Harnessing Passion, Drive & Persistence for Lifelong Success | Tony Hawk

In this episode, my guest is Tony Hawk, the legendary and pioneering professional skateboarder, video game and skateboard industry entrepreneur, and founder of the Skatepark Project, whose philanthropic mission is to help underserved communities create safe and inclusive public skateparks for all youth. We discuss his career, how he helped popularize and evolve the sport of skateboarding, and his role as an ambassador for skateboard culture. We also discuss where he derives his intrinsic drive, how he sets and evolves goals and how he has made remarkable and continual progress throughout his career. We also discuss Tony’s ability to overcome what would otherwise be career-ending injuries. For anyone seeking to find or pursue their passion and make lifelong progress while serving the larger world, this episode with Tony Hawk ought to be of deep interest. For show notes, including referenced articles and additional resources, please visit hubermanlab.com. Use Ask Huberman Lab, our new AI-powered platform, for a summary, clips, and insights from this episode. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://athleticgreens.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/hubermanlab Waking Up: https://wakingup.com/huberman Momentous: https://livemomentous.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Tony Hawk (00:03:32) Sponsors: LMNT & Waking Up (00:05:55) Childhood & Self-Concept (00:11:08) Early Skateboarding & Skateparks (00:16:58) Adolescence, Skateboarding (00:23:10) Turning Professional, The Bones Brigade (00:32:01) Sponsor: AG1 (Athletic Greens) (00:35:27) Trick Development & Evolution (00:40:33) Visualization, Dreaming (00:47:09) “Feeling” While Skateboarding (00:51:15) Drive & Discipline; Injuries (00:58:46) Injury Recovery Practices (01:06:52) Healthy Life Practices & Skateboarding (01:15:03) Video Game Development (01:23:00) Financial Investments, Birdhouse (01:30:16) Professionalism; Hobbies (01:35:43) Kids, Parents & Skateboarding (01:44:15) Music; High School (01:49:28) Females in Skateboarding (01:56:04) Inspiration, Kids, Bones Brigade (02:01:18) Memorabilia, Autographs (02:05:50) Skatepark Project (02:08:14) Future Goals & Aspirations (02:13:08) Zero-Cost Support, YouTube Feedback, Spotify & Apple Reviews, Sponsors, Momentous, Neural Network Newsletter, Social Media Disclaimer 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.

• 0:00Andrew D. Huberman?

  Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.

• 0:09Andrew D. Huberman?

  I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, my guest is Tony Hawk. Tony Hawk is one of the most celebrated and accomplished professional skateboarders of all time. For more than 40 years, he has been at the forefront of the sport. And I don't mean just doing a sport for more than 40 years. I truly mean he has been at the forefront of skateboarding, developing new maneuvers, AKA tricks, that include incredible feats like the 900 and 900-degree spin in the air, as well as numerous other maneuvers that have really pushed the entire sport forward. He's also completely popularized the sport through his video game and through his ambassadorship for skateboarding.

• 0:50Andrew D. Huberman?

  In fact, few, if any, names are synonymous with skateboarding in the general public as Tony Hawk, and he is oh-so-deserved of that title because for more than 40 years, he has shown up as the consummate professional. He is kind, he is respectful, and he is completely committed to his craft, and that shows up in every aspect of his life. He still, to this day, skateboards daily, and as you'll soon learn, he recently suffered a major injury, a complete break of his femur. That is the bone in his upper leg. And this is what many people would consider a career-ending injury. Not only did Tony come back from that injury, but he went back to the very trick on which he broke his femur and recently completed that trick.

• 1:33Andrew D. Huberman?

  That is a 540, or so-called McTwist. I mention this because at every level of his life, Tony has demonstrated himself to be somebody with incredible drive, incredible vision, and incredible persistence. And today, we talk about that drive, vision, and persistence, and we talk about what it takes to set a goal and to continually evolve one's goal and to continually progress as a basically young pre-teen, as a teenager, as a young adult, as an adult, and well, let's face it, as a 55-year-old man, he is now heading a little bit past middle age, although we do hope that he lives forever. Tony Hawk, aka The Birdman, really does seem to be superhuman.

• 2:15Andrew D. Huberman?

  But as you'll learn today, he is oh-so-human in the way that he shares his own experience and shares with you the ways in which we can each and all look at what we do and think about what we want to achieve and put our minds and our bodies to those goals and achieve them. I confess that today's discussion with Tony Hawk was a particularly thrilling one for me to have. I grew up in the sport of skateboarding, so I had met Tony previously, although he doesn't remember it, that was many years ago. In fact, I met his parents, you'll learn more about that story during today's episode. But I was aware, of course, of Tony's accomplishments. I was also aware of his philanthropy, so he has a skate park foundation. I also listened to his podcast with another professional skateboarder, Jason Ellis, called Hawk vs Wolf.

• 3:00Andrew D. Huberman?

  We provided a link to that podcast in the show note captions as well. But never before have I had the opportunity to sit down and talk to the Tony Hawk and learn from him. So I was absolutely delighted to have this conversation, and it far exceeded my already lofty expectations. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

• 3:32Speaker 01

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• 3:42Speaker 02

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• 3:57Speaker 02

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• 4:21Speaker 04

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• 4:27Andrew D. Huberman?

  And now for my discussion with Tony Hawk. Tony Hawk, welcome.

• 4:31Speaker 05

  Thanks.

• 4:32Andrew D. Huberman?

  I'm particularly thrilled to have this conversation because I've tracked your career for a very long time. Grew up in the skateboard thing.

• 4:41Speaker 05

  I know.

• 4:42Andrew D. Huberman?

  Had your poster on my wall.

• 4:44Speaker 05

  Oh, thank you.

• 4:45Andrew D. Huberman?

  Your name is synonymous with skateboarding, as you know. I think a question that probably get asked from time to time, but let's just clarify the data from the outset. Tony Hawk is your real name, right?

• 4:57Speaker 05

  Yes, Anthony Frank Hawk, but I never went by Anthony. I mean, my parents called me Tony since I could remember, so.

• 5:04Andrew D. Huberman?

  It's a fitting name, given the sport and what you do. And we will get into this a little bit later when we talk about family and parenting and parents. But I'll allude to the story now that when I was 14 years old, your parents took me in.

• 5:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:19Andrew D. Huberman?

  I slept in your bed, in your home.

• 5:22Speaker 05

  That's so wild.

• 5:22Andrew D. Huberman?

  Not with you in it, but surrounded by your near infinite number of trophies.

• 5:27Speaker 05

  And it must have been right after I moved out.

• 5:32Andrew D. Huberman?

  So this would be, I was 14 years old. Maybe I'll just tell the story now very briefly. I was 14 years old. I was at a contest at Linda Vista Boys Club. Everyone left. Me and another kid named Billy Waldman were still there. Your dad said, "Where are you going?" It was clear that I didn't know where I was going. My life was, I was a wayward youth at that time. And so they took me in for a night, maybe even two nights. Your mom, Nancy, and your dad Frank were so gracious, brought me in into your home, took me to dinner. I don't recall.

• 6:07Speaker 05

  I mean, that tracks. That would, my dad and my mom together would be doing that, yes.

• 6:12Andrew D. Huberman?

  Incredible people. And we'll get back to that story later because you and I actually met the next day in Fallbrook at your ramp.

• 6:18Speaker 05

  Oh, Fallbrook. So it had to have been 88, 89?

• 6:21Andrew D. Huberman?

  That's right. I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say 89.

• 6:23Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 6:24Andrew D. Huberman?

  And it must have been one of the either NSA or Castle contests.

• 6:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 6:29Andrew D. Huberman?

  That your dad was very active in. But we'll get back to that. But I have so many questions that relate to skateboarding to you and really, as a neuroscientist, to the whole concept of a life of continual progression. Because whether or not people listening to this and watching this are skateboarders or not, and I imagine that most of them are not. It's absolutely clear that you've been in this game a very long time and that you've somehow managed to continue to progress over and over to come back from very severe injuries and somehow keep getting better and better. So the first question I have is about the younger version of you.

• 7:10Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 7:13Andrew D. Huberman?

  Did you have any sort of self-concept like, you know, I want to be a pro athlete, or I want to be a skateboarder, or I want to have a video game named after me, right?

• 7:24Speaker 05

  Right.

• 7:25Andrew D. Huberman?

  Right, exactly. You know, but if you can think back to maybe even pre-skeboarding, do you remember what your self-concept was? You know, this notion of like, I'm, I have a self and I'm either similar or different to other kids in some way?

• 7:39Speaker 05

  I think that when I was young, I was put in a lot of advanced classes and not that that felt like a badge of honor, it felt more like I was just classified as a nerd. But then I thought, okay, well, that's my strength. So I'll lean into that. And I thought that maybe I would be a teacher. Cause I thought, well, I get all these concepts and I think I could relate them to kids or to my peers. Cause I helped a lot of my classmates through some, some classes. So that's all I really had. I didn't know. And then when I would play sports, I would, I would be okay. You know, I wasn't, I wasn't terrible, but I wasn't the VIP or the MVP. And so I was just kind of playing basketball, playing

• 8:24Speaker 05

  baseball. And then when I found skateboarding, I mean, it was, it was pretty obvious that that was what I wanted to do. It was, once, once I got on a skateboard and realized that I could maneuver it and do things that were unique, and not they were moving the needle or anyone cared, but they were unique in the sense of like, I didn't, I've never seen anyone do this. And this feels awesome. And so I just want to do this. And so I didn't think that this is my career. I was 10. So I just thought, this, this is my, this is my hobby. This is, this is my thing. And I don't want to play these other sports anymore.

• 9:03Andrew D. Huberman?

  Did you stop playing all the other sports?

• 9:06Speaker 05

  Yes. I, I quit, I quit Little League in the middle of the season when my dad had been appointed president of that chapter of Little League. Because he was the coach, he was always very involved in all of his kids. I have three siblings, so he was always very supportive, whatever they were doing. And then when I was playing baseball, he became the coach because he had time and he was doing that. He was, he was, you know, almost retired. Um, and then he was such a prominent figure in the little league. They said, oh, you're president now. And so then someone else was coach and then I was skating and I was over it.

• 9:42Andrew D. Huberman?

  Did you immediately start skateboarding in the parks on transition, as we say? Or, or were you pushing around in the driveway like most kids?

• 9:50Speaker 05

  It was, I was transportation and skating was kind of a fad. So I started in seventy eight, roughly, maybe seventy seven even. And it was kind of a fad. So kids just had skateboards and they would, they would all cruise around, you know, like it was the seventies. So everyone had a bike, right? And you knew wherever all the kids were because the bikes were in the front lawn. And then at some point that kind of turned into skating. So everyone had skateboard. They were all like shitty, you know, uh, JCPenney or big box store skateboards. No one had really good one, not in my area.

• 10:29Speaker 05

  But then at some point, we were just looking at these magazines of people skating and everyone skating in pools. Cause that was the Dogtown and Z-Boys era and it was like, these guys are flying. I want to like, where do we do that? And then the skate park opened up in San Diego.

• 10:43Andrew D. Huberman?

  That was Delmar Skate Park. Skate Ranch. Okay, Oasis.

• 10:46Speaker 05

  Oasis Skate Park was the first one in our area. Actually, I take that back. Spring Valley was the first skate park. I tried to go there and I was nine and you had to be ten. And I remember like sitting in the parking lot, looking over the fence. And my dad didn't realize what they ate, because my dad would have easily lied for me. But he didn't realize there was an age limit and he's, how old is he? Nine, oh, sorry, he can't come. And then they closed. Long after, so when I never got to Skate Spring Valley.

• 11:16Andrew D. Huberman?

  Cause I, I think of you as synonymous with Delmar Skate Ranch.

• 11:19Speaker 05

  Sure. Well, that was, that came later because Oasis Skate Park was open. So this was when I first went, it was like 78. A friend of mine was going and he said, I'm going to go to the skate park. So I had to go get, you know, it's such a hassle. Like I had to go get the authorization form. I had to get it notarized by the bank, by my parents, like to go there. And then I went and it was, that was my epiphany. When I first saw people flying around in person, I was like, this is what I'm doing for as long as I could possibly do it. Cause it looked, it looked like magic. It really did. It looked like they were flying on magic carpets. And it spoke to me in the sense of being a daredevil, but also

• 12:03Speaker 05

  doing it individually, not relying on my team, not getting, getting hassled by a coach. It was just like, oh, I can be part of the scene, but do it my own way. And then I skated Oasis as much as I could. Whenever I get your rides there. And then my parents moved to North County, San Diego when I was in high school. Mostly because they were just chasing kind of real estate deals. And, and so I got lucky that Delmar Skate Ranch was right there. Every other park closed, but Delmar Skate Ranch remained open. So I mean, there was a bit of luck to all that. And it was based on geography.

• 12:47Andrew D. Huberman?

  Your dad's involvement is interesting because I got into skateboarding because, you know, my dad wasn't around that much at that time. A lot of kids get into skateboarding because it doesn't require parent involvement. Was it unusual to have parental involvement at that stage?

• 13:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 13:04Andrew D. Huberman?

  I mean, I remember Frank, and by the way, I remember Frank and Nancy, your parents with, with such fondness. Not just because they took me in, but I remember thinking like they're, they were at times the only point of stability in a landscape of like 200 people where as you know, there could be like potential chaos of any kind.

• 13:20Speaker 05

  Always.

• 13:20Andrew D. Huberman?

  And your dad had this way of moving about, like he wasn't afraid, I recall that he wasn't afraid to say what he thought, like, hey, don't do that. Like impose some regulation at these contests. And at the same time, it seemed he also understood that this was a sport unlike other sports. Like you're not going to regulate. Kids like me at the time, or you're not gonna try and control people. So what was it like to have your dad involved? And the reason I ask is that you're a parent, we'll talk more about parenting. But also, it seems that he went from saying, okay, you know, Little League, other sports, which is more typical, to, okay, this kind of unusual sport, skateboarding. But your mere interest in it was enough to get him excited or motivated enough to take you around to these places. That's pretty special.

• 14:05Andrew D. Huberman?

  I mean, that's pretty unique.

• 14:06Speaker 05

  It was, I mean, and in that respect, it was great to have his support and to rely on him for that. The fact that he was always around and that he was in charge of a lot of the events, that sucked because, because it just marked me as one being favorited and spoiled. And, and most of my friends, their parents didn't want them skating. So even though they were stoked that my dad was, was doing this kind of thing and giving that kind of support, they still were like, your dad's here. Like, this is our thing, this is our scene, this is our getaway from our parents. I didn't really have a choice in the matter.

• 14:47Speaker 05

  I did, I did at some point tell him my, my concerns and my frustrations with it, but he didn't really want to hear it. You know, he was, he was very much steadfast, like, well, I'm, I've been coming this far, like, you can, we can keep our distance at these events, but people are relying on me to organize them. And so I just had to suck it up for a while.

• 15:12Andrew D. Huberman?

  Did it push you harder? Like, you know, if you could prove yourself with a skateboard and then you didn't have to worry about any claims of favoritism? Because ultimately, you can't fake, you can't fake skateboarding, right? I mean, there's no deep fake version of skateboarding, you know? You either can do it or you can't do it, and it's shown in real time. So.

• 15:32Andrew D. Huberman?

  And I suppose back then, I recall you were quite a bit skinny or skinnier.

• 15:38Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. I had, I had all kinds of things going against me at the time.

• 15:43Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah. I mean, I don't think people will realize this unless they've met you in person. But nowadays, there are a few taller skateboarders out there because the sport's grown so much. But you're pretty tall. You're like six.

• 15:53Speaker 05

  Six, three, but I was not when I was growing. When I was that age, I was very small. And kind of concerningly small because by the time I got to be 16, I was still, I looked like I was 13. I used to get pulled over. I literally, like, I had a car that I bought with my earnings. I had a Honda Civic, 1977 CBCC, and I would get pulled over. And then the cops would be like, how, how old are you? I'll go 16. Like, well, you looked like you were 13 back there. And then I shot up around age 17.

• 16:31Andrew D. Huberman?

  Okay, so that's interesting, and we can get back to this when we talk about your almost remarkable levels of ability to recover from physical injuries because, well, I'll just share a little bit of biological theory here, which is that, you know, there are a lot of people that study longevity, and perhaps the fastest rate of aging that we ever undergo is puberty, right? If you think about a kid before puberty, a kid after puberty, it's like a different human being psychologically, often physically as well. Some people have a longer arc of puberty than others, and that does seem to correlate with a longer life. And so it's kind of interesting, you know, some kids hit puberty and they go through all the markers of puberty in like one summer. Other kids, it's very, very long. And it sounds like, we don't have to talk about when you hit puberty and the other

• 17:15Andrew D. Huberman?

  markers, but it sounds like your growth spurt occurred late. That's a terrific marker of a long life, by the way. Because what it reflects is the onset of a big burst of growth hormone out of the pituitary and the brain. And if you continue to grow for a long period of time, that indicates, you know, it gives you a little bit of the slope of the line. Does that make sense?

• 17:36Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:36Andrew D. Huberman?

  So this, this may have important and fortunate consequences. So at 17, you shot up. Am I correct in remembering, maybe you said it, maybe somebody else did, that you were, forgive me, but so skinny when you were a kid that you actually wore elbow pads as knee pads?

• 17:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 17:52Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, that's a true, that's a true story.

• 17:54Speaker 05

  For sure. And, and. I took inspiration from others that that I identified with, namely Steve Caballero, because he was already an established pro when I started to come up in the ranks or even get noticed at all. And he was wearing elbow pads on his knees in this full page picture of him in Winchester doing a back sit there. And I was like, that, I want to do that. And he's small. And I feel like that's my goal.

• 18:21Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah.

• 18:21Speaker 05

  It wasn't say like, if he can do that, I can do it. It was just more like, oh, this, I identify with that. And and that gives me hope.

• 18:28Andrew D. Huberman?

  And as I recall, Stevie also has a pretty severe scoliosis.

• 18:32Speaker 05

  Right? Uh, yeah, it's not scoliosis what he has.

• 18:34Andrew D. Huberman?

  At one point, he was turned turned pretty, pretty tight to the to the right or left. I don't recall which. I mean, still incredible skateboarder. Love Stevie. He's a NorCal guy. So I grew up around him.

• 18:43Speaker 05

  I know whatever he had is from birth, but um, but it was more that that his size and I didn't even know he was many, not many, but no, he's like four years older than me. Um, so I just was like, oh, there's small guys doing that. I can do it maybe. But when I got tall, when I went through puberty, suddenly I had all these tricks. And then suddenly I had the the strength and the the height that gave me confidence. And so all of a sudden, it was like, oh, I can go way higher now. And I'm comfortable with these tricks, these intricate board maneuvers and stuff. So that was a huge advantage to me. The the smaller stuff felt different after that,

• 19:28Speaker 05

  which was harder. But being able to blast eight feet in the air as opposed to four feet in the air was a huge advantage.

• 19:35Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, isn't that wild? When the nervous system knows how to do something and then your body changes and you can do the same thing, but with so much more force.

• 19:43Speaker 05

  Even the bowls look smaller. When I would stand on top, I was like, wait, this isn't that big.

• 19:50Andrew D. Huberman?

  It's wild. Well, the reason I ask about this, I think, you know, people listening generally seem to assume that, you know, if you become a Stanford professor, you become a professional skateboarder, or you professional soccer player, that you were just fated to become that, right? And it's clear that it's the confluence of so many different factors. But one of the consistent factors, for sure, is a sense that you just really love doing it, right? I mean, I can't imagine getting, you know, proficient or excellent at anything without loving doing it, right? And so still at this time, when you were, let's say, 14, 15, did you have any concept of, you know, I'm gonna be a pro model, I'm gonna... None of that?

• 20:32Speaker 05

  Well, there was, there was none of that to be had. So we didn't have these great aspirations because no one had really done that before. There were, you could have some success. Yes, you could have maybe a signature model. But even the top sales of skateboarding then wasn't a career. The prize money was $150 for first place, $100 for second, $50 for third.

• 20:57Andrew D. Huberman?

  Couple of tanks of gas, some food.

• 20:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, so let's put it this way. I turned pro when I was 14. By the time I was 15 and a half, and I had a learner's permit and I could drive a scooter, you know, I had $600 in my bank account. And I used that to buy a Honda Express moped. For a year and a half, that was my earnings, was $600.

• 21:23Andrew D. Huberman?

  So clearly, money wasn't the dopamine hit. It was the, it was the actual skateboarder.

• 21:28Speaker 05

  Sure, and that's what I mean, though. There wasn't, there was no goal of that because it just didn't exist. So I didn't care. Like, are you kidding me? I had my own vehicle at age 15. Like, I was living large. I could get to the skate park on my own. That was amazing.

• 21:44Andrew D. Huberman?

  To be 14 and be a professional at anything must be a trip, so to speak. But what I'm wondering about, because I came up when your early cohort with Paul Peralta, so for those that don't know, so-called Bones Brigade, right? I guess it was a total, what, like six, seven guys? There were some that were a little more peripheral than others. There were about six, seven of the core guys in the various videos. I mean, you guys were famous, right? You had posters on kids' walls who skateboarded. There was a second, or maybe it was a third surge of popularity in skateboarding, because it would sort of surge in general popularity, then disappear and come back,

• 22:25Andrew D. Huberman?

  as it has over decades, keeps coming and going to some extent. Did you have a conscious awareness of just how, you know, how much attention was being placed on, you know, photos of you, videos of you? And I'm just wondering about the younger version of you, whether or not, you know, you realized what was happening. And the reason I ask is because you've always seemed to me somebody who, through interviews, through videos, through our interactions, and for those who have known you much longer than I have, just very grounded, like not caught up in it. You know, we've never seen headlines about you kind of just, you know, blowing all your money, or, you know, wrecking cars and, you know, destroying your life. I mean, I'm sure you've made mistakes like any of us,

• 23:07Andrew D. Huberman?

  but, but you seem to have avoided a lot of the pitfalls of quote-unquote famous people and celebrities, and yet you were a famous person from a very young age.

• 23:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, I, I, well, I think it was that I didn't never, I never, that was never a goal. And then when I had a sense of it, I was very uncomfortable. I mean, I was happy. I was happy to be successful. I was happy that people recognized me. That, that was amazing, just because I was good at skateboarding. I never imagined something like that. And, but I was always very...

• 23:42Speaker 05

  I mean, some people thought that I was sort of almost like pompous or arrogant because I wasn't interacting.

• 23:47Andrew D. Huberman?

  Really?

• 23:48Speaker 05

  Because I was just, I was walled up. I was like, I don't know what to do.

• 23:50Andrew D. Huberman?

  Gosh, this is the last words I would ever use to describe you.

• 23:54Speaker 05

  I think it was just more that, that, that people would see me like I'd go to a ramp. I didn't know anybody and I would just start skating and I'd do all my stuff and they were like, oh, he doesn't even talk to anyone. And it, and I was like, I don't know, I don't know what to do. I don't know how to act.

• 24:06Andrew D. Huberman?

  Also, you're 14 years old.

• 24:08Speaker 05

  Right. So Stacy broke me out of that because I remember one time there was a kid that was just staring at me like holding my skateboard. He had my signature model and he's like, go say hi to that guy. What? Are you sure? Like, he wants, he wants to interact with you. You know, just go high five him or anything. And, and I learned to sort of break out of my comfort zone by doing that enough. Um, but my first go around, I mean, that was, that was sort of my first, uh, wave of fame, I'd say, the Bones Brigade years. And we were so young that we thought this is forever. And so we were definitely careless with our, our money, with our actions. And, um, and at some point my dad saw that he didn't think it was going to be long-term.

• 24:54Speaker 05

  Cause no one had had a long-term career, right? So he, he, uh, encouraged me to, to invest, to get property, like to, to buy a house. That was the, that was my saving grace because I definitely was spending.

• 25:10Andrew D. Huberman?

  On cars and things like that.

• 25:12Speaker 05

  Uh, yeah, car, like kind of a little bit beyond my means. I wasn't really considered, all my money was, was 1099 income. So it wasn't, we weren't paying taxes on anything. And at the end of the year, it would be like, oh, you owe this much. Like, wait, what? You're talking about? So, um, for instance, hey, do you want to go to Hawaii? Yeah. Okay. Invite everyone. We're all going to Hawaii. I got, well, let's rent a place. Okay. You know, and it was on me because I had the means.

• 25:40Andrew D. Huberman?

  You mentioned Stacy. We should probably clarify for people, um, Tony's referring to the great Stacy Peralta.

• 25:46Speaker 05

  Yeah. He was, he was the one who put me on the Bones Brigade. When I was still considered sort of a circus act. Like a, you know, my, my skating was not really established. The stuff that I was doing was largely made fun of because people thought that what I was doing was just more like a free show.

• 26:06Andrew D. Huberman?

  Can you explain more? So my, and let me just tell you that my recollection, first recollection of you, that I still have that image in my mind would, is the finger flip air. Right? You know, so for folks that aren't familiar with skateboarding, you know, people ride around on transition or in the street, handrails, stairs, you know, people probably familiar with all those things. But skateboarders will ride up toward the top of the pool or the ramp and they'll do something on the so-called lip or the coping. That's to ride at the edge of it, or they'll go above it like in the air. But I recall seeing you do the finger flip air. I'd never seen anyone flip a board in the air. I'd seen people do varial, so move it. It's gonna be complicated for people just listening, but just to flip it upside down and then catch it in and finger flip

• 26:46Andrew D. Huberman?

  air. Yeah, that was, I remember that was jaw drop, right? It was like, so if that was considered circus era, or circus like, then I don't know, I don't know what it was being compared to because at the time, we probably watched that, it was in slow motion, as I recall, and we probably watched it 3,000 times. You know, that summer, there was a big group of us that all started skateboarding that summer.

• 27:11Speaker 05

  I would say kind of just before that, in that window, is when people were, were more

• 27:19Speaker 05

  giving me flack for what I was doing, because I was mostly doing board variation and stuff, but I still didn't have the height.

• 27:26Andrew D. Huberman?

  The height in terms of the

• 27:27Speaker 05

  The height in terms of, in terms of getting in the air.

• 27:29Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah.

• 27:30Speaker 05

  So I was doing all this stuff kind of right at coping level, and so people weren't taking it into consideration or giving it much merit, because it was just like, oh, he's doing a little board twist or a board turn. And then when I started to get some height, around the time you saw, and started doing those tricks, like visibly way up high, that's when the, the shift happened in terms of more acceptance. But I was still labeled as a, as like a trick skater, robot skater. And then you had Christian Asoye, who was all style. Air is higher than anyone. Anytime he did a trick, it was gonna be so flashy and so amazing.

• 28:10Andrew D. Huberman?

  And rock star personality.

• 28:11Speaker 05

  And rock star personality. And so in that era, you, I mean, it was very divided. It was like, no one liked us both. You know what I mean? It was just so strange to be of that age and of doing something that had never really been established. And then something impeded against another skater and we're just trying to make our way through teen years and skateboarding and it was hard. I mean, it was like, I got bullied. You know, yes, I was successful. Yes, I was doing, but I would get, I would get, Thrasher Magazine would talk shit about my performance when I would win.

• 28:56Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, I remember that because I was from Northern California and Thrasher Magazine, the skateboard magazine from Northern California, actually wrote for them for a while when I was a postdoc to make some extra money, under a different name, folks, but you can try and find those articles, they're out there. And then in Southern California, it was Skateboarder Mag, Transworld, mostly Transworld Skateboarding.

• 29:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was Transworld Skateboarding and Thrasher Magazine were the two.

• 29:18Andrew D. Huberman?

  The rivals.

• 29:19Speaker 05

  Right.

• 29:19Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah. So, yeah, I recall some of those things that were said. It just is amazing to me, but it brings about a really important lesson, which is, you know, that kid that gets made fun of, if they're determined and they love what they're doing, that's going to be the kid that blows everyone away later. And I know this for sure because I'll never forget, do you remember the Back to the City contest that were held in San Francisco? So I went to those, they were in the drain fountains in front of City Hall. I remember getting there one day and there was this guy with kind of like Afro-like hair pushing around and he was doing what are called daffys. He had two skateboards and he was kind of like weaving around. And I remember thinking, you know, San Francisco's got its issues now, but back then it was rough also for different reasons. I remember thinking like, this guy's going to get beat up.

• 30:02Andrew D. Huberman?

  I hung out with the Embarcadero Crew, I was like, this guy's going to get beat down. That guy was Mark Gonzalez.

• 30:07Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:08Andrew D. Huberman?

  So one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest street skateboarder, if you can't really define these things, greatest and whatnot in skateboarding.

• 30:17Andrew D. Huberman?

  But you know, I remember thinking this guy is just, he's a kook. And then I realized who it was. And then I realized he was just like any other kid there at some level. And then a lot of the kids that got teased early on, they stuck with it. Five years later, I'm seeing them in the magazines. And I think about this with podcasting too. There've been some podcasters that have reached out early on and had questions and I look at their stuff and you know, one's initial impression can be like, what are they like, what are they doing here? And then you just see them two years later, three years later, and they're doing amazingly well. And you're like, this guy or gal is here for good. They're gonna, they're probably gonna be top of the game in a few years. So you never count anybody out. When you would go to sleep at night in that era, were you like laying on the pillow going like, oh my God, people hate me. There's stuff in the magazines.

• 30:58Andrew D. Huberman?

  I gotta push harder. This is hard. Did you talk to your dad about it? I mean, again, it's a lot to bear, even as an adult. I can only imagine what it's like to bear as a 15 year old kid.

• 31:09Speaker 05

  I didn't really have a support group, you know, or any resource to, to voice those concerns. Um, I just knew I wanted to keep getting better. That was it. And so if anything, if I was worried about those voices, or I was worried about the, whatever take people had on me, I knew I was just gonna go back to the skate park and learn more tricks. Um, and at some point, I had so much of that as a foundation that it was sort of undeniable that like, well, he can do all this stuff.

• 31:45Speaker 05

  And he doesn't just do it at his home park. Um, and I think that's probably when the tide turned for me is when, when I started to do well at other events. Namely, Upland Pipeline, which was for the most part, the most frightening pool that we could ride.

• 32:04Andrew D. Huberman?

  The thing was big, but I also recall like the hips, as they're called, like the transitions, the way they match up were super tight.

• 32:10Speaker 05

  Lot of her giant coping, super rough. Like if you fell in Upland, you're getting chewed up. It's pulling your kneepads down.

• 32:18Andrew D. Huberman?

  I didn't know that because from the photos, I wouldn't know that.

• 32:20Speaker 05

  Oh, it was, it was treacherous. It really was like it was and, and I wanted to do well at the event and I would drive up there every weekend. Like my friend, uh, Greg Smith was a freestyler, but he lived near Upland. And so I would go drive Friday after school, straight to Upland, skate at night, skate Saturday all day, skate Sunday, uh, early and then drive home. Cause I live in San Diego and I just made it my mission to, to figure that thing out because that was the proving ground for me. And so if I could skate that, I could go skating.

• 32:56Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company for me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. So y'all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 33:06Speaker 02

  Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us out. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 33:12Speaker 03

  What would happen if I stopped going? You stall, you freeze in there. That's what.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 33:20Speaker 03

  I'm not the first then.

• 33:21Speaker 02

  Digger, see the trailer online, only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R, under 17, not a minute without parent.

• 33:27Andrew D. Huberman?

  So it's clear you had enormous drive. Let, let's talk a little bit about, um, the process of trying tricks, the anxiety associated with it. Did you, did you and do you have a sort of systematic process? Was it, you know, um, I'm going to learn the basics first. Like, did you say that? Did you say, um, okay, I'm going to learn how to do stuff, you know, at coping level. Then I'm going to do a little layer, then I'm going to go bigger. I'm going to do this. Or, um, did you just sort of, um, try what you wanted to try? And you obviously weren't haphazard about it. Like how, it seems you were pretty systematic about exploring what's possible and then pushing forward a little by little. But, um, yeah, maybe you could talk a little bit about how you have conceptualized, okay, tomorrow I want to try this.

• 34:10Speaker 05

  It, it comes in different forms, but for the most part, I think about how I could combine existing tricks. And would this trick work going into this trick? And could your body position shift or would it all work in unison? And when I approach a new trick, I, I'm saying, I'm saying more in the last 20 years. My thought process is I have all the pieces to this. I've done every bit of it. I've done the, I've done the first part of the trick in another form. I've done the second part or the grinding of it or whatever, usually in some other basic way.

• 34:51Speaker 05

  And then the landing is, well, the landing is from whatever that is. And if you can throw all those things together and make the timing work, it's gonna work. And I, I never, I never went at something with some haphazard approach or throwing caution to the wind, like hopeless, see what happens. It's always very much like, I know I have all these things. And so I just have to put them together. And I mean, now, things are so technical that my same approach that I'm doing hundreds of times, one of them just works. And it's not because I didn't, it's not because I committed to that one. It's because of some tiny fractional adjustment that happened that I didn't even know happened and it just worked.

• 35:36Speaker 05

  And I mean, that kinda is the curse of what tricks are now. Cause there are plenty of moves that I've done over the last 10 years even that I, I only did once because it was too fucking hard to get to. And I didn't learn from that one make. And that, that is, that's hard to accept. Cause in the past, I was learning tricks to have them in my arsenal that I could just throw them down at a competition or a demo. I've got that in my pocket. These days, like that trick, for instance, I did a, I did a 360 shove it, five out of faking.

• 36:09Andrew D. Huberman?

  All right, let's, let's break that down for real. 360 shove it, so who's gonna take this on? I'll let you take this on. I can try from my knowledge and perspective, but why?

• 36:17Speaker 05

  360 shove it is pushing the board with your feet and letting it spin a full 360 rotation under your feet and then landing back on it. It's, it's a trick that people do on, usually on flat ground. I've learned, I've learned to do it up on the vert walls. Like I can do 360 shove it's kind of in the air. But I'm doing that. I'm doing a 360 shove it and then I'm landing on my truck, right?

• 36:45Andrew D. Huberman?

  Like the axle between the wheels.

• 36:46Speaker 05

  On one axle in a what we call a 5-0 position, which is basically a wheelie on the truck. So everything is so precise. I gotta do a 360 shove it at exactly a certain spot on the wall. I've gotta catch it so that my truck lands when my foot hits it. I can't push it into the truck because that that screws up my balance. So it has to land on the truck. I have to land with my weight perfectly set back enough that I can come in backwards. Because I'm doing this trick and and I'm I'm gonna come in fakie, right? 360 shove 5-0 to coming in forward is is a whole different beast. That that I could probably do that just in a few tries. But the idea that I have to land on this thing, balance on it like a teeter totter,

• 37:31Speaker 05

  and then reverse my energy and come in fakie backward. It's so hard. It's so hard to to get into the right position. So like anytime I try it, there's like a 1 in 10 chance I'm even gonna get into the position I need. And that's the one I have to commit to. So every time I do it, it's so intense and it takes so much, so much commitment and and so much mind.

• 38:00Speaker 05

  I don't even know how to explain it like the

• 38:04Speaker 05

  that you have shut everything else out except this one moment and this one fractional piece that you have to make work. And it I I've done it once. And I like, I would love to do it again, but I know what it's gonna it's gonna take the same amount of effort. I didn't learn from that one that I made, some trick that makes it happen every time. It's all so technical and there's so many things that can go wrong that I'll accept that, okay, I did it once.

• 38:33Andrew D. Huberman?

  In thinking about the 360 show at 500 fakey, was that something that you thought of the night before you decide that day? Do you ever use visualization? Have you ever had learning come to you in a dream or find that you tried, tried, tried something? Went to sleep that night, next day, made it? Anything like that?

• 38:50Speaker 05

  Yes, sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night and I'll write down something. Cause it was like, oh, there's this trick. Oh, I think I could do that. Yeah, okay, I'm gonna write it down.

• 38:58Andrew D. Huberman?

  So you dream about skateboarding from time to time?

• 39:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, yeah, that has shifted a bit after I got hurt. But yeah, I used to dream that I can't skate. Like I'm trying and that it feels like the ramps made of carpet. I can't get the speed. I can't get the timing. And then as I went through this traumatic injury, my dreams shifted to, wow, I can skate. I can do all my tricks again.

• 39:19Andrew D. Huberman?

  Oh, interesting.

• 39:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 39:20Andrew D. Huberman?

  A little piece of science around the can't, can't skate piece. Or when people feel like they're bolted down in a dream or they can't run away.

• 39:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 39:28Andrew D. Huberman?

  There's this one phase of sleep called rapid eye movement sleep where the brain is very active. The dreams associated with it tend to be very vivid. And at the same time, we are completely paralyzed. And the idea is that no one really knows why, but that it's the case that we're paralyzed to prevent us from acting out our dreams. It's also an interesting neurochemical phenomenon because during these rapid eye movement dreams, they tend to be very intense. But the body can't release adrenaline. So it's almost like its own form of trauma therapy. It's like you're experiencing this intense thing in your mind, but your body can't react. And so oftentimes people have argued that that's why you feel like you want to move and you can't because you actually can't. Some people have woken up while still a bit paralyzed in REM. Have you ever had that happen? Where you wake up?

• 40:13Speaker 05

  But actually a couple of my kids have struggled with that a couple of times.

• 40:17Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, REM interference is called. It's not dangerous and usually people can jolt themselves out, but it's kind of terrifying. So that's interesting. So we'll get to a discussion about the, the recent injury and thankfully recovery from the injury. Not miraculous because that makes it seem as if it's surprising. Frankly, I'm not surprised that you've recovered, but it is spectacular the way you have. But You're saying that in your dreams before the injury, you would think about skateboarding, but you felt like there was a kind of can't do it.

• 40:45Speaker 05

  When I was doing it in my dream, there was always some roadblock that I just could like, why can't I get any speed? Why can't I, why can't I snap or do this trick? It's more in the moments where it's twilight moments where I'm kind of awake and I'm thinking about tricks that everything else falls away and I can actually focus on what kind of new moves to come up with.

• 41:10Speaker 05

  An example of that was recently I went to the X Games in Japan a few weeks ago. And I was thinking, I was gonna go more to show my support and because they had a vert event. There's not a lot of vert events anymore. So if there's a vert event, it's kind of like, if you build it, I will come because I want to show my support. That's, that's kind of where my heart is. And they had a best trick event and I thought, man, maybe I could get in the best trick. Is there anything new though? You know, and I'm still recovering from my leg. And then at some point I was falling asleep and I thought, oh, I could do that trick and come in 180. I know I could do that with, with my current state and not getting that much speed.

• 41:55Speaker 05

  So to explain what I was doing is, is a half cab body barrel to backside blunt.

• 42:01Andrew D. Huberman?

  Okay, we can walk through this half cab. Cab has come up backwards, go 360, right? So half of that would go 180.

• 42:08Speaker 05

  As I approached the top of the ramp, I body rail, that means I jump around. And then I jump around on my board and then I make sure that it lands with my two trucks out and my tail on the coping, which is very precarious. And I've done that and come in fakie before.

• 42:24Andrew D. Huberman?

  That's the blunt piece.

• 42:25Speaker 05

  That's the blunt. So I've done that where I, where, and then you have to, you have to use your feet to lift up the board, come in fakie, right? I've done that, I've done that twice. And I thought, well, I wonder if there's something I could do like that. And then I realized that if I just keep coming around and I come in backside direction, that keeps my body spinning and that might actually be easier.

• 42:49Speaker 05

  It wasn't, but I figured it out.

• 42:51Andrew D. Huberman?

  I think I saw a clip of this on Instagram.

• 42:52Speaker 05

  I did it, yeah. I did it. I did it at X Games and I was like, it was my last run. It was, it was, I mean, it didn't move the needle. I got seventh place, but for me, it was a huge moment.

• 43:02Andrew D. Huberman?

  It felt amazing, I bet.

• 43:04Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, and I was, I mean, it was like weeks of preparation and trying to figure this thing out. I made it twice before the event. Um, on my own, alone, on my ramp. But, um, that's just an example of, of, you know, I was, I was literally falling asleep and then all of a sudden it was like, half cap, body roll, back step, blunt.

• 43:26Andrew D. Huberman?

  I love it. That liminal state between wakefulness and sleep is such a beautiful state that if one is open to ideas showing up there.

• 43:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:35Andrew D. Huberman?

  They almost always do.

• 43:36Speaker 05

  I tried, started trying it the next morning.

• 43:39Andrew D. Huberman?

  Do you ever find that when you're taking walks or in the shower or not thinking about skateboarding?

• 43:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's usually in the, in the sort of mundane moments that, that I get inspiration.

• 43:51Andrew D. Huberman?

  Do you have practices for pure relaxation, aside from socialization?

• 43:55Speaker 05

  I know, I, I was never, I think that's something I've been lacking. I, I never was good at warming up, stretching, post-warm-up.

• 44:08Speaker 05

  Or, or, or relaxing, you know, meditation, nothing. I just, I, I go skate and it's on.

• 44:17Speaker 05

  And as I've gotten older, I realized that's not the best technique. But it's worked so far.

• 44:24Andrew D. Huberman?

  It has worked. Um, so for you, it's go hopefully a little bit of warm-up if you.

• 44:28Speaker 05

  I have more of a sort of OCD warm-up run that I use to gauge how I'm feeling. But I kind of have to get through that.

• 44:38Andrew D. Huberman?

  Like a surgeon, when a surgeon's about to do a surgery, they don't warm up. They just check off the various boxes of, you know, this is here, that's there. Make sure that they're comfortable in their environment and then they do, they do the, the life-saving work. Yeah.

• 44:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, my, I'd say my warm-up run is, is kind of basic tricks, but they give me a sense of how, how stiff or how I, what I need to adjust for, for the rest of the day. So I guess it's not so OCD, but it, but I definitely feel like I gotta go through that routine.

• 45:09Andrew D. Huberman?

  What feels the best? Like, I know that making a new trick feels incredible, especially if you've been at it a long time. Dialing it in so that you can do it again and again is its own form of reward.

• 45:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 45:22Andrew D. Huberman?

  But what is the maybe list of two or three things that just feels so good?

• 45:27Speaker 05

  Well, that for sure, learning new tricks, not even that that it's something that I created, but just doing something that I've never done before. When I first learned varials, backside varials, no one had done backside varials before. They'd only done it on the front side. And a varial is where you you reach down, grab your board, jump in the air and then turn it 180 under your feet. It's it's like a shove it, but you're guiding with your hand. I learned that halfway up the pool, the the main pool in a way at Oasis with no one around. And the feeling I got when I rode away was something that I had never experienced. And it is, it is literally the buzz that I've been chasing ever since, because it was like I created something.

• 46:10Andrew D. Huberman?

  Varyals below coping was the was the button.

• 46:13Speaker 05

  That was it. It really was. And if you saw a video of it, you'd be like, that thing? Like, what can I say? It was it was the first time that I thought I thought of it.

• 46:23Speaker 05

  I I went through all the motions of it. I did the work and I figured it out. And, you know, no one, no one cared. But at some point, I was able to do it six feet in the air and do a full 360 varial. And so that was the building block. But but that feeling was like no other. I'd say that. And then just even to to strip everything else away, like the most basic tricks, like a backside ollie is is a no handed aerial. That used to be what it was called, backside no handed aerial. It feels so good because even to this day, people, people say, how does the

• 47:04Speaker 05

  board stay on your feet? And I can't even tell you how the board stays on my feet. I just know, I know how to maneuver it. And I know how to keep the pressure on it and the friction going. And backside always is like, I think it's like a marvel of physics. And a clean backside allie to me is feels as good as anything.

• 47:24Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, it's a beautiful thing to behold. I confess I've never done a legitimate backside allie on Vert. On a mini ramp, sure, but not on Vert. So I can't relate to the feeling, but I love, love, love the fact that you brought us back to that early, very low coping feeling and that that marks the essence of what feels so good when you do something else, right? It's sort of like a, it's a, as a neuroscientist, I see it as a chemical stamp. It's like a chemical fingerprint of progress, right?

• 47:56Andrew D. Huberman?

  And I'm also delighted to hear that it still feels that good to do these things. Cause I don't think anyone can have the kind of lifelong progression that you've had, and it's still going, without a, not just love of the thing, but love of the feeling that it brings when no one's around. Cause you said skating your ramp by yourself. So how often are you on your ramp with, you know, no one's filming for Instagram, no, nothing for a video, nothing for a video game, none of that. Maybe there's, you know, maybe other guys are around, gals around. We'll talk about gals too, because one of the big shifts in skateboarding since I started is that there's some amazing female skateboarders now. There's a young lady, in fact, that's been skateboarding at your ramp. Forgive me, I can't remember her name. Is it?

• 48:37Speaker 05

  Reese.

• 48:37Andrew D. Huberman?

  Reese.

• 48:38Speaker 05

  Reese Nelson.

• 48:39Andrew D. Huberman?

  Goodness. Goodness, gracious.

• 48:42Speaker 05

  I know.

• 48:42Andrew D. Huberman?

  She is so.

• 48:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 48:44Andrew D. Huberman?

  Good.

• 48:45Speaker 05

  So good.

• 48:45Andrew D. Huberman?

  So good. So we'll get back to that, but I think that, you know, people starting any kind of sport or academic career or business or anything, I think people assume that you go from zero to a hundred somehow, and that there are these people that are just selected by genetics or by luck or by some combination of things to just like get it and be better than everybody else. But it's clear that you've spent a lot of time alone driving someplace to skate the next day, or alone at the ramp.

• 49:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 49:14Andrew D. Huberman?

  Or, so do you ever reflect on that kind of drive? And, you know, what, what, what that's all about? Or is it just so intrinsic to who you are?

• 49:24Speaker 05

  It's more innate. I don't, I don't think about it. I just know I have to do it. It's like, I mean, I, we can get into it with my injury, but.

• 49:35Speaker 05

  But to go back to what you're saying is you're saying that people think that, "Oh, you were chosen for this," or genetics, whatever.

• 49:41Andrew D. Huberman?

  Your last name's Hawk after all.

• 49:42Speaker 05

  If you saw me skate,

• 49:44Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah.

• 49:44Speaker 05

  When I first started skating, there was no way you'd think that I was a natural or that I had any future in it. I was all gangly, I was all over the place, I was eating shit left and right. Like, it just, it wasn't, I wasn't good. I wasn't. I wasn't a natural. I've seen people that are naturals, and I've seen that how they don't have that drive. They don't have the discipline. And it's not wasted, but they just don't, they don't utilize, they don't take advantage of what they have naturally. And for whatever reason, I don't fault anyone for it. But I've seen both sides of it. And I've also seen other skaters who are just driven and who are not really good, kind of sloppy, and become the best.

• 50:29Speaker 05

  Andrew Reynolds.

• 50:31Andrew D. Huberman?

  Oh, yeah.

• 50:31Speaker 05

  When we put him on our team, he was just like me, super gangly, his boards bouncing around, but he's trying every single trick. And every time he sent me a video, it's some new technique that he's figured out. And he didn't really, by the untrained eye, he didn't have the skill set for. And then he became the boss. You know what I mean? So I think it's just, you have to, you have to give that as much weight as natural to him. If not more. I'd say more.

• 51:03Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, I would certainly say more for science. And, you know, the people who are in the lab, late at night and early in the morning and drilling away, not always the smartest, certainly not the dumbest, but smart enough to show up when other people are leaving and continue. And I think there has to be a little bit of friction internally. I mean, maybe externally also, but just some friction, some I'm gonna show you.

• 51:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, yes. Okay, my best example of that, and I haven't talked about this yet, because I did it privately, but I broke my leg doing a McTwist, something that I've done thousands of times.

• 51:44Andrew D. Huberman?

  540.

• 51:45Speaker 05

  540, yeah. So it's a one and a half spin in the backside direction, but that particular grab that you do makes it a McTwist because it makes you kind of flip upside down. So it's kind of a one and a half somersault. It's not my tricks, it's Mike McGill's trick. I learned it not long after he created it in 1984. Been doing it ever since. I mean, I'm talking about 40 years in McTwist, right? I've gotten hurt once or twice, but not bad. Anyway, I fucked around and found out. Did one with no speed. Last year, thinking I could do it like I was still 20 and got tangled up and broke my femur. I had a super long recovery, I had a false start, I had a non-union fracture,

• 52:29Speaker 05

  which means my bone never connected back to itself and it kept pushing itself further away.

• 52:35Speaker 05

  And that's all. In the past, I got a second surgery in November. And all along, in the back of my head is, I gotta get back to 540s, I have to. And I can't explain why I have to. I hate that it means that much to me. But it's in here. You know what I mean? It's not, it's not a sense of pride. It's not like, I have to prove this to anyone. I just have to do it. And last week, I did it. It was so scary.

• 53:10Speaker 05

  And I prepped for it. I, I mean, even down to like my diet and I, I stopped drinking altogether. And I was like, every time I go to the ramp, I'm just trying 540s, like to get the spin, to get the, to get the landing zone, with no intention of making it, just that I had to get there. And then I had to have this heart-to-heart with my wife that, you know, she doesn't want to see me get hurt. She doesn't want to see me risking myself at this age anymore. She doesn't want to live through another traumatic injury with me. And I had to tell her, like, I have to do this. She was gracious and accepting and that's all I could ask for. It wasn't like she was like, yeah, you gotta go do it. It was like, okay.

• 53:52Speaker 05

  That's who you are. And so she was there. She was my only spectator.

• 53:59Andrew D. Huberman?

  So good. I confess, I've seen a video of this and my first response was, um, F yes. Uh, and my second response was, that was really high. Like this is no, you know, just above coping 540. This isn't even, you know, this is a head high 540.

• 54:17Speaker 05

  I'm not going to make the same mistake I did last time where I tried it low thinking I just get away with it anymore. So the going high was more of a safety measure, which is ironic. The, the, the bigger the ramps for me, the safer it is because I have a better landing zone. I have more time in the air to adjust. And even though it looks spectacular and you're six feet in the air. It's just like, no, I need that. I can't skate some eight foot pool. I have no landing zone. I'm too tall. I'm too, I move too slowly now to do that kind of stuff. So that's why you don't see me like in the park events and stuff like that. You know, you're going to see me on this 14 foot vert ramp because that's my happy place and that's where I'm safe. But also having my wife there, I just knew I wasn't going to get hurt in front of her.

• 55:03Speaker 05

  Cause I would have been such trouble.

• 55:07Andrew D. Huberman?

  The, the emotional support and pressure is, uh, is a real thing and in the best ways. Not to focus on the bad aspects of the injury, uh, because.

• 55:18Speaker 05

  There are plenty.

• 55:19Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, that I recall you and I communicated not long after the, let's say, let's call it what it was, the first break. And I remember you said to me over text, you said, how long before I'm skateboarding again? And I said, um, skateboarding as in pushing or skateboarding as in, um, what you do on vert, you know? And you said, uh, what I do on vert. And I said, well, it seems you are doing a lot of things. You were doing deliberate cold, deliberate heat, pressure. You do a number of things. I mean, you're not haphazard about your career and your body and your health. And we'll get into that a little bit later. Some of the things that you've enjoyed as beneficial for you. But, um, you said, I'm calling it at two months.

• 55:59Andrew D. Huberman?

  And I said, okay, I believe it. And then I recall that you, was it the Oscars or some other award event where you came out about a week later, you came out there, you walked out, this broken femur, and you weren't using any support to walk out. So you clearly ditched whatever support you might have been using, which I think is awesome, by the way. And then, pretty soon, I was seeing videos of you dropping in, I'm seeing videos of you doing kick turns below coping, I'm seeing videos of you at coping, and you know, we have a friend in common, the skateboard and generally photographer, Mike Blayback, and I remember texting Mike, I was like, Tony's back already. This is, this is superhuman

• 56:40Andrew D. Huberman?

  rates of healing. And I think it is superhuman rates of healing. Then you mentioned that you damaged, broke, broke the femur again. So did you allow more rest the second time? What was driving you to get back in it so quickly?

• 56:54Speaker 05

  The first go around, I just didn't listen to any of the professional advice, because I thought, well, I've done, I've come this far, and I've always been able to push through broken pelvis, broken elbow, knee surgeries, and I've always been, the timeline's always very shortened for me, because I just get back out there and I, and I get the healing started. But I also am comfortable with what people think is extremely risky. But in this instance, I wanted to get back out there right away. And not long after the Academy Awards, I was actually walking with a cane at that time, and I ditched the cane just to walk out on stage to present the awards. So that was my big, my big coming out moment, but it was kind of forced. And as soon as I walked off the stage, I grabbed my cane,

• 57:38Speaker 05

  and I was hobbling in the backstage. But I was, I was skating kind of a mini ramp, and, and I was already struggling, because I couldn't put my weight on my front foot, because my bone still had not connected to itself. So there's a gap in the bone, but there's a, there's a nail, what they call a nail, or, you know, a big piece of metal that's holding them in place. But I didn't realize how careful I needed to be with that, because it was so precarious. And I decided, I'm gonna drop in on the mini ramp. Like, I think I'm ready. And, and it wasn't the drop in on the mini ramp, it was me getting to the top of the mini ramp and stepping off my board.

• 58:18Andrew D. Huberman?

  It's always that kind of stuff.

• 58:20Speaker 05

  But, but I just stepped off my board, like I would do any other day, but I didn't think I led with my front foot, and I felt the bone move in that moment.

• 58:29Speaker 05

  I really, I felt it, I felt it either twist or get out of place. And I was in total denial for months. Cause I just said, oh, it just, it just hurts now. Like I, you know, I, I got a minor setback. And then I finally, eight months into my recovery, seven months into my recovery, I was always in pain. My skating wasn't progressing. I couldn't get speed. And by all measures, I should be back. At least I'd be back to a level that I feel good about. And I went and got x-rays and they said, your bone never connected. You have a non-union fracture and, and, and, and every time I skated, so my bone's like this.

• 59:13Speaker 05

  Every time I skated, I was pushing it further away. And so my bone was like this on the last x-ray and, and that was the hard truth.

• 59:22Andrew D. Huberman?

  So for those listening, just laterally displaced, think about a pipe that's broken in the middle and just one's offset to the other.

• 59:28Speaker 05

  And, and as I keep skating and I, I could force my skate, like I kind of learned this hack where I can put 75% of my weight on my back foot and 25% of my front foot and do what I wanted to do, but it wasn't where I thought I'd be. And it just hurt all the time. I mean, it really was like, that was my trigger because I, I have a pretty high tolerance to pain. And it was always hurt. Like I, I would dread going to the airport, knowing I had to walk to a gate. So I knew something was wrong there. I went to a specialist that deals in non-union fractures. And he had a very pragmatic, factual approach. And it was like, oh, I would do this. I'm taking that nail out and take the other hardware out and put it together.

• 1:00:13Speaker 05

  And you cannot move for two months.

• 1:00:17Andrew D. Huberman?

  Did you obey that order?

• 1:00:18Speaker 05

  I did.

• 1:00:18Andrew D. Huberman?

  Really?

• 1:00:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:00:20Andrew D. Huberman?

  So what, what is?

• 1:00:21Speaker 05

  I was chilling. I was not going to risk that again.

• 1:00:24Andrew D. Huberman?

  Did you, and do you prioritize things like sleep, nutrition, just, you know, generally? And did you emphasize those things while you were recovering from the injury?

• 1:00:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, I, I was very disciplined in my diet, in my schedule, in my sleep. Surprisingly, I, I was very busy because I do speaking engagements. And suddenly my speaking engagements were getting booked left and right.

• 1:00:55Speaker 05

  I mean, to the point where I did a tour through Europe last summer of speaking engagements. So that was sort of, that was a silver lining, I guess, to my, my idle time.

• 1:01:06Speaker 05

  And I leaned into it, you know, I made myself available and, and it, you know, it's good money and it was, it's fun to, to interact. And, um, but all through, all through that, of course, in the back of my head, I was like, when, when can I skate? When can I skate? And then when I finally started skating, it was night and day with my leg. I felt like I could lean forward. Suddenly I was learning tricks every, every session, relearning tricks.

• 1:01:36Speaker 05

  So I just, I'm just lucky that I got to live in this time of modern medicine.

• 1:01:41Andrew D. Huberman?

  Was that two months, the longest you've ever gone without skateboarding vert?

• 1:01:44Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah, without skating at all.

• 1:01:48Andrew D. Huberman?

  Not even just pushing around?

• 1:01:49Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:01:50Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, good for you for obeying doctor's orders and also

• 1:01:53Speaker 05

  Finally.

• 1:01:55Andrew D. Huberman?

  And also good for you for deciding that your rate of recovery is going to be whatever it is for you. Because I feel like I'm hearing both things. On the one hand, you listen to the medical professionals. On the other hand, I'm not hearing, oh, you know, I looked at the average rate of recovery from this kind of fracture, this and that. It's, it's like, it's as if you decided two things at once, that there are experts who have something to offer me here. I'll follow their advice and yet I'm the expert at myself. Here, I'm putting myself in your first person. Tony's the expert in Tony and I'm going to make sure that I come back a hundred percent.

• 1:02:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:02:29Andrew D. Huberman?

  Or better.

• 1:02:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, not better, but, um, and I've, and I have come to terms with that. Because I know that I'm not going to be pushing myself the way that I did before I got hurt anymore. There are some tricks now that are way more difficult, just because whatever, something changed in my body. And for instance, I can't grab slob. Like I can't, I, I can't do it consistently. That used to be my go-to grab. Could do that anytime, over sixty foot gaps, whatever, like I could, I just grab, I knew where my board was. I knew that was going to hold on to my feet and half the time I try to grab that way. Now I don't reach it or I grab my foot instead. And I, I don't know, I can't make the adjustment to fix it.

• 1:03:12Speaker 05

  And so I've just sort of come to terms with, well, that's not the go-to grab anymore. And that's okay.

• 1:03:19Andrew D. Huberman?

  Your kit's.

• 1:03:19Speaker 05

  I had a good run.

• 1:03:20Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, your kit's pretty, pretty vast. So there's a lot of other things to reach to. Aside from the 540, which by the way, congratulations.

• 1:03:28Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 1:03:28Andrew D. Huberman?

  Not only is it a 540, but done at least head high. I've seen it with my own eyes and, and under really great circumstances. Your wife there, just the two of you and after, and the trick that broke the femur in the first place.

• 1:03:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:43Andrew D. Huberman?

  So congratulations on that.

• 1:03:45Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 1:03:46Andrew D. Huberman?

  Are there other things that you, you're thinking, you know, can't wait to get back to that? Let's set aside slaw bears for now.

• 1:03:53Speaker 05

  Yeah. Um, yeah, I, I want to get my hand plants back the way I used to do them. I have yet, yeah, it's so inverted, like it's one handed handstand. I can do them now, but I.

• 1:04:06Andrew D. Huberman?

  I've seen you do them recently.

• 1:04:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, but, but I used, they used to be my signature was a tuck knee inver and flopped all the way back. And, and I can't get a hold of my board to pull it all the way back like I used to. If I can get that, I'll feel like that's it. That's, that's, that was the last milestone.

• 1:04:25Andrew D. Huberman?

  I'm not here to diagnose and, and treat these specific skateboard trickisms, but between your, what you said about the slaw bear and what you're saying about this.

• 1:04:33Speaker 05

  Well, same grab.

• 1:04:34Andrew D. Huberman?

  It seems like there's something about, about getting your, your, your front hand around and just kind of pulling it back, back in, uh, behind you. So maybe this is like the way that the femur is lining up with your pelvis and maybe some off ramp, something or other. Physical therapy could do it.

• 1:04:49Speaker 05

  I am actually working with, um, at Beskor, he is a, he is a doctor of physical therapy and he has helped me immensely through my recovery. And when I'm frustrated with this motion, or that's the same grab actually as in the twist. He worked on me before it and was just contorting my body and my leg into these positions that I don't really even get to when I'm skating. Just to prepare me for that. And he did, but that's what it took.

• 1:05:21Andrew D. Huberman?

  It's interesting that we're talking about skateboarding and we're also talking about physical therapists. We're talking about nutrition. We're talking about sleep. So

• 1:05:29Speaker 05

  You came in like none of that, none of that.

• 1:05:31Andrew D. Huberman?

  Never imagined any of this. And I'm chuckling because, you know, growing up in skateboarding, early on for me, not quite as early as you, but pretty early, 12, and got out of it and back and yes, I can still do a thing or two here and there. But that's not the point. The point is that, you know, the nutrition consisted largely of, you know, fast food or whatever was around. Cigarettes and beer were sort of the, the energy drinks and, and supplements of, of the times. This is fortunately changed, but there, there was essentially no health promoting tools or aspects to it at all. But that was back then. But then over time, it seems it's evolved. Like now I see, I saw a couple of posts from Stevie

• 1:06:16Andrew D. Huberman?

  Williams, like he's in the gym. I think I saw Danny Way early on, working with Paul Check and doing some balance work, neck work, because he had broken his neck surfing and things of that sort. So there seems to have been a big shift over the last 15, 20 years, where skateboarders are taking good care of their bodies, like other athletes, thinking about the resilience of their bodies and also generally taking better care. Like a lot of them opt not to drink and do drugs and all those sorts of things. So, I mean, how does it strike you to see the way that skateboarding has evolved towards the option to be much healthier and treat it like a, like a serious sport where you're a serious athlete? A word that, you know, even 15 years ago, 20 years ago, if you called a skateboarder an athlete, some people might even be offended by that. People in skateboarding, right?

• 1:07:01Speaker 05

  Absolutely. Yeah. Well, to answer your question, in the early days, that was part of the, the scene and the culture, just because the, it was the antithesis to organize team sports and mainstream culture. And so it was just like, yeah, this is what we do. Fuck it. Who cares? Like we drank and we skated and everyone, it was, it was Wild West, right? But as I never fell into that deeply because I saw how it affected people's performances. And the skating itself was paramount to me. That is what I wanted to focus on. That's what I wanted to be good at. And I saw people partying and partying their skills away. So I had at least that forethought.

• 1:07:46Speaker 05

  And then as skating got more established, popular, more of a career option, then people started taking it more seriously, especially competitors. I mean, and, and, but there's such a wide swath of, of what skateboarding is. And it's a big tent. So to say that it's more organized, yes, it's organized over here. There's still all these skaters over here, partying, hopping fences, don't care about contests, don't want sponsors.

• 1:08:15Andrew D. Huberman?

  Oh, well, like GX1000, like those kids at Baumhills in San Francisco, like, like.

• 1:08:19Speaker 05

  But, but that, that's what I love about it is, is the diversity of it all. And that, that's, we're all part of this scene. So I, I was a competitor. That was, that was my path to success. And so I appreciate that people take it more seriously now and that they do have trainer. They have resources. I mean, they have sponsors that will pay for this kind of stuff.

• 1:08:41Speaker 05

  There was no such thing. I mean, like, at, at our biggest skate contest, we were all staying at Stacy Pearlton's parents' house the night before. And he would take us out to get spaghetti because he thought carbohydrates was going to give us energy the next day. That was the extent of training in 1983, right? But nowadays, we're treated like high elite athletes. Because they are, like, if you really look at people that are at the top of their field, people like Naja Huston, you know what I mean? Like, the dude is a machine. He is, he is one of the most precise skaters that we've ever seen or precise athletes. The side of Nadya Komanyich.

• 1:09:26Speaker 05

  You know, yes, I'm, I'm, I'm aging myself, but.

• 1:09:31Speaker 05

  What I'm saying is like, this is, this is takes hardcore dedication, precision, athleticism, and devotion. And so now they have the resources to back that up and to keep it going longer. I mean, yeah, would I be able to do this now, especially after getting hurt without the help of a doctor of physical training? Probably not. I'd do it on some level, but I wouldn't get to where I am now. And so, hey, I think it's awesome. I, you know, I, I never, I never wanted to covet skateboarding as this thing that no one else, like a gatekeeper to it. No one else can touch it. I always thought there was something to skateboarding that was

• 1:10:13Speaker 05

  magical and that was good for mental health and that was, that was required such, um, required such passion. And I didn't, I never understood why it didn't get bigger through those, those lean years. It was always like kids, this speaks to kids, like it's, it's daredevil and it's active and it's exciting and you can do it as a group, but you can do it your own way. And I don't know, all those things, it took a long time for everyone else to figure it out. They definitely figured it out. I mean, nowadays, skaters are the cool kids in school.

• 1:10:48Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, it's in the Olympics. Like, there was always discussion, would it be, it was an exhibition sport in the Olympics at one point?

• 1:10:53Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:10:54Andrew D. Huberman?

  Uh, no?

• 1:10:55Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:10:55Andrew D. Huberman?

  Oh, I thought it was it for, maybe it had a run at potentially being an exhibition.

• 1:10:59Speaker 05

  There were, there was talk of that.

• 1:11:00Andrew D. Huberman?

  Got it. Got it.

• 1:11:01Speaker 05

  Um, but it, it never did. And, and not that, I mean, at some point, especially in the late nineties or two thousands, skating was getting appreciated and, and kind of reached that threshold of, of is it mainstream? Well, it's in, it's on McDonald's commercials. So I guess that's pretty mainstream. And so we already had come of age and it was like, we don't need the Olympics. We're already more popular than a lot of Olympic sports, right? So why do we need their validation? And then at some point it became like the, the, the power dynamic shifted and it was like, oh, they need our cool factor. We don't

• 1:11:41Speaker 05

  need their validation. And it was like, yeah, okay. You guys want it? Sure. Go ahead. Hold the events, hold the qualifiers. We'll participate, but we don't need this.

• 1:11:56Andrew D. Huberman?

  Well, you've been an amazing ambassador for the sport that's driven so much of that wider acceptance and progression and invitation into different domains. One of the things that I definitely want to talk about is the video game, right? Because I think that the video game changed a lot of things for the general public in terms of their perception of skateboarding. I mean, what it allowed, of course, is, this is obvious, but it allowed kids that weren't going to, you know, bang up their shins, or walk in with a broken wrist, or, you know, all skinned up to, to do incredible tricks, but in silicone on a screen, right? And to pretend that they are

• 1:12:37Andrew D. Huberman?

  the pro skateboarder. That's essentially what, what video games are about. And yet, when you can see something, just like you can imagine it in a dream, or while you're falling asleep, and you can see something and hear in air quotes, "do something" in a video game, it also is going to inspire a number of kids to go outside and grab a real skateboard and try that, or try something like that. So clearly, the video game was a catalyst for what I consider now the wide acceptance of skateboarding as a sport in all its various forms. Could you just talk for a little bit about the genesis of the video game? Were you into video games prior to the video game?

• 1:13:14Andrew D. Huberman?

  Were you into technology generally? And what sort of motivated the interest in the video game? Because it certainly has changed the face of actual skateboarding and the perception of skateboarding.

• 1:13:25Speaker 05

  Well, I've been into video games since the get-go. I mean, I was a kid, you know, playing Pong, Pac-Man, Missile Command, Cubert, you name it, and then getting the home systems in television, Super NES, Commodore 64.

• 1:13:41Andrew D. Huberman?

  Sega.

• 1:13:42Speaker 05

  Sega, yeah. But, but I, and I always loved technology. So when I, when I finally started making money in the 80s, my first kind of big purchase in terms of that, in terms of electronics, was Commodore Amiga, which was considered one of the highest-end home computers, you know, alongside Mac, but, but more graphic-oriented and more game-oriented. And so I was always into that idea that you could do this kind of stuff at home, not just in arcades. And then I got a, I got a call from a PC programmer that wanted to pitch a skate game

• 1:14:25Speaker 05

  and had a crude engine of a skater that would cruise around, go run bowls and stuff like that. And it was all keyboard controlled. It was clunky, but it was something. And the last thing that we had as skating was 720 in the arcade or Skater Die for home systems for Commodore 64. That was like the last thing that had happened for skateboarding in video games. And so I went with him. I was excited to get like, I got to, we got to go to Nintendo and pitch it. We went to Midway. You know, we went to all these different console and software manufacturers and were just told that this is a bad idea.

• 1:15:07Speaker 05

  Skateboarding is not popular. Home video games are barely a thing. Why would anyone want to buy a video game about skateboarding? Someone said those exact words to me at Midway. And so he got frustrated and he needed to find a job and I was, I was just kind of free floating. So I said, okay. And he goes, well, I'm, I'm not going to do this, but I feel like you've established yourself, at least in the video game world industry that you're interested in doing something. So maybe if someone does something, they'll call you. And I was like, yeah, right. Sure. Sure enough, like a year later, Activision called me and they said, hey, we heard you want to do a video game. I said, well, yes, I would love to work on a video game. I'm not a programmer or anything. So we have

• 1:15:52Speaker 05

  something we're working on and we'd like to show it to you. And so I went up to Activision. They were working on a skate game, but it was based on an engine of a game that was already released called Apocalypse starring Bruce Willis. So the first version of my game was Bruce Willis on a skateboard with a gun strapped to his back.

• 1:16:13Speaker 05

  In a desert wasteland doing kickflips. And it was awesome. It was, it was truly like I picked it up. And I got past that visual and then I started playing it and, and it was intuitive. It, the motion felt right, the engine was right. And I was like, this is, this is the baseline of something special. I didn't think it was going to be some big hit. I just thought this is, this is going to be appreciated by skateboarders. And that was my goal, the entire, uh, development process, which was about a year and a half after I signed on. We, through that year and a half, we were going back and forth with, they would, they would FedEx me builds on CDs. I had a modified PlayStation and I would play it, make notes.

• 1:16:56Speaker 05

  And then I thought, man, skaters are going to dig this. And that was it. And skating wasn't even that popular. It was coming to, you know, it was starting to get some traction.

• 1:17:05Andrew D. Huberman?

  What year was this again?

• 1:17:06Speaker 05

  Like 98.

• 1:17:07Andrew D. Huberman?

  Uh huh.

• 1:17:07Speaker 05

  So it was like X Games were starting to come into the fold. People were taking note of what skateboarding had become at that point. And then I thought, this is going to be cool. Skaters are going to like it. And then, um, not long before the release, they called me and they said, hey, we want to, um, we want to offer you a buyout of future royalties for this game. Cause I think, you know, there's, I think people are going to like it. And I was like, what does that mean? And they go, we, we'll give you a half a million dollars and then you don't get royalties going forward, but you get that money upfront. And at that time in my life, like to hear someone say half a million dollars seriously sounded like a half a billion dollars.

• 1:17:49Speaker 05

  Like no one had ever talked about numbers that big to me.

• 1:17:54Andrew D. Huberman?

  Well, also 98 was a little bit of a, of a quiet time for vert skateboarding too, right?

• 1:17:59Speaker 05

  Sure. Yeah. Skateboarding in general, but, but yeah, for, for.

• 1:18:03Speaker 05

  Luckily vert skating.

• 1:18:06Speaker 05

  Still was a thing because of inline skating.

• 1:18:10Speaker 05

  Because inline skating was huge, right? Late 90s. And they were all vert. And so we as skaters got to sort of ride those coattails. Cause it was like, hey, there are vert ramps, because everyone's rollerblading.

• 1:18:22Andrew D. Huberman?

  I forgot about that.

• 1:18:23Speaker 05

  That did, like, and I had honestly, like, I was the special guest at a couple of inline rollerblade shows. Where it was like, this is Team Rollerblade Live and special guest, Tony Hawk, the skateboarder. And I was like, hey, hi, alright, dropping in. But it paid the bills.

• 1:18:38Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yep.

• 1:18:38Speaker 05

  Um, so. To answer, to like, to, to. From what you're saying, vert skating was. It was a thing at least established in the X Games. Which was something and enough for us to make a living. Um, so when they offered me this money. I actually was in a pretty good place, um, in terms of. My, I don't know, my options, my, my trajectory, and I felt like, and I had, I had just bought a new home and I thought, I'm gonna take a chance and just see what happens. And like, that was. The best financial decision I ever made.

• 1:19:17Andrew D. Huberman?

  Took the equity.

• 1:19:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, I just let it ride. I was like, no, I want to see what happens with this and. As soon as the game was released, it was getting. Stellar reviews and then I remember like, the very next week after it was released. Never stopped saying, okay, we're working on number two. What do you want to do? I was like, what do you mean? Well, yeah, we're doing a sequel. Wait, what? Awesome. And then we ended up doing like 10.

• 1:19:46Andrew D. Huberman?

  Amazing.

• 1:19:46Speaker 05

  Crazy.

• 1:19:47Andrew D. Huberman?

  Amazing.

• 1:19:49Andrew D. Huberman?

  I'm thinking about your decision to not take the cash and to see how it would go. I'm thinking about, uh, your decision to buy a car at 16 and yet. As a consequence, get pulled over because you looked younger. Um, I'm thinking about the time when through the graciousness of your parents who took me in, because I had no money to get back up to Northern California and they couldn't get ahold of my mom. Um, they took me to your home, but then. They took me to where you were living the next day, which was in Fallbrook. You don't remember this, but I do. Um, and I know you've heard this story before, so forgive me because most people listening haven't, but I remember getting driven up to Fallbrook. You had the ramps in your backyard. I walked in, got introduced to you. You were very gracious, said hello, what's up?

• 1:20:32Andrew D. Huberman?

  Said, feel free to push around on the ramps outside. It was the mini, it was a spine ramp?

• 1:20:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:20:36Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah. Two ramps back to back, folks, spine. Sorry, nomenclature. I think Ray Underhill was there.

• 1:20:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, he lived there for a while.

• 1:20:45Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah. And as I recall, you had a pretty vast music collection, and we'll talk about music.

• 1:20:51Andrew D. Huberman?

  But it also seemed, you know, there was a couple of cars in the driveway and whatnot, but it's clear to me, based on a number of things and that interaction and what I observed there, that either you had someone in your ear, either your dad or your mom or both, or maybe it had been Stacy, or maybe it was somebody else, who was advising you to make very good financial decisions, like not spend all your money, or continue to spend all your money, to invest in things, you know? Or maybe it was just instilled in you at a young age, who knows? I'm asking because I think so many people burn their early success. You know, what represents a lot of wealth for them early on, they burn that,

• 1:21:33Andrew D. Huberman?

  where they start making just bad decisions. You explained before why you tended to avoid drugs and alcohol, and certainly any severe relationship to drugs or alcohol that would keep you from progressing in skateboarding. But, you know, the ability to make really good decisions as a young, famous athlete, is more rare than it is common, even when people have coaches. So I'm curious, you know, where did that shrewdness and that prudence come from? And was Frank, your dad, and maybe Nancy also, you know, advising you all along, like, hey, you know, think smart, be smart, because clearly you've made some, some very smart decisions.

• 1:22:11Speaker 05

  Um, he was definitely a guide in it. He, he was the first one who said, you should probably...

• 1:22:19Speaker 05

  Buy real estate. I was seventeen, so I didn't even know that was possible. But he cosigned and made it possible. But then after that, I ended up buying that home that you went to. And it was four acre property and we built these ramps on it. And that was amazing and definitely helped propel my skating to a different level than I ever imagined. But at some point, that was just a drain. And it was a drain financially and I was living beyond my means. And my income kept dropping because we're talking about not long after that was ninety-one, ninety-two, the slowest days of skating. And I've got this giant mortgage. And I've got this property and these ramps that I can't afford to upkeep.

• 1:23:04Speaker 05

  I can barely afford my water bill at one point. You know, and so what you saw might have seemed stable, but behind the scenes, it was, it was starting to unravel. Birdhouse hadn't been started. Birdhouse was started in ninety-two. And when I started Birdhouse, I took the equity from that house to start it. Because I, I didn't, I burned through my savings from trying to keep this place going. So I took a second mortgage out on that house or I, I took my equity out. Started Birdhouse, sold the house for what I had taken out. And then moved to my original place that I had when I was in high school. And just

• 1:23:45Speaker 05

  pulled back on expenses. I think that was, that was when I really became shrewd. Because I had to. I had, I had a first child. I had an income that was very uncertain, very fluctuating. And I was just eating Taco Bell and Top Ramen and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and, and not spending anything and, and taking every job. Like the most random demo requests or we want you to be a consultant on this commercial. Because I'm too, I'm twenty-four. I'm too old to be the guy skating because it has to be youth, right? But they're like, well, we want to see what's possible. So can you come up the day before and show us the ropes? And so I would be the stunt skater

• 1:24:30Speaker 05

  that's filling in to, to show them the angles and stuff. And then they would go hire Chet Thomas. As the young kid and then I would stand around, I was getting paid. I didn't care.

• 1:24:39Andrew D. Huberman?

  I think I remember those commercials. It was a cereal commercial, something like that.

• 1:24:44Speaker 05

  The cereal commercial was Chris Miller Frosted Flakes.

• 1:24:48Andrew D. Huberman?

  Right.

• 1:24:48Speaker 05

  And I was Tony the Tiger.

• 1:24:51Andrew D. Huberman?

  So I was the, so the blond SoCal guys, you, Chet, Chris. I, throughout the, um, Birdhouse, which is your company, but without telling people what it is, skateboard company. I remember, uh, Willie Santos was early on. I remember, he's a super nice kid. I used to see him at the contests. I remember thinking, whoa, Tony Hawk has his own company. For skateboarders, that was revolutionary.

• 1:25:13Speaker 05

  We had a team, you know, like Willie, Willie was a maestro.

• 1:25:18Speaker 05

  Jeremy Klein, legendary street pioneer. Uh, Steve Barra, who's kind of a, we called ATV, but street invert.

• 1:25:27Speaker 05

  We had, uh, Ocean Howell, who was like our number one amateur. We had Andrew Reynolds, Matt Beach. We had a team. Like it was full on.

• 1:25:37Andrew D. Huberman?

  Was it fun to move from rider to also rider, but team manager, owner?

• 1:25:44Speaker 05

  Was it fun? It was just necessary. I can't say it was fun. I mean, yeah, it was, it was fun because we were still just kind of reckless and driving, you know, six of us in a van, driving to skate shops across the country and begging them for 300 bucks so that we could get gas and food and a hotel room and get on our way. Um, I don't know. It just, it, it, but for me, it just felt like a necessity to keep, to, to, that was what I had to do to make a brand happen. And so I was willing to do it. Um, and, but it was exhausting. Yeah. Cause I had to be the,

• 1:26:25Speaker 05

  I had to be the, the coach and the tour manager and the skater.

• 1:26:32Speaker 05

  You know, I was putting myself out there on like the worst conditions. And just rolling my ankle left and right and it was and it was all street and it was just wasn't my thing. It was hard, but I just, I loved it. I made it happen.

• 1:26:47Andrew D. Huberman?

  In my mind, I'm thinking you had to be Tony Hawk, the skateboarder, Frank Hawk, the organizer.

• 1:26:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:26:53Andrew D. Huberman?

  And Stacy Peralta, the.

• 1:26:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:26:55Andrew D. Huberman?

  Cause Stacy had been a pro skateboarder. I still think of him as a skateboarder.

• 1:26:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:26:59Andrew D. Huberman?

  Even though he's filmmaker, right skateboarder, just like I still think of Spike Jones as a skateboarder, BMXer filmmaker. Seems like you had to integrate all of those. And I mentioned that because I am curious, I think a lot of people are probably curious. Are you the type of person like sit back in a chair at night and think like, okay, like how I'm going to do this? I mean, are you contemplative or is it really you just sort of identify what needs to be done this year and over the next three years? And, you know, set your milestones kind of short in.

• 1:27:27Speaker 05

  I guess now or back then?

• 1:27:28Andrew D. Huberman?

  Back then.

• 1:27:29Speaker 05

  Oh no, everything was just in the moment. We gotta get here. We gotta get to Dallas by tomorrow. It's like, as soon as this demo is over, get in the van, we're going.

• 1:27:40Speaker 05

  We gotta get a hotel room.

• 1:27:43Speaker 05

  It was just stuff like that. It was, it was very much, but, but I, I, I respected. I think I learned to respect

• 1:27:52Speaker 05

  punctuality. Because I travel with plenty of skaters that were not and didn't care and show up late and was like, dude, and like, I don't know these guys. And then when I was in charge, it was like, we're going to be on time. Cause we have to respect other people's time. And we said, we're going to be here at three o'clock. We're going to be here at three o'clock. And that's not easy with a skate crew.

• 1:28:15Andrew D. Huberman?

  No, Mike Blayback, who as you know, is integral to the Hubert and Lab podcast. I talk about that. We've got some other

• 1:28:22Andrew D. Huberman?

  guys that came over from DC to as filmers and editors for us. And, you know, they're so punctual and they're so on it. And I noticed you showed up early today, right? Right on timer, early. Early by five minutes. And. That is a distinguishing factor, I think, in any occupation, but especially in skateboarding, where there's this kind of looseness.

• 1:28:43Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 1:28:44Andrew D. Huberman?

  And so if you do show up on time, it really means a lot. The professionalism that was instilled in you, it's clear, the different places where that's showing up. Mentioned the shrewdness about the business decisions. I'm curious about another aspect of that, which is maybe a little more cryptic, which is, whether or not it was the CD collection that I saw, or your mention of the car, your interest in video games. It seems that one thing that you've done, that a lot of guys that I knew, because back then, by the way, it was mostly guys, now, as we said, there are women doing it too. Women and girls. It seems like you have a lot of other hobbies and interests, music, et cetera, but that we never heard about you getting distracted or pulled down those lines.

• 1:29:28Andrew D. Huberman?

  We didn't hear about you going and surfing and getting hurt surfing so that you couldn't skate, or getting really into motorcycles, or racing cars, right? You know, some people went hard left out of skateboarding into that, like Ken Block, the late, great Ken Block, but that became his main thing. Seems like you knew that skateboarding was the main frame and stayed with that. And yet you have a lot of other interests.

• 1:29:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think I, well, with other sports, especially like motocross. I have this huge respect for motocross. I think it's super exciting. I would love to do it, and I know that I would not escape unscathed. Like, I would definitely want to learn the tricks, do whips and flips and whatever, and I'm gonna get hurt. And I don't want to risk my skate career for that. So I purposely pulled away from that type of thing. The last knee surgery I had is because I overshot a jump in mammoth on my snowboard. So that was the lesson. It was like, don't, what are you doing?

• 1:30:33Andrew D. Huberman?

  Just cruise.

• 1:30:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, stay on the ground.

• 1:30:35Andrew D. Huberman?

  Right.

• 1:30:35Speaker 05

  Hit the powder.

• 1:30:36Andrew D. Huberman?

  Right.

• 1:30:37Speaker 05

  You know, free ride with your bros, because I learned my lesson. And so, yeah, you're right, but at the same time, like, I still, I still love going surfing and snowboarding. I don't do them as much, obviously, but... But those are part of of what I did all growing up. Um, and they're important to me.

• 1:30:57Speaker 05

  I did, you know, do a couple of celebrity car races, like a NASCAR race. And um, I totaled a car in the Long Beach Grand Prix. Cause this dude ran me into the wall and it was like, well, that was fun, but I'm not. I don't, I don't have the bandwidth to get that serious about it.

• 1:31:15Andrew D. Huberman?

  And now you have a family, of course, too.

• 1:31:16Speaker 05

  Of course, yeah, I mean, and, and those things, as fun as they are and as, as. I don't know, um. As, as sort of auxiliary as, as they are, they require a lot of time. I mean, just for instance, that Long Beach Grand Prix, they want you to go stay in Palmdale for like a week and a half and train. And, and figure out how to truly know how to drive and be safe. And it's like, I don't, I ain't got time for that.

• 1:31:43Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, that's time you're not skateboarding.

• 1:31:45Speaker 05

  Or with your family.

• 1:31:46Andrew D. Huberman?

  Right.

• 1:31:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:31:47Andrew D. Huberman?

  Right. Now, I feel the same way. If I get pulled away from reading papers and prepping podcasts and. Reading the latest research and thinking about experiments we could do, then I, for more than a couple of days, I start feeling the itch. I have a feeling this stuff is programmed into one's nervous system after a while. Like you've been skateboarding for so long that if you go a few days. It probably just, your system is, is.

• 1:32:07Speaker 05

  Oh, I get edgy.

• 1:32:08Andrew D. Huberman?

  It's like depriving you of water or something like that.

• 1:32:10Speaker 05

  For sure. I mean, um, well, just for instance, uh, our ramp is, uh, being torn down on Sunday. Today is Friday. Our ramp is being torn down on Sunday at 10 a.m. to be moved to Salt Lake City for our big vert event. I'm going there at 8:30 so I can get a session before it gets torn down.

• 1:32:29Andrew D. Huberman?

  I love it.

• 1:32:30Speaker 05

  On Father's Day. That's my Father's Day. I'm going to work at 8:30 a.m. on Sunday.

• 1:32:35Andrew D. Huberman?

  I love it. Speaking of family and lineage, uh, tell us, uh, about your kids. You've got some talented skateboarders in your family besides yourself.

• 1:32:45Speaker 05

  I do. Um, well, I have four of my own and I have two stepkids and, um, they all skate. My daughter, not so much anymore, but all the boys, five boys, uh, are all really into it. Um, my oldest son is the most, uh, he's the most prominent because he turned pro. And has, I mean.

• 1:33:08Speaker 05

  You know, has, has his own following, has a name for himself, uh, Riley, and he's 30.

• 1:33:13Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, he kills it on the street. He's a big street skateboarder.

• 1:33:15Speaker 05

  He does.

• 1:33:16Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:17Speaker 05

  Um, but they, you know, they're, they're all good. They're all good skaters in their own ways. And, uh, it's so fun. I mean, I, I, I didn't, of course they're surrounded by it their whole life. Especially Riley, cause when he was young, I, I didn't really have the means to have childcare or whatever. So I just had to take him with me on tours and whatnot. So he was always around it. So he got good at it by default, but at some point started to shy away from it because he felt the, the pressure and my shadow. And it was like, I don't, this isn't fun. I don't, people expect me to be super good or I have to do this stuff. And so he went, shied away from it, but then found

• 1:33:56Speaker 05

  a bunch of his friends in high school that they love skating. He's still good at it. So he, that he found his crew and they've all found their crews. Uh, completely independent of me. And so when we go on vacation, for instance, we, we were, last year we were in, uh, or two years ago, we were on the big island of Hawaii. They wanted to skate parks. I don't want to go to skate parks. I'm on vacation.

• 1:34:21Andrew D. Huberman?

  It's also a little harsh stuff. It's a great way to get hurt, right?

• 1:34:23Speaker 05

  What's that?

• 1:34:24Andrew D. Huberman?

  Over in Hawaii.

• 1:34:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:34:25Andrew D. Huberman?

  It's all weather worn.

• 1:34:26Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. And it's not even my scene, but, but then, so I go, I'm, I'm, so I'm their chauffeur and I'm their filmer.

• 1:34:32Andrew D. Huberman?

  I love it.

• 1:34:33Speaker 05

  That's my vacation, but, but because they all love it so much, you know what I mean? And it just, it's so cool. Like, I mean, how could I ever ask for more? It's amazing.

• 1:34:43Andrew D. Huberman?

  Let's talk about Frank and Nancy a little bit, just cause I have this kind of odd connection to your family through the, uh, this really two or three day interaction. Changed, changed my life forever. Meeting you was spectacular as a young skateboarding kid, but also just the idea that someone would literally take me into their home. I mean, they had every reason to not trust me. First of all, I was hanging out with Billy Waldman. No explanation needed. The people who knew Billy, I hope he's doing well. I haven't heard anything about him, but I hope he's doing well. Um, but we were wild, but he basically took me into your home. He and Nancy took me in, um, you know, fed us, um, or fed me. Um, I had another friend with me. Um, and you know, I just have to

• 1:35:23Andrew D. Huberman?

  say, as you're describing your family, I can only imagine what it must've been like for Frank and Nancy to see you have your kids. Did they get to, um, live long enough to see, uh, that Riley and your other kids were skateboarders?

• 1:35:36Speaker 05

  My dad met Riley, uh, but my dad passed away when Riley was two. So he's the only one of my kids that that he met.

• 1:35:45Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:47Speaker 05

  My older sibling had kids, so he met two of his other grandkids besides Riley. My mom got to see some of Riley's success, but she suffered from Alzheimer's dementia. And so things slipped away. But I I think that my dad would not believe that skateboarding is in the Olympics. To him, that's that is the top of the mountain. Because he was really into other sport. He loves sports. He loved the Olympics. He loves he loved watching football. He loved watching baseball. He loves when the Olympics were on. He just he loved the the competition element and the and the hype of it.

• 1:36:32Speaker 05

  And and I think there was part of him that felt like, why isn't skateboarding in this? You know, but he knew that there were so many hurdles to get through and so much more acceptance that needed to happen. And I don't think he imagined would ever happen.

• 1:36:49Andrew D. Huberman?

  He was a special guy. I can still hear his voice. He was a very large guy, too. I don't know if I was just smaller then. I definitely was smaller.

• 1:36:55Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, no.

• 1:36:56Andrew D. Huberman?

  He had like a big presence. And and I know I've told you this many times before. This is actually how we got reconnected. I sent you a direct message and said, hey, I met your parents. In fact, they took me into your home and I'm telling the truth. And you'll know I'm telling the truth because they took me to dinner and they ordered black coffee after dinner. And, you know, for years I would order black coffee after dinner. You know, as a kid, you're just so impressionable. These really nice people took me in. I was like, wow, this is what a really healthy family looks like. I I'm grateful to have loving parents, always did, but I didn't have the healthy family structure. So for me, it was like, oh, my goodness, these people drink black coffee after. This must be what healthy families do. So, by the way, folks, don't drink caffeine within eight hours of going to sleep. But.

• 1:37:38Speaker 05

  I still do that.

• 1:37:40Andrew D. Huberman?

  But, well, you it doesn't seem to be holding you back.

• 1:37:44Andrew D. Huberman?

  Individualized. But, yeah, it's spectacular that this lineage of, you know, Frank to you. And and I I mentioned and Nancy, because it seems like while she might not have been at the contest and run around setting up tables and doing all that. Like, she clearly was supportive as well.

• 1:37:58Speaker 05

  Oh, oh, she was at a lot of the events, too. I mean, they needed all hands on deck when it started getting big. And no one was taking salaries. You know, that's the thing is that people thought like, oh, your dad's like cashing on. He never took up money for any of that. And he took so much shit. You know what I mean? He just, he just loved it.

• 1:38:16Andrew D. Huberman?

  It was for you.

• 1:38:17Speaker 05

  It well, it.

• 1:38:18Andrew D. Huberman?

  I have to imagine he wouldn't have been there.

• 1:38:19Speaker 05

  It was for me and it was also for the misfits that I surrounded myself with. And even though he was, he was brash and he was like, you know, he was, uh, I don't know. What's the word? He, he was foreboding and intimidating and whatever else. He did it for all those kids that were kind of lost. Like you, I mean, really like he, he loved that it brought them together, that it gave them a sense of self. It gave them a sense of purpose. He saw that because he, he was that. He, he really had a rough childhood. And he did everything he could through his adult life to make up for it with his own kids. And with the kids that they surrounded themselves with. So that's, that's what he loved about it. Of course he loved seeing me thrive too.

• 1:39:04Speaker 05

  But he loved that he created this safe space and this, this sense of community. And so my mom, my mom was, that was her thing was getting people together. Gatherings. You know, oh, we should all get together like even, even my siblings and I, as much as we want to emulate our parents, we don't do it as much that as they did, and we regret that.

• 1:39:28Andrew D. Huberman?

  Well, there's still time.

• 1:39:29Speaker 05

  No, we, I mean, we do, but it's tricky. We're all in different areas.

• 1:39:33Andrew D. Huberman?

  Sure. Yeah, the, the person that comes to mind when I think about your dad. Now I'm forgetting the movie, but there's this one Clint Eastwood movie where he lives in a neighborhood where, where I think it's a bunch of young Mung.

• 1:39:45Speaker 05

  Oh, is it?

• 1:39:46Andrew D. Huberman?

  Gangsters.

• 1:39:46Speaker 05

  El Camino?

• 1:39:47Andrew D. Huberman?

  El Camino.

• 1:39:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:39:48Andrew D. Huberman?

  And I just remember like there's that scene of like Clint coming out on his porch and just standing really upright.

• 1:39:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:39:54Andrew D. Huberman?

  Everything in his front is, front lawn is everything's super manicured. And just standing there like this immense presence and that, that's how I remember Frank Hawk.

• 1:40:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, but he was a total softie. That's the thing. That's, that's, you know, there, there was a, it was, it was all a front.

• 1:40:11Andrew D. Huberman?

  Well, he was certainly very gracious.

• 1:40:13Speaker 05

  Like, you know, you got, you got to see that side of him where it's just like, oh yeah, come on, we'll, we'll take you out. You want to go see Tony's place? Let's go. Like, that's not some hard ass.

• 1:40:25Andrew D. Huberman?

  Well, there's a tail end to the story too, where he actually called my mom. And I think there may have been a statement or two about, hey, this kid's 14, like he can't be in Linda Vista Boys Club, taking the bus back to Lancaster, et cetera, et cetera. May have been some discussion like that. But then they also paid for me to go home.

• 1:40:42Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:40:42Andrew D. Huberman?

  They flew me home.

• 1:40:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:40:44Andrew D. Huberman?

  So I think I owe you a couple hundred bucks for a Southwest flight, or whatever airline it was. Well, it's, it's fun. And I think important to reminisce about these people because they aren't just your parents, but they, they've done so much and through you. You know, I, I really think that emotions and stories are really like the equivalent of energy in humans. You know, when people talk about energy, because that gets carried forward. Speaking of which, we share a common love of some particular music. Are you somebody who listens to music to sort of, to inspire you, to get amped up to go skateboard? Is music an important part of your life?

• 1:41:21Speaker 05

  Yeah. Let's put it this way. I had, I had a playlist for my 540 the other day.

• 1:41:27Andrew D. Huberman?

  Okay.

• 1:41:28Speaker 05

  Fine tuned to that trick and what would get me motivated and hyped to, to do it.

• 1:41:35Andrew D. Huberman?

  You don't have to share with us what's on the playlist unless you, you choose to.

• 1:41:38Speaker 05

  Oh, man.

• 1:41:39Andrew D. Huberman?

  But was it high energy, low energy?

• 1:41:40Speaker 05

  High energy. Well, and, and some meaningful songs like New Order Ceremony and, uh, let's see, Nine Inch Nails, Getting Smaller, because that was a song we used in one of our big skate tours. And it was one of the most high energy sections of the, of the show. Um, uh, gosh, there were so, I, I can't go through all of them. I forget. Um, uh, Gang of Four. Um,

• 1:42:10Speaker 05

  wait, Gang of Four is, uh, shit, I forgot. What is it? Um, oh, I find that essence rare.

• 1:42:19Speaker 05

  Fires up. So I had, I had like 10 that were just gonna, if any of those played, it's, I'm gonna make it. And, and I knew that it was about an hour and a half. And that's as long as I'm gonna try it before I'm too tired.

• 1:42:33Andrew D. Huberman?

  So you're listening in the warehouse or you're listening?

• 1:42:35Speaker 05

  In the warehouse on random. And then, uh, the song that I made it to was, uh, off of that prodigy album Fat of the Lamb. Uh, and it's called Climatize. It's instrumental. I used it for a birdhouse edit when 411 was the thing.

• 1:42:51Andrew D. Huberman?

  411 were these little like video newsletter type things.

• 1:42:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:42:55Andrew D. Huberman?

  Anyway.

• 1:42:56Speaker 05

  So when that song came on, I, I was feeling it and I made it.

• 1:43:01Andrew D. Huberman?

  Fantastic. I love this because, you know, the neuroscientist in me is immediately gonna say, you know, we have this brain that loves to take in information and discard other information, but paired association is so strong.

• 1:43:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:43:14Andrew D. Huberman?

  And when you couple that with some sense of reward, like the making of the very old below coping as a, as, as, uh, early in life. We're making the 540 as, as a comeback to, you know, the injury after the injury.

• 1:43:28Speaker 05

  It was almost like, I, I loved all that music, but I was indoctrinated by it through the skate parks. Because that was the soundtrack to this. It was, it was punk music. It was Sex Pistols and, and 999 and Black Flag and Devo and Axe and Buzzcocks. And, you know, that, that was, that's what I kept hearing and that's what I associate with my best of times.

• 1:43:51Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah. It's in your nervous system.

• 1:43:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:43:54Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah. There's, uh, a few voices, you know, Rancid and Tim Armstrong and, and the other guys.

• 1:43:59Speaker 05

  Operation Ivy.

• 1:44:00Andrew D. Huberman?

  Operation Ivy.

• 1:44:01Speaker 05

  Yeah. Sound System, Sound System was on that playlist, was on the 540 playlist.

• 1:44:05Andrew D. Huberman?

  All right. You know, Tim will be so happy to hear that. And Matt Freeman, the bass player, and Jesse Michaels is now playing again with Tim. Their lead singer of Operation Ivy.

• 1:44:12Speaker 05

  Yeah. With their new, um, their new gig. What's it called?

• 1:44:15Andrew D. Huberman?

  They had a name and then they, they, uh, they changed it.

• 1:44:19Speaker 05

  Oh, okay.

• 1:44:19Andrew D. Huberman?

  Initially it was, uh, well, I don't wanna say, cause they changed it for a reason, but anyway.

• 1:44:25Speaker 05

  I know they're making new music.

• 1:44:26Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah. Which is amazing. Operation Ivy was incredible. My yearbook photo for, I think two years running was the cover of Operation Ivy. Cause I didn't show up for the yearbook photo. Speaking of which, did you show up for your yearbook photos or did you graduate high school?

• 1:44:38Speaker 05

  I graduated high school, but I didn't go to any of the events. Prom or any of the auxiliary, I didn't know, I mean, I was, I was an outcast like I was not. Even though I had success in skating, skating wasn't cool. And I was not homies with anyone at school except for two other skaters. And we felt very ostracized. So nah, yeah, I did show up for the graduation because, because my mom and dad wanted to see it.

• 1:45:07Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, likewise, I graduated, but I could tell you more about the curbs in the parking lot of my high school than I could about anything that happened in a classroom.

• 1:45:13Speaker 05

  I broke so many sprinkler heads because the sprinkler heads were right next to the curb and there was a double sided curb. And so if you board slide, because I'd go there early and board slide, and then I'd just like lean too far in and break the sprinkler head and never got caught.

• 1:45:25Andrew D. Huberman?

  What high school?

• 1:45:26Speaker 05

  Well, I went to a couple, I went to Sarah High School originally. Then I went to San Diego High School, which is in North County, and then I ended up at Torrey Pines. I got so bullied at San Diego that I requested to be transferred.

• 1:45:42Speaker 05

  Because I couldn't go, I couldn't survive there as a skater. I would have to hide my skateboard in the bushes before class and then go find it after school so that people wouldn't target me.

• 1:45:53Andrew D. Huberman?

  The eighties were rough. It was like a, it was like a John Hughes film.

• 1:45:57Speaker 05

  Well, for sure. It was jocks versus nerds and then skaters were like, not even considered in that realm because they're just going to get, they're going to get hammered. Because there were so few of us.

• 1:46:10Andrew D. Huberman?

  Well, things have changed and not only have things have changed such that skateboarding is far more popular and respected and. You know, at least one mark of that is in the Olympics, although there are other marks of respect certainly. But a huge evolution that I've observed is when I was skateboarding as a 14 year old and it, you know, into my, uh, close to my twenties and then took some time off. For sure.

• 1:46:35Andrew D. Huberman?

  Hardly any girls, hardly any women. There were a few, like Caribeth Burnside. They got teased, ridiculed. It was hard on them.

• 1:46:44Speaker 05

  Super hard, yeah.

• 1:46:44Andrew D. Huberman?

  Super hard. Now, largely through Instagram, but some other channels as well, you can see this young girl, Reese, on vert, skateboarding better than a lot of grown men, who have been skateboarding for decades. I mean, and then there are a number of other ones in the, in street skateboarding, and also taking really hard slams, you know, so this, this is a complete revision of the recent history of skateboarding. So thoughts on that, and on Reese, and there are a few others. Was it, is it Lizzie?

• 1:47:18Speaker 05

  Who took a really bad fall that was filmed? Broke her, broke the neck off her femur, yeah.

• 1:47:26Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, these are tough ladies.

• 1:47:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:47:29Andrew D. Huberman?

  For doing it and for coming back.

• 1:47:31Speaker 05

  Lizzie, Lizzie did the loop. She did the full 360 loop. First woman to ever do it.

• 1:47:37Andrew D. Huberman?

  So what do you think changed, like, that paved the way? Is it just, you know, a critical mass of females doing it? Is it that, you know, Sky Brown?

• 1:47:48Speaker 05

  Well, for sure, for sure, there were, there were the pioneers, people like Caribeth Burnside, and there are so many others. Patty Hoffman was one of the, one of the first vert skaters too, who were, they planted the seed. And, and then there were other women that took inspiration, like, oh, girls can do this. Even though they're largely outnumbered, and they get hassled, for sure. And then through the street era, people like Alyssa Steamer, who, who paved the way for legit street skating. But then, through the years, it, it started to become more common,

• 1:48:30Speaker 05

  more accepted, which is dumb to say, because it's always been, it should have always been accepted. But the thing that, that really tipped the scale was when everything was leading up to the Olympics, there had to be equal divisions in equal disciplines. For men and women. And suddenly, there was no question of should we have a, should we have a women's event? Like, no, we have to have a women's event. Because that's how we, that's the road to qualifying for this, the Olympic stage. And Vance Park series, to their credit, they were holding events simultaneously, not that we're Olympic qualifiers, but just their own, and they said, these events are equal across the board. Equal prize money, equal attention. I mean, it was just like, that was just matter of fact.

• 1:49:14Speaker 05

  And that shifted a lot. It really did. Now, if you go to a skate park, you see plenty of women there.

• 1:49:22Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, it's awesome.

• 1:49:23Speaker 05

  Like, literal women, like moms, you know? There's, there are older women that are learning how to skate. It's awesome.

• 1:49:32Andrew D. Huberman?

  Not that it matters so much, but does anyone claim to be the first female to do 540 on vert? Is that sort of a known thing?

• 1:49:40Speaker 05

  That would be Lindsay Adams.

• 1:49:43Andrew D. Huberman?

  Fantastic.

• 1:49:44Speaker 05

  And she did that, I'll tell you how she did that. She was trying it. So she's trying, she's trying to do McTwist. She's married to Travis Pastrana. It's like the, you know? It's like the, the elite action sports couple. And she was trying them, she was, she was getting pretty close. And then we did a big exhibition in Paris at the Grand Palais on behalf of Quicksilver. It was a huge event. They put a halfpipe up and we did this giant show. There were thousands of people there.

• 1:50:21Speaker 05

  And it was very much unspoken, but expected that I was gonna do a 900 at this event. I think it was, I wanna say it was 2010, maybe? And, or no, like 2009. And And and the organizers were kind of like, okay, so we're gonna do this. And then, you know, at some point,

• 1:50:45Speaker 05

  you do a 900. And I was like, I, I can't guarantee that ever. Like, every time I've ever made it, it's been pretty spontaneous. I, you know, I've set out to do it and not, I've come up short. Can't guarantee it. I'll try. I'll try. And they, they're like, yeah, yeah, okay. And so I knew the whole time that we're skating. I was like, okay, everyone's expecting this. So I kind of went through the motions of, of,

• 1:51:08Speaker 05

  doing my exhibition tricks, you know, playing the hits, and then started trying 900s. And at the same time, Lindsay started trying 540s because she was feeling that energy. And so it was this sort of, not battle, but definitely we were, we were trading hits. It was like, all right, here goes Tony, and then, oh, you missed it. And here goes Lindsay. Oh, she missed it. And then I,

• 1:51:34Speaker 05

  she almost made one, like was riding down, you know, and, and then fell at the flat bottom. It was like, oh, and then I made 900. And that was kind of the showstopper. Because like, that's what they expected. And everyone's going crazy and whatever. People are coming down off the ramp, knee sliding down, and we're saying goodbye to the crowd. And I look up and Lindsay puts her tail out. There's still people standing on the ramp. And she puts her tail out. And I was like, I think Lindsay wants to try it again. Here we go. I'm on the mic now. She made it.

• 1:52:08Andrew D. Huberman?

  Love it.

• 1:52:09Speaker 05

  She stole the show. Like, without question. It was huge. You can look it up on, on YouTube. Like, it's there. Lindsay Adams, first, first 540. It was awesome. And then she made it. And we all grabbed her and put her on her shoulders.

• 1:52:26Andrew D. Huberman?

  That is awesome.

• 1:52:27Speaker 05

  It was pretty cool.

• 1:52:28Andrew D. Huberman?

  That is awesome. Because these things are like the four minute mile. As a barrier, then people break that barrier, and then other people break that barrier. It's, I mean, I, I've watched enough of skateboarding in recent years to, you know, like the Sky Brown thing. Like, she's phenomenal. And I actually saw her family out to dinner here in Los Angeles and with her brother. And her folks are really gracious, really nice. And there again, you know, parents going to the skate park. After all, she couldn't drive herself. I think she's, at that time, she was probably like nine, you know?

• 1:52:57Speaker 05

  That's probably one of the biggest shifts, too, is that parents encourage their kids to skate now. Could you imagine that when we were young?

• 1:53:06Speaker 05

  Never.

• 1:53:06Andrew D. Huberman?

  No, there were so many factors telling us not to, which just made us want to do it more.

• 1:53:10Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 1:53:11Andrew D. Huberman?

  But.

• 1:53:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, now, now kids are like, parents are pushing them into it. Get out there, learn tricks. It's like, wait, that's not what we're supposed to be doing, but it's cool that, that, I think, I think what the, the, the really cool factor of all that is there are definitely people our age. I'm, I'm grouping you into my age category.

• 1:53:31Andrew D. Huberman?

  I'm 47.

• 1:53:31Speaker 05

  All right.

• 1:53:32Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:32Speaker 05

  Close enough. But, but that have kids and skateboarding was such a special time in our life. And then they're rediscovering it through their kids and they're skating together. And I think that's just so amazing.

• 1:53:47Speaker 05

  That someone of our age would be like, you know what, I used to do that. You're into that, like, let's go. And then you could show your kid how to do a sweeper.

• 1:53:57Andrew D. Huberman?

  I could probably do that. I don't have kids yet, but when I do, I'll show, I intend on being healthy enough and

• 1:54:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:54:02Andrew D. Huberman?

  to do a sweeper. People can look up sweeper. We don't have to explain it for them, but little layback grinder, a sweeper. Yep. Oh yeah. Because they won't, they wouldn't think to do it.

• 1:54:10Speaker 05

  No, and they're doing all these difficult flip tricks and that's not my, it's not my scene.

• 1:54:14Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah. What's your go-to on a game of skate if you're going to really like take out the younger generation?

• 1:54:18Speaker 05

  Um, I can do impossibles pretty, uh,

• 1:54:24Speaker 05

  pretty regularly.

• 1:54:25Andrew D. Huberman?

  On transition.

• 1:54:25Speaker 05

  Consistently. I can do them on flat.

• 1:54:27Andrew D. Huberman?

  So this is where basically you scrape the back of the, it's an ollie really, but it wraps around the back foot.

• 1:54:32Speaker 05

  The whole board wraps over your foot.

• 1:54:33Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:34Speaker 05

  Um, that's kind of my, my sneak attack on games of skate.

• 1:54:38Andrew D. Huberman?

  Does Rodney Mullen get credit for that trick still?

• 1:54:40Speaker 05

  Oh, yes.

• 1:54:40Andrew D. Huberman?

  That's, yeah, it's a Rodney. Are you still in touch with Rodney?

• 1:54:44Speaker 05

  Absolutely. Yeah.

• 1:54:45Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, he's somebody that certainly deserves, deserves mention in the pioneering of tricks. I think of

• 1:54:50Speaker 05

  He's the godfather of modern skateboarding.

• 1:54:52Andrew D. Huberman?

  I think of Rodney, you and Mark Gonzalez, Gons, as like the, their guys that

• 1:54:59Speaker 05

  I'm honored.

• 1:54:59Andrew D. Huberman?

  drove the, um, the progression in different, partially overlapping directions that set the template for essentially

• 1:55:07Speaker 05

  I learned finger flips because of Rodney. Like the first trick you saw me do, I learned that because I saw Rodney do it on the ground and I thought, well, I can't do it on the ground, but I have plenty of time in the air to do it.

• 1:55:18Andrew D. Huberman?

  It's awesome. It's awesome that Stacy put you guys together. We, we mentioned Bones Brigade, but we didn't really talk about the architecture of it from the perspective of skateboard progression. But it was kind of like any good band. It seemed like there was really good chemistry.

• 1:55:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:55:33Andrew D. Huberman?

  Interpersonally, but also that there was, each person had something unique. You skated the way you did, Mike skated the way he did, Stevie the way he did, and you know Rodney and you know.

• 1:55:43Speaker 05

  And we respected each other, but we also fed off each other.

• 1:55:46Andrew D. Huberman?

  Tommy Guerrero.

• 1:55:47Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:55:48Andrew D. Huberman?

  Right. Cause growing up in the Bay Area, like.

• 1:55:50Speaker 05

  Straight. Yeah.

• 1:55:51Andrew D. Huberman?

  In fact, Tommy skating the hills of San Francisco in those videos makes it look easy.

• 1:55:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:55:56Andrew D. Huberman?

  But those hills are rough. They're dangerous and they have real life obstacles like moving buses. You'll notice he wasn't stopping at stop signs. So that's fantastic. Uh, we could reminisce about all these angles, but the, the point being that, um, spending time with people who do similar things or the same thing, but do it differently is one of the best ways to progress. That's why I routinely fly to Texas and hang out with Peter Attia, another podcaster, Lex Friedman, just because they do things differently than I do. Um, where do you draw sort of peripheral inspiration from now? Like, I know you, I see Jimmy Wilkins at your ramp quite a lot. The phenom, Jimmy Wilkins. It's kind of eerie how good that kid is. Um, who else are you spending

• 1:56:38Andrew D. Huberman?

  time with besides Reese? And one of the reasons I ask this is that skateboarding is unique among many sports in that a given session, a gathering, uh, to skateboard will include an enormous.

• 1:56:49Speaker 05

  55 year old men and 10 year old girls.

• 1:56:51Andrew D. Huberman?

  Exactly.

• 1:56:52Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:56:53Andrew D. Huberman?

  Which is, which is incredible. You don't think about soccer, you know, a serious game of soccer between professional soccer players.

• 1:56:59Speaker 05

  It's not even that, that we're skating together. It's that we are communicating and influencing each other. I mean, that is like, the last conversation I had with Reese was she's talking about like, are you going to try to do 540s again? I go, yeah, I'm kind of working on it. She goes, well, I think, cause she saw me try one. She goes, I think you need to pull out a little more. And she was right.

• 1:57:20Andrew D. Huberman?

  And she's how old again?

• 1:57:21Speaker 05

  She's 10. And I, and I didn't even consider that because I'm just back in my mode and I'm not taking into consideration that I don't have the snap that I had before I got hurt. And she was, I mean, that was one key to me making it.

• 1:57:35Speaker 05

  And you know, to that, that's but it but to me, that's just that's representative skateboarding. And the inclusivity of it and the diversity of it. Where it's me, I'm 55, there's 30 year old. Pros that are at the top of the game. There are 17 year old. Up and comers, men, women, 10 year old girl that is doing tricks that we've never even thought of or want to do. And it's all part of the. The whole mix.

• 1:58:09Andrew D. Huberman?

  That's really beautiful. Want to ask you about memorabilia. Not a topic that I think about much, but I think in a prior conversation of ours, you mentioned something about this. So you know, there are skateboard collectors. There are people that collect stickers, skateboards, there's a whole market and world for this. And in addition to people wanting selfies with you when they see you, I imagine there's a long history and continued tradition of people taking a pen, putting your hand and saying, can you sign this? Right? Because you are in this very small, but very clearly esteemed group of people where your signature increases the value of things.

• 1:58:53Andrew D. Huberman?

  So how does that work? And how does that feel? Like if a skateboarder who, you know, there are the telltale signs of who is and who isn't, right? If they walk up to you and they're like, hey, will you sign this? Do you feel good about signing it? Or is that something that you refrain from? And if somebody's just merely a collector, a trader, and they're trying to build their portfolio, so to speak, you can probably also sense that. So I'm not trying to put you in the hot seat here.

• 1:59:21Speaker 05

  Well, to answer your question, through the years.

• 1:59:25Speaker 05

  I was always open to that and I'm happy to. Especially when people are skaters or skate fans and whatnot. In the last three years, there has been this new element of resellers, of people that just go buy signature stuff. They have nothing to do with skating. They don't care about skateboarding at all. They just want to get my signature on an item and sell it. And they usually do it on eBay or through their own channels.

• 1:59:56Speaker 05

  That's fine. At some point, like a few years ago, I respected the hustle. These guys are, they knew that I was going to be at this event. Okay, they're outside waiting. They've been waiting for hours. I'll sign a couple of things. But in recent months even, they have figured out how to get my flight info. Like some hacked into my, my actual airline accounts. Some have sources at certain airports that get the manifests and they sell the information. I found all this out because I've actually held a couple of them accountable. Because I said, "Look, I'm not going to sign this until you tell me how you knew I was going to be here. I have no business here. I'm here to visit family. No one knows I'm coming here." "Oh, well, we saw, our friends said they saw you at the Detroit airport." Like, no, they didn't. They wouldn't know where I'm going to anyway.

• 2:00:42Speaker 05

  "Like, well, I saw it on Twitter." You didn't see it on Twitter. I'm on Twitter. Tell me the truth. There was a guy from TMZ that gets flight info and he sells it to us. Okay, thank you. But that has increased to a point where it's, it's not sustainable. I can't, I can't please everyone. The last time I flew out of Chicago, there were about 15 people. One guy had a shopping cart full of skateboards. And they all, they all bum rushed me at security before I went through security. Thinking that I'm going to sign stuff. I'm like, "You guys, I can't, I can't do that. I'm going to miss my flight and I can't delineate who, like, I, I, I'm sorry. You guys have sabotaged yourselves. I don't know what to say."

• 2:01:26Speaker 05

  And then I went through security and there were four dudes waiting at the gate. They had bought tickets, airline tickets, so that it could be past security. That they, airline tickets they're not going to use to chase this.

• 2:01:41Speaker 05

  So, I mean, wham, people want my autograph, but it's weird and it's intrusive and it's kind of creepy.

• 2:01:47Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, just tell them that a neuroscientist told you that you gotta get that slob air right, and if you sign too many autographs, that you're never gonna get that.

• 2:01:56Speaker 05

  You're gonna ruin all my chances of getting it back.

• 2:01:57Andrew D. Huberman?

  You're not gonna get the tuck knee, you're not, you're just not gonna be, do the flap knee invert, you're just not gonna get it.

• 2:02:02Speaker 05

  Anyway, it is, it's just a really weird new thing that has popped up and, other than that, and, and so, the tricky part is when there is a public thing, or a public exhibition or whatever, to try to figure out who is the true skate fans and who aren't. Usually they're pretty identifiable, but it, it just, it, it has ruined the experience for people who truly are, that grew up skating.

• 2:02:27Andrew D. Huberman?

  Well, thanks for sharing that, and we won't tell everyone what the telltale signs are, so that these people don't exploit them, the skateboarders, the real fans will know. They won't even have to worry about whether or not they represent accurately, because you just will. On the positive side, something I've been wanting to learn more about from you is your philanthropic efforts. I think Kevin Rose, who's in the tech sector, was the first to mention to me that you, you guys have done some philanthropy together, and maybe you've done some with Jim Thebow as well, the great Jim Thebow.

• 2:03:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, both, both Jim and Kevin were board members, Jim is a current board member of the Skateboard Project.

• 2:03:14Andrew D. Huberman?

  Tell us about the Skateboard Project.

• 2:03:16Speaker 05

  It's, it's, it's my nonprofit, and we try to develop public skate parks in our, in underserved areas, but more so by, by supporting the community and giving them the resources to do so. So, groups that are trying to get skate parks in the area, we are the resource center for them. We'll give them advice, we'll give them funding, we'll give them our stamp of approval, and that can go a long way. And to date, we've helped to fund over, almost a thousand skate parks now, and seven or eight hundred of which are open. I mean, it's my proudest work, for sure, and, and it's because... I never, I never took for granted the fact that I grew up near a skate park.

• 2:03:59Speaker 05

  And that was my home away from home. That was where I found my sense of community, my sense of identity, my, my crew. And so many kids choose to skateboard, but have no support in doing so. And so those skate parks are a lifeline.

• 2:04:14Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, I can attest, they, they absolutely save lives. There's no question. Where can people find out more about your foundation? We can provide a link, but what?

• 2:04:23Speaker 05

  Skatepark.org.

• 2:04:24Andrew D. Huberman?

  So where does the funding for these parks actually come from?

• 2:04:27Speaker 05

  Um, it comes from donations from supporters. It comes from fundraisers, some corporate. Sometimes funding is, is funneled through us for specific regions. Like the, uh, we have a Built to Play project that's in Michigan and New York. And that's funded by the Ralph C. Wilson Junior Foundation. So they, they give us the funding and then we have to give it to that area, but, but it's easy because there's plenty of projects. And now there's an abundance of skate parks in those areas.

• 2:04:59Andrew D. Huberman?

  Love it. Thank you for doing that, for organizing around that.

• 2:05:03Speaker 05

  And I get to get more places to skate.

• 2:05:07Andrew D. Huberman?

  I'm curious, what's in the immediate horizon, right? These days you probably have the option to say yes to things and no to things. You know, you have a family, you have your skateboard career.

• 2:05:22Andrew D. Huberman?

  Where do you place your priorities in terms of how to carve up your day or your week? I mean, what would you like to make sure that you do? For as much of the hours of your waking day for the next, let's just say five years. Cause if you want to extend that out, you can.

• 2:05:38Speaker 05

  Well, I, I want to be available to my kids first and foremost. And we still have one at home for the next four years. So, uh, I will make sure that I'm available to her and.

• 2:05:52Speaker 05

  In terms of career, I never had great aspirations. Like, I never thought, okay, these are, this is what I want to accomplish. It was always just very more, you know, trick-specific oriented. So it was always like, oh, I want to try this and this and this. I would like to continue skating. I don't know if I'll be able to skate at the level I'm skating right now in five years, but I know that I'll still be on the ramp. I may not be doing it in public. Trying to advocate for public skate parks, doing more with the foundation. And whatever I, I think, I think the way I prioritize my time is what will resonate the furthest and have the best impact on skateboarding in general. I do feel

• 2:06:33Speaker 05

  that I've come to a point where, yes, I'm some unofficial ambassador to skateboarding, and I want to represent it well. I want, I want to be fair in that skateboarding is all kinds of different things. It's not just X Games or Olympics or, or whatnot. It's, it represents a true culture. And I want to project that as much as I can and make sure that people understand that that's also positive.

• 2:07:06Speaker 05

  And, I mean, really, everything that I'm doing now is just kind of fun. Like, it's for the, I would say in the last five to 10 years is the first time I have truly enjoyed what skateboarding has provided me in terms of opportunity and what it brings to me and, and what it means to my family. Like, I have a much better appreciation, understanding for it. And these days, it's just like, everything's kind of gravy. It's just so fun. I can't believe I get to still do it for a living. It's crazy. I'm 55 years old, and I truly ride my skateboard as a career. Like, that's nuts. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

• 2:07:48Andrew D. Huberman?

  Well, it certainly is earned and I just want to say thank you for a number of things. First of all, thank you for going to the skate park. Thank you for picking this trajectory. Thank you for inspiring me and so many other young people and old people, older people over so many decades now, both with what you did on a skateboard and off the skateboard and including your resilience and determination to push and continue to progress to the point where you were badly injured and then to push through that, come back, at least match what you did previously and I would wager that you will exceed your prior skill level going forward. So I want to thank you for your resilience.

• 2:08:33Andrew D. Huberman?

  I know it comes from an intrinsic drive, your love of skateboarding, it just absolutely comes through. I share in some of that, of course, having grown up in it, but not nearly as much as you, but also just your willingness to stretch out into these different areas like the video game thing or talk about X Games, the Olympics, because that did allow for a lot of growth and lateral movement of skateboarding. And at the same time, just as you said, to bring it right back to the fact that skateboarding isn't one thing, it is not like other sports, it's its own sport and it's its own lifestyle, it's its own thing. And we do consider you the ambassador for skateboarding.

• 2:09:13Speaker 05

  I appreciate it.

• 2:09:14Andrew D. Huberman?

  And I speak for many people and I say that we're very grateful that you are because you bring that, that shrewdness and that prudence to it, but also that get after it punk rock spirit and the goodness that your parents, you know, instilled in you clearly comes through everything from the philanthropy and onwards. So I can't say enough positive things.

• 2:09:31Speaker 05

  Oh, thank you.

• 2:09:32Andrew D. Huberman?

  Or express enough gratitude for your, what you've done and for your time here. Your legacy in skateboarding, but also just in the game of life is clearly cemented. So, thank you.

• 2:09:41Speaker 05

  Oh, thank you. Well, hey, and I appreciate that the ethos of skateboarding shines through on your show and just your crew here, clearly, a lot of them come from the skateboard world. So you're, you're still supporting it whether you know it or not.

• 2:09:55Andrew D. Huberman?

  Thanks so much and hopefully you'll come back and we'll do it again.

• 2:09:59Speaker 05

  All right. Sounds good.

• 2:10:02Andrew D. Huberman?

  Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Tony Hawk. If you're learning from and/or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. In addition, please subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five star review. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast, or guests that you'd like me to consider hosting on the Huberman Lab Podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. Not on today's podcast, but on many previous episodes of the Huberman Lab Podcast, we discuss supplements. While supplements aren't necessary for everybody, many people derive tremendous benefit from

• 2:10:45Andrew D. Huberman?

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• 2:11:30Andrew D. Huberman?

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