's got to feel incredible.

• 5:15Theo Von?

  Yeah. Oh, that's amazing. He looks a little bit like your assistant that came in today, too.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, he does look a little bit like Greg. You're right. They have a resemblance.

• 5:23Theo Von?

  He looks a little bit like Greg, dude.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  And they're friends, so that's interesting, but.

• 5:27Theo Von?

  But yeah, that baby, God, I would have loved to have been her son or been, um, or just had a chain. Yeah, even I'm glad that, yeah, I'm happy that she has a baby.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Well, she's got that menagerie of animals like Mona, her pit bull Ridgeback mix. I love. I also, I have a close relationship to her Great Dane Frank.

• 5:46Theo Von?

  Oh, let me see that.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Like, right now I don't have a dog, so a little while ago, I was like, I need some dog time. So I went over there and he thinks he's a puppy and he crawled up on me on the couch. And that's different one. Frank's gray, but.

• 5:58Theo Von?

  That one's mixed up.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  There he is. That's probably Frank. And he, uh, and I woke up at two in the morning. She'd covered us with a blanket on the sofa and Frank was breathing into my face.

• 6:07Theo Von?

  Oh.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  And it was, uh, it was a moment, but, uh, I love Great Danes because they, they think they're little dogs, but they're giant dogs. So, anyway. Never a dull moment at Casa de Cummings.

• 6:20Theo Von?

  No, she's always had excitement and she definitely will free an animal if there's even, you know, she'll uh, she'll release a damn animal from anything.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Oh, if she hears that there's a, like a dog running around in the street or I, I think this is right. Check me on this. We'll have to ask her, but a while back, I think that she was trying to rescue a giraffe. You know, you get these wealthy people that have exotic animals. They want a giraffe or an elephant or something. So she'll, she'll drop everything and like go try and rescue a giraffe.

• 6:49Theo Von?

  She's a real animal lover. She's definitely, uh, who's the guy? William Wordsworth or whatever. Who's, no, who had the animal movie? Dr. Dolittle. She's like the female Dr. Dolittle.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  Can talk to the animals.

• 7:03Theo Von?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:05Theo Von?

  I would love to see her do a show just for animals, even like a live performance just for animals. And, and see how it goes. But yeah, she'll, she'll pet anything, but I'm glad she's got that beautiful baby over there. Um, Andrew Huberman, good to see you, dude.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Great, great to meet you in person finally. We've corresponded a little bit, but

• 7:22Theo Von?

  You too, man.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  I'm a big fan and I, uh, heard your name mentioned at the inauguration of the president of the United States. And I went, this is wild. Worlds colliding, right? I think Dana White mentioned Joe Rogan and you at the inauguration of the most powerful person in the, in the world. And, and who else? I'm sorry.

• 7:40Theo Von?

  The Nelk Boys. Well, he mentioned us and the Nelk Boys, and then he mentioned, and the most powerful person, Joe Rogan. We definitely were like some satellites in the orbit, but it was really sweet of him. I mean, I think you catch Dana White at 2am, you know, and he'll, and he'll drop some different names and stuff. But, um, yeah, that was crazy when that happened. I remember my ex-girlfriend's mom just texted me like the, they just mentioned you on the inauguration address or something. And I was like, what is going on? That, that podcasting has become this thing. It's just such a part of the universe, you know?

• 8:13Theo Von?

  What do you think it is? You know, like, what do you think it is? Cause you may even have more of a scientific look at it. Uh, why is podcasting just? It's as it's as common as like somebody saying the New York Times five years ago.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts about this. First of all, it's interesting that we looked at skateboarding earlier. I've been lucky enough to get in on some things in the early phase, not the very earliest, but the early phase. When things were kind of small and there wasn't a lot of money at first and then things kind of blow up. When I was younger, I got into skateboarding. Every kid in my town played soccer, swam. I got really excited about skateboarding when it was kind of at a low point in terms of like there weren't a lot of kids skateboarding. It had gone through a phase of popularity, then it had died in the early 90s.

• 8:58Theo Von?

  What town was that you're in?

• 8:59Speaker 01

  I grew up in the South Bay area. So this is what now is known as South Palo Alto before the internet.

• 9:04Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Um, so, you know, we worked hard when we were in high school to get a skate park put in. There weren't many skate parks. It was really small. We used to take the 7F bus up to San Francisco, the famed Embarcadero or EMB crowd. This is where people like Rob Dierdick would show up. Back then, he didn't have his show. Actually, the photographer for my podcast, my playback, was taking photos of all those guys. A lot of those guys now went on to have, well, Rob Dierdick's famous, has his own show Ridiculousness and has done a bunch of other things. Robin Big, Tony Hawk, of course, has lasted through all the peaks and valleys of skateboarding.

• 9:35Theo Von?

  Pretty impressive.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  You know, so back then it was really small. I was going to contests where I met Frank Hawk. Tony's dad was kind of running it a little bit like a baseball league.

• 9:43Theo Von?

  Bring up a picture of Frank Hawk, you never see it, huh?

• 9:45Speaker 01

  Frank and Nancy Hawk. I'll tell you a funny story, actually. When I was 14, I went to a

• 9:50Speaker 01

  a contest at the Linda Vista Boys Club out in the middle of nowhere. And when the contest ended, I was 14. When the contest ended, Frank came around and asked me and this kid Billy Waldman, who was like, they called him the demon child. He's kind of a wild one. He was my friend. If you put Billy Waldman, demon child, he'll show up. You'll see it in his face. Watch this. Ready? Look, that's what a demon child looks like. He was a good kid. But in any case, what ended up happening was Frank was like, hey, where are you guys going? And we're like, well, we don't know. I was gonna take the bus to Lancaster, see my friend Joe Rickabosh and somehow get home. And he was like, no, no, you guys can't do that. He was like a real protective dad. So he and Nancy Hawk took me in. I got to stay in Tony Hawk's bedroom that night with all the trophies everywhere.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  And they took me out to dinner and I'll never forget, and this is how I got back in touch with Tony in recent years. They had black coffee after dinner at like 8pm and I'd never seen that. So a few years ago on Instagram, I wrote to Tony and said, hey, you know, your parents took me in when I was a little bit stranded. And if you don't believe me, they drink coffee at 8:30pm after dinner. He wrote back and he goes, no way. You're the only per- the only way to know that is actually have, uh, have a meal with them. So anyway, you know, skateboarding back then, I got out of it. I wasn't very good. Okay. I got put on a team out of sympathy. I tried, but I kept getting hurt.

• 11:07Theo Von?

  Team, what do you mean?

• 11:08Speaker 01

  Sponsored.

• 11:08Theo Von?

  The Dutch drink coffee late at night. Bring that up real quick. Who's drinking coffee very late at night? Or, or see if, uh, Tony Hawk is Amsterdamian. If he's an Amsterdamian guy, I believe he, he looks Amsterdamian to me.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Have you, Tony is like six foot five.

• 11:21Theo Von?

  I know the Dutch are tall.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  And his son is, is tall as well. You couldn't pick a more perfect last name for a professional skateboarder, right?

• 11:29Theo Von?

  Well, that's another reason I believe that he's all, in addition to his talent, which has helped him stay on the test of time.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 11:35Theo Von?

  Is such a, uh, moniker. There's nothing like that. Tony Hawk. It's

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 11:39Theo Von?

  Tony is the most relatable name in the world. And then it just like, who don't want to be like, Tony Hawk is a predominantly British Isles descent. Oh damn, I was hoping we'd get him in Amsterdam. All right. That's all good. Um, but yeah. So what were you saying, brother? Sorry.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  No. Um, so got into that early and then got hurt.

• 11:56Theo Von?

  You got put on a team, you said?

• 11:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. So I got sponsored by a little, uh, company called Thunder Trucks Spitfire Wheels. They put me on out of sympathy. I'm, I'm still friends with the team manager from back then and he'll tell you it was out of sympathy. But I got to see a lot of friends turn pro, start companies. Danny Way and Colin McKay started DC.

• 12:12Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  DC, which eventually sold to Quicksilver. They did that also with, uh, Ken Block, who was a rally car driver. Unfortunately passed away a few years ago. He was the guy that do Jim Connor, all the driving around cities, you know, jump. You haven't seen Jim Connor in San Francisco? Oh man, we're bringing back all the stuff.

• 12:27Theo Von?

  No, this is awesome. Pull this up. I love learning about this.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  If you look at San Francisco, um, and you say Ken Block, this is, I mean, so Ken unfortunately died in this snowmobile accident a few years ago. But this on YouTube, um, is unbelievable. I would go to the middle of it to really get a sense of.

• 12:46Theo Von?

  And so they would drive around?

• 12:48Speaker 01

  They basically just, they shut down big segments of the city. So that's down at the piers and then.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  All this, look, 119 million views, all this aerial footage, shutting to jump, why not just jump between two streets in San Francisco?

• 13:03Theo Von?

  Hell, yeah. So that was this was-

• 13:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, my friend Mike Blayback was the one photographing all this for DC. So DC was initially skateboarding, Danny and Colin and Danny's older brother, Damon, started DC. It actually stood for something called drawers clothing, but DC Danny Colin.

• 13:18Theo Von?

  And DC shoes, right?

• 13:19Speaker 01

  DC shoes, and then they went snowboarding, rally car, BMX, motocross.

• 13:24Theo Von?

  Oh.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  Monster, you know, monster, rock star. All that was born out of essentially skateboarding and BMX early on, then X Games took off. So it's kind of like how, you know, in the 90s, skateboarding was really small. Then it blew up, then it dies a little bit and it keeps coming back. Now it's in the Olympics. Okay. So when I got into neuroscience, because that's my official job, I'm a professor of neuroscience up at Stanford. I don't currently run my lab anymore. I tooled that down in 2023 so I could focus more on the podcast, but I still teach medical students, graduate students and undergraduates.

• 13:55Theo Von?

  Okay, so you're still practicing?

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah, and I ran a lab for more than a decade and really got into science when I was in college. I decided, listen, I'm not going to become a professional skateboarder, not a musician. I gotta do something with my life. I got into biology and psychology and I started working in a lab. And so even when I got into neuroscience, it was early. There was no such thing called a neuroscience degree or a neuroscientist. There was biology, there was genetics, but there wasn't something official. Then came the decade of the brain and now neuroscience is everywhere.

• 14:21Theo Von?

  Yeah, you hear about it a lot.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:23Theo Von?

  So you didn't hear about it 10 years ago, for sure.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  You did not. And it really drew from people from different fields. And then now we have a better, not complete, but we could talk about a better understanding of lots of different things, memory, addiction, et cetera. When I got into podcasting, I started my podcast in 2021, as we were talking about before, it was just, you know, small closet, I was living in Topanga, kind of self-appointed sabbatical. It was the pandemic, everything had shut down.

• 14:45Theo Von?

  You had a dog?

• 14:46Speaker 01

  And my Bulldog Mastiff Costello.

• 14:48Theo Von?

  And he passed away at some point?

• 14:49Speaker 01

  2021, I had to put him down. I had to do it myself.

• 14:54Theo Von?

  No.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  I was at home, I had them come, he hated the vet. You know, I mean, a bulldog's an amazing animal. The contract between a bulldog and owner is very simple. They will die for you, and you can feel that. They will die for you. But if your life is not on the line, they're not doing shit at all. Yeah, that's the contract.

• 15:11Theo Von?

  They will die for you. They'll also take a nap. They'll also take a nap for you.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  They will take a nap for you. So he's, he used to just snore. You can hear him snoring in our early episodes and fart and, you know, that's what they do. But, but if there was a threat, they don't hesitate, you know?

• 15:25Theo Von?

  Shit.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  He was skunked something like 27 times because they don't learn.

• 15:29Theo Von?

  He was stung by bees?

• 15:30Speaker 01

  No, skunked.

• 15:31Theo Von?

  Oh, by skunk.

• 15:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, they always say there are two kinds of dogs, dogs that get skunked once and then all the other kinds of dogs. But in any case, you know, we started the podcast and we weren't thinking about, oh, we're gonna make money with this or it'll be a big podcast. Sat down, put up a couple of cameras and me and, you know, my, what I now call my producer, but my friend Rob Moore, just did that. Mike Blayback from DC, because I knew people from skateboarding, he took the photos. And then what happened between 2021 and 2025 is you all, right? Thanks in large part to Joe, right? We could talk about, I have theories about why Joe is the king of podcasting and the biggest media channel on the planet, not just podcasting. What happened was people wanted to hear conversation where it's not scripted

• 16:15Speaker 01

  and where the ads and commercials are things that people actually use.

• 16:19Theo Von?

  Right.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  You know, and, and it went from this little niche community of comedians and people that like to talk about UFC to, you know, Lex Friedman was the one that inspired me to start a podcast. So he was my kind of, uh, my brother in crime in terms of.

• 16:35Theo Von?

  Podcast Eskimo or whatever.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, because he was an acad- he is an academic, right? I mean, he, he has a PhD. A lot of people don't know this, but it's Doctor Lex Friedman. So he's not a medical doctor, but he has a PhD. And he was the AI computer science guy. And I was the neuroscience guy, but then I'm also very interested in health and health and fitness.

• 16:53Theo Von?

  But you guys didn't podcast together.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  No, we've done a few, but.

• 16:56Theo Von?

  Right, a few episodes together, but you don't have.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  We're kind of the science podcast.

• 16:58Theo Von?

  Right. Oh, for sure.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  And then it just, you know, the comedians led the way, right? You, Joe, uh, you know.

• 17:05Theo Von?

  Marc Maron.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  Marc Maron. And then it just kind of.

• 17:09Theo Von?

  Pete Holmes. Pete Holmes was a big one early. Remember Pete Holmes was before everybody. Yeah, it was a very early podcast, but no, I it's definitely gotten where um I think it's nice not having people like, you know, sometimes I'll see things people seem like, oh, this this group now you're working with this group or you're working with this group or you've been like infiltrated by this country or this idea. It's like, no, it don't work for anybody. It's just I try my best, you know, and and um.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  Oh, you do an amazing job because it's so it's pure. So the the parallels I was setting up with skateboarding and neuroscience and then this, I realized at some point and I, you know, I'll get accused of name dropping, but I'm very blessed to be very close friends with Rick Rubin. I spent a lot of time with Rick, either here when he's in the States or.

• 17:55Theo Von?

  Fascinating gentleman. Rick Rubin is I know almost he's a music producer.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Yep, music producer. You know, he's also produced comedy. He did a he worked with Andrew Dice Clay. And he has great stories about that.

• 18:07Theo Von?

  Oh, I bet he does.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  You know, and so what's interesting is I talked to Rick about this. I was like, why is podcasting experiencing this surge, the question you asked? And he said, and this is kind of how Rick talks. He he actually talks like this. He's like, because it's real. You know, people, when they're when something's early, they're not thinking about how it's going to be received. You're not thinking about whether or not your corporate sponsors are going to be happy. This is why Rick, you know, remember Rick produced.

• 18:34Theo Von?

  Beastie Boys.

• 18:35Speaker 01

  LL Cool J, Beastie Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Adele, Kanye. Um, he's doing classical music stuff now, country, and he tends to work with people at the beginning and then not necessarily again, maybe on a song or two. And I asked him why? And he's like, because at the beginning, they're in what Josh Waitzkin, the great chess player, has described as the pre-consciousness phase of creativity. You're not trying to defend a title. You know, you're not trying to defend a title. You're not thinking about how it's going to be received because you really have nothing to compare it to.

• 19:08Theo Von?

  You have nothing to lose.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, listen, when Chris Cole 360 flipped down Wallenberg, someone was filming it, right? But after he did that, I'm sure that he thought about, God, like, how do I how do I like supersede that the next time? How do you but when when it's the next big thing, you're just thinking about the next thing. And there's something really beautiful to that, and that's what people tend to gravitate toward, whether or not it's media, podcasting, skateboarding, motocross, I don't care what it is, we can feel when something is real.

• 19:36Theo Von?

  Ah.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  In fact, Rick has this great saying, and I love it, because one time I saw this whole thing in the media related to somebody I knew, and it turned out that their whole company was just a complete sham. At least, that's what the media was claiming. And he said to me, he goes, "It's all lies." And I said, "Yeah, apparently, it's all lies." And he said, "No, no, no, everything is made up." He said, "There's only two things that are true: nature, like the laws of chemistry, biology, physics, and professional wrestling."

• 20:06Theo Von?

  Hmm.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  He said, "Because everyone knows professional wrestling's made up."

• 20:10Theo Von?

  Right.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  And Rick watches 12 hours a week of professional wrestling.

• 20:14Theo Von?

  Oh, my God.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  And when I go and see him, and we watch professional wrestling, I'm like, "Why do you, why do you watch so much professional wrestling?" And he said, "You know, it relaxes me, and also, you can see all the theater of life there." And he also likes that people don't actually get hurt. But you're also wondering, "Wait, was that really part of the act?"

• 20:30Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  And when you look at politics, or you look at the world, you know, a lot of it's made up, like Bitcoin's on a run today, everyone's excited, it broke 109 or 110. I mean, great, but Bitcoin's made up.

• 20:43Theo Von?

  Right.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  I mean, it's value is dependent on people's kind of perceived value of it, right? And so, he's right, everything, basically, is made up. And so, when you capture something that's real to a person.

• 20:56Theo Von?

  Right.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  Like a song, and the way they sing it, and they're not comparing it to the way they sang it last time, they're not thinking about whether or not their tour is bigger than the other big tour that's out there. There's something that I think really resonates with people, and we just go, "Wow, like, that's, you know, I see it as like, that's the human spirit in action." It's really beautiful.

• 21:14Theo Von?

  Yeah, it's like seeing a duck, like a little duck, try to take it, learn to fly, or whatever, you know? That's the funnest part. Once you see a duck fly, and you're like, "Ah, it's fine, you know, it can fly, that's great," or whatever, "Looks cool, still beautiful." But seeing that duck give those, give those tries, and take that shot out of the nest, whatever, that's kind of like the funnest part, you know?

• 21:32Speaker 01

  Well, and the, I think that's the beauty of childhood, right? You know, is, is- Everything's new.

• 21:36Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  You know, it's, and you know, this is actually a, an interesting segue to dopamine because you know, dopamine is triggered by a bunch of things, but mostly by anticipation of something.

• 21:48Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  Right?

• 21:48Theo Von?

  So let me think about that. So dopamine is, when people say dopamine, because you hear it all the time, right?

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Dopamine hits, dopamine hits.

• 21:54Theo Von?

  Right. You hear about dopamine or give it, you know, you're getting dopamine out of that. You're, so what is it? It's a, it's something that's in your body naturally?

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 22:04Theo Von?

  So. And where is it hidden in your body? Behind your ears?

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, basically. So real quick lesson in dopamine. Dopamine's a neurochemical. Some people call it neurotransmitter, neuromodular. Let's just say it's a chemical.

• 22:15Theo Von?

  Okay, it's a chemical. So it's a liquid?

• 22:17Speaker 01

  It's a, yeah, basically it's released from neurons. Neurons are nerve cells. And it's going to bind to the next, it's going to park in a parking spot. We call a receptor on the next nerve cell and trigger the activity of that nerve cell. Nerve cells communicate through electricity and chemicals. The chemicals stimulate electricity.

• 22:33Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  And neurons can make the next neuron more active. They can make the ne- next neuron less active. So this is important. In fact, a good kind of mechanical example is if you flex your bicep, you are inhibiting, you are preventing the neurons that flex your tricep. They are antagonistic muscles.

• 22:52Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  And as just kind of a parallel where we can get to, when you, for instance, smell something you like.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  It's what's called an appetitive response. It's kind of appetite. That inhibits the repulsion response.

• 23:08Theo Von?

  I see.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  When you smell vomit or something really putrid.

• 23:12Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  You tend to retract and it tends to shut down at the same time, the circuits that would bring you closer to something. So it's, it, you know, every circuit in the brain is like that. There's a push and a pull, an accelerator and a brake.

• 23:23Theo Von?

  And if you do want it, it limits the other.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Think of it like a seesaw. One goes up, the other goes down.

• 23:28Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  You know, everything from, if you step on a pin, you move your foot up and guess what? What happens? Your o- other leg automatically extends.

• 23:35Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Okay. This is called the monosynaptic stretch reflex. If you touch a fish on the side, there's a big old neuron, giant neuron called the Maldner neuron. And what does the fish do? It heads in the opposite direction. This is just a, you know, these circuits have been selected for because the dumb fish that went toward the thing that touched it probably got eaten. So all these responses are hardwired responses. This chemical dopamine exists in a couple of different places in your brain. It has several roles. The most important ones to know about are that it's involved in generating movement. People with Parkinson's lose the neurons that create dopamine.

• 24:11Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  In an area called the substantia nigra. If you were to cut open a human brain, you'd see two dark areas at the bottom of the brain. And in Latin, nigra, dark, black, is down at the bottom of the brain. And those are the neurons that degenerate. And there's a picture of it, but maybe we can find, it's really impressive. You can see even without a microscope, if you just say, um, I don't know, you said like actual brain tissue or something.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  There you go. Look, so see that first, um, that first one, look at that. That's probably without any staining. You're just looking at the brain with no microscope. In Parkinson's, those degenerate. You can see it on the right. What happens is when they're, so dopamine is critical for movement. And it's important to keep that in mind because the other thing that dopamine does is it's involved in a, a set of brain circuits that are involved in motivation. So if you think about any animal, human, dog, rat, cat, monkey, bat, that animal has three choices for movement. You can move towards something, you can stay still, or you can move backward.

• 25:10Theo Von?

  Right.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  Dopamine is involved in motivation, not reward. So when you, like, what's something that you really enjoy doing?

• 25:19Theo Von?

  Making quesadillas?

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Making quesadillas. When you get the ingredients and you put them out.

• 25:24Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  Your dopamine is starting to rise.

• 25:27Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  Okay. If you're, if you're somebody who likes gambling, it's on the way to Vegas. You're walking in, you're getting your chips, it's the feel of the chips, the dopamine's going up. Okay? This is a hardwired set of circuits that were designed to have us do things that were adaptive. So dopamine starts to rise in anticipation of food when we're hungry.

• 25:47Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  Cold when we're hot, heat when we're cold, sex when we're horny.

• 25:52Theo Von?

  Right.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  Right? And it's going to be involved in anything that we think is going to bring a feeling or a resource.

• 26:00Theo Von?

  So a lot of dopamine is based on perception?

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Absolutely. You nailed it. In fact, in fact, whether or not we're talking about Bitcoin, US dollars, likes on Instagram or X, followers. Views or any of that. The currency is dopamine.

• 26:19Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  There's one currency of motivation. So dopamine is about wanting and craving, not about having. Then something happens. You make the quesadilla.

• 26:27Theo Von?

  Okay, hold on, let me slow it down. Just real quick, I need to show that. Cause I sometimes it's hard for me. So I know it might be hard for some of our listeners, but so the dopamine is is based on the motivation. So it's not about like the fact that when I'm sitting there and I'm making my quesadilla like that's the that's the dopamine is like knowing that I'm gonna get the quesadilla soon. That's dopamine. But then when I actually get the quesadilla, what?

• 26:49Speaker 01

  Okay, so it depends on the quesadilla. Let's, let's go with three different scenarios.

• 26:53Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  And we could change out quesadilla here for jackpot at the casino table.

• 26:59Theo Von?

  Sex.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  Winning a UFC fight or winning the bet on the UFC fight.

• 27:03Theo Von?

  Being nervous about asking a girl out and then actually doing it.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  Comedy when you move to crowd work and you're like, this feels like I'm out on a tightrope.

• 27:10Theo Von?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah. So any of those things, anything where there's a potential payoff, then something happens. Let's, let's use the quesadilla example, because it's, it's straightforward. You have the quesadilla and it's pretty good. Tastes like the quesadilla you usually make. Okay, what happens? Your dopamine starts dropping a little bit.

• 27:29Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  Not a lot, but you're okay. Yeah, it starts dropping. Let's say, just by way of example, you eat four quesadillas. Each time, it's gonna be a little bit less dopamine from the actual eating of the quesadilla.

• 27:44Theo Von?

  Yeah, the second quesadilla, you can barely even taste it sometimes.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Let's say you bite into the quesadilla and it's like, oh, this tastes weird. Like there's something off here. Dopamine plummets. So how much dopamine you get depends on the anticipation minus what you actually get. Something called reward prediction error. But the language doesn't really matter. That's a bunch of nerd speak for when an experience is worse than you expected. Your dopamine drops below where it started.

• 28:12Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  When an experience is better than you expected, surprise, it's way above where you started. And it stays up there for a while. So. The dopamine system loves surprise. Now, all of this is related to learning. This is an ancient system designed for you to learn where are the payoffs? Where's the water? Where's the food? Where are the mates? Where's the money? Where's the resources? These are ancient circuits that we are doing non-ancient things with. And so, for instance, you do tour, you do comedy tours, right? When you do your comedy tours and like you really nail it one night? Like really nail it. It does two things. It raises your baseline level of dopamine. So the next time you go out, you have confidence, right? You're still feeling that.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  But it also raises the threshold for dopamine, right? Now, it's harder to get dopamine. You can't have the same experiences that you had prior to that really killer night? And get the same amount of dopamine that you used to.

• 29:11Theo Von?

  You ever realize that you spent your entire morning thinking about lunch? It's 9:00 a.m. and somehow I'm already in negotiations with myself about how I'm gonna spend $20 on a sandwich at noon. And then I eat it, or you eat it, or somebody eats it. And then an hour later, you're just standing in the kitchen worrying about what you'll do for dinner. And that's one reason why I've been into Huell. The Black Edition Powder is a complete meal you have instead of food, not a shake on top of food. Their powder starts at less than $3 per meal, has 40 grams of protein, and mixes with water or milk in about 30 seconds. I like Huell's shakes because they're clean and it's quick.

• 29:54Theo Von?

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• 30:37Theo Von?

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• 31:17Theo Von?

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• 32:00Theo Von?

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• 32:38Theo Von?

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• 33:23Theo Von?

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• 34:08Theo Von?

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• 34:51Speaker 01

  And when you think about dopamine, the most important thing to think about is how quickly does it go up, how quickly and how far does it go down? Because every time it goes up, it goes down. Why? Because remember earlier, we were saying everything is like a seesaw. If you feel motivated, there is, and this is so important for people to understand, especially people with compulsions, addictions and this kind of thing. The better it feels, the lower you're going to feel afterwards and the longer it will take you to get back to baseline. So the drug of all drugs for this, to really nail home dopamine as a concept.

• 35:25Theo Von?

  Sex.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  Or what? Well, behavioral, behaviorally, sex. You're, you're right. So, and people have behavior addictions, process addictions. Methamphetamine. If you were going to look at what creates the biggest rise in dopamine the fastest. So it's dopamine over time. Okay. Cause listen, when you write jokes or you know, when I'm, you know, reading papers, I love reading science papers. I'm like mining for papers. Every once in a while, I'll take a little break and I'm super into cephalopods, octopuses. I'm building an octopus tank at home right now. So that's kind of my, my indulgence is, is octopus. You know, it's a little bit of dopamine.

• 36:00Theo Von?

  Right.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Methamphetamine is a huge rapid increase in dopamine. Then what happens?

• 36:06Theo Von?

  How much do we get off that? Bring it up real quick. I just want to see what is the?

• 36:09Speaker 01

  It's, it's, it's how fast it occurs. It, it occurs within minutes. This is why crack cocaine was so much more addictive than, than snorted cocaine. Right? It was the speed with, with which it hits the system.

• 36:20Theo Von?

  How much dopamine does an activity release? Baseline is a hundred percent, food is a hundred and fifty percent. So an 50% increase, video games, um, 175% sex, 200.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  I disagree with sex, by the way. I think it depends on, you know, if, if you're, and people should know this, if you live with somebody and you guys are having sex a lot and you've known each other a long time, there's a lot of the reason why people are like looking for novelty in their relationship, et cetera. I'm not trying to be salacious here, but new sexual partner is probably about 400, 500%.

• 36:49Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and I think most people would not dispute that.

• 36:53Theo Von?

  Cocaine goes to 450%, amphetamine 1,000%, methamphetamine 1,300%.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  That meth, that meth, that methyl group increases the speed. That speed increases dopamine.

• 37:09Theo Von?

  So it's almost the same. It could, it could potentially almost be kind of the same, but the speed at which it happens is so much greater that it intensifies it so much.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  Right. And remember that the brain is thinking in terms of approach, pause, or retract. So when there's a ton of dopamine, listen, anyone on cocaine or methamphetamine, everything's a good idea to them.

• 37:26Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah, anything.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  Right. And then you think about cannabis. Cannabis has its own discussion, its own effects, but very different system and tends to make people pretty happy with right where they are. The opioids tends to make people overly happy with right where they are. They tend to be a motivated, not motivated. So dopamine, in this context, what happens is then dopamine drops below baseline after a drug or porn, or even, you know, somebody's, you know, let's say they make the huge mistake of like going outside their marriage to a prostitute or something. It's the anticipation, the fear, the excitement. Boom, then it drops below baseline. And now here's the real rub. In order to get back to baseline, most people, when they're in that trough, what do they do? They use more. But each time they use,

• 38:12Speaker 01

  while they're in that trough, when dopamine is low, this is the key thing, when dopamine is low, no matter how much you do of that substance, no matter how much you engage in that behavior, that dopamine is going to have less and less of an effect and it's not even going to get you above baseline.

• 38:27Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  You have to wait. The period of abstinence is when these circuits return to normal. And with the exception of alcohol where people can die from rapid withdrawal, this is why every addiction recovery program has a period of abstinence. They don't tell you to kind of taper off cocaine.

• 38:44Theo Von?

  Right.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  They're like, listen, this has got to stop. And then when people relapse, the problem is they get, you know, no pun intended, they get a bump, but that dopamine Level is not where it used to be and they're constantly quote unquote chasing the dragon or whatever you want to call it. So you know, these dopamine circuits evolved for a good reason to drive us toward adaptive behaviors. But listen, I have friends in the tech sector, in the finance sector, you see this in the finance guys. It's often finance guy, they're doing Adderall, they're day trading, they're night trading, you know, their friends are making a ton of money. And we also have the social comparison thing. So I'm not gonna say that social media hijacks all of this. But let's just say, and I love social media, I'm on Instagram

• 39:25Speaker 01

  and X, I teach there, I learn there. Love your content, love Segura's content, Rogan, you know, I'm learning there, Tim Dillon, right? Like, I'm, I love it. Yeah, but there are elements of this, where if you find yourself on social media, but you're kind of like, what am I doing here? Like, this is like, nothing's happening here. You are in a dopamine trough.

• 39:45Theo Von?

  You're in a trough. So you've already gotten your high.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  You've gotten it. And we hear dopamine hits. If it were really dopamine hits, you'd be going, whoa, yeah, amazing. Cool. No, that happens now and again. But what's happening is the threshold for what really draws you in is getting higher and higher.

• 40:00Theo Von?

  Which goes to show why when it comes sometimes to like sex addiction and pornography addiction, that people's, what the kink that they need or the thing they need to see gets more out there. Because they have to, just to even get back to the baseline, they have to, uh, they have, they've got to find more, they need a higher arc.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 40:19Theo Von?

  Um, I had a couple of questions, sorry.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 40:22Theo Von?

  And say where you're at. Can you, can you distill dopamine? Like, is there, is it manufacturable dopamine?

• 40:30Speaker 01

  There are things, yes. So there are things that are precursors to dopamine, and things that stimulate the release of dopamine. So, uh, things that stimulate the release of dopamine, the amino acid L-tyrosine.

• 40:42Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  It's found in hard cheeses, like Parmesan cheese, believe it or not. Some people think they're a little bit addicted to cheese in some ways.

• 40:51Theo Von?

  Oh, they do?

• 40:52Speaker 01

  Some people think that, yeah. It's a, uh, L-tyrosine is a supplement as well.

• 40:55Theo Von?

  Ooh, L-tyrosine, he sounds like he's from Rome, huh?

• 40:59Speaker 01

  There's a, there's a very interesting, um,

• 41:03Speaker 01

  Hairy little bean, no joke. This is a hairy little bean called Mucuna purines.

• 41:09Theo Von?

  You're gonna say something else.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  Mucuna purines.

• 41:11Theo Von?

  Mucuna purines?

• 41:12Speaker 01

  Mucuna purines. This is a velvety bean. If you just put velvet bean L-dopa. It is 99% L-dopa, which is the precursor.

• 41:21Theo Von?

  Ooh.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  It gets converted to dopamine.

• 41:23Theo Von?

  I'll take L-8 ball of it.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  Remember that movie Awakenings where people were frozen?

• 41:28Theo Von?

  Yes, with Robert De Niro.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  That's right, and Robin Williams.

• 41:32Theo Von?

  Yes, Robin Williams.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  And they gave those patients, it was a true story, it's based on a story by the neurologist writer Oliver Sacks. And they gave those people L-dopa. That velvety little bean is L-dopa. So you say, can you manufacture it? You can take the thing that is the precursor. Now, if you do that, you'll feel dope dopaminergic, as neuroscientists say. You'll be like buzzed.

• 41:55Theo Von?

  Right.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Energized.

• 41:56Theo Von?

  Like Shakira.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And then

• 42:00Theo Von?

  But yeah, vibed up.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  And then you'll feel the drop.

• 42:03Theo Von?

  So

• 42:04Speaker 01

  And then methamphetamine stimulates the release, as we saw cocaine stimulates release behaviors. Listen, I don't want to demonize dopamine.

• 42:10Theo Von?

  No, not at all.

• 42:11Speaker 01

  Dopamine is, you know, I'm sure I had a surge of dopamine walking in here today. I'm a fan of your show.

• 42:15Theo Von?

  I had a surge of dopamine when I saw you. I was excited, nervous about it, and then it happened.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  And hopefully I will, the reward prediction error won't be less than you anticipated. That's my goal.

• 42:25Theo Von?

  It's already fascinating.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  So I think that, you know, can you manufacture it? Well, there are things that can stimulate its release. Now, what's beautiful, what's really beautiful is when, I usually, I think usually it happens when you're a teen. For me, it was 19 when I discovered biology. You know, wasn't good at skateboarding, wasn't bad, but you know, I liked running and working out, but I never thought about becoming a professional athlete. And then I discovered learning and biology. And I thought, wow, this is something that I'm highly motivated to do. I didn't really understand dopamine then. We didn't know that much about it, but I'm motivated to do it. So there's dopamine from doing it. It brings me resources at first degrees and knowledge. Later, you know, the ability to buy a house, right?

• 43:07Speaker 01

  So much of my life is built around the work that I did, like a maniac really, between the age of 19 and I'm 49 now, just working nonstop. And so there's functional dopamine. And pretty soon you start weaving it in like, oh, I can also rest and have some recreation. And that's giving me dopamine. So our lives are built around this molecule we call dopamine.

• 43:25Theo Von?

  And so the ways that you can manage it, almost orchestrate dopamine to use it to your advantage. It's very usable.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  I think the thing to remember the following, dopamine is not about the pursuit of pleasure. It's about the pleasure of pursuit. It's about motivation. The other thing to remember about dopamine is it can, if it's increased very dramatically and very fast, it can drive addiction. And I define addiction as a progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure. A great life is where many, many things bring you pleasure.

• 43:59Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  And then the, perhaps the most important thing for people, especially if they're concerned about porn, gambling, internet use, or whatever, even if they're not a full-blown addict, they're just kind of feeling like a slave to everything going on that, you know, just everything. Highly processed foods, all of that, is that any high amount of dopamine that comes to you without effort before it, will eventually destroy you.

• 44:23Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  Or bring you close to destruction. So something that just feels so good that you, that all you had to do was open a package. All you had to do was take a pill.

• 44:31Theo Von?

  Or open a website.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  Or open a website. That is the slippery slope. And if we think more in terms of, you know.

• 44:39Theo Von?

  Yeah, Pandora's box doesn't really have a key on it, huh?

• 44:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, like I, I, listen, I'm not a huge UFC fan, but I'd, I've been to a few fights and it's fun. And I see you guys down there in the front row and this kind of thing. Look, someday I imagine, given my friend set and given my interests, maybe I'll just buy a ticket and it'd be a great thrill, right? But if I were a kid and I suddenly were just planted there every single night, guess what? You move one row back, it's gonna feel like bad seating, you know? And it's, this is why the children of very wealthy people, unless your father is like a Warren Buffett, who insists that you actually work and this kind of thing.

• 45:12Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  That children of very wealthy people often destroy their lives. You know, they destroy their lives because they haven't had to work to have all this stuff. And there's this huge cushion below them. In fact, my graduate advisor.

• 45:25Theo Von?

  They're almost swimming in dope and they're almost in the hot tub, but they've never been in the pool.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  And then they're exactly, and then they're, and then they're down below baseline. And then it takes more and more and more like, you know, that show.

• 45:34Theo Von?

  Is that genetic then? Sorry to interrupt you, but is that genetic that your baseline level for uh dopamine? Is that genetic?

• 45:41Speaker 01

  No, this is all behaviorally driven. And you know, I'm not saying parents.

• 45:45Theo Von?

  So you said it's all behaviorally driven?

• 45:47Speaker 01

  All behaviorally driven.

• 45:48Theo Von?

  Saying, yeah, say if like you had a like, you know, your father was an addict or somebody and then it could the, to the next generation have that same like need to get back to that baseline and it could be inherited type of thing.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  Well, they're okay. So there are certain addictions that appear to have some genetic component. But it's confounded, as we say, it's mixed up with the behavioral stuff around that. Like for instance, the probability of somebody becoming a severe alcoholic, they now call it alcohol use disorder. And I'm, I'm not trying to be irreverent, but I just call it alcoholism. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna try and stay out of the, the lanes of.

• 46:22Theo Von?

  Yeah, we've all got it in here.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, great. So the probability that somebody will become an alcoholic greatly increases if their first drink, just their first sip comes before age 13. Okay. Now some parents think, hey, listen, if my kid has a beer when they're eight, 10, then they won't have this, you know, kind of mysterious feeling around alcohol. That's one theory, but we know on good statistics that drinking before the age of 13 greatly increases the probability of becoming an alcoholic. So now you can imagine in which households will that happen? Well, where they're trying to normalize high alcohol intake. So it can be both genetic and circumstantial.

• 46:59Theo Von?

  But do some countries then suffer with the higher alcoholism rates then?

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 47:03Theo Von?

  Even European ones?

• 47:04Speaker 01

  Northern European countries, especially in the winter. I have northern European relatives. I'll tell you in the winter, uh, they can drink up there and it's dark and, and you know, alcohol is a depressant. There's also about eight percent of people have a gene variant that when they drink, they don't feel the same sedative type quality to alcohol. When, when you drink, the first thing that happens for everybody is your prefrontal cortex. This is like the part of your brain right behind your forehead. It's the part that sets context, like what's, what's appropriate in different places.

• 47:34Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  It inhibits you. Everybody gets a little more talkative, right? Everyone's talking, talking, talking. But then you drink more and people are starting to pass out on the couch and people are slurring their words. About eight percent of people get a dopamine surge and an energy increase from alcohol with increasing alcohol intake. These are the people, remember, uh, when you're in your twenties and there's that guy and he's still awake at like three in the morning, he's in the kitchen.

• 47:57Theo Von?

  And he's bumping around, he's in the cupboard.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  And you see him the next morning.

• 48:00Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 48:00Speaker 01

  And he's like, hey, and you're like, we were passed out, blacked out drunk.

• 48:05Theo Von?

  He's doing laundry or whatever?

• 48:06Speaker 01

  He's just like, hey, let's go running.

• 48:08Theo Von?

  Yeah, he's doing, yeah, making a lemonade or whatever.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  So that's a genetic predisposition.

• 48:12Theo Von?

  Wow. And so, but is that a positive one? It sounds like it is kind of.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  Well, it's probably adaptive in some, you know, they've got, you got the cursor on Russia. I mean, listen, I'm friends with Lex Friedman. I mean, that kid can drink compared to me.

• 48:24Theo Von?

  Oh, dude, yeah, he definitely.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  I don't drink. I, I, I had my last sip in 2019.

• 48:28Theo Von?

  Amen. Well, and Lex has the depression to show it, man. He's got that emo side of him that takes over him, you know, he's definitely.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  I think he just put something out again on X.

• 48:36Theo Von?

  I mean, it's perfect. No, I, I, I love Lex because he, there's this transparency about him to me that is, um, remarkably human, you know, like this, like ever hopeful, talented, but also very like honest.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  This is so Lex.

• 48:52Theo Von?

  He just said, I'm an introvert who hides from the world often way too much. One thing I wish I did more is call and text my friends. I think about them often and feel lucky to know them, but experience a strange anxiety that prevents me from texting and calling. Silly introvert, introvert brain wants to pull me into isolation and darkness. Then again, once I hang out with said friends, it's like, we've been talking every day. So maybe there's no problem. And it's just how dude friendships are. Yes, he's thoughts brought to you by brain on six shots of espresso. That's perfect.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  And I, you know, with Lex, you know, I won't claim that he posted that because, because of me, but I'd been texting for like three weeks now. And it's just crickets. And then I'll get something back that just says, here.

• 49:29Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  And you just learn with him over time. That's just, you know, that's just that guy.

• 49:34Theo Von?

  Russian communication. I mean, it can take five generations to get a hug out of somebody, you know, it's like.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  I love the Russians.

• 49:40Theo Von?

  Oh, they're unbelievable. And they, you know, a lot of them had carried stone dolls as children. Like imagine if your doll, your baby doll is made of stone. It's like that's your whole concept of the world is going to be so different. Bring up, bring, bring back that chart up again. I want to see what they were doing over there. Alcoholism by country. Um, United States, thirteen point nine percent.

• 50:01Theo Von?

  Canada only eight percent.

• 50:04Theo Von?

  UK 8.7 and what's the darkest one over there? It's Russian. What's it at 20.9% hell?

• 50:09Speaker 01

  It's cold and bleak.

• 50:10Theo Von?

  Oh yeah, you gotta be fucking brain dead.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  North Korea is lowest, but but we don't really know what's going on in North Korea.

• 50:16Theo Von?

  No, we don't know. This is just a fun chart, but it's also exciting to just make.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  That's one place I never want to visit.

• 50:21Theo Von?

  Be reminded that the Russians live like that. I want to ask you about this about um. So one of the big things that I think is is a huge problem that's about to happen in the world is um. Uh pornography addiction, right? I think it's I believe it's humongous. I believe it's bigger than alcoholism. I believe it's like the wave of it that we're we're starting to see like people really suffering from it. I think it's one of the reasons why there's a lot of divorce.

• 50:50Theo Von?

  What do you see like neuroscientifically uh about? How we can how people can start to manage that? And then even if what you just talked about about dopamine, it's like. I think it's helping people realize with that that it's like such a hole that you're getting into no uh. No ju whatever that thing is called, no pun intended. Um, how does that? How can people start to cut that off for themselves? Is there anything they can do manage? Like, or do they have to get help if they believe that they're suffering from like pornography or uh sexual addiction?

• 51:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, super important questions. I'm so glad you're raising this because you know, it's it's interesting. If you look at the research on pornography and sexual behavior generally, right? What you'll find mostly in the academic studies of those areas is kind of an attempt to to normalize a lot of behavior. There are reasons for that, some pseudo political, some um, just kind of the way those studies were done for a long time. But it's really important to emphasize that it takes a while for science to catch up to culture.

• 51:56Theo Von?

  Okay, it takes a while for science to catch up to culture.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, it takes, and the reason is not because scientists are lazy or they're uninterested is that doing science well takes a long time. Look, I've run studies in my lab on animals, on humans, clinical trials. It takes a long time, like three, four years sometimes.

• 52:12Theo Von?

  To get real information?

• 52:13Speaker 01

  To get a really good study done. Meanwhile, life is happening. And in the last, in the last five years especially, there's been an exponential growth of the amount of pornography available online, the different formats, right? OnlyFans, you know, all the different sites that people can go to.

• 52:32Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Pre-paid.

• 52:33Theo Von?

  AI.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  AI. And within each of those, there's also been a huge amplification of the, of what's called like high intensity porn. What's high intensity porn? It's more than two people. It's BDSM. Now BDSM is its own discussion that maybe we could talk about at some point, you know, just separately about this merge of pain and pleasure that, that the reason, I'll just, the punchline is that dopamine is also increased by what we call the cessation of pain. When pain starts and then stops, you get an amplified dopamine surge. So a lot of people are watching or engaging in what we would call violent porn, right? And we're, as primate species, humans, we have an empathy. So when people are watching pornography,

• 53:17Speaker 01

  they're obviously not experiencing the same things exactly those people are doing and experiencing, but they're tuning into it, right? They're getting to it. And we can only speculate as to what they're doing to themselves, right? Typically, when we're talking about porn, let's just be direct, that we're also talking about masturbation, right? Typically, when we're talking about watching video porn, sometimes it's women, most often it's men, by a huge majority.

• 53:39Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah, the men are the one watching it.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. Although, you know, years ago, I had a, I had a girlfriend, a woman I was dating very seriously, and, and she confessed to me that prior to our relationship, she had developed a porn compulsion. It wasn't an addiction. You know, addiction again is a progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure. It hadn't taken her to the point where it was destructive, but she had the wisdom to cut herself off from it early on. Okay. So it does happen with women, but it's much more frequent with men. So here's the thing, we can think of pornography now as like the methamphetamine.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  Of pornography compared to the pornography of, you know, we always hear about, oh, you know, like when I was growing up.

• 54:17Theo Von?

  Drawings, yeah.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  Playboy or, or, you know, that, the thing when I was a kid, like I'll confess is for, didn't know I was gonna do a confession, but they had those like sex education books where they were like sketch drawings in pencil.

• 54:28Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah, bring them up.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  You know, when I was, you know, probably 14, 13, I was like, this is awesome.

• 54:34Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 54:35Speaker 01

  You know, this was awesome, but it was about, you know, teaching you basically about sex, it was teaching about body parts and that was, you know.

• 54:44Theo Von?

  For sure, man.

• 54:45Speaker 01

  We do pencil drawings, I can't believe we're looking this up.

• 54:47Theo Von?

  No, it's interesting because I think a lot of people probably.

• 54:48Speaker 01

  If you do pencil drawings, uh, who knows what kind of freaky stuff's gonna jump up here.

• 54:55Theo Von?

  No, we have a blocker on, I'm pretty sure.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. There we go, there we go, so.

• 55:00Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, have some, see, human loving, this is very different than today's porn.

• 55:04Theo Von?

  Sex and hu, I love how they used to call it human loving.

• 55:07Speaker 01

  Human loving.

• 55:08Theo Von?

  That's nice, though.

• 55:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:10Theo Von?

  At least it makes more sense, it puts it in your head into something, you know, instead of like Britney's butt world or whatever, you know, which takes it to a whole different deal.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  And there was no discussion whatsoever of elements of pain or BDSM or power play, there you go, you know.

• 55:24Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you know.

• 55:26Theo Von?

  God, that's nice.

• 55:27Speaker 01

  For a heterosexual young male, the fact that they put her naked facing us as opposed to the guy on the other side, you're like, okay, cool, but you know, the other thing about pornography.

• 55:35Theo Von?

  I like it.

• 55:36Speaker 01

  Is that it, in a young brain, this, this is very important, it relates to everything we're talking about today, from about age zero to 25, your brain is incredibly plastic, it's modified by experience, just by being in those experiences.

• 55:49Theo Von?

  When you say plastic, you mean it's more like it's not so solid yet?

• 55:52Speaker 01

  That's right, you can literally wire neurons, plasticity, you can wire neurons to other neurons very readily, I mean, this was known for a long time, but it was really formalized by my scientific great grandparents, David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel, they won a Nobel Prize for showing that if you take a cat, a monkey, or a kid, and you close one eyelid for just a few hours each day. The brain becomes blind to visual input through that eye. Once you open the eye up, unless you do something else like close the other eye in order to reverse that plasticity. However, if today I just wow, yeah, that's how fast and permanent it is unless you do something to reverse it. But if I did that same thing to you now or me now, there'd be no brain change. You close your eye, obviously you can't see through a closed eye.

• 56:36Speaker 01

  Pop open the eyelid later, you see just fine. So we know that from a until about age 25, the brain just modifies itself based on experience. So if you're doing cocaine, amphetamine, or let's just stay with this example, you're watching high intensity violent porn with more than two people. Right? You know, we forget that every time you add another person, even if it's two women and one guy, or it's, you know, what's this woman on X? I mean, I have to say it makes it gives me an aversive response, which I think is the healthy response. Every time she announces, I think she's like sleeping with 100 than 1,000 people. And listen, she's obviously in control of her own life.

• 57:13Theo Von?

  Conference right now, I think I'd have saw the other day, I don't know what her barbit, uh, is it barbit blues?

• 57:18Speaker 03

  Bonnie blue.

• 57:19Theo Von?

  Body blue.

• 57:20Speaker 03

  Bonnie.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  I mean, this is like, this is like methamphetamine with heroin and you know, you get the picture, it's starting to layer in all these different things. And so the young, you think about the young male brain in particular, young female brain watching this stuff. And it's not just setting a behavioral expectation because we always hear about that, you know, they, they think sex is like that and it's not. It's setting this incredibly high threshold for what they consider stimulating, not just stimulating sexually, but stimulating mentally.

• 57:50Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  I mean, it's crazy. It's like, you know, listen, I like playing cards every once in a while. So you go play a card, play a card game with your friends. It'd be like the first time you play cards, you got a million bucks, you know, you're, or you're back there in the high state, you're in like the Dana White Room, right? Like, I know, like when I see sometimes his gambling hands, right? He's, you know, but he can afford to play.

• 58:11Theo Von?

  Right.

• 58:11Speaker 01

  And he also knows where that fits into the rest of his life. But you think about a kid, you know, you have a chance to win a, you know, a million dollars. Actually, there's this scene in that movie, that show, remember Succession?

• 58:24Theo Von?

  Yes.

• 58:25Speaker 01

  A show that it's all about dopamine. This family of rich brats who are completely corrupt. Everything's about more, more, more. Dopamine has been called in a, in a book. I forget the author, the molecule of more. It's all about wanting more. And there's this dreadfully sad scene where they go out to play. I think it was like a baseball game or something and they bring their, uh, their garden help. And they take the kid and they say, hey, if you can hit a home run, these people's kids, people are clearly.

• 58:51Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:52Speaker 01

  And they say, if you hit a homerun, you have a million dollars. And you see the anticipation. This would transform these kids and their parents' life. And then he doesn't get the million dollars and they give him like some watch. That's probably worth $25,000. This is dopamine reward prediction error in a, in a nutshell. Had they given him the watch, the family probably would have been pretty thrilled. They could sell it, they could use it. Had they not been involved in the game, their dopamine is the same as when they go home at night. But they had a chance at a million dollars. And when they didn't get that, it drops them below baseline. And then you see the kid that evening, like sitting around his apartment, just completely despondent with the watch sitting there as if it was worth nothing. That's dopamine.

• 59:36Speaker 01

  And when you think about pornography, that's what young people are being exposed to. So their first sexual experiences not only are quite different. Remember pornography is about, obviously people are getting aroused by watching other people have sex.

• 59:51Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  Um, you know, I don't know what kind of sex people are having out there, but in my experience, you know, the whole, the whole business of sex and learning how to have great sex is about learning to be in the, in the experience with somebody and it's a communication. It's an ongoing communication and it's about being in the experience, being present, not watching someone else have sex.

• 1:00:09Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah. I was thinking the other day, watching some other dude like have sex with a woman. It's kind of, I don't even know if it's homoerotic. I don't know what it is. It's definitely when you really, when you take a step back from it, it's a little bizarre. It's definitely intrusive, right? But for surely it alters the way that you think about things. I mean, I know in my own life, I got exposed to pornography real early. I would bike across town to get a little look at some porno.

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  Perfectly normal behavior for a young male.

• 1:00:36Theo Von?

  Pretty normal. I was breaking into houses to fricking, you know.

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  That's I had friends like you growing up. Where did you grow up?

• 1:00:43Theo Von?

  Uh Louisiana.

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  I had friends growing up. I mean, in the in South, South Bay Palo Alto was pretty tame. But when we started getting into skateboard thing.

• 1:00:50Theo Von?

  Oh, for sure.

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  We drew from kids from all over. And listen, I'm very grateful for that early exposure.

• 1:00:55Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah, it's easy to jerk off to if you got some good graffiti.

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  Oh, no, I meant early exposure to kids that from all walks of life. But I knew kids like you breaking into houses.

• 1:01:01Theo Von?

  Oh dude, yeah, I remember. Yeah, it would be crazy. Would like, you know, yeah, just like breaking in that just like, yeah, we made some poor choices. But I think the fact that um, here's one thing I noticed for myself, right? So. Well, I had like a lot of dislike. I had kind of a disorder, I guess, where like I had some intimacy issues where I couldn't. Um, I had like some issues like just like probably with my mom from growing up of not having a connection. And so if a woman, if I got around a woman, I got very nervous, right? It was like a very extremely nervous, right? So I think it made it like once I saw pornography, I was like, okay, well, here's a way that I can be near a woman.

• 1:01:43Theo Von?

  Or near as a female where I can uh have some form of intimacy without having to have a real person there. So that for one for me was um, it was okay. It made sense that that's how I adapted to it as a kid or how I understood it as a kid. It makes sense. Uh, but as an adult, it didn't help me at a certain point. Um, and then the secondary part for me was uh.

• 1:02:09Theo Von?

  You know, you would just see you would see sex like in images or scenes or a way a camera set up. And so then that's how you start to think of it of intimacy. It's like, you know, it's like, okay, well, we have to do this scene, you know, it's not like you would stage things around your room or anything. You didn't have any cameras or anything, but you would just like you thought of each thing as like a scene or a scenario. So um.

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're not out there shooting baskets. You're trying to like recreate the NBA final, you know?

• 1:02:35Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  And that's a lot. That's a lot of pressure.

• 1:02:38Theo Von?

  Oh, so it was a ton of pressure. So it was like, and you almost couldn't even, yeah, there was no real connection. So that for me was a real cul-de-sac of like trying to figure out how to evolve like um. Intimately, you know, and, and, and, and it's, it's something that's taken a long time to get through and different like, uh, cla- like not classes, but like ayahuasca really helped me a lot. Different medicines helped a lot with like, just unbinding all that anxiety that was just like this young person who just, uh, didn't know how to relate to females, you know? You know, so I've been speaking recently about Moonpay and what it is and what it ain't, baby.

• 1:03:19Theo Von?

  Cause you know, I've, I've had that, I've been, I've had one foot in crypto and one foot out over the years. I'm walking that line, you know, but I'm not going to stop telling you about Moonpay because it's where I'm at now. It's what's brought me back into the crypto game. Moonpay powers the entire world of crypto. Some people say they are the PayPal of crypto. Seriously, nearly every crypto app you're using or thinking about using uses Moonpay to let you buy crypto with your favorite payment methods, including credit cards, debit cards, Venmo, and even PayPal. Moonpay is partnered with Backpack, a self custodial wallet built for Solana and many blockchains.

• 1:04:00Theo Von?

  Backpack prioritizes user experience and security and partnered with Moonpay. So you can now buy and sell crypto using most major payment methods. Remember, while Moonpay makes buying crypto straightforward, and while I enjoy using it for my crypto choices, it's essential to do your own research and understand the risks involved. Crypto trading can be volatile and you could lose your investment. Moonpay is a tool to facilitate your transactions, not a source of financial advice. Trade responsibly. It's that time of year, baby. It's the season is ahead, that sunlight season. And they say the sun is going to be brighter than ever. They say this will be one of the hottest summers on record down in New Orleans.

• 1:04:46Theo Von?

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• 1:05:32Theo Von?

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• 1:06:18Theo Von?

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• 1:06:58Theo Von?

  Go to shipstation.com/ Theo to sign up for your free trial. That's shipstation.com/ T-H-E-O.

• 1:07:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's a really important conversation. If I may.

• 1:07:15Theo Von?

  Yeah, it's huge.

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  Listen, like I said, I'm forty nine now, but you know, I am forever grateful to my first girlfriend. I was a virgin when she and I started sleeping together. She had slept with this other guy. All I knew about him was he was like some buff football player. I'm like the skinny skateboard kid.

• 1:07:30Theo Von?

  Oh dude, my first girlfriend slept with a dude before me who wore a cape dude, a fucking.

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  You wore a cape?

• 1:07:39Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  Like fuck dude.

• 1:07:41Theo Von?

  What the heck?

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, listen, I mean, I remember going into that, like any young male, thinking like, my goodness, you know, this is like, is a lot of pressure. And one of the things I'm so grateful to her for is, you know, we were able to talk a bit. At first, no, you know, it was just like, you're just wanting to go perfect, right? You just wanted to go perfect. And I will say, one of the huge mistakes people make. Maybe we can save some, some people, some men and women, young, young men and women, some serious stress. One of the huge mistakes people make is to try and take that edge off with alcohol.

• 1:08:16Theo Von?

  Oh.

• 1:08:16Speaker 01

  First of all, it starts to really muddy all the consent stuff. So you're already like, you're already playing with fire, right? Because, you know, when people are inebriated, there's all, they're not in their right mind.

• 1:08:27Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:27Speaker 01

  So the other thing is that by chemically removing that stress, you, many people come to depend on those chemicals to relax. And they don't learn the skills, right? Because I always joke, you know, now, not, it's not a joke, it's serious, you know, nowadays, like every young male who wants to like, get a little bit, you know, jacked is like, should I take TRT? And I'm like, dude, you're twenty five, you're already filled with testosterone. They're like, yeah, but you know, and you're like, learn how to train, learn how to eat. And when you're in your late forties, talk to a doctor, freeze some sperm, because it's going to shut down your sperm production, maybe then, but like, just chill. And in the same way, it's like, I think there's immense pressure. There's also something that's happening now that I hear about a lot, which is.

• 1:09:11Speaker 01

  From the beginning of time, women have talked to one another. Okay. I had the.

• 1:09:16Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah, chatty Cathy. You heard of that term?

• 1:09:18Speaker 01

  No, is that what it's called?

• 1:09:20Theo Von?

  Yeah, it's a famous term. Who brought it up? Let's get to the bottom of that term really quick because people have heard it a lot. And you don't know where it really started. Do we know that? The phrase chatty Cathy originally came from the name of popular talking doll manufactured by Mattel in the 1960s. The doll's pull string mechanism played pre-recorded phrases when the string was activated. Like, you don't make any money, or you get your own dinner. I made those up, but damn, Cathy's a vibe. Look at her.

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  She had buck tooth, a little buck tooth there.

• 1:09:49Theo Von?

  Yeah, back when you get a good British gal. But go on, was there anything left on that information? Over time, the term chatty Cathy became a common idiom to describe someone who is especially talkative. And I'm just joking, ladies, but, uh, but that's interesting where that came from. I never knew, always heard that.

• 1:10:04Speaker 01

  I never heard that term. You know, so I had the great benefit and the disadvantage as well of having a sister, right?

• 1:10:12Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:10:12Speaker 01

  Having a sister is great because you don't think women are weird. Like, I grew up with a girl living next door to me, my sister. We shared a bathroom, all that. But I also heard the way her and her friends talk about boys. And so from a young age, I was like, man, I can't make a mistake on a first date. I gotta do everything perfect because it's gonna be the rundown. But back then, there was no social media. Now, young guys tell me they are terrified to go out on dates because let's say they do something wrong. Let's say they're less than perfect. They are very concerned it's gonna end up on some site and they're gonna be shamed. And I'll tell you, I do think, and of course, I take the male perspective because that's the only body I've ever lived in.

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  But I do think that a lot of the complaints about, you know, young, you know, there are no men today, young, young males, like in their twenties and thirties, you know? A lot of these guys are terrified because they feel like everything's potentially gonna become public.

• 1:11:08Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:09Speaker 01

  Positive or negative. And I hear a lot from young males about the pornography question, about all this. And I like, there's one kid that I was kind of mentored over time, I've known him since he was a little kid. And now he's in his twenties and he's doing great in life, but he's had his, um, his challenges. And he, I'll tell you, it's really interesting.

• 1:11:27Speaker 01

  He said to me, he goes, look, you know, it's hard, a good looking kid, he's right now, he's working in construction, he's, he's doing great. And he said, look, it's hard to find someone who just kind of want to keeps your relationship, just the two of you.

• 1:11:40Theo Von?

  Private, yeah.

• 1:11:40Speaker 01

  But he did, he, he had a girlfriend, she wasn't the one. So he found one and they have a closed container, they call it. You know, there's like the new, new language or something. And he's like, man, it's awesome. And he's like, you know, if I'm nervous about something related to intimacy, we talk about it. Turns out she's nervous too. And he feels super safe. And, but he had to literally ante that up because where he went to school, I won't say where he went to school because he'll murder, he'll murder me. But you know, it's, it's like the opposite Arizona State, right? Exactly. There, there's all this stuff about people talking behind this and then posting it to the internet. And that's enough. And so that drives guys more into the, the loneliness and isolation of porn and substance abuse.

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  And so I'm not blaming women here. I'm not blaming men here. I'm just saying that when it comes to intimacy, everybody's nervous about that, right? When I was a kid, there was like Dr. Ruth and there were those books. And then you had this thing called experience and you'd have to, well, that went well, that went less well, that went really well. And then over time, you learn how to have the communication and enjoy yourself in it.

• 1:12:43Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:43Speaker 01

  But it's hard. It's difficult.

• 1:12:45Theo Von?

  Now you can have a thing where it's like, say you go out on a date with a girl and then they, they could make a video like, oh, this guy tried to kiss me, what a lose. Just like, but I guess guys could do that too. But just, just the risk of that on either side, it's like, then that wins, you know? It's like, how many times are we going to let technology defeat what just means being human, right? And like, and at what point do we start to choose like, hey, I want to make a moral, like a choice for myself and whoever I'm on a date with, maybe have a talk with them first or something like, you But it's like every time it's like technology is the one that seems to like take away like things that used to be so real to us. Yeah, because then you're both in a cave, you're both

• 1:13:28Theo Von?

  just masturbating or whatever, and you're both like brokenhearted in some semblance, it seems like. Is that crazy to say that?

• 1:13:34Speaker 01

  No, I don't think so at all. I mean, listen, text messages, I hate telling people this, but like everything you text is potentially public. I don't care if you're a public facing AKA famous person or not, and that terrifies people. At the same time, you know, there can be great intimacy through writing, you know, my first girlfriend and I wrote each other letters for years, for years. I still have letters from girlfriends. You know, I cherish those. I don't break them out too often. If you have a new girlfriend, you basically, you gotta hide those away pretty carefully. But I assume anyone I date's got those, you know, from their former relationships. And I'm not bothered by that. I mean, that's

• 1:14:07Theo Von?

  It's nice to go get them out. But I agree, man. I get nervous because sometimes like for a date or something I would like to do, well, let's do a Zoom call or something first because it's like, you know, especially if we live a little bit away from each other, let's see if we even talk well or something. But then you're worried like, well, is somebody recording this or what's going on?

• 1:14:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:14:25Theo Von?

  But then it's like, yeah.

• 1:14:26Speaker 01

  I'm just kidding. Listen, well, the old stereotype was, girls feared getting slut shamed.

• 1:14:34Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:14:34Speaker 01

  Guys feared getting dork shamed. Like loser shamed.

• 1:14:38Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:39Speaker 01

  Right? You know, it's been said in by the evolutionary biologist.

• 1:14:43Theo Von?

  Donnie's a loser, dude.

• 1:14:44Speaker 01

  And they speculate a lot, but the evolutionary biologists will say, you know, woman's greatest fear is violence from a man. Man's greatest fear is being laughed at by a woman. Right? And, and, right, exactly. And so there's this battle nowadays. I'm glad we're talking about this because there's this kind of unspoken battle between the masculine and feminine forces.

• 1:15:05Theo Von?

  Well, it's just funny that you say that because I just realized that the majority of my childhood was some woman. I don't even know who it was laughing in the distance in my head.

• 1:15:13Speaker 01

  Oh, man. Well, and

• 1:15:14Theo Von?

  Like especially when I got in a puberty in that kind of time.

• 1:15:17Speaker 01

  But well, and there's nothing that feels better than, you know, feeling like you can deeply satisfy your partner and they're devoted to you and you're devoted to them. It's a wonderful, I mean, that's the stuff that, you know, love and marriages and families and to be direct, great sex are made of, right?

• 1:15:32Theo Von?

  But this is one of the most important conversations to our audience because I think this is the thing that's, it's, you know, relationships are falling up. It's like, if we don't, if this doesn't get fixed now, it's gonna be. I think it's, you know, societies can change and end really fast, especially with like technology now. To me, it's, it's just like we're at a crucial moment for relationships.

• 1:15:56Speaker 01

  I totally agree. I mean, you know, young guys approached me a lot about the porn thing about concern about like, are they going to be shamed on one of these sites if they, you know, do something wrong or, and I'm not talking about like wrong, like they were forceful. I'm talking about wrong, like they, they made a mistake. Or they said something dumb or, you know, I think a lot of-

• 1:16:13Theo Von?

  I saw one, Nick, didn't you have a site you were pulling up? This is one right here. Are we dating the same guy? Women turn to Facebook to uncover cheating and violence. Experts say use of groups to warn others about dangerous men is indictment on government's failure to keep women safe.

• 1:16:28Speaker 03

  This is from the Guardian, so it's obviously very pro the groups, but there's negative consequences like people being reported just for dating multiple women that they're not exclusive with and stuff like that.

• 1:16:37Theo Von?

  But it's also, it's very pro who you said?

• 1:16:39Speaker 03

  Guardian is very pro the app as like empowerment for women, the way they can stay safe.

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I think apps that protect people against violence are great. I think that, you know, if you look at the data on infidelity in and out of marriage, it's equally distributed between men and women. Okay, it's equally distributed. So there's no, there's no men cheat more than women. It's, it's, it's clearly equally distributed. So the data play that over and over again, you look at divorce data, but you just look at self-report data, all different forms of data collection that really orient towards honesty because people lie all the time and studies and statistics.

• 1:17:14Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:15Speaker 01

  Point to that. I think that, you know, the, the most important thing really, if we're talking about forming intimacy, whether or not sexual intimacy, emotional intimacy or both, is that people feel that their communications are vaulted between them. Right?

• 1:17:30Theo Von?

  What does vaulted mean?

• 1:17:31Speaker 01

  Vaulted means it's just between them. What hap- what, what's exchanged between them stays, stays between them.

• 1:17:36Theo Von?

  That's intimacy in its own right. Is it that it's something here, it's, it's between us, right?

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  That's right. I mean, I, you know, I have a half joking solution to this, but I'm only half joking.

• 1:17:47Theo Von?

  Oh yeah, for sure.

• 1:17:48Speaker 01

  And, and I should say, I've had some-

• 1:17:51Speaker 01

  Great relationships and I've had some not great relationships, right? Um, I'm on great terms with most all of my ex-girlfriends, you know? And I'm so grateful to especially one from about, it was a long relationship, about seven years, where she really taught me how to like have the uncomfortable conversation.

• 1:18:11Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:18:11Speaker 01

  And, and I'm still learning, right? And we're still good friends, but I'll, I'll tell you one of the, the solutions to this.

• 1:18:19Speaker 01

  Men, find a good lesbian friend. You wanna really understand where you're strong, where you're weak, and you wanna learn to just kinda relax around women. Be around a woman that you have no chance of sleeping with.

• 1:18:34Theo Von?

  That buddy oyster, bro.

• 1:18:35Speaker 01

  You know, I have a couple of lesbian friends and I'll tell you, I've always had a couple of lesbian friends. I'm, I'm convinced lesbians are gonna save us all.

• 1:18:41Theo Von?

  God, I gotta get one.

• 1:18:42Speaker 01

  They are.

• 1:18:43Theo Von?

  You know, you know what I'm saying?

• 1:18:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and you gotta get it out of your head that you're gonna sleep with them.

• 1:18:46Theo Von?

  Yes.

• 1:18:47Speaker 01

  Cause these are what we call platinum star lesbians. They are interested in women and women only.

• 1:18:50Theo Von?

  Oh yeah, I'm talking, checking a Westbrook jersey.

• 1:18:52Speaker 01

  So, and they, it's interesting because they have an amazing perspective on men that's from a women's perspective. And they also have an amazing perspective on women. They can say things like, she's crazy. Andrew, you date her, you're gonna be in pain. And they can also say things like, she seems pretty cool. I would date her, except she's not into women.

• 1:19:13Theo Von?

  Ooh, that's good.

• 1:19:14Speaker 01

  Women can see things in women that men can't see. Men can see things in men that obviously women can't see. I mean, I grew up in a big pack of guys. Like, I only hit bullseyes when it comes to assessment of friends and business partners, men and women, but you know, with men, I can just tell, he's a sociopath. He's cool, he's not cool, I can just tell, it's like a sixth sense. The other thing, you know, across the sexes, you know? A macaque monkey, blindfolded on LSD.

• 1:19:41Theo Von?

  God.

• 1:19:42Speaker 01

  Has better optics. And I don't think I'm alone in that, right? Cause we get stirred, it's not all about the anticipation of sex. It's that the, the styles of communication are different. The way that stories and information is turned into things by one sex and it's like a whole different world. Lesbians normalize all of this and they're extremely direct. And some of my best friends are lesbians. I love them to death. I would.

• 1:20:05Theo Von?

  We gotta get some damn lesbians over here.

• 1:20:07Speaker 01

  Lesbians are gonna save us all, man.

• 1:20:08Theo Von?

  Yeah, I love that. That would be a great musical, Lesbians Are Gonna Save Us All. And I believe that, I would love to see that. And I think that, yeah, I think there is this, you know,

• 1:20:22Theo Von?

  for a while there, people were like gays and gays and, you know, don't be gay and that kind of stuff. Probably like 50 years ago, that was like a thing, you know? And then, but now, I think one of the, one of the neat things about gay folks is there are that they have like a special recipe, you know?

• 1:20:41Speaker 01

  Gay men haven't worked out. Like, I have a good friend I've known since childhood. It was, it's wild, because he basically slept with like more women than any of us in high school.

• 1:20:48Theo Von?

  He's a gay gentleman?

• 1:20:49Speaker 01

  He ended up being gay. Went off to college, he's as, he's as gay as could be.

• 1:20:53Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:54Speaker 01

  And, um, you know, and the communication, he's explained, like, the communication in the gay community, gay male community, I don't, you know, so, well, it's just very direct.

• 1:21:02Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:21:02Speaker 01

  People ask for sex if they want, they say no if they don't want to.

• 1:21:04Theo Von?

  Want lunch? Wanna come?

• 1:21:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean.

• 1:21:06Theo Von?

  That's it.

• 1:21:07Speaker 01

  It's a, it.

• 1:21:08Theo Von?

  Straight up.

• 1:21:08Speaker 01

  I mean, the stereotype is it matches, there are some married gay couples, obviously monogamous, et cetera, but it aligns with all the, the male stereotypes of promiscuous, multiple partners. That's, that's the kind of stereotype, right?

• 1:21:23Theo Von?

  You know, grill and cum, that'd be, that'd be my team, dude. If you had a gay flag football team in college, dude, uh, for the, uh, for, at the, um, rec center, grill and cum.

• 1:21:35Speaker 01

  You want to hear some, some wild data on homosexuality and hormones? Okay, so years ago, when I was a graduate student at Berkeley, I was part of a study, I wasn't the main author, that looked at finger length ratios and homosexuality in men and women, and how much testosterone was in utero. Now, I don't want anyone to freak out and just start staring at their fingers, but because it has to be measured correctly.

• 1:21:57Theo Von?

  Alright.

• 1:21:57Speaker 01

  Alright, so, so if you hold, if you hold up your right hand, like I'm holding up my right hand, my ring finger here is a little bit longer. than my pointer finger.

• 1:22:07Theo Von?

  Okay, which one's ring finger?

• 1:22:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, so uh turn but turn it the other way around for me. Yeah, okay, so your ring finger is a little bit longer than your pointer finger.

• 1:22:16Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:16Speaker 01

  Okay, that is the typical heterosexual male pattern.

• 1:22:20Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:22:20Speaker 01

  Now, people are gonna be like, this is bullshit. Listen, this has been replicated more than five times in humans. Okay, so on the right hand. And and you don't know, there's sometimes they look a little more equal.

• 1:22:30Theo Von?

  What is replicated? Five generations?

• 1:22:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, five different studies have repeated this and it holds up every single time. So and and if sometimes you have to measure from that first crease on the palm side.

• 1:22:39Theo Von?

  Oh, cuz it's cheating.

• 1:22:40Speaker 01

  We were to measure it, yeah, so so this this pointer finger is smaller than the ring finger. Okay, it's called the D two to D four ratio. Scientists are super nerdy. Okay, turns out that if you look at gay men, men that identify as gay, there there are very few men that identify as bisexual. Actually, but if you look gay gay men, that difference is much more pronounced, much bigger. They have a hyper male pattern. Now, it can't be due to behavior, right? You could say, well, they're having sex with a lot more people, sexy increases testosterone. No. It's directly related to how much testosterone you were exposed to in utero when you were in your mommy's belly. Now.

• 1:23:21Theo Von?

  Can you get exposed to testosterone in your mom's belly if someone ejaculates into the mom?

• 1:23:25Speaker 01

  Uh, that hasn't been looked at, but um I don't think so. There's a lot to talk about here. So, yeah, you can put that hand up. So. So gay gay men have a hyper male pattern that the index finger, excuse me, the pointer finger tends to be relatively shorter than the ring finger.

• 1:23:43Theo Von?

  So the pointer finger is shorter than the ring finger?

• 1:23:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, on the right hand. Good, the right hand is where it's, there you go. See, so, yep, yeah.

• 1:23:50Theo Von?

  Yeah, there you go. Okay. So it's close.

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  Well, no, no, yours, it's a very small difference in everyone, but in but in gay men, it tends to be much greater now.

• 1:23:59Theo Von?

  So in the gay man, the pointer finger is is a little bit more shorter than the ring finger?

• 1:24:03Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:24:04Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:24:04Speaker 01

  And we're not talking about absolute, we're talking about the ratio. Okay, now, check this out. Now, check it out. Lesbians tend to have the same pattern as heterosexual men, which is not to say they are men, right? Believe me, I got lesbian friends, they are women. A lot of people, when they hear lesbian, they think of like a sort of cartoon stereotype of lesbian. There are a lot, trust me, there are a lot of different lesbian, actually, my lesbian friends recently have been trying to school me on how you spot a lesbian. Turns out, there's all sorts of interesting things that, uh, the lesbian community is gonna get, uh, I'm not supposed to give away these secrets, it's kinda like magicians, you know, but let's just say like number of rings and stuff is our like interesting correlates, okay. Love the lesbian community.

• 1:24:46Theo Von?

  Yeah, we gotta find some good lesbians, man, in the future.

• 1:24:49Speaker 01

  So here's what's wild.

• 1:24:50Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:51Speaker 01

  The more older brothers a guy has, the more testosterone he's exposed to in utero, and the higher probability that it is that he'll be gay.

• 1:24:59Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:25:00Speaker 01

  Now, that's not always the case, it doesn't mean you have five older brothers, you'll be gay, but much higher probability of being gay if you have more older brothers. With each older brother, the probability of a male baby growing up into a gay man increases significantly.

• 1:25:15Theo Von?

  Gosh.

• 1:25:15Speaker 01

  Okay, super interesting. Now, all of this is interesting because it shows that there's what we call organizational effects of hormones in utero. None of this can be because of behavior, in fact, these differences are present at birth.

• 1:25:28Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:25:28Speaker 01

  Okay, and then, of course, the question I asked when I was on the study is if I would chop off my index finger, does my testosterone go up? The answer is no. So, you know, so when we think about like partner selection, like, you know, heterosexual, homosexual, you know, I think years ago, it was thought that this was, you know, there were still people that thought this was a behavioral choice. Listen, news flash, this is clearly a biological phenomenon.

• 1:25:52Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:25:52Speaker 01

  None of this, clearly, like, you know, and, and I understand that, but there's, but there's, of course, also flexibility. You could imagine that some people, because of experience, decide that they're gonna, you know, bat for the other team.

• 1:26:03Theo Von?

  Oh, for sure. A lot of my gay friends are like, it's not a choice, right? It's just like, it's who you are. And I'm like, well, why, after you've had a drink, are you trying to get me to choose it? That's a thing for me.

• 1:26:14Speaker 01

  That's a very good point.

• 1:26:14Theo Von?

  It's like reverse psychology, they're trying to trick you or something, wiener trick.

• 1:26:18Speaker 01

  That's interesting. Um, my lesbian friends have never tried to convince me to be a lesbian. But the uh.

• 1:26:24Theo Von?

  But I don't blame gay dudes if they, cause I think the ultim- the ultimate thing you can get is a gay dude is a straight dude. Do you know? That's the hot chick.

• 1:26:31Speaker 01

  Well, okay. So in the, I can't speak for lesbians, but my close lesbian friends tell me that also, yeah, like flipping somebody.

• 1:26:38Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:38Speaker 01

  For them is like considered a trophy, right?

• 1:26:41Theo Von?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:26:42Speaker 01

  But you know, so the last sort of study in this, uh.

• 1:26:45Theo Von?

  Like catching a Bigfoot or whatever.

• 1:26:47Speaker 01

  There's a, a neuroscientist by the name of Simon Levey, um, who years ago looked in the brain for brain differences between gay and straight men. And he found one. There's a little area of the hypothalamus called the interst- the interstitial nucleus of the anterior hypothalamus, area four. That is different in size between gay men and straight men. Uh, and you know, it's hard to argue that that comes from behavior. It could have. The, the, the, the problem with that study is they got the brains from deceased. Uh, AIDS patients and AIDS is a known neurodegenerative condition. So you know, there's no perfect study of any of this. I don't know how we got into this, but I think basically we're talking about, um, lesbians are going to save us all.

• 1:27:26Speaker 01

  But you know, so one, one thing that I think is so important about the work you do, um, and seriously, one of the reasons I wanted to come here today is because. You're normalizing conversations about addiction, porn, sex, intimacy. You know, you asked why, I think you answered your question earlier. Why is podcasting so big and important now? Cause you're not going to get this kind of conversation on a legacy news channel. They're going to bring in somebody who was like the expert. And they're going to talk about things from the perspective of never having done them. They're not going to reveal anything about themselves. And here we are, kind of, you know, like, uh, like, you know, brushing up against the barbed wire of some of these topics in an effort to really. Talk about them because this is what a lot of people are struggling with.

• 1:28:10Theo Von?

  Yeah. Some of that intimacy, that intimacy disorder stuff was a nightmare for me because when I was in my twenties, I was so nervous around women. That I all like, a lot of times I had erectile dysfunction, you know?

• 1:28:21Speaker 01

  Could you talk to your partner about it?

• 1:28:24Theo Von?

  Uh.

• 1:28:24Speaker 01

  Probably back then it was probably taboo, right?

• 1:28:26Theo Von?

  Oh yeah. No, I think I just felt defeated, you know? It felt very much like, damn, something's wrong with me. I don't know what's wrong with me. You know, and it was like, um.

• 1:28:39Theo Von?

  I remember I had, uh, it's funny because kind of with like my first girlfriend, I didn't really have it. And then it started to happen. And then the same thing happened with my second girlfriend. And then after that, once I kind of got into like age 23, it was, or like 24, it was like a problem for a long time.

• 1:28:59Speaker 01

  It was like a bug in your brain.

• 1:29:00Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah. So once it was like, I knew it was there, then it was like always this thing. So, oh, fuck, I can't even, I, I, I forgot about all these nightmare times where you'd be on a date and you'd be like, how's this date going? And then like, are we gonna get like intimate and what's gonna happen? And I would like, you know, I remember like, um, I would eat like, you know, those gas station weiner pills like, uh, you know, like Black Attack 40 or whatever.

• 1:29:25Speaker 01

  I've seen them on the counter.

• 1:29:26Theo Von?

  Work, dude.

• 1:29:27Speaker 01

  I think they're all just caffeine and stimulants. Oh, bro. Can't be good. Can't be good.

• 1:29:32Theo Von?

  One of them, I took, yeah. Just zooming on to some of those. No, that's Dayquil. I mean, that's not gonna help anybody. Uh, yeah, Triple Green, Rhino 87, Macho Man, um, White Black Guy. That's a crazy name for one.

• 1:29:46Speaker 01

  Wait, what?

• 1:29:47Theo Von?

  Yeah, I made that up.

• 1:29:48Speaker 01

  Okay, I didn't see that there. I have a visual defect or something.

• 1:29:51Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah. Uh, Body Beast or whatever, King Kong.

• 1:29:55Speaker 01

  But nowadays, a lot of this has worked out because, you know, the, the drug Tadalfil, um, also known as Cialis, was developed as a way to increase blood flow to the prostate. By the way, every male 35 or older, this was suggested by the Director of Male Sexual Health at Stanford School of Medicine, Mike Eisenberg. So I'm not just pulling this out of, you know, nowhere. Every male 35 or older should probably be on a low dose, 2.5 to 5 milligrams of Tadalfil per, in the evening. It's very inexpensive. It does require a prescription. Why? Because the prostate needs blood flow. And it also serves, you know, it has this pro erectile function, right? And, and of course, one has to do all the other things correctly. You gotta be sleeping, exercising, et cetera. Also, a lot of guys think they should be doing Kegels, you know, that thing where you like,

• 1:30:39Speaker 01

  you know, kind of tight. That actually will tighten your pelvic floor and block blood flow to the penis and make erection more difficult.

• 1:30:45Theo Von?

  Had men in it.

• 1:30:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. So they did, you know, a lot of this stuff wasn't taught.

• 1:30:48Theo Von?

  Yeah, I remember I would take so much sometime. I remember one time I was trying to like perform like have sex with this gal or something and my I'd taken so many of those wiener pills. My nose just started bleeding all over this woman and I was like, what is happening?

• 1:31:04Speaker 01

  Did she freak out?

• 1:31:05Theo Von?

  I don't know. It was in Miami. Everybody we had like a belly full of crab or whatever. Been in this like this nice crab place. But it was like, and my nose just it was just like, that was crazy. But it just became this crazy dance in my head where it was like wiener pills, trying to be normal, like trying to calm down, like putting ice in my shirt. Just all these things to like chill, like just be able to be normal for sex. That shit was a nightmare.

• 1:31:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean.

• 1:31:33Theo Von?

  It was a nightmare. And then you're stuck in this universe where that is becomes like your whole battle. And then you get afraid to even talk to girls sometimes or relate to them because you're like, well, what, you know, if I take a girl down this road and it's not able to work out, then who am I? Then where am I at? You know?

• 1:31:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then imagine that, but layered on top of that is the fear of being shamed by. Oh. Listen, I don't know that I should, you know, I'm just gonna bring it up. I don't know the specifics, but I remember hearing a few years ago, there was a comedian who was like shamed for being bad in bed or something. Was this like, and that was one of the first kind of it was he was kind of canceled for being bad in bed. Wasn't that? That was, all right. Well, and listen, if there was like coercive stuff or whatever, I don't know. But I wasn't there, obviously. Obviously, didn't read the article either. But I think, you know, you layer on top the fear of being shamed, right? And all of a sudden, you know, like you're talking about like collapsing a young male's existence.

• 1:32:28Speaker 01

  I mean, you know, I think, yeah, I like I said, for the fourth time, I'm forgive me for repeating myself, 49, so I.

• 1:32:36Theo Von?

  You look young, man.

• 1:32:37Speaker 01

  Thanks, man. I feel good. Well, listen, I quit drinking. I never drank that much, but also I've been doing things that I love. I was gonna say that one of the things that'll keep you young is dopamine.

• 1:32:44Theo Von?

  Really?

• 1:32:45Speaker 01

  Not from pharmacology, but being in pursuit of things that you love. Positive anticipation, but I think that.

• 1:32:51Theo Von?

  Let's go into that in just a second, but let's finish out this, what you were saying.

• 1:32:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that, you know.

• 1:32:58Speaker 01

  I benefited tremendously from being open with that first girlfriend.

• 1:33:04Theo Von?

  Yes.

• 1:33:05Speaker 01

  That first girlfriend just saying, hey, like, you know, like, she had this like buff boyfriend in another school, but actually it was wild because he ended up killing himself. And that was years later. And I remember thinking this guy was like the football hero, right? He ended up committing suicide. And I remember thinking, wow, I thought in my mind, he was like, couldn't be outdone, right? And so talking to her, I remember her just saying like, first she said something like, we were kids, right? We were like 16, you know, she said, you know, you're, you're wonderful. And I remember thinking like, I don't want to be called wonderful. Like, I'm trying to get good at this thing, right? And I think if I've learned anything, like if I could send like a, like all points bulletin out, it's like,

• 1:33:47Speaker 01

  everything we know about the erectile response is that it's what we call parasympathetic. It comes from the relaxation response. Orgasm is related to, it's almost like a stress of sorts. It's pleasureful, but high arousal.

• 1:33:59Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:59Speaker 01

  The key to all of it is a lot of exhales, a lot of nasal breathing, and just slow the whole thing down. Slow the whole thing down. That, you, you, you know, later, once you're comfortable with somebody, if you got like five minutes and you're gonna like go for the, the quickie thing in the kitchen before you leave to work. Okay, that's a, that's a whole program.

• 1:34:20Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:34:20Speaker 01

  Okay. That's like that, uh, that guy lethal shooter on Instagram, the guy can make a basket from anywhere. Like, he worked up to that. The, uh, what you're trying to do is slow down the whole thing, like, and get into sensation. You gotta get out of your head.

• 1:34:36Theo Von?

  Yes.

• 1:34:36Speaker 01

  Now, it's one thing to say get out of your head. It's another to do it. So the whole process there starts with just only going so far as then you communicate with her, slow down. These things have a real beauty to them because when people start entering that dance and communicating well with one another. All of a sudden, like, the magic of biology takes over.

• 1:34:57Theo Von?

  God, yeah.

• 1:34:57Speaker 01

  And then someone thinks, oh, well, now it's gonna go back. Then you just kind of restart and do the whole thing. And nowadays, I think, young males go quickly. They're like, I'm gonna take 20 milligrams. It's a dial fill this out. Listen, that probably would help, but learning how to do this, this thing that we call intimacy, right? I mean, intimacy is a lot of things, but knowing that what's happening there is between the two of you. And that also means you guys, because you know, there's also been a long history of men talking about all the women they slept with. And then that doesn't feel good necessarily to

• 1:35:25Theo Von?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:35:27Speaker 01

  You know, so the real, the art of intimacy is something that we've lost. And listen, I'm not saying that all sexes has this element, you know? Sometimes people just want to get together and get raw, like, but that's, that's a, you know, that's an advanced skill that you may or may not want to engage in.

• 1:35:42Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:35:42Speaker 01

  And I think that slowing the whole thing down, like, hey, we're gonna be together in bed four times before we ever actually have intercourse. Like, that's weird to look at while I say that, but you know what I'm talking about.

• 1:35:54Theo Von?

  No, hell no, it would have been great.

• 1:35:56Speaker 01

  If this is the kind of thing that can transform, not only avoids problems, but can transform your notion of like, what's possible in relationship.

• 1:36:05Theo Von?

  Oh, I had to work.

• 1:36:06Speaker 01

  Slow, slow, slow, slow. And then, once that intimacy is set, then there can be some, you know, more adventurous exploration at speed. But, you know, it's all about, it's all about slowing that thing down, slowing the whole process down.

• 1:36:24Theo Von?

  Yeah, dude, I remember, oh, dude, I remember this fricking, my girlfriend at the time, I was like, I thought I couldn't get an erection, right? So I had her call me a different name, like, we're making out.

• 1:36:36Speaker 01

  That was your, that was your solution?

• 1:36:37Theo Von?

  Well, this dude, Robert, in our, in our grade, was getting mad erections, everybody was saying. And I'd be like, call me, and I, oh, this is so embarrassing, but I'd be like, call me Robert, call me Robert. And it didn't fucking help. And she's like, it was just the most embarrassed, that shit was super embarrassing, dude. Because even if I was Robert, I couldn't even get an erection at the time, so that was horrible. Trying to think of what else happened. Dude, oh, I've gone, I mean, you know, over the years, I've gone, you know, down the gamut of all of it, like, hiring escorts, or, um, you know, thinking like, oh, we need more than one part, like, all that, like, just thinking like, all these things would change it, you know, drugs, alcohol, like, all these different things to, like, trying to fine tune how I would feel okay. I think even just to be in like a

• 1:37:21Theo Von?

  Conversa- like, just to be like in an intimate conversation, like, oh, I wished I would have from the beginning been like, just with a girl, I've been, hey, like, this is what's going on, and this is how I'm feeling, and this is what's popping, you know, and like, and even made it cool or whatever, and it would have brought us closer together, but instead, I took this huge bypass of like, things that I thought would, like, I thought that intimacy was just a, um, one man show.

• 1:37:47Speaker 01

  Well, that, yeah, it's so important what you're saying, that it was all your responsibility.

• 1:37:51Theo Von?

  Does that make any sense or not?

• 1:37:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, listen, newsflash, men and women, there are women who are great in bed, and there are women who are not great in bed.

• 1:37:58Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:37:59Speaker 01

  You know, there are great lovers who are women, there are not great lovers. I'll tell you what makes a great female lover.

• 1:38:04Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:05Speaker 01

  Somebody who can relax and enjoy herself, and part of that is the communication, and also, somebody who's tuned in to what works for you. You know, it took me a long time, because I, listen, I think all young men deal with this, right? You want to perform well, and it's interesting, you mentioned Robert, and I mentioned this other guy that sadly eventually killed himself, but every young male knows the experience of, there's like this satellite male, you're holding yourself up against this image and an idea, right? This image and idea, that's very dangerous thinking. You know what I think? I think that every male should understand that at some point, you're the satellite male.

• 1:38:39Theo Von?

  Ah.

• 1:38:39Speaker 01

  You're the satellite male. So you gotta get out of that kind of thinking, and understand that, like, like, dancing, like, athletics, like, it takes time to get good at. You need reps.

• 1:38:51Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:51Speaker 01

  And you need reps under conditions where you can learn. You know, I think, you know, it sounds like you put the pressure on yourself to be like a sexual athlete from go, and like, you gotta learn the layups, no pun intended, you gotta learn the, your free throws, you gotta learn-

• 1:39:04Theo Von?

  Lay downs, brother, I look at all that pornography, that's what it was. I've been looking at all that porno, you know, and it got me all bent out.

• 1:39:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, if you want to play basketball, you don't go look at Lethal Shooter's Instagram, and go, I'm gonna do that tomorrow.

• 1:39:17Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:17Speaker 01

  I mean, he built up to that, you know, so, I think, we're using analogy here and metaphor, but, it's just so important that, oh, this guy-

• 1:39:25Theo Von?

  Right there, Lethal Shooter, huh?

• 1:39:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, this kid, this guy is like-

• 1:39:30Theo Von?

  He's just like that, huh?

• 1:39:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I'll tell you, no, it's reps, it's reps, reps, reps. He did a live one night that I caught really late at night when I was in New York. He's, he can visually measure the angle the ball has to go in. He's not shoot, he is shooting for the basket, but he's trying to put the ball in a cone of a particular angle. He's looking above the basket at the, at the angle he needs to sink that thing. He'll put a gummy bear into a 16 ounce bottle from across a court.

• 1:39:56Theo Von?

  Damn.

• 1:39:56Speaker 01

  And then he yells at you for, for doubting him.

• 1:39:59Theo Von?

  Oh, I love that.

• 1:40:00Speaker 01

  What's he doing here? Oh, he's, what do they call that game?

• 1:40:03Theo Von?

  Gamer, cornhole or?

• 1:40:05Speaker 01

  What a weird name for a game.

• 1:40:07Theo Von?

  Yeah, you wonder how it started.

• 1:40:08Speaker 01

  Boom, look at this guy.

• 1:40:10Theo Von?

  Beanbag.

• 1:40:11Speaker 01

  And he goes, I understand it now, so.

• 1:40:13Theo Von?

  Yeah, he's really good, that man lethal shooter right there.

• 1:40:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, he reps, he worked up to that. And he didn't work up to it by picking up a basketball, metaphorically speaking, and saying, okay, I gotta make this or else my life is destroyed and people are gonna be talking about it.

• 1:40:26Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:27Speaker 01

  So I think there has to be a private world, an intimate world where people can explore in a healthy way, communicate in a healthy way, know it's between them. And then you get to this beautiful vista with intimacy where you're like, I love this or I love that. And you know, I mean.

• 1:40:44Theo Von?

  And it brings people together.

• 1:40:45Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, listen, I mean, I, I wanna be respectful to, you know, my former partners, but you know, it's one of these things where you go like, wow, like I really, I really learned something from that person. Now, of course, as a man, you also have to have an ego intact enough to know she learned a few things from somebody else too, right? Unless you, unless it's a first relationship.

• 1:41:03Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:41:03Speaker 01

  This notion that you're the only person that's ever been there is quite rare and part of being a grown male is accepting that. And frankly, you know, different, different strokes for different folks, you know? But I think you gotta understand, like, we're all, we're all here because either in a dish or in a human, sperm, egg, okay? This drive that's dopamine driven to reproduce and sex, the reason those things are so closely woven is, and that drives so much a culture and behavior and shame and addiction and pleasure and all this stuff is because. It's why we're here. Like, I mean, this is, this is, this is everything. And you know, now Elon and other people are talking about how the, you know, the, the replacement rate for humans is way, way down because we have birth control and people aren't having sex

• 1:41:47Speaker 01

  as much. I mean, it is possible that humans fail to replace themselves as a species, you know? And then you got guys like him who are trying to make up for that deficit.

• 1:41:57Theo Von?

  Oh yeah, he's popping off, dude.

• 1:41:59Speaker 01

  He's got like, what, like 14 kids or something?

• 1:42:00Theo Von?

  He'll knock up a fucking parking meter, that dude. He don't give a damn, boy. He's the only dude who put, yeah, he put, definitely, he'll, he'll get it. I want to pivot a little bit. I saw an, there's, we're starting to see stuff, like I've been, I've been noticing recently, these articles about measles. Have you seen this stuff hitting the airwaves? Is that realistic? It just starts to seem, if you can see one of them, Nick can bring it up. Person may have spread measles at Shakira concert in MetLife Stadium, health officials say, right? This just seems like a person who attended a Shakira concert at MetLife Stadium on May 15th was infected with measles and may have spread the highly contagious virus at the event, health officials say. This almost reads like the beginning of a movie,

• 1:42:45Theo Von?

  right? Like, highly contagious, infected, spread, um, at a concert. So it makes it super scary, right? All these, but like, all the viruses tend to spread more quickly indoors. Measles can live in an airspace for up to two hours and is highly transmissible, especially amongst the unvaccinated. So this is an article, what's this in?

• 1:43:06Speaker 03

  This is northjersey.com, which is owned by USA Today.

• 1:43:08Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:43:09Speaker 01

  Conventional media. So.

• 1:43:11Theo Von?

  So I'm just like, what is going on here? Are we, are, are they just trying to see another thing that will stick to society? What do you, as a scientist, what do you even think when you read something like this?

• 1:43:21Speaker 01

  Okay, uh, super important, specific and general question you're asking. First question as a scientist I would ask is, what was the frequency of people with measles coming into the hospital before there was a focus on measles?

• 1:43:34Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 1:43:35Speaker 01

  Like, two years ago, before the discussion about measles and vaccines was as prominent, at least measles vaccines, right? Back then it was all about COVID vaccines. But, so I'd say, how, you know, if we were to look in the medical history, because hospitals keep records, you know, in the, uh, this was in East Rutherford. Okay, so in New Jersey, I have relatives in New Jersey, how many measles cases were identified? In the last 10 years.

• 1:43:58Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:43:59Speaker 01

  And what percentage of those reported having been in a public place prior? That's what I'd want to know because that will tell you whether or not this is the media amplifying. Here we go.

• 1:44:10Theo Von?

  Texas outbreak drives up early US measles cases in early 2025. Number of measles cases reported in the US per year.

• 1:44:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, we hear about these things like bird flu. Remember a few years back, it was monkeypox?

• 1:44:21Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:21Speaker 01

  Monkeypox, we don't hear about monkeypox anymore. That was like monkeypox is coming for us.

• 1:44:26Theo Von?

  Yeah, every, every, every couple of months, there's something that pops off like this every few months. It's like hoof mouth syndrome or canary baby, you know?

• 1:44:34Speaker 01

  There are cases of measles that can be very detrimental, but there's an episode of the Brady Bunch. Do you remember this episode of the Brady Bunch? Where they all get measles and then at the end, Alice walks in and she's got the spots and she goes, I've got measles too. You know, when I was a kid, I had the chickenpox. Now, I'm not trying to make light of the measles, right? Like any infectious disease, there's inflammation of the body and brain. There are cases where these diseases cause serious long-term effects. And then there are cases where it has less of an effect. The most important thing to understand for me would be what are the real statistics of like, is measles becoming more frequent? Is that tied to the shift? Because let's face it, regardless of where you stand on the issue of vaccination, people are now taking a look again at vaccination. The vaccine schedules have expanded, right?

• 1:45:19Speaker 01

  You know, I'm part of the medical community. I'm an employee at Stanford School of Medicine and I, I would say I fall more, just full disclosure, into the more conventional standpoint of, of this. I want to be really clear because of, I do believe that there are certain vaccinations that are highly beneficial. I also think there are a number of vaccinations that for public health reasons, should be explored further if for no other reason to discover that yes, we were right or no, we were wrong. I, it's just critically important. I mean, you know, I think any good, any self-respecting scientist would say, those are the data, let's look again. Now, there's this real twist in the data around. The autism vaccine thing, that's very, that's really unfortunate.

• 1:46:04Speaker 01

  And this is one of the reasons why this is such a hot button issue is that the guy Andrew Wakefield, who originally tried to tie the vaccine to autism, he was found guilty of fraud. Okay, now, I wasn't involved in the papers or the case, but like, that puts a twist in everything.

• 1:46:18Theo Von?

  Did he go to jail?

• 1:46:19Speaker 01

  I believe he did, or he at least lost his medical license. Okay, there have been other instances, you know, of scientific fraud. But that one in particular caused the entire field to assume he was completely wrong about everything. And now there are folks like Robert Kennedy, who is, like him or not, is our head of HHS. Okay, I actually know Robert. I actually am going to host Jay Bhattacharya, who is my colleague at Stanford, on the, he's the head of NIH. And so, I think right now, there's a, here, what were the consequences?

• 1:46:48Theo Von?

  Andrew Wakefield did not go to prison, although he was found guilty of serious professional misconduct by the UK General Medical Council and was struck off the medical register, effectively ending his career as a physician. There is no record or evidence that he was ever criminally prosecuted or imprisoned for his actions related to the fraudulent 1998 Lancet study linking the MMR vaccine to autism. The sanctions against him were professional and civil, not criminal.

• 1:47:09Speaker 01

  So, an important thing that must be done, I, I know this issue is, you know, I'm going to catch hate either way.

• 1:47:14Theo Von?

  What's a hot issue right now?

• 1:47:15Speaker 01

  It's a super hot issue. Listen, as a parent, can you imagine? You have a kid, and your kid seems, for all measures, perfectly healthy. Has some treatment, vaccine, or a pill, or a trip to, you know, the supermarket, and that kid fundamentally changes their behavior afterwards. You know, the one thing we know is, you know, this is also a deep hypothalamic circuit, as we say. There is a hardwired circuit for mothers, especially. You know, dads can be protective, but mothers to protect their young. So, you know, when the moms are pissed off and curious, they are unrelenting. And no amount of discussion about that was resolved because the Wakefield thing was gone is going to satisfy them. So, my, my personal take is...

• 1:48:00Speaker 01

  Run the studies you need to run. Make sure they're run properly from with an unbiased look at all of this. So important because the thing about vaccines and autism is really a microcosm for a much larger theme about how much can we trust the medical community? And listen, I know scientists, I was weaned in this, my dad's a scientist, like most scientists, like 99.9% of scientists want to get things right. We are in the business of trying to untease the secrets of nature and do good things with them. Okay? And yet there are those that will manipulate the system. No one goes into science to get rich. They go into biotech to get rich, but you don't become a bench scientist at a university to get rich. Trust me.

• 1:48:41Theo Von?

  But how can those scientists be manipulated as a group? Like when you look back at like, how can that happen? Like, is it journals that are compromised? Is it the medical energy that gets compromised? But how do you have like a whole, you know?

• 1:48:52Speaker 01

  Sure. So I'll try and keep this relatively succinct. This is a whole landscape and it's something that is like really deep and important to me as a science communicator, health communicator, who has friends on both sides, you know, of these debates. The most important thing to understand is scientists are trying to figure out the truth. They are also human and they are highly incentivized to advance their careers. One of the things that I've observed in science is not people making up data. That's exceedingly rare. But scientists sometimes, when they don't get the answer they want in an experiment, they'll come up with reasons for why that experiment probably wasn't run right and maybe we should discard the data.

• 1:49:34Theo Von?

  Okay, let's say it one more time. When they don't get?

• 1:49:36Speaker 01

  When they don't get the answer they want, they will come up with reasons why, oh, that antibody wasn't as fresh or, you know, the conditions weren't right. And they will start to steer the data, steer the experiment. I have observed that.

• 1:49:48Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:49:49Speaker 01

  Okay, I've observed that a lot in my career, sadly. Far less common are people outright making up data, what we call fudging data, just like making up numbers. There's a famous case in nanotechnology of this kid whose last name was Shon. He was like a wonderkin in the sense that he had like, it's very hard to publish papers in Science or Nature. This is like the Super Bowl rings of science. I've had a couple in Nature, a couple in Science, and I feel immensely blessed for that. Shon was publishing 12 papers a year in Nature and Science.

• 1:50:17Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:50:17Speaker 01

  And at some point, people start looking more closely at their data, okay? And what happened? They saw that the random noise plots, random should be random, right? You don't need to be a scientist or a genius to understand that random should be random. He was so lazy that he was replotting the random noise in two different experiments. You can't get the same random noise in two different experiments. So there are bad apples like him. He's gone now, but most scientists are trying to get it right. And yet, there's this thing that we have to constantly check ourselves on. This is why you have to, what we call, blind the data. You look at it not knowing what condition you're looking at. This is why replication is so key. And the big problem in science, and I do think this new administration cares about this.

• 1:51:02Speaker 01

  It's hard to get a job as a professor for replicating work. Everyone wants to see the new thing. So a PhD student comes into my lab, they want to study something. We rarely say, "Oh, let's go do what someone else did, make sure they're right." No, you pick something new. So a lot of mistakes of past get kind of baked into the field, and this is what happened in the Alzheimer's field. This is why, you know, one mistake, which probably was somebody outright fudging as well, making stuff up, kind of get woven into the lineage, then other papers get published more easily. And then, lo and behold, 25 years later, we say, "We don't have a single good treatment for Alzheimer's. Best thing you can do is get good sleep. There's a little study out today about creatine maybe helping." But we're just nipping around the corners of this extremely important problem.

• 1:51:42Speaker 01

  I, I, I must say, and this is not for political correctness, listen, I'm a tenured professor at Stanford, so I don't have to worry about, quote unquote, "losing my job." I mean, there are ways you can lose your job even with tenure, but I just want to say, with all the bad things about science, the Wakefield thing, the Alzheimer's thing, the replication crisis, the lack of incentive for people to replicate work, I do have to say something very important. There are so many treatments for diseases that exist nowadays that we take for granted that were born out of basic research. Scientists in a lab just trying to figure things out without the idea of a treatment someday. My scientific great grandparents, I mentioned them earlier, David Hubel and Torrance Weasel, did that experiment of closing one eye in

• 1:52:25Speaker 01

  a kitty cat and monkey, showed that the brain is immensely plastic. That gave birth, excuse me, that gave birth to an entire field of the molecules involved and the hormones involved and why it shuts down with age, how to open plasticity in adulthood. In many ways, it's given rise to this whole field of psychedelics for the treatment of of of brain disorders in order to reopen plasticity. They did not do those experiments thinking there would be any medical application, but we now know, as compared to the seventies, when a kid has a lazy eye or a cataract, or what we call strabismus, or any of that, we now know to get in and treat those eye diseases early while the brain is still plastic. Their work has saved the vision, in other words, has prevented blindness of countless people around

• 1:53:09Speaker 01

  the world. And there's this whole initiative in in places overseas to remove cataracts, save vision. So I can give you a million, not a million, I can give you thousands of examples of that. Immunotherapies for cancer, neuroplasticity, the incredible work being done on psilocybin for depression, MDMA, which hopefully will be approved by the FDA soon for the treatment of PTSD, incredible 70%, 70% remission rates. The understanding of that drug, methylene dioxy, methamphetamine, it's methamphetamine with a little twist, okay? The understanding of that was born out of serious scientists slaving away in their labs for very little pay because they love discovery. And and I'm not saying that

• 1:53:52Speaker 01

  to to just, you know, kind of say, oh, all scientists are great. But I think we have to be very careful. The replication crisis is real. We need to take another look at all issues related to public health. You can tell I'm very passionate about this. Listen, I text Bobby all the time. Yeah, I'm like, listen, man, we got to look at this. We got to look at, and you know what? We can't allow allow ourselves to go too far in one direction or the other. I say, let's not waste any time. Let's take a look at all these vaccines again in great controlled studies.

• 1:54:18Theo Von?

  Yeah, what did we lose by looking at them?

• 1:54:19Speaker 01

  Nothing. But I'll tell you, to say what I'm saying here, like, I'm, I'm gonna, this will be cut and clipped and contorted. You know, I'm just gonna come out with it trad medias, you know, the moment I started showing up on Rogan. And listen, I think Joe Rogan has done tremendous amount of good for science communication. Matt Walker, me, David Sinclair, other people on there, physicists, you know, but then the adjacency to anyone who's asking these larger questions puts you in the bull's eye of, oh, you know, he, you know, Andrew's a science denier, Flat Earth, or whatever. No, I believe that any solid field should be subject to self scrutiny and outside scrutiny.

• 1:54:57Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:58Speaker 01

  And this is why, listen, I publish a number of papers and we all, I always say, listen, I'm happy to be wrong for the right reasons, like we were trying our damnedest to get it right. You can't be wrong for the wrong reasons, like making shit up. You make a mistake, you correct yourself. It's called being an adult. And you can tell that like my, this gets my, my energy going. Because I will tell you, I am very concerned about the future of science in this country either way. Cause we've got a split right down the middle and there's all this finger pointing. And somebody, hopefully Jay Bhattacharya, our new director of the NIH, God willing, he's gonna bridge this gap. I'm trying to do what I can behind the scenes to really get people talking. Cause there's so much shit talking behind the, you know, I hate them and I hate them. And then, but listen, we all gotta live in this world. Forgive me for going on a monologue.

• 1:55:43Theo Von?

  No, I don't care.

• 1:55:44Speaker 01

  But I'm telling you.

• 1:55:45Theo Von?

  I'm glad.

• 1:55:45Speaker 01

  We, we need, we need to take a hard look at ourselves and, and we really, really need to, whatever we explore, we need to explore it properly. But scientists are good people, man. And I don't make my living doing science anymore. So I can say that with no bias. They're good people, 99.9% of them. And then, and those bad apples, excuse my language, but fuck them.

• 1:56:05Theo Von?

  Oh, for sure.

• 1:56:06Speaker 01

  Because they, because they ruined it all for everybody.

• 1:56:08Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah. Well, and it also leads to impairment. It leads to disease, it leads to, you know, atrocities that happen to people and it's for, usually for the sake of profit. Do you believe that Big Pharma would lobby against certain tests being done? Or residual testing, reexamination of, of, of past findings, et cetera, in order to keep things a certain way?

• 1:56:37Speaker 01

  Okay, so.

• 1:56:38Theo Von?

  Does that make sense?

• 1:56:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. So two things about Big Pharma. First of all, I don't have any direct links to Big Pharma. You know, people think because I'm at Stanford, I've been accused of being part of MKUltra. I don't even know what that is, but sounds scary, you know?

• 1:56:50Theo Von?

  Oh, I don't know, dude. What's MKUltra? Jets fucking lost, I know that, dude.

• 1:56:53Speaker 01

  I've been told I'm a CIA plant, MKUltra. Man, that stuff is crazy.

• 1:56:57Theo Von?

  Oh dude, somebody told me I went to the Middle East or something. Somebody said I was working for something, Bangladesh or something. I was like, dude, I don't, I've never had anybody ask me to do anything.

• 1:57:06Speaker 01

  I wasn't even born. I wasn't even born. I was born in 75.

• 1:57:09Theo Von?

  Yeah, well.

• 1:57:10Speaker 01

  So, so Big Pharma, look, they're a business, okay? So, there are drugs like SSRIs, which we will say have been not so helpful for the treatment of depression for most people, but guess what? SSRIs are tremendously helpful for people with OCD. Real OCD is a condition where the compulsion, the behavior makes the obsession worse. Imagine a mosquito bite, every time you scratch it, itches worse and worse and worse, destroys lives. SSRIs have helped those people a lot. The drug companies are highly incentivized to keep drugs out of generic so that the prices come down. They do a game. I know this because I was involved in exploring drugs for eye disease years ago and I would learn from these companies.

• 1:57:51Speaker 01

  If you can have a drug that goes through all the research and development, costs millions of dollars, and then is used, say, for the treatment of a heart condition. If you can bypass the need to do all the safety studies because you discovered that that drug is now also useful for, say, preserving vision and macular degeneration or glaucoma, or diabetes, whatever. You save yourself a lot of money. Same drug, you maintain the patent, and you can't have generic competitors. So drug companies, I don't think people talk about this enough, are highly incentivized to not discover new drugs, but rather to continue with the same drugs and find new uses for the same drugs.

• 1:58:24Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:58:25Speaker 01

  That's rarely talked about. That's a serious problem. The other thing about drug companies is-

• 1:58:29Theo Von?

  Because the negative side effect of that is what? That something gets kind of shoehorned in and working for something, but the-

• 1:58:34Speaker 01

  Very expensive drugs for everybody, because if you look at the difference between, like, there are these new sleep medications called the Doras. They shut down the wakefulness system as opposed to making you sleepy. They have a lot less abuse potential. They're like $300 a month. And as long as they can maintain the patent on that, there won't be the generic version because it probably costs, the profit margins on these things are huge because they're trying to cover the research and development they did. There's, you know, so that's just one example, but the drug companies are incentivized. Yeah, the Doras. I've tried them. I felt, I felt lousy.

• 1:59:04Theo Von?

  And is that like, um, uh, Ambien or whatever?

• 1:59:08Speaker 01

  No. So Ambien is a problem because it can give you memory issues. This works through something called the hypocretinorexin system. It was discovered in narcoleptic dogs in the basement of Stanford, believe it or not. There's all sorts of cool stuff there, but, but the drug companies are, are a concern in one sense, which is that, look, dopamine, as we learned, is involved in movement. It's involved in reward. Schizophrenics take drugs to block dopamine. And if you see someone on the street corner, nowadays it's complicated with fentanyl, but you see the person kind of writhing. It's called tardive dyskinesia. That's because it, those drugs, the, and the neuroleptics, as we call them, reduce the auditory hallucinations. They relieve a lot of those symptoms of schizophrenia, but it also hits dopamine in the spinal system, the, the motor system.

• 1:59:51Speaker 01

  And then they have these motor side effects. So there are, the problem is most pharmaceuticals have side effects because most

• 1:59:59Speaker 01

  chemicals like dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine, they're in multiple places in the brain, not just the area that you're concerned about repairing. So, you know, I'm not super anti-big pharma, but I will say I am very pro self-directed healthcare. There's why I'm, you know, a big part of my initiative with the podcast is get people, getting sunlight in their eyes in the evening. Get some sunlight in your eyes in the after, in, in the morning, excuse me, sunlight in your eyes in the morning. You know, hydrate, exercise, get on a normal circadian rhythm. One of the most important things for mental health is bright mornings and days, dark nights.

• 2:00:33Theo Von?

  And how do you get on that circadian rhythm, man? That's something that I've struggled with. That thing, my circadian rhythm is, God, it's a, I'm going to turn into a cicada.

• 2:00:40Speaker 01

  Well, we got to get you some of the red lens glasses. I'm not doing a promotional here, but getting the screens dim or wearing red lens glasses in the evening to block the, the blue and green lights.

• 2:00:48Theo Von?

  But how to even set up a circadian rhythm?

• 2:00:50Speaker 01

  Bright light in the morning. If you wake up and the sun's out, get outside, take that brimmed hat off, take the sunglasses off, look in the direction of the sun. You don't have to force yourself to get five to 15 minutes of sunlight, drink your coffee, get some exercise, maybe even do like a hundred jumping jacks, get your system going. Very simple way to put this is early in the day, you want movement, caffeine, hydration, sunlight. If you can't get sunlight, you get bright light from like an artificial light. You can get a 10,000 lux light on Amazon for like a hundred bucks. I have no relationship to any of those companies. Get your morning kind of going. You know, it's hard to be Jaco Willing. It's hard, but you gotta kind of force a little bit of that on yourself. And then the afternoon taper off the caffeine, dim the screens, lower your heart rate.

• 2:01:34Speaker 01

  Do some long exhale breathing, you know, just take it down a notch. And over about three days of doing that, what you'll find is I start to wake up in anticipation of the day. You have this circadian rhythm that learns, well, I'm going to be active in a few hours. And you start waking up in the morning at a particular time. That whole phenomenon, you set your clock for 7:00 AM and you wake up at 6:59. Your brain is clocking time.

• 2:01:58Theo Von?

  So does that mean you need to go to bed at like 8:00 PM for a week to get your circadian rhythm set? Or what's the truth?

• 2:02:02Speaker 01

  Everyone's slightly different, different chronotypes. So I do best, for instance, I know if I had total control, going to bed sometime between 10:00 and 11:00 PM. And I wake up around 6:00 AM. Okay, yes, I can go to bed at nine and wake up at four, but I can't stick to that schedule very long. My system just genetically is not wired for it. Some people are real night owls. They do best going to sleep at 2:00 AM and waking up at 10:00. They just feel better. Try a couple of different schedules for at least three days. And then wherever you feel kind of most yourself, kind of like, you know, for me, going to bed by 10:30 and waking up by six is kind of a natural antidepressant. When I sleep in and go to bed late, I start feeling off. Then I start abusing caffeine because I love caffeine, love, love, love caffeine. And I'm a big fan of caffeine.

• 2:02:46Theo Von?

  I like it.

• 2:02:47Speaker 01

  But, but then I start abusing it. I start taking too much and then, you know, and then it, you know, potentially can drift into other stimulants. You know, and then you're, then you're a mess. So, but you know, some people do really well going to bed at 8:30 and waking up at 4:00 AM. But look. The world is not really wired for that. If you're gonna have any kind of social life.

• 2:03:06Theo Von?

  Like Mark Wahlberg or something. He's always has things like I wake up at three.

• 2:03:10Speaker 01

  Well, him and Ari Emanuel from WME. Like, yeah, those guys are like the 4 a.m. club. They're like texting each other and like up. I get texts from Ari every once in a while. He's like, man, up early. He's hyperbaric chamber. But he's, I mean, he's got like 12 cylinders. That guy is like, go, go, go, go, go, go. And listen, some people need more sleep than others. I do great on six or six and a half. When I sleep eight, I actually feel more groggy.

• 2:03:31Theo Von?

  Ooh.

• 2:03:32Speaker 01

  So if you get your schedule right, you don't need quite as much sleep. But before I came out here today, I did a half hour, what I call, it's used to be called yoga nidra. It's non-sleep deep rest, NSDR. You just do long exhale breathing. You listen to a script. You relax your body. The data show you come out of that with your dopamine level 60% higher than you went into it. It replenishes your vigor.

• 2:03:53Theo Von?

  Yoga nidra?

• 2:03:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, yoga nidra or NSDR, non-sleep deep rest. And these are zero cost tools, right?

• 2:03:59Theo Von?

  Got it. So how many milligrams of caffeine are you taking a day? Are you usually taking a day?

• 2:04:03Speaker 01

  Ready for this?

• 2:04:04Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:06Speaker 01

  All right. A normal cup of coffee would be about 200 milligrams of strong coffee. I consume about 800 milligrams of caffeine a day. I drink, I'm half Argentine, so I drink, I drink yerba mate.

• 2:04:18Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:04:18Speaker 01

  Cold brew, zero sugar yerba mate, or I drink yerba mate out the gourd. If you're gonna drink yerba mate, don't get the, uh, don't get the sugary kind. Nope. Get the loose leaf. No, I have a yerba mate brand. It's not that one. So ours is Matina, which is, I'm not gonna do a promotional here, but the point here is that if you like energy drinks, you like yerba mate, you like coffee, I'm like more power to you.

• 2:04:39Theo Von?

  So there's 200 in a cup of coffee?

• 2:04:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. What's in one of these?

• 2:04:45Speaker 01

  So there was actually a study just published on taurine that everyone's worried about, but that study was in vitro. I need to see a lot of data. There's a lot of data, actually, that taurine is beneficial for the heart. And it has kind of an anti-aging thing. It's in, you know, a lot of energy drinks.

• 2:04:57Theo Von?

  Yeah, it's like a lysine in a taurine. Um.

• 2:05:00Speaker 01

  I love caffeine. I mean, man, caffeine and nicotine. I, right now, I'm kind of easing back on it. The delivery mechanism, you don't want to smoke vape dipper snuff. You get cancer. People go, vaping's not bad. Popcorn lung is real. People hate me for saying that vaping is bad. Not as bad as smoking. Vaping ain't good for you.

• 2:05:20Theo Von?

  And what flavor's the worst flavor? Any flavor?

• 2:05:22Speaker 01

  It's all bad for you, man. But the gums and the pouches. Provided it's a low dose, it's very habit forming, but you know, three to six milligrams or something on occasion. This is the problem. People go to pretty soon they're doing a whole canister a day.

• 2:05:36Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:05:36Speaker 01

  But.

• 2:05:37Theo Von?

  I got a buddy got a fucking mouthful of my buddy like damn cotton eyed Joe over there.

• 2:05:42Speaker 01

  Nicotine's a very interesting drug because it's a stimulant, but it relaxes you too. But it does cause, excuse me, vasoconstriction. And that's not good for all the stuff we were talking about earlier. You want blood flow to the brain and to your extremities, you know? And so some nicotine early in the day, little bit, no big deal with caffeine to get work done. Remember effort that precedes dopamine in constructive areas of life, writing comedy, podcasting, school, sports, socializing in healthy ways, like this is good.

• 2:06:16Theo Von?

  Can you get just as much dopamine from doing those positive things as you can from doing things that we would consider, you know, that off sometimes add a level of disappointment or shame? And maybe shame is not the word I want to use.

• 2:06:29Speaker 01

  Yes, you can. It just, you need to be more determined and focused on it. You know, remember it's how quickly the dopamine comes in with porn and methamphetamine, cocaine and all of that. It's how quickly gambling raises dopamine. You know, the stuff we're talking about work, focus, learning, all that. It's, it's work. I mean, it's, it's hard work, but the effort that precedes dopamine is a completely different beast because you're in control and it doesn't put you in the trough. But I did see a, you know, I guess we don't call them tweets now. What do we call them? On X, some guy made a billion dollars and a couple of weeks later, he said, I don't know what's going on, but I feel like I'm suicidally depressed. And I just said, it's dopamine. He got the reward.

• 2:07:14Speaker 01

  And what he misses is the hunt. You have to stay in the hunt. This is like the will to live is the hunt for new things.

• 2:07:21Theo Von?

  Ah, the will to live. Thirty-one-year-old guy who sells his startup for 100 million shares why he is depressed and how to think about your career and life. I sold my company, MVMT. I know that company. They made watches, right? A few years ago for a lot of money and thought all my problems would be solved. I made my life really cushy and comfortable. I optimized for being as stress free as possible. I play video games when I want. I wake up when I want. And really have no reason to get out of bed if I don't want to. I always thought this was a dream that I'd be happy forever. I realize I'm in an incredibly unique situation and wanted to share some things I've learned and am still working through.

• 2:08:00Speaker 01

  I mean, for you, you know, and forgive me, I've been monologuing a bit because I just want to make sure I blast through some of this info that hopefully people can make use.

• 2:08:08Theo Von?

  About it again.

• 2:08:08Speaker 01

  But I, but I, you know, for you, right? You've got the podcast. You do your comedy tours. You know, I'm not a comedian, but I love going to see live comedy.

• 2:08:17Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah, it's fun.

• 2:08:17Speaker 01

  And I just have to imagine that staying busy in pursuit has got to be super important to your overall well being.

• 2:08:26Theo Von?

  It's funny you say that. I think it's like, yeah, I didn't know that I liked to work really, you know? I mean, I knew that I was persistent maybe and I liked comedy. But then like as other things have started to arise and like learning the podcast and then you're running a business and then, you know, I, I like to work, you know, I really enjoy it. I think I'm probably competitive in some ways.

• 2:08:50Speaker 01

  Do you have a, you don't, I'm not going to ask you to tell us, but do you have a couple of comedians in your mind that like, you're like, I can, I can best that or is it besting against yourself?

• 2:08:58Theo Von?

  Oh, no, I think it's just, can you still make yourself laugh? That's my thing.

• 2:09:02Speaker 01

  Is that, what's your writing? I'm very curious about this. What's your writing process?

• 2:09:06Theo Von?

  Oh, I'll talk to somebody. Usually I'm telling, I'm trying to talk with a gal and entertain her or talk with one of my buddies and entertain them. And there's something that'll get said that's just kind of like, oh, that's perfect, man. So that's kind of how I'll do it. And then I'll put it on a stage from there, you know, and I'll record my sets and um, and I've started to put some of them into like chat GPT or AI so it can like show me what was new during this one or the last one and learn a little intricacies and things like that. Things that worked and things that changed.

• 2:09:33Speaker 01

  Do you get ideas in your dreams? Do you ever wake up laughing?

• 2:09:35Theo Von?

  Ayahuasca, I've gotten ideas. I've gotten, um, I got like some good bits.

• 2:09:41Speaker 01

  How often are you doing?

• 2:09:42Theo Von?

  Uh, maybe every 18 months. I'm kind of do again to do something like that. I want to talk to this guy, Brian Hubbard, I believe is his name, who does the Ibogaine. He talks about Ibogaine.

• 2:09:52Speaker 01

  I've been very, I'm not, uh, I can't take any credit for that project, but my colleague at Stanford, Nolan Williams, triple board certified psychiatrist and neurologist. He's the one running the brain imaging of the veterans that Brian has been, um, bringing down to Mexico to do the Ibogaine DMT work.

• 2:10:07Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 2:10:08Speaker 01

  And Nolan has discovered there are these changes in brain areas like the insula, which are involved in kind of self-reflection, bottle, self-body relationship, all sorts of things. The data from those studies are incredible. I mean, these tier one operators, you know, which is code for have to be ready in 24 hours to go overseas and kill their high-risk, high-consequence work. The number of those guys I've talked to that were dependent on alcohol, drugs and other substances that go down there and do it once or twice and never even feel the desire to use again is just striking. Yeah, the Ibogaine sounds amazing. I also hear it's terrifying. Couple of those guys told me, and they, and they have a high bar for this. Couple of those guys have told me it is the most terrifying experience of their entire life.

• 2:10:53Theo Von?

  What?

• 2:10:54Speaker 01

  But also brought them the most amount of peace. Well, it's 22-hour psychedelic journey.

• 2:10:57Theo Von?

  Oh.

• 2:10:58Speaker 01

  Followed by DMT.

• 2:11:00Theo Von?

  Are you asleep during it?

• 2:11:01Speaker 01

  No, you're awake. And what I hear is that you don't hallucinate when your eyes are open. But when you close your eyes, you get high-definition recall of previous experiences, but you have agency. You can act differently in there and rewire. I've never done it. I'm very curious to do. I've never done ayahuasca. I have had, um, some incredibly beneficial clinical experiences with MDMA and with psilocybin. Uh, and it's just complete, I would, you know, I don't encourage kids to do it. You need a really good practitioner. You have to find a way to do it legally and there are ways.

• 2:11:30Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:11:31Speaker 01

  But man, it is a game changer.

• 2:11:33Theo Von?

  Lot of bootleg stuff going on out there, but I do think that, yeah, it's like getting back to nature, getting back to roots, and literally you're getting back to the roots of like what will, uh, what can reorganize. I think the nature inside of us, it gets so rattled by us maneuvering it and existing in the world. I don't know how we manage to damage our own nature so much over time.

• 2:11:52Speaker 01

  Well, maybe it's, uh, instead of saying lesbians will save us all, it's lesbians and psychedelics will save us all. That's kind of my new campaign.

• 2:12:00Theo Von?

  Dude, look at this guy right here.

• 2:12:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, that, that's.

• 2:12:03Theo Von?

  That's Rick Rubin.

• 2:12:04Speaker 01

  That's, you know, what I was saying earlier, you know, that's me when it comes to being able to see clearly along certain dimensions of life, but that's when you come to rely on good friends and, and you do your, you do your work, your inner journey work and figure it out.

• 2:12:18Theo Von?

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's fascinating and I think just the fact that we can get.

• 2:12:22Speaker 01

  Can I get a copy of that?

• 2:12:23Theo Von?

  This thing is awesome.

• 2:12:24Speaker 01

  Man.

• 2:12:25Theo Von?

  How'd y'all get that?

• 2:12:27Speaker 03

  Just chat GPT.

• 2:12:28Theo Von?

  Oh, it's so great.

• 2:12:29Speaker 03

  Cock a monkey blindfolded on LSD.

• 2:12:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, sometimes I've looked at decisions I've made in my life and go, you know, I pretty much had the clarity that that guy right there had.

• 2:12:39Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:39Speaker 01

  And, but in other areas of my life, like the decision to go into skateboarding and leave the decision to pursue science and then podcasting and, you know, my life's a dream, man.

• 2:12:49Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:49Speaker 01

  Like, I can't tell you, like, you know, people will think I'm just trying to puff you up, but like, to be sitting here talking to you, I'm a fan to be able to.

• 2:12:57Theo Von?

  Thanks, man. Yeah.

• 2:12:58Speaker 01

  To explore ideas and to learn from such a diverse array of people. Like, I love talking to scientists, but I love talking to comedians and creatives and like my childhood hero became one of my best friends. Cause he heard the podcast and.

• 2:13:14Theo Von?

  Really?

• 2:13:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. My, I mean, it's kind of embarrassing to say, but Tim Armstrong, the singer for Rancid and the Transplants. He has that band with Rob Aston and Travis Barker. I mean, Tim's like my hero and we've become very good friends. He's a, he's a, he's a real life poet. He's an incredible musician. He's produced a ton of music for others. He's a very, you know, soft spoken. He's, he's a true music producer and performer.

• 2:13:40Theo Von?

  That's fascinating.

• 2:13:41Speaker 01

  And he, we became, he's one of my best friends.

• 2:13:43Theo Von?

  That's like me and David Spade. I just can't even believe that we're buddies and then I get to like ask him about stuff or even listen to him tell jokes over dinner at like. Yeah, sometimes things like that, like not to name drop, but yeah, it just blows your mind. Some of the people you get to come across, you know?

• 2:13:57Speaker 01

  Well, and for people listening, I, I, you know, I have to say, like, I used to watch and, you know, watch things and read and listen to podcasts and like, I wanted to be part of it. But like being myself, and that's really the key. Rick always says this, he's like, the, the way to succeed in any genre that you're interested in is to be you. Cause no one's done that yet. The moment you try and be like the, the other guy, you know, or the other gal is when it falls flat. Right? The reason Tony Hawk's Tony Hawk is because he's a pioneer and he just kept going. There's only one of him.

• 2:14:27Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:28Speaker 01

  You know, and, and there are others in skateboarding and others in podcasting, but like, like it's like that trust in, in self, you just have to, if you just show up you and do your personal work too. I do think, you know, journaling, meditation, working out.

• 2:14:43Theo Von?

  It's a relationship with you.

• 2:14:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, and you just show that you just show up you. So like, you know, I think we got the answer to your initial question. Why is podcasting what it is is because like, we just show up. We didn't have a, we didn't have a template or there's no script, nothing. We just show up.

• 2:14:56Theo Von?

  Just a couple of guys in their closets, man.

• 2:14:58Speaker 01

  We're talking about finger lengths and lesbians and monkeys on LSD and measles vaccine and some of the biggest issues in public health. And, and you know, your name was mentioned in, in, in a moment of praise at the inauguration of the President of the United States.

• 2:15:13Theo Von?

  Yeah, that's crazy.

• 2:15:14Speaker 01

  We are living, I don't think we're living in a simulation. I think what's so freaking awesome about this life is it's real. Not that it's fake, it's all the, it's all the shit that's real that blows my mind.

• 2:15:25Theo Von?

  And just, I think what you, what you, what you can be called upon to be a part of, you know? And taking agency, having some more agency. The biggest thing I noticed in my life is how do I get to know myself better and get to utilize myself better? And not just for me, but for like, uh, and really to listen to God better. How do I learn to have a relationship with something that's bigger than me? So that I can get better direction, you know, and better, um, and better peace at times. Because God's not just there for direction. I believe, I believe that he's also there, uh, for reflection and for rest, you know? And just to be able to, you know, I don't know.

• 2:16:01Speaker 01

  Do you pray every day?

• 2:16:03Theo Von?

  I pray every day, yeah.

• 2:16:04Speaker 01

  Me too. I'm a scientist, but I'm a believer. You know, I've always believed in God and I used to hide praying. Cause I grew up in a complicated home religiously for different. We've got a real mixed family, but also like the attitudes about religion, very mixed. Some very positive, some not positive. But a few years ago, a friend of mine who was a former tier one operator and runs some of my security stuff. Like he encouraged me to start reading the Bible. And I was like, wow, there is so much wisdom here. And then he encouraged me to start praying and it's. I know people are gonna got, some people roll their eyes, some people will be like, get it. I mean, when you start praying before sleeping in the morning. Yeah, I prayed right before I came in here. In the bathroom, I literally get on my knees and pray before anything important this morning at night.

• 2:16:46Speaker 01

  And you know, people, how can you be a scientist and believe in in God? And it's like, well, easy, because as a scientist, you learn that like, even as a, let's just say a vision scientist. There are animals that can see parts of the visual spectrum that we can't see. UV light, infrared light, pit vipers can see it, mosquitoes see things we don't see. So the moment you start just thinking, wait, our human brain can understand and make sense of certain things, but not others through logic and reasoning and emotion. You go, well, there's this not just possibility of an entire set of energies out there that we're not aware of. It's absolutely certain. And then you go, well, that's a big leap to the idea that there's a guy or, you know, and his son is the, you know,

• 2:17:30Speaker 01

  is, you know, is, is Christ and Christ was resurrected. But when you start reading the stories and you start like looking at our real world experience, you go, you know, so much of this makes sense and it doesn't make nature and science any less interesting. It makes it more interesting. It makes it more important. It's like we're, we're here, I believe that we're here to like. Access that energy, allow it come through us.

• 2:17:56Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:56Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't think like we podcast, I think energy comes through us and we podcast.

• 2:18:01Theo Von?

  Oh, I think the funnest thing sometimes is like getting an idea because I'm like, this didn't come from me.

• 2:18:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:18:06Theo Von?

  What the hell am I doing? I'm just like something out here that's trying to position myself to be the best receptor. It's almost like when you're trying to like, put those dog ears out for a television or whatever, like an old black and white TV. You're trying to pick up the signal. It's like, I'm just trying to best get myself in a situation to, to, to receive a decent signal.

• 2:18:24Speaker 01

  Do you believe, sorry, yesterday I was in a conversation with a Stanford and Harvard trained psychiatrist, one of the smartest people I know. And he said to me, he said, you know, these are him talking, he said, you know, I believe in miracles. He's like, there are miracles. And I was like, really? And he explained a case of a patient like, there is no way this person should still be alive, let alone flourishing as they are. The number of things that had to organize for that to work out. And, um, you know, so I'm kind of obsessed these days with like this notion of miracles.

• 2:18:52Theo Von?

  Well, I love that. Have you considered, because we, we will sometimes interview people who have had a miracle experience happen to them. And it's really fascinating sometimes just to hear some of their stories. It's something I would like to do more. Um, one of the things I want to do is just, I want to come over to your pod, man. Next time I'm in town.

• 2:19:06Speaker 01

  Let's do it.

• 2:19:07Theo Von?

  And, um, and we can do this again sometime. We, I feel like we only got to talk about a few things, but that's perfect. It'll give us more stuff to talk about in the future. And, um, just thank you, Andrew, for just being a good voice. You have a lot to say and you, you share information well. And it's like, I think we're at a time where people just need to have information that isn't compromised by, like a bank or an advertiser that's telling someone they have to speak a certain way, you know, unless it's an advertisement where you're reading for Takeda's or for Liquid IV or something, you know? But, uh, yeah, thank you for all your commitment to, uh, sharing information with us, man.

• 2:19:37Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:19:37Theo Von?

  Yeah. And thanks for spending time with us today.

• 2:19:39Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me on. And I want to say, you know, the, the, uh, universal love that I see out there for you is not a coincidence. You know, it's, it's so interesting. Like people can't put you in a box. And I, and I love that because there's so much pressure to like, put people in a box.

• 2:19:54Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:54Speaker 01

  And people really, people really feel your heart in everything you do. And it in part is the vulnerability. It's also when you, when you say like, the hell with that and really stretch your wings, the way you've developed this incredible expertise at the various things you do, comedy and others. So, you know, I'm very grateful to be here today. I'm a fan and you just have the love of so many people and it's not an accident, man. You're, you're, you're a real leader and, uh, I appreciate you.

• 2:20:19Theo Von?

  That's very nice of you to say, man. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. That's a very thoughtful thing to say. And yeah, thank you for being here today and I look forward to seeing you out in Malibu.

• 2:20:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's do it again on the HLP.

• 2:20:31Theo Von?

  Amen.

• 2:20:58Speaker 04

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