A Process for Finding & Achieving Your Unique Purpose | Robert Greene

In this episode, my guest is Robert Greene, multiple New York Times bestselling author and expert on human psychology and behavior both at the individual and group levels and in the context of relationships, careers, and society. We discuss how to find, pursue and achieve one’s unique life purpose, and how to best learn from good and hard experiences along that journey. We discuss power dynamics in relationships, the different types of human communication and the interplay between seduction and vulnerability. We discuss how to find the right romantic partner, improve healthy self-awareness, the link between anxiety and creativity, and pick ideal mentors and role models. Robert also discusses his recent stroke and what he has learned from his near-death experience about motivation, urgency and appreciation for life. Listeners of all ages will benefit from Robert’s insights on navigating the process of building a deeply purposeful life and enhancing one’s relationship with the self, others and society. 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://drinkag1.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/hubermanlab Waking Up: https://wakingup.com/huberman Momentous: https://livemomentous.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Robert Greene (00:02:15) Sponsors: LMNT & Waking Up (00:05:56) Mastery (The Book), Purpose (00:08:26) Finding Purpose, Childhood, Learning & Emotional Engagement (00:18:00) Early Interests, Delight & Discovery (00:22:50) Love vs. Hate Experiences & Learning (00:28:25) Self-Awareness, Frustration, Excitation (00:30:51) Sponsor: AG1 (00:33:18) Sublime Experiences, Real vs. False; Authenticity & Time (00:43:57) Power & Relationships; Purpose & Mastery (00:55:51) Seduction, Vulnerability, Childhood (01:08:05) Power Dynamics & Romance; Equality, Love Sublime & Connection (01:18:42) Vulnerability in Relationships, Creativity; Social Media, Justice (01:29:45) Outrage, Control, “Art of Ignore” (01:33:50) Masculinity & Femininity (01:42:16) Picking Role Models; Purpose & Mentor Relationship (01:51:07) “Alive” Thinking; Anxiety & Creativity (01:58:55) Convergent Interests & Romantic Relationships (02:07:19) Self-Awareness, Core Values & Romantic Relationships (02:15:27) Non-Verbal Communication & Relationships (02:24:58) Eyes, Voice, Intuition & Seduction (02:28:38) Virtual World, Social Skills, Non-Verbal Communication (02:32:19) Self-Awareness & Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Nuance (02:41:43) Human Brain, Plasticity (02:45:18) Stroke & Near-Death Experiences, Self, Time (02:55:49) Appreciation & Near-Death Experience, Urgency (03:01:36) “Death Ground” & Urgency (03:09:13) Zero-Cost Support, Spotify & Apple Reviews, Sponsors, YouTube Feedback, Momentous, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter 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. My guest today is Robert Greene. Robert Greene is an author who has written more than five bestselling books, including The Forty Eight Laws of Power, The Laws of Human Nature, and Mastery. He did his bachelor's training at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Robert Greene's books are both unique and important for several reasons, not the least of which is that they explore the interaction between the psychology of self, self-exploration, and the psychology of human interaction, all rooted in history and modern culture, and at the same time, in a way that pertains to everybody. I first learned about Robert's work from reading the book Mastery,

• 0:53Andrew D. Huberman?

  which, to my mind, is a brilliant exploration and a practical tool for how to think about and pursue one's purpose. Whenever I'm asked for book suggestions, I always include Mastery in my top three recommendations. During today's discussion, we cover a wide range of topics, including how to find and pursue and achieve one's purpose. We talk about the selection of a life partner, as well as romantic and other types of relationships. We also discuss the topics of motivation and urgency, and this concept of death ground, which arose during our discussion of Robert's recent stroke. Robert's stroke rendered him certain limitations, but also has allowed him to explore how to write, how to exercise, indeed, how to interface with life in general

• 1:36Andrew D. Huberman?

  in new ways that allow him to continue to expand his sense of purpose. I'm certain that by the end of today's episode, you will have gleaned tremendous amounts of new knowledge that will allow you to navigate forward along the path to your purpose, perhaps find your purpose, if you feel you haven't done that yet, as well as to greatly enhance your relationship with yourself, with others, and indeed, to the world around you. 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.

• 2:15Speaker 01

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• 3:10Andrew D. Huberman?

  And now for my discussion with Robert Greene. Robert, I'm so happy you're here.

• 3:15Speaker 05

  I'm really happy to be here, Andrew. Thank you so much for inviting me.

• 3:19Andrew D. Huberman?

  A short story. In 2015, I was teaching a course to undergraduates. This was a big course, 450 students.

• 3:28Speaker 05

  Where was this?

• 3:29Andrew D. Huberman?

  This was when I was a professor at University of California, San Diego. I was about to move back to Stanford. But the course was entitled Neural Circuits in Health and Disease. But there was a final lecture where I would do a lot of Q and A with the students about science, about careers, about career paths. And what I found was that many of the students had questions about not just science, but about how to learn and forage for information.

• 3:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:55Andrew D. Huberman?

  And I recommended three books at the end of the course, every year that I taught it. I taught it for four years. And one of the books was the book Longitude, which is a wonderful story about discovery of timekeeping devices at sea.

• 4:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:11Andrew D. Huberman?

  One book I'll leave as a mystery, not to be, not to be mysterious, but because it's not, it's a science book. I'll just tell you what it is. It's Principles of Neuroscience.

• 4:20Speaker 05

  And I don't know that one.

• 4:22Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, it's a big, it makes a better doorstop for most than, than a book, but it's a wonderful resource if you want to learn about neuroscience and your book Mastery.

• 4:31Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 4:32Andrew D. Huberman?

  And the reason I recommended Mastery is because these students were soon going to go into the great jungle of, you know, post undergraduate education. And, and for me, I found Mastery to be an absolutely transformative book in that it taught me so much about how to learn from others, how to expect certain types of interactions when one kind of assigns themselves to a mentor and vice versa. And it talked about some things that we'll get into in more depth today, but not the least of which is about identifying that unique seed that exists within all of us that can guide our best decisions in terms of finding

• 5:14Andrew D. Huberman?

  our purpose. And, and so I usually end with a great debt of gratitude, and I'll probably do that again at the end. But I want to start with a great debt of gratitude.

• 5:23Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 5:24Andrew D. Huberman?

  Mastery transformed my entire life. And in many ways, this podcast probably wouldn't exist were it not for Mastery, because it really embedded in me this idea that we all have a deeper purpose and it explains how to go about finding that purpose. So I tell you that, and I also will use that as a segue for asking you now, since I'm sure people's ears are pricked up to this, you know, how do you find your purpose? Could you share with us what it is to find one's purpose and how early life events perhaps can cue us to what that purpose is for each of us?

• 6:04Speaker 05

  Well, thank you for that, that marvelous introduction. I'm almost blushing. That's, that's fantastic story.

• 6:11Speaker 05

  Well, you know, being a human being is not easy as opposed to an animal because we're born and nobody gives us like a direction. Our parents might be a little bit, our college teachers, et cetera, mentors, but generally, we're on our own. And it's a very, very difficult process. You wake up in the morning and you don't really know what you're, what you can do. You could choose 12 different paths. It can be very confusing and very overwhelming. When you find that sense of purpose, when you find what I call your life's task, everything has a direction, everything has a purpose, your energy is concentrated. It's not like you're just going down a single narrow pathway. It's not like life becomes boring and it's just about discipline and solving problems. It's actually the most exciting thing that can ever happen to you

• 6:56Speaker 05

  because you never have that lost feeling. You wake up in the morning and you go, yeah, this is what I need to accomplish. People come at you with all kinds of distractions and boring and irritating things. You're able to cut it out. It's just the most marvelous piece of internal radar that you can have. So I genuinely wish that everybody can find that kind of internal radar. And so it's not easy and I understand that. There's no like instant formula because we're all about instant formulas. It's difficult and I want you to know that. So it's not like Robert can give me the answer in three minutes. No, I can't. But there's a process involved. It's not, it's not, you know, a mystery. You can follow a very singular process.

• 7:39Speaker 05

  And the idea is, you're talking about childhood. The way I like to frame it is when you were born, you are a phenomenon. You are unique. Your DNA has never occurred in the history of the universe, going back billions of years. It will never occur in the future. Your life experiences with your parents and everything that you experienced in your early years going on up is unique, it's yours. You're one of a kind, right? So that is your source of power. To waste that is just the worst thing you can do in your life. And what, what the power is, is finding that uniqueness. What makes you you and how you can mine that and how you can go deep into it

• 8:21Speaker 05

  and use that to create a career path, right? And so I tell people when you're a child, when you're four or five, Or even younger, you have what the great psychologist Maslow called impulse voices. They're little voices in your head that say, I love this, I hate that. I like this food, I don't like when mommy moves this way. I like when daddy comes from here. You're very cued into who you are and what you like and what you don't like. And these voices kind of direct you in certain ways, right? And when you're very young, they direct you towards intellectual, mental pursuits as well. And there's a book I recommend for everybody. It's Howard Gardner's Five Frames of Mind.

• 9:06Speaker 05

  It's helped me immensely. The idea is, he talks about five forms of intelligence. Our problem is, we think of intelligence as mostly intellectual. But there are many forms of intelligence. There's the intelligence that has to do with words. There's abstract intelligence that has to do with patterns and mathematics. There's kinetic intelligence that has to do with the body. There's social intelligence. He has five of them. And the idea is, your brain naturally veers towards one of them. It can veer towards two of them, that happens. But generally, one of them kind of dominates, right? And it's like a grain in your brain that's going in a certain direction. You want to go with that grain, because that's where your power will lie.

• 9:50Speaker 05

  So when you're young, if you go back and think about when you were four or five, you can maybe get a picture of some kind of direction or voice inside of you that was impelling you towards this. I know for me, it was words. I can remember when I was six years old, I was just obsessed with words, just the letters in words. Almost like in a slightly schizophrenic way, I would spell words backwards. I would take them apart, I would do anagrams, I love palindromes, right? So I had a thing about words and language, it's very primal.

• 10:24Speaker 05

  Some people, you know, Albert Einstein, when he was four years old, his father gave him a birthday gift of a compass. And he was just mesmerized by this compass. The idea that there are invisible forces out there in the cosmos, moving this needle. And he's obsessed with the idea of invisible forces. Steve Jobs, when he was like seven or eight, or maybe younger, in Burlingame, California. His father, they passed by his store with technological devices in the window. And he was just hypnotized by the design of those devices and the glass tubes and everything. So he wanted to go in that direction. You know, Tiger Woods saw his father hitting golf balls in the garage. And he was just like screaming with joy. He had to, he had to do that, right?

• 11:08Speaker 05

  You know, I could give you a million different examples of this. Of course, these are people who are famous, obviously. We can go back and find that. It's easier. But what happens to you, and please cut me off if I'm going on too long.

• 11:20Andrew D. Huberman?

  No, please continue, please.

• 11:22Speaker 05

  What happens to you is you're seven, now you're getting older. And you're starting to not hear that voice anymore. You're hearing the voice of your teachers telling you, you're not good at this field. You need to get better at math, you know? You shouldn't be interested in these sports or anything. You should be going this way. Your parents are starting to tell you, this is the career they want for you, the direction they want you to go in, right? You start hearing that more than your own voice. And as you get older, it gets worse and worse and worse. Then when you're a teenager, it's all about what other people are doing, your peers, what's cool, what's not cool, you know? And that kind of is more, so all of these noise enters your brain. And you can't hear that anymore. You don't know who you are.

• 12:06Speaker 05

  And so you go to college. You kind of maybe choose a major that seems practical, that your parents want you to go into. Maybe you kind of wander around, you're not sure. And then you enter the work world without that inner radar that I'm talking about. And you, brother, you're lost, right? Where should I go? Well, I need to make money, right? And so you make a choice based on the need to make a lot of money. Some, not everyone, but some people do that. And I understand that need. We all need to make a living. But that can set you off on a very bad path because you're not connected emotionally. The thing is, when you figure out that primal inclination, that grain that's inside of you,

• 12:50Speaker 05

  then you have the the energy to to do, to be disciplined, to go through boring tasks, to learn. You learn at a faster rate because you're emotionally engaged. When you're emotionally engaged in a subject, the brain learns twice, three times, four times as fast as when you're not. I always give the example. In college, I studied foreign languages, which was kind of a passion of mine. For three or four years, I studied French. And then I went to Paris, and I couldn't speak a word. It was it was useless because it didn't teach me anything practical, right? I was totally confused. And then, but I was in Paris and I and I loved it. And I wanted to live there, right? And I had a girlfriend and I needed to speak French to her.

• 13:35Speaker 05

  And I can tell you, in one month, I learned more than those four years of university because I wanted to, because I was engaged. My emotions were there. It was like I had to survive to learn French. Whereas, so most of us, we don't have a need really to learn this subject. We're half, we're paying half attention. But when you find that thing that really connects to you, you're paying deep attention. Your emotions are engaged. You're learning at a much faster rate. Okay? And so, the thing is, how do you find that when you're older? When you're 21, I I give people a lot of help, and it's usually not so difficult. We can go through that process. It gets harder when you're 30 and you've been wandering around, but it's not impossible.

• 14:18Speaker 05

  I didn't really start find my exact path until I was 38, 39, to be honest. So there's hope. When you get forty and you get fifty, it gets more and more difficult, right? And it's very sad if you wasted that seed of uniqueness that I'm talking about. And I tell people there are ways of going back. And we go through a process like archeology. We have to dig and dig and dig and find those bones from your childhood that indicated what you were meant to do. But when you find your life's task, everything opens up. It doesn't mean you figured out, okay, I've got to aim for this particular job when I'm twenty-eight. That's not how it works. It gives you a sense of direction. You can try different things. You can experiment. You can have fun when you're in your twenties. You're gonna learn, you're gonna learn skills.

• 15:03Speaker 05

  But it gives you an overall framework. Instead of, whoa, all of this confusion, this chaos, social media, the internet. I could go here, here, here. You're lost at sea. It gives you a very important sense of direction, a compass.

• 15:16Andrew D. Huberman?

  As you describe this, I have this image of, you know, you mentioned animals that presumably don't have a lot of flexibility in terms of the niches they can exist in. But the way I imagine this process is that as a human, we're plopped into a environment, and here I'm using analogy, where we don't really know if we are an aquatic animal, a terrestrial animal, or an avian, right?

• 15:42Speaker 05

  Or an amphibian.

• 15:43Andrew D. Huberman?

  Or an amphibian, for that matter. And to make the wrong choice, right? To be an amphibian who's trying to fly, although I'm sure they're out there in the animal kingdom, it's not just a waste of time. It's probably deadly.

• 15:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:58Andrew D. Huberman?

  And not to overdramatize the failure of finding one's purpose, but I see it that way. Whereas perhaps we could just say that the process of finding one's purpose is to realize like, ah, you know, I'm an amphibian. I can go in and out of water, whereas a bunch of other creatures around me stop at the water's edge.

• 16:17Speaker 05

  Right.

• 16:18Andrew D. Huberman?

  Right? And this is really cool. And a bunch of these other things, like these flying things, they can't actually even go in the water.

• 16:23Speaker 05

  Right.

• 16:24Andrew D. Huberman?

  Some of them might, you know, be on the surface or dive into it, but they can't do what I can do. So the process of self-discovery, it sounds like, is about restricting one's choices to a sort of wedge within the full landscape of options. And, you know, for me, I can certainly recall, after reading Mastery, it helped me recall some early seed emotions that I experienced as a very distinct sensation in my body.

• 16:49Speaker 05

  Can you describe that?

• 16:50Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah. Well, without making it too specific to my, my unique tastes, you know, as a kid, I loved flora and fauna. I loved learning about biology.

• 17:00Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 17:01Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, no surprise there. But animals and how they move in particular and fish and going to a, a proper aquarium store for the first time for me and going snorkeling for the first time was like, wow. And even as I describe it, it's almost like my body floats. I feel it in my left arm of all things and it feels like there's something to do about it. It's not just that I'm in observation of things that delight me.

• 17:23Speaker 05

  Right.

• 17:23Andrew D. Huberman?

  It's like there's something, there's an activation state created within me, like I gotta do something with this. And typically it's tell everybody about it until they won't listen anymore. But oftentimes it's to also draw those things to think about them and I just delight in them. It's a constant source of delight. And so seeds such as those, and there are a few other things in that, in that landscape of flora and fauna and learning about animals and biology, including the human animal, and then organizing information feels so satisfying to me. It's like a drug that, and so it just felt, feels like this, you know, eternal spring of, of life, right? And so for me, that's what it was. And to, and in 2015, when I was teaching that course, the course I loved,

• 18:07Andrew D. Huberman?

  but I was feeling a little bit astray in my scientific career. And then I read Mastery and I realized, yes, I love running a laboratory. I love teaching, but there's something else for me. And it has to do not with a podcast. I didn't even know what a podcast, I probably, I knew what a podcast was. I was listening to podcasts at that time, but, but I wasn't on social media. I had no thoughts of having a podcast, but what I wanted was that feeling in its total number of forms. That's the goal. Get that feeling in as many forms as possible.

• 18:36Speaker 05

  Right.

• 18:36Andrew D. Huberman?

  Is that, is that about?

• 18:37Speaker 05

  That's, that's, that's absolutely perfect because the connection to what I'm talking about, it's not an intellectual thing. It's visceral, it's emotional, it's physical, right? And you feel it in your body and when you're doing it. It's like it's at your level. It's like you're swimming with the current. You feel it, things are easy. Everything clicks together, there's a delight. Not everything is going to be delightful. There's going to be tedium involved. There's going to be moments of boredom. But you're able to withstand the moments of boredom because you feel the deep, overall connection. So yes, that's precisely what I'm talking about. I mean, it's, for me, it's a little bit similar thing is, I said about words, but the other thing that I was obsessed with when I was a kid

• 19:23Speaker 05

  was early human ancestors. Don't ask me why. I just was so obsessed with our ancestors millions of years ago and how it's possible to be living here in the 60s or 70s with cars and everything, but to come to where we are now. And I wrote a short story when I was eight years old about a vulture. It was written from the point of view of a vulture watching the first humans kind of emerge on the planet. I'm sure it was absolutely awful, dreadful. But the weird thing is, I'm writing a new book and all I'm doing in that book is going into early humans. And I feel like a kid again. I'm so excited, I'm so happy. So I can very much relate to your story.

• 20:07Andrew D. Huberman?

  You mentioned these five different forms of intelligence, or frames of mind, as you referred to them. And I'm certainly aware that I lean towards a more intellectual interest, although, as you pointed out, the excitement, the delight is visceral. And the actions are actions, they're of the body ultimately. One has to draw, speak, write books, et cetera, to transmute that excitement into something real. For people that are not as intellectually tuned, but maybe are kinesthetically tuned, for instance, I can only wonder what that's like. I'm not completely uncoordinated, but I don't think I have a kinesthetic attunement or frame of mind.

• 20:50Andrew D. Huberman?

  But I, for instance, had a podcast listener mention that they...

• 20:56Andrew D. Huberman?

  Think in feels, that they literally experience thought as a sort of a patchwork of bodily sensations.

• 21:05Speaker 05

  Right.

• 21:06Andrew D. Huberman?

  And that thought for them is not of the stuff from the neck up, but only from the neck down, which to me was really intriguing. And so I only raise this because there have to be, as you point out, there's an infinite number of different sort of orientations based on our unique DNA and experience. But what do you think explains why these particular seeds, or as you point out, like the direction that the grain runs in the brain? I mean, it's partially going to be nature, it's going to be DNA.

• 21:37Speaker 05

  For sure.

• 21:38Andrew D. Huberman?

  But we're talking about this as if there's some exciting, or awe-inspiring, or delightful thing that captures us. Can it be the other way too? Can it be, you know, one has a bad experience as a child in an intellectual environment, and then decides, you know, I'm going in the, things of the body feel good, things of the mind, of intellect feels bad. And does it matter whether or not we are drawn to our purpose by recognizing what we love, or what we hate, or are both useful?

• 22:12Speaker 05

  Oh, they're both very, very useful. You know, a lot of intelligence is non-verbal. We think in terms of images, we're very much infected by the emotions of other people. So I know, for instance, my mother is very, very interested in history, she's obsessed with history, and I probably absorbed her interest in history. I don't think there's a genetic gene for that interest, you know? So you're going to absorb things from your parents as well, so it's not all just genetic. But yeah, what you hate will have a big thing. But the problem with doing that is, if you go into a direction, and you're in elementary

• 22:55Speaker 05

  school, etc., and they force you to learn math, and you hate it, what it tends to do is it turns you off from learning in general. Think, I don't wanna, I don't wanna, I don't wanna be disciplined. I don't wanna go through anything because it's painful. It doesn't lead anywhere. It's not me, it's frustration. It turns you off from learning in general. So it's really, really important for a child to have the love experience as early as possible so that they can know what they hate and why they hate it, right? And then they can rebel and they can go into that field as opposed to, I hate learning, I hate discipline, I hate studying, I hate trying things over and over again. If you're kinesthetically oriented, and you know, a part of me, I understand that because I love sports, is you have to, you have to practice.

• 23:40Speaker 05

  It's gonna take a lot, it's not, you're not gonna instantly be good at something, right? And that's gonna require a love of it, right? But if your math experience, because I hate learning shit, you're not, it's gonna transfer to sports, you're gonna hate discipline in general. So it's very important for parents to let that child have at least glimmers of that love moment. I know for me, when I finished college and I entered the work world, I had to get a job, I got, worked in journalism. I hated it. I hated working for other people. I hated office politics. I hated all the egos. I hated the smarminess. I hated the lack of quality. It was all just about, you know, making money and getting things out there.

• 24:25Speaker 05

  And then I worked in Hollywood. I hated Hollywood. I hated working in Hollywood. That formed me very much, made me go in the direction that I went in, but only from the basis of I knew that I wanted to be a writer. So, you know, that's very important that it's not just hate. It can form you, but there also has to be that positive, deep emotional love of something that also is grounded in you in some way.

• 24:50Andrew D. Huberman?

  What you just said really highlights the fact that energy and motivation can come from either, either pressure, you know, desire for something or desire to get away from something. And earlier, when you were talking about how we are so much more... Engaged and driven towards things that stir us emotionally. And, and actually, we know based on the neuroscience, as you know, too, I'm sure, that only by the release of certain neurochemicals in the brain and body would our brain have any reason to change, right? If you don't feel agitation and you can do everything that you're trying to do, of course, your brain wouldn't change. Like, why would it? Right? That agitation is a, is a signature of the neurochemicals that are saying, hey, something's different now.

• 25:33Speaker 05

  Right, right, right.

• 25:34Andrew D. Huberman?

  You might need to do something different, including rewire yourself.

• 25:37Speaker 05

  Right.

• 25:37Andrew D. Huberman?

  Right? Um, and that can come from positive or negative experiences.

• 25:41Speaker 05

  Definitely, of course.

• 25:42Andrew D. Huberman?

  Now, I'm obsessed with this idea of energy. I mean, we all want to have more energy and focus. And normally, we hear about the concept of energy in the context of caloric energy, like, what should we eat? And when? And how much? And we need to get sleep. But what you're really referring to is neural energy. Like, the engagement of ourselves that's, you know, uh, sitting there, ready to be engaged, but it requires the right experiential macronutrients, right? The experiential micronutrients, as opposed to, of course, we need good nutrition, but that's not sufficient. It's necessary, but not sufficient. So, uh, would you say that when, um, we are, let, let's say, since a good number of our listeners are in adulthood, um, you know, from our twenties on, that the things

• 26:26Andrew D. Huberman?

  that excite us as adults, that really generate some feeling of readiness or, or grab our attention, um, are still informative toward guiding our decisions about best life and life purpose?

• 26:39Speaker 05

  Well, um, what do you, what exactly do you mean by that? I mean, like, because there are things that excite you in, in a kind of a quick way, like, you know, where you have to relieve some tension and you, there's entertainment and there's things that kind of give you pretty immediate gratification. And there's the larger picture of something that will give you fulfillment over years to come. So you can feel that when you're older and you can pay attention to it. But a lot of the time is we're paying too much attention to the immediate pleasures of life, to what gives us instant gratification. And that's what we're grabbing for. So this is a much more kind of deeper process that involves that digging that I was saying.

• 27:21Speaker 05

  It's deeper than just kind of, I like this, I don't like that, you know, kind of thing. It's more, it's more something macro than than just that. And so when you're in your twenties, or in your thirties, or your forties, you want to be paying attention to yourself. And the problem with people in the world today is you're not paying attention to yourself. You're not inside your own head. You don't hear those voices. You don't hear what you love, what you like anymore. Because as I said, there's so many of these other distractions going on. And so you're always like attuned to what other people like, right? Because you're in social media. This is what people are following. This is what they're interested in.

• 28:03Speaker 05

  As opposed to disengaging, backing off from that and looking at yourself and going through the process of, that's not me, actually, I don't really like that, you know? And so what you're talking about is, I think, very profound, is levels of frustration or anxiety are definite signals that you must pay attention to, that they're telling you, this isn't a good direction for you. This is a waste of time for you. And in general, I tell people, self-awareness, being able to hear those voices, to understand that your frustration is telling you something. And sometimes you you just act on it without understanding it. But understanding why you're frustrated, why you don't like your career,

• 28:46Speaker 05

  why you're not happy about where you're going, is the key to everything. It will open up, it will actually be able, even in your thirties, to return you to that childhood inclination. But if you can't listen to where those emotions come from, then they're useless. They're not teaching you anything.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig.

• 29:07Speaker 02

  On October 2nd.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 29:20Speaker 03

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stop, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 29:27Speaker 03

  I'm not the first nanny.

• 29:29Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a middle without parent.

• 29:34Andrew D. Huberman?

  So it sounds like one of the goals is to engage in what I'll just call for the moment, unadulterated self-referencing. You know, unadulterated in all senses of the word. Because as a child, as you pointed out, at stages of life that are before puberty, they're literally pre-sexual, which I think is important, right? Because puberty, to me, as a neurobiologist who started off as a developmental neurobiologist, I can tell you that puberty is the most profound transformation that the brain undergoes Oh, for sure. in the entire lifespan. There's just absolutely no question about it. Everything is different after puberty because of all of the new relational dynamics that

• 30:19Andrew D. Huberman?

  become apparent and our potential involvement in them. It's just, you know, it's not talked about enough how dramatically puberty changes the brain. Sure. I mean, we are different people before and after puberty. The hormones that are suddenly raging. The hormones are there, and it's not just changes in how we view the world, but changes in how the world views us. Yeah. And not just through the lens of sexuality, but also expectation of what we are capable of, what we are responsible for or not responsible for, our learning capacity. I mean, puberty is like this, you know, it's also the most rapid stage of aging in our entire lifespan. Wow, I didn't know that. Those kids that go home for summer and then come back, like shaving, you know? I was sort of a late, I wasn't a late bloomer, but I had a long protracted puberty.

• 31:04Andrew D. Huberman?

  But I remember those kids. I'm sure we all remember those kids. Everything changes. And so I think prior to puberty, these seeds, as you've described them, of delight or of resistance to things. I think they are an adulterate, they're not contaminated

• 31:19Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 31:19Andrew D. Huberman?

  by the voices and expectations of others. And so I can see the challenge of reaching back to those as an adult. I wonder if this relates to something that I've heard you talk about before, although perhaps not as much as some of the other topics you've discussed publicly, which is the real versus the false sublime.

• 31:39Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 31:40Andrew D. Huberman?

  Could you perhaps just define for us what sublime really is? What a sublime experience is? And the distinction between real and false sublime experiences? Because I feel like this relates to finding that seed. Right, it's about finding authentic seeds within us, as opposed to when emotions can be distracting and misleading.

• 32:01Speaker 05

  Wow, I never thought, I never made that connection. It's the book that I'm writing right now, so thank you for that. I'll have to think about that. Actually, I'm writing a book on the sublime. And I have several ways of illustrating. I generally like to use a metaphor. And the metaphor is that being a human being, being a social human being living in a particular culture, means that you live inside of a circle. And that circle of that time are the conventions of thinking, of ideas that are acceptable, of behavior that is acceptable. This is where you can go mentally, where you can go physically, you know, all the codes and conventions.

• 32:41Speaker 05

  So that circle for ancient Egypt and for 21st century America, they're obviously very different, but it's the same circle. It's the same limiting factor. You're not supposed to go outside of it. These are thoughts, experiences, behavior you're not supposed to do. The sublime is what lies just outside that circle. The word sublime comes from on the threshold of. It's like, here's a door, and the sublime is literally at the threshold of the door. You're looking out into something else, right? And the quintessential sublime experience is a near-death experience. You're standing on the doorway, the threshold of death itself, right? And so

• 33:27Speaker 05

  In my book, I'm illustrating the different kinds of sublime experiences that you can have in relation to the cosmos, in the relation to thinking about being alive. Just being alive is the strangest sensation you could possibly have. I know that very personally after my stroke. I go into childhood, a chapter on childhood and how sublime your own childhood was. I go into animals, in relation to animals. I go, I have a chapter about the brain, a chapter about love. I'm working right now on a chapter about history, okay? But what I'm trying to say is the human brain is wired for these experiences, is wired for transcendental experiences that take us out of the narrow little realm that we live in.

• 34:09Speaker 05

  Because we're aware of our death as the only animal truly conscious of its own mortality, and it frightens the hell out of us. And the idea that we can see something larger than just the banal parts of our life is a doorway that allows us to kind of transcend the moment, to feel connected to something larger, to feel connected to some power in the cosmos, to evolution itself, right? And so, we're wired for that. And I'm writing a chapter now about 40,000 years ago, at the moment where I think the sublime was born. It's a story that I'm trying to illustrate right now with our upper Paleolithic ancestors. So it's deep inside of us, we need it, we have to have it.

• 34:53Speaker 05

  In the 21st century, we have very few avenues for it, any real avenues. Religion used to be the main kind of way of accessing this. And so, because it's so deep, we reach for false forms of the sublime that give us the sense that we're transcending, but it's not at all because sublime has to come from within. It's an experience that you have, that you're generating in your own mind, in your own experience. The false sublime comes from outside. It comes from drugs, it comes from alcohol, it comes from shopping, it comes from online rage, it comes from joining a cause and just getting out all your aggression and violence, right?

• 35:37Speaker 05

  It comes from causes, it comes from addictions. Okay, it gives you a sense, it calms you down, it makes you feel like there's something else going on in life besides your job that you're sick of. But it's not real, it's not lasting, it's false, it's an illusion, it's not based on anything real. It's not connecting to that deep part of human nature that's wired for these experiences. So what happens is, you have to have more and more and more and more of it. You have to have, you know, more of this rush. You need more of the drug, you need more of the alcohol, you need more of the sex, you need more of the porn. It's never going to satisfy you. But the real sublime, you don't have that feeling, it's like, it's transformative. Once you feel it, it lasts for you for the rest of your life.

• 36:21Speaker 05

  It's what Maslow again called a peak experience. So that's the difference between the false and the real sublime. I haven't quite connected it to what you were saying, but if I think about it, I think you're on something very interesting.

• 36:35Andrew D. Huberman?

  I mean, maybe the connection I was trying to draw was, doesn't hold, but yeah, for me, those early experiences of seeing things that just delighted me in a way that felt like, that not only is, the thought process, it was a long time ago, when something like, oh my goodness, I can't believe this exists. This is so cool, this is the coolest thing. And so clearly created an activation state within me. But then there was also a thought and a feeling of, again, a lot of this is sort of pre-verbal. It's not truly pre-verbal, I could speak at that age, but it was, that's of me and I'm of it, right, there's a connection there.

• 37:18Andrew D. Huberman?

  And then it was, there's something to do about this. The activation state created in the body was, you know, I need to learn more about this, I need to tell people about this. I need to think about this, I need more examples of this and see whether or not they're all like this, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So certainly, it meets some of the criteria of a sublime experience.

• 37:40Speaker 05

  Definitely.

• 37:40Andrew D. Huberman?

  And I knew, again, when I was in graduate school, and again, when I was this young professor about to transition to tenure, that I knew it was going to do something different. It was as if I was on the threshold of something, but I didn't know what that next thing was. But I could trust it because of that early experience of knowing that's the thread. Like, I'm an amphibian, this is my environment.

• 38:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:02Andrew D. Huberman?

  And you're an amphibian too.

• 38:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:04Andrew D. Huberman?

  And we're different amphibians, but, you know, we're gonna be amphibians together.

• 38:07Speaker 05

  Right.

• 38:07Andrew D. Huberman?

  And then, and there's a permanence to it, that it does seem to transcend time. I'm obsessed with time perception, so I have to be careful not to go off on a tangent about that. But the human brain's ability to fine slice or macro slice time is incredible. And it's been said of not just addictions, but also interactions with toxic people, that they murder time. That humans have a, I think it was Jung, I'll look it up, but one of the great psychologists said something to the extent that addictive behaviors, thought patterns, substances are humans' attempts to murder time so that they don't have to address their mortality.

• 38:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:51Andrew D. Huberman?

  And that's always made a lot of sense to me.

• 38:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, we say kill time is our expression.

• 38:55Andrew D. Huberman?

  Kill time through passive engagement, but also kill time through trying to get overwhelmed or overtaken by an experience or a substance.

• 39:04Speaker 05

  As opposed to when you're truly connected, you have that sense of flow, and three hours can pass by and you're not even aware of it. So time is a totally subjective experience. It can be extremely slow and tedious, and you feel very depressed, or it can pass by, but it passes by without you even noticing it, and it's a wondrous experience, you know? When I'm deep in my writing, I'm not aware of the time passing, I'm so involved, I'm so immersed, it's a deeply, deeply pleasurable experience of time. It is sublime. And yeah, so I agree with you, I think your distinction's very interesting.

• 39:41Andrew D. Huberman?

  I'm eagerly awaiting your next book, but we won't rush you.

• 39:45Speaker 05

  Well, I'm so immersed in it that I could talk for hours because I also have a chapter in there about what I call the daemon, which is like that voice inside of you that speaks to you, and I'm writing a whole chapter about how sublime that is when you connect to that voice. So you are spot on. There is something very much connected to mastery in this book, but it's the next chapter that I'm writing.

• 40:09Andrew D. Huberman?

  Fantastic. I can't wait. I can't wait. I'd like to shift slightly to a topic that you've written extensively about, which is power. And not just power, but also seduction, which you've written extensively about. And of course, you've written about finding one's purpose. So tell me if the framework that I've just given myself liberty to create is an accurate one. And if it's not, I'm hoping that it's not in perhaps some interesting ways. So to me, you talk about, and we will talk about, power as a resource. It's something that, it's there as a resource. It could be used or not used.

• 40:51Andrew D. Huberman?

  And I think of seduction as one form of exchange between the individual. So there's a verb associated with seduction. Power, I'm thinking of more as a noun in this context. You're the word guy. And then, you know, purpose is really about finding like to what end or ends one is going to devote. Power, seduction, and the other forces that allow human beings to interact with each other in the world. But power as a resource that can be expressed in different ways and accessed in different ways. Maybe we could just explore that a little bit because, you know, when we hear the word power, I think a lot of people kind of brace themselves like, here we go. Someone's going to try and have power over me. This is about manipulation and so on and so forth.

• 41:37Andrew D. Huberman?

  But I learned pretty early on that every, every career endeavor, there's, there are power dynamics. There's mentor mentee, there are teachers and there are students, and both have power. Um, in inter, in romantic relationships, there's a power exchange. There are yeses and there are nos, there are maybes. There are, um, uh, covert and overt contracts.

• 42:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 42:02Andrew D. Huberman?

  I'll do this because I want to.

• 42:03Speaker 05

  Right.

• 42:04Andrew D. Huberman?

  You'll do this because you want to. Great. Sounds great. Overt contract. There are also covert contracts. Well, I don't feel safe doing that. So what I'll do is I'll take something on, through, on the interaction that you're not aware of so that I can sort of, um, ease my sense of danger and make my, give myself the illusion of feeling safe. And all sorts of kind of complicated human dynamics that have to do with us having this forebrain thing that can do all of that gymnastics. So maybe we could start very simply by just saying, you know, how would you define power in terms of its, uh, functional definition, like in, in, in interpersonal relations? And then why do you think power is so essential to all relationships? That's really what I'd like to get to. Why is it so essential?

• 42:48Andrew D. Huberman?

  Why couldn't it be something else?

• 42:51Speaker 05

  Well, the way I define power is I try and take it away from that kind of negative context that most people have and that you, that you brought up. And I bring it to something very primitive and very primal. The way the human being is wired, the feeling that we have no control over our environment, and in the earliest period, it was literally over our environment and wild animals and nature and, and climate, et cetera. But now the sense that you have no control over your career, over your children, over your parents, is deeply, deeply immiserating. And it compels us to act in certain ways, either attempts to find positive ways of power, or doing what you call covert ways of getting power,

• 43:35Speaker 05

  you know, passive aggressive, traditionally passive aggressive means. So it's deeply wired in us to want a degree of control over the immediate environment and immediate events. We can never have complete control, and the idea of having complete control is nonsense, and it would actually be very ugly, because you want a degree of letting go and letting circumstances come to you, et cetera, et cetera. So the sense of you, you, you want to feel like with other people and relationships, that you can influence them, that you can move them in a certain direction, either to get you to love you and treat you better, or either to stop annoying irritating behaviors,

• 44:16Speaker 05

  or either to, you know, wake up and find and do productive activities to your children, et cetera. You want to have the ability to influence people, to move them in a certain direction, either in your interest or in their interest, right? And once you have that need, and every single human being ever who's ever lived has that need, and we often don't recognize it because we're embarrassed by it. We're embarrassed by our desire for power, for our need to control. Every human being has it, right? And it's not easy because human beings are complicated. They don't, if you say, "Do this," and you're talking to your son, he'll do the opposite, or he'll do something else.

• 45:00Speaker 05

  You can't just force people in a direction, right? By being overt and telling them, "This is what you need to do," you create resentment, you create an enemy. They may, they may say, "Yes, yes daddy, yes husband, I'll do what you say." But they're, you, they're, they're gonna resist you deep down inside, right? So people are tricky. They wear masks. They pretend to say one thing and they do another. They have their egos, and you inadvertently wound their egos or trip them in some way, and they react in a way that you don't expect. And so, power is this kind of invisible realm that envelops society, where people are continually battling each other and struggling in it. But no one is like talking about it, no one's being overt about it.

• 45:44Speaker 05

  No one's saying, "This is exactly what I'm trying to do." And so, when you enter the social world and the career world, you're not expecting these battles. You don't, no one's taught you, no one's trained you. Your parents don't train you, nobody trains you. And you make mistakes and you realize how political people are. If you're a sharky character and there's this certain percentage of them, you realize, wow, I can deceive people, I can manipulate them, I can get what I want, I can pretend to love them and they'll fall for me and I can do all this other stuff. But for most of us, the ninety-five percent of us who aren't sharks, and I'm including myself in that category, it's very, very disturbing to suddenly enter that world and see all of that invisible power games on this.

• 46:29Speaker 05

  No one's given you any advice for or helped you. And so, take it out of the realm of it's just about trying to dominate the world and manipulate and exploit and abuse. It's something inside of you. You have this need and your suppression of it will only make you come out in passive ways and you won't be able to control certain things. If you want to move people, if you want them to follow your ideas, if you want them to be more aligned with your politics or your ideas, you have to be subtle, you have to learn psychology, you have to learn certain aspects of how to almost move people without them realizing in certain directions,

• 47:14Speaker 05

  which is like the art of seduction. And if you're not interested in that, if you're just gonna tell people what you think and what you're gonna do, that means you're not interested in practical action, you're not interested in results, you're just interested in venting your own frustrations or your own anger. So, learning the subtle little dynamics of power is extremely essential because we're a social animal. It doesn't mean that you're gonna get dirty, that you're gonna suddenly go out there and manipulate the hell out of people. Most of the forty-eight laws of power is about defense. But how to defend yourself from the sharks about there, how to defend yourself from making classic mistakes, like outshining the master, like talking too much, like arguing with people instead of demonstrating your ideas, on and on and on.

• 47:59Speaker 05

  It's not an ugly thing. It actually makes you a better social individual. So that's how I like to frame it.

• 48:07Andrew D. Huberman?

  It's very interesting. I think... As a young guy growing up, it was so important to me to know where I fit in with my friend group. And I didn't think of it so much as a hierarchy. Nor when I was in my academic studies, did I think of it as a hierarchy, even though it was, clearly was, right? So much as the goal was to figure out where was my unique slot? That I could do the most good for myself and others.

• 48:40Speaker 05

  Right.

• 48:40Andrew D. Huberman?

  You know, kind of finding my spot. I don't want to say on a shelf because that gives an image of something vertical, but you know, in the, let's make it lateral. A lateral arrangement of different people with different strengths, different life purposes, trying to figure them out. You know, where should I be in order to express that and also feel connected to others? And in order to do that, I did have to, I realize now, based on your answer, I did have to figure out, you know, who's trying to have power over, who's pretending that they don't want power, but is actually exerting power. You know, these sorts of things. And there's an incredible piece that comes from knowing that one is in the correct place,

• 49:22Andrew D. Huberman?

  both profession, interpersonally, in relation to oneself, but also in the context of one's peer group. It's kind of knowing, yeah, this is where I belong. Because trying to gain power when one is trying to move to a position that isn't right for them, or in a way that isn't right for them, just seems so energetically costly.

• 49:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 49:41Andrew D. Huberman?

  Seems like a waste of a life, frankly.

• 49:42Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 49:43Andrew D. Huberman?

  You know, trying to gather resources simply to have them, to give the illusion of power, but then being afraid of losing them just sounds like a recipe for misery, as you pointed out.

• 49:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 49:53Andrew D. Huberman?

  You know, whereas figuring out where am I most powerful, in the benevolent sense of the word? That, that seems like a good, a good pursuit.

• 50:02Speaker 05

  Well, it's connecting up to mastery again and finding your life's purpose. You know, I knew when I was young that I couldn't exert physical power because I was a skinny little runt. And I wasn't bullied, but people would kind of pick on me, et cetera, et cetera. So I veered towards intellectual pursuits where I could have power. And in the end, you know, you might have been a jock and you might have done well in high school. But haha, look at me now. I'm not saying that it's a beautiful thing, but that's part of human nature. The desire to actually, you know, prove yourself and find that niche that you belong to. So you don't have that kind of, that sense of inferiority.

• 50:43Speaker 05

  Which Alfred Adler, the psychologist, describes very eloquently. So a lot of it is kind of compensating when you're a child for things that are your weaknesses. And finding what you're so good at, that you do have that power. And people can't bully you, right? And you're like now a famous neuroscientist. Whereas they're like, who knows what they're doing, kind of thing. So power definitely is connected in some way to that inner sense of what you were meant to do. And you feel it with the ease and the connection that comes from it, right? So I can honestly say that my dislike of working for other people and office politics and egos.

• 51:25Speaker 05

  I now have an existence where I don't have to deal with any of that. And I'm so blessed and I wake up every morning and I pray to God, thank God, I found this. Because it's the perfect lifestyle for me.

• 51:37Andrew D. Huberman?

  And you're, can be accurately described as an intellectual beast. So it's, which is like a compliment, right? We hear the word beast and we think, you know, a ferocious beast trying to harm others, but.

• 51:50Speaker 05

  I'm happy being a beast.

• 51:51Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, you know, so I think finding where we can be a beast, you know? And for some people, that's painting or gardening or whatever it might be. I think is, again, ties back to these issues of, or this quest for mastery.

• 52:07Andrew D. Huberman?

  Seduction is also a very loaded word, right?

• 52:10Speaker 05

  It's even more uglier than power.

• 52:12Andrew D. Huberman?

  Because seduction, right, seduction kind of drips with the idea that somebody is tricking someone else into doing something that they otherwise would not want to do. But seduction is, both our propensity to do it and to have it done to us, is hardwired into our nervous system and has a lot to do with the hypothalamus and a bunch of other areas that I won't bore us with the nomenclature. But seduction, to me, implies some sort of exchange. I suppose we could seduce ourselves through denial or convincing ourselves that, of something. But more often than not, when we talk about seduction, we're talking about an interaction between two or more people.

• 52:54Andrew D. Huberman?

  So what are some of the core principles of seduction? And if you care to play anthropologist a bit and neuroscientist, I would invite that. Why do you think we have neural circuits in our brain that allow us to seduce and be seduced?

• 53:13Speaker 05

  Well, I don't know how, if I'm being kind of an armchair intellectual here, but my theory is some of it has to go back to social events long in our prehistory, which have to do with taboos. And society was initially kind of organized by a series of taboos, right? Most notably, the taboo on incest. And what happened, this is just not my theory, it's the theory of the Malinowski, Malinowski is how it's pronounced, is that the moment a taboo enters the human brain, like, you're not supposed to sleep with this woman, the desire arises inside of you to actually sleep with that woman.

• 53:57Speaker 05

  Then the sense of no, the sense that this is prohibited, stirs the desire, stirs the contrary impulses in humans. And we can be very, what's the word, perverse creatures, right? So if you've ever tried to suppress a thought, You realize that it keeps coming up, it keeps coming up. You can't suppress it. Don't think of an elephant, Andrews. Whatever you do, don't think of an elephant. You're thinking of it because you can't help it, right? The idea that you're not supposed to desire this person stirs that actual desire. So I believe the sense of something being taboo and transgressive is the ultimate kind of origin of our desire for seduction.

• 54:40Speaker 05

  But seduction involves vulnerability. It involves somebody gets inside, somebody gets under our skin, right? And to do that, we have to let them in. So the person being seduced is in some ways, to a degree, complicit. Because if you just put up a wall and you said, no, I'm not going to be seduced, nothing will happen. But you have a vulnerability. You're letting that person into your psyche, into your inner space. The paradigm for that is early childhood. So Freud talks a lot about this. So I don't know if people still believe in Freud anymore.

• 55:18Andrew D. Huberman?

  I certainly do.

• 55:19Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 55:20Andrew D. Huberman?

  Absolutely. Genius of both psychology and physiology. Wrong about a lot of things, did a lot of things he shouldn't have done. Let's acknowledge that. I think everyone would agree that sleeping with your patients and being a cocaine addict, bad ideas. But at the same time, he had an absolute, like near supernatural levels of insight and brilliance into human nature.

• 55:41Speaker 05

  Did you sleep with his patients?

• 55:42Andrew D. Huberman?

  I believe he did. But if I just, if I just threw that on him without him doing it, then, you know, forgive me.

• 55:48Speaker 05

  He certainly had emotional attachments to his patients that he shouldn't have had. I don't know if he slept with them, he very well might have. But his idea was that the child is seduced by the parent. You're in extremely vulnerable position, right? Your life depends on them. And they're seducing you with their energy. You're letting them in, right? And that kind of creates a pattern for the rest of your life. And So for instance, the feeling of being carried by your father and just being taken around physically is a form of seduction because you don't know what he's going to do to you. You're very excited. You want that surprise, right?

• 56:30Speaker 05

  And to me, it's related to the seduction of a story. Stories are very seducing to us. We don't know where they're taking us. We don't know what the next chapter is, what's going to happen to this character or not. The surprise lowers our resistance and opens our mind up to what's going to happen next. It's a form of seduction. Fairy tales, the stories you were reading as a child, your interactions with your parents, they're deeply, deeply ingrained in you. You cannot be seduced unless you are vulnerable, right? And so I like to switch it around and get out of the negative connotations. Being vulnerable is actually a positive trait. I think a lot of people now in the world today,

• 57:14Speaker 05

  because things are so harsh and invasive, that people have become too invulnerable. They don't want to let anything in, right? And this now infects their relationships with other people. They don't want to be influenced. They want to be strong inside of themselves. They're afraid of giving in to the other person, of surrendering to their influence. But it's actually a delightful feeling to surrender to the power of another person and then reverse that charge and have them surrender to your power. So when I'm reading a writer, and sometimes they completely seduce me, like Friedrich Nietzsche is one of my favorite writers. I let go of everything. I let him enter my brain, and I'm completely seduced.

• 57:59Speaker 05

  I let him lead me along. But then I encounter writers that I don't like at all. I'll mention one. You know, it's probably not a good thing, but Steven Pinker. I don't like Steven Pinker. I find him really annoying, okay? But I force myself to try and find a way to be seduced by him, to let him into my brain, to see where he's coming from, to open myself to the possibility that he could be correct. So vulnerability, letting people into your mental space, is a form of intelligence. It's a kind of an emotional and an intellectual intelligence.

• 58:33Andrew D. Huberman?

  And forgive me for interrupting, but I think it also implies a level of confidence because empathy or allowing oneself to be vulnerable to the point where you're seduced by something. By definition, if you're choosing to do it, implies that you also have the confidence that you can get back to yourself afterward.

• 58:52Speaker 05

  Of course.

• 58:53Andrew D. Huberman?

  Right, that you're not going to get lost

• 58:54Speaker 05

  Of course.

• 58:55Andrew D. Huberman?

  in the circumstances, that you're not going to be hijacked to the point of no return.

• 58:58Speaker 05

  Right.

• 58:58Andrew D. Huberman?

  Or in some way that's detrimental to you.

• 59:00Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 59:01Andrew D. Huberman?

  So it's, um, it, I'm sounding really nerdy here. It's, it's collinear with, with confidence in many ways. Sure, like, take my mind and take it where you will, because I know I can come back at any time.

• 59:13Speaker 05

  Right, right. And the same thing in a physical seduction, in a romantic sense, right? You're opening yourself up to the charm, to the energy of the other person. But if they start displaying dark energy and you see that they're abusive or something is wrong, you have the ability to retreat.

• 59:30Andrew D. Huberman?

  Uh, well, there it gets tricky.

• 59:31Speaker 05

  It gets very tricky.

• 59:32Andrew D. Huberman?

  Well, because the attachment systems, which are also rooted in childhood, oftentimes can overwhelm one's ability to recover oneself. Like, I mean, so, I mean, how many, if I had a dollar for every time someone in, that I knew in my life saying like, you know, I know they're bad for me, but I just can't, like, we just can't seem to disengage. Like, that, you hear about that all the time. I mean, you see court cases about this that are public and, you know, you just go, why didn't they just walk away from one another?

• 59:58Speaker 05

  Of course.

• 59:59Andrew D. Huberman?

  Well, because once those attachment systems are locked in.

• 1:00:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:00:02Andrew D. Huberman?

  It almost becomes, in a, and here metaphorically speaking, like a parent-child relationship. Like, you can't suddenly decide your parents weren't your parents.

• 1:00:08Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:00:09Andrew D. Huberman?

  Simply because you know better now. You are forever stricken with the reality that they were and they had an influence. And I think that, that attachment system is, um, is a, is a force that tugs pretty hard.

• 1:00:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, and, um, a lot of women have written to me since The Art of Seduction, sort of saying that their boyfriend or husband was applying some of these tactics on them. And it was very painful and they were kind of a little bit angry at me for, for it. Then they kind of realized that they, it wasn't, they didn't learn really from my book. It was already kind of wired in them. But that reading about these tactics and these strategies actually helped them to recognize what their husband or boyfriend was doing to them. The manipulation and the games that were being played.

• 1:00:55Andrew D. Huberman?

  Do men write to you and talk about the seductive adornments that women have used to, to, um, bring them into a relationship as well, or is, are you typically hearing from women?

• 1:01:03Speaker 05

  I mostly hear from women complaining about men and, and how they've abused them and how they used

• 1:01:09Andrew D. Huberman?

  I see.

• 1:01:10Speaker 05

  some of these. Some of the strategies I don't deny have a slightly nefarious edge to them because I didn't want to write a book about seduction that doesn't have that taboo element because I say seduction involves the taboo and I didn't want to censor myself.

• 1:01:26Andrew D. Huberman?

  But female to male seduction clearly also exists.

• 1:01:29Speaker 05

  Very much so.

• 1:01:30Andrew D. Huberman?

  It's less often, I acknowledge that it's less often is it physically abusive. But, I mean, from an early age, both boys and girls, men and women are coached by society on the sorts of seductive tactics and adornments, right? I mean, everything from makeup, perfume, hairstyles, cars, watches, jewelry, expression, power displays of any kind. I mean, that stuff, the world's filled with that stuff.

• 1:01:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, but men are generally kind of happy when a woman seduces them, right? Unless they're after their money or something like that, which happens. But generally, the sense, you know, I talk about this in the first chapter about sirens, which I'd say is the quintessential archetype of the female seductress. The kind of half-human, half-bird creature on a rock, singing so beautifully that you have to jump in the water and then they kill you. And so, the idea is that men want to let go because men have to be so in control, so powerful, they have to project this image. They have a secret desire to let go and be almost dominated by a very powerful woman. A lot of men have that.

• 1:02:37Speaker 05

  And I talk about some of the most powerful men in history, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Joe DiMaggio, who, all these men, very masculine men, who've fallen for very feminine, siren-like women and been completely dominated by them. And they actually kind of enjoy the process because it's like a sense of, I can let go, I can enter this totally sensual, physical world, and it's extremely pleasing. It's like another realm outside of my kind of cold, masculine world, you know? So, I don't really get men complaining too much about women who've seduced them, honestly. It's usually the other way around.

• 1:03:19Andrew D. Huberman?

  I've heard before, and I promise this is not an original idea that I'm pretending to have heard elsewhere, that my friend asked me to ask sort of question, that in all sexual exchanges, there's a power exchange.

• 1:03:32Speaker 05

  Definitely.

• 1:03:33Andrew D. Huberman?

  Maybe you could elaborate on that, because as you were describing some of the seductive power dynamics that exist, a phrase that I've heard before came to mind, that at first made me chuckle, but then made me think quite deeply about this issue of the relationship between sexual and power dynamics, which is this notion of topping from the bottom. You know, if one is giving someone else the impression that they are more powerful, by virtue of the word giving, they actually hold some power, right? Power is, can be given or taken, but oftentimes, seductive exchanges, and sexual exchanges,

• 1:04:08Andrew D. Huberman?

  and romantic exchanges in particular, are about both people buying into a temporary illusion. Let's pretend that you're in charge, when actually, I'm in charge, okay, but I know that you think that you're in charge, okay, let's just pretend none of that exists, and just do X, right? And I think this is another example of covert contracts, and it's one that actually can potentially create a lot of problems, post hoc, right? But I think the relationship between sex, romance, and power is an important area to explore in the context of this.

• 1:04:48Speaker 05

  Well, I wrote The Art of Seduction with the idea that it was an art invented by women. It was invented by women who had no power essentially, socially, politically, in any sense of the word, domestically, right? And, but the one power that they could, that they could wield over a man was through sex, some physical attraction. And so they developed this art of kind of luring a man into their world through various theatrical effects, Cleopatra being kind of the archetype of this, and then luring the powerful man into this world, he has the illusion that he's the one pursuing her, but in fact, she is the one controlling the dynamic.

• 1:05:33Speaker 05

  So oftentimes, the person who appears to be the weaker one in the relationship, who's not doing the pursuing, is actually inviting the pursuing, is actually leading the other person on. So there's a lot of kind of... Appearance games going on and you can never really figure out who exactly is in control of the dynamic because one person is like allowing the other person to lead them on, but the fact that you're allowing them is a degree of power, is a degree of control, right? So it's very hard to figure out and sex and power and romantic relationships are very much intertwined in us physically, emotionally, neurologically, you can't avoid it, right?

• 1:06:18Speaker 05

  And so I think it's kind of dishonest to say that that none of that exists, that it's like that there's some egalitarian paradise out of there when it's really not wired in us for that kind of relationship.

• 1:06:32Andrew D. Huberman?

  There's a recent scientific publication slash factoid that I wanted to share with you in this context because I'd like your thoughts on it. David Anderson, who's a phenomenal neurobiologist, he's been a guest on this podcast before, he's a professor at Caltech, studies basically the functions of the hypothalamus.

• 1:06:50Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:06:50Andrew D. Huberman?

  So things like aggression, mating and things of that sort and does it so with great detail. He's a virtuoso of the hypothalamus and he published a paper two years ago showing that indeed there are neural circuits in the brain of animals and presumably in humans as well that control sexual mounting behavior, but that there is actually a separate circuit for purely non-sexual mounting and physical power over that's expressed in animals. And anyone that's ever owned a dog and gone to the dog park will see same-sex mounting between dogs or mounting between dogs that has apparently no sexual endpoint.

• 1:07:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:07:35Andrew D. Huberman?

  And in exploring this literature and some talking to David about it, it's very clear that there are neural circuits that have everything to do with essentially one animal of a species getting on top of the other animal, usually from behind. Oftentimes scruffing or biting the back of the neck and saying, I control you. It's often done in a playful context, especially between animals, not always aggressive. But there's a certain element of aggressive to it. But it essentially says, I decide whether or not you are mobile or not for this moment. And that it, and this is very important, I want to emphasize this. This is a circuit that is entirely separate from all of the reflexes associated with sexual behavior in males and females. I find this to be fascinating.

• 1:08:18Andrew D. Huberman?

  And because we hear about power over, right? And we hear about power and we think about physical power over. But the idea that something as primitive as mounting, just like something as primitive as biting or as striking, has its own unique set of circuits in the brain, I think substantiates everything that you put in your books about power and maybe even seduction as well. So as I just kind of toss that out there for consideration, I wonder if you have any reflections on it? If not, feel free to just say, I don't. But of course, but to me, this was a really important discovery because I think everyone looks at mounting behavior and says, oh, that has to be sexual. And sometimes it's.

• 1:09:01Speaker 05

  Oh, I see what you mean.

• 1:09:02Andrew D. Huberman?

  But it's not. That there's a, there seem to be a host of neural circuits in the brain that are really about defining who's on top, literally, that has nothing to do with sex.

• 1:09:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm sure that's true. I've never, I've never, I've never read anything about that. But I can say that I wrote a chapter in my new book about love. And that's a different thing than seduction. And I was trying to come up with an idea of love that does have an element of equality that doesn't have this power dynamic going on in it.

• 1:09:38Andrew D. Huberman?

  I love that.

• 1:09:39Speaker 05

  And, you know, kind of like the antithesis of my art of seduction where I'm almost contradicting myself. And I was going into the biology of it and even into the physics of it. So there's a famous French biologist, whose name escapes me. Sorry, I can't remember, from the 20s and 30s. And he was studying paramecium. And he found, he was studying them, you know, they're in these ponds, et cetera. And he said that there was these moments where these single-celled organisms were suddenly coupling. They were all joining together, just one to one. And they were absorbing the membrane of one inside the other.

• 1:10:21Speaker 05

  And then they would like go, and then, once one couple did that, all the paramecium started joining up together. Then they would sink to the bottom of the pond. And paramecium don't reproduce through sex. They reproduce through dividing themselves, right? Self-reproduction. And so, he was saying that the desire to couple, to connect to someone so deeply, where you absorb, one is absorbed in the other, is biologically wired into us. Goes back millions and millions and millions of years. And it's a desire, essentially, a biological desire for love, right?

• 1:11:01Speaker 05

  And it's an energy that permeates all, it's not just about power and hierarchies. And that he was showing other creatures that had something similar going on. And, you know, in physics, we talk about entanglement. And we also talk about, you know, matter. If matter isn't opposed by a lot of kinetic energy, it joins together. I mean, particles join together to form matter, et cetera, et cetera. So there's something in the universe that's trying to connect things to each other. So there's this kind of energy that exists in the world, where we have a deep need to connect to somebody. With outside of those power dynamics, right?

• 1:11:45Speaker 05

  Where there's a degree of equality, where we're drawn to each other. And we let go of the ego games, we let go of the playing. We kind of surmount our own physiology, our own hypothalamus. And we engage in this, I call it love sublime. And it involves the physical part, the sexual part is the trigger for it. Because when you have sex with someone, your body is suddenly permeable to their energy in a way that you cannot control. It releases all kinds of chemicals in the brain that are very powerful. And oftentimes, that sense is too powerful and you react. And you're afraid of it and you pull back. But if you don't react and you go further,

• 1:12:30Speaker 05

  then the mind also becomes permeable to the other person and their energy and their desire. And so then it kind of creates a spiraling effect where the physical and the mental connection reaches the state that I call love sublime. Now, it's an ideal. It doesn't really exist that much out there in the world today. But there are stories in history that illustrate it. And I believe that is a biological necessity for us to feel a deep, deep sense of connection. We normally ascribe that to religion, to God, et cetera. But I maintain the essence of love, the model for love is between two human beings, straight or homosexual, it doesn't matter.

• 1:13:13Speaker 05

  And that feeling of surmounting our own neurology, our own system and entering this zone is deeply, deeply satisfying. We all want it. And it has to involve letting go of the power dynamics, letting and everything being equal. It's not that the other person is exactly like you. You recognize their difference. But as far as being worthy of attention, being worthy and respected.

• 1:13:42Speaker 05

  You leave all that other stuff outside. So there is a zone that's possible that's outside this power dynamic that we're talking about.

• 1:13:50Andrew D. Huberman?

  I'm excited that you're writing about this. So this is for your next book.

• 1:13:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:13:54Andrew D. Huberman?

  I'm very excited. I couldn't help but think of some of the parallels between what you describe and what we're observing nowadays in the landscape of politics and social dynamics, where clearly there is no setting aside of egos. People feel, both sides feel attacked. Everyone in between feels confused, like, why do I have to pick a side? And there seems to be no hint of a future where people are setting down their swords, which means, if we were to go with your earlier definition, which I like a lot, that nobody feels safe enough to be vulnerable enough to allow the union of people to occur,

• 1:14:38Andrew D. Huberman?

  which is just a way of rewording, you know, a bunch of other things and not nearly as eloquently as you described it. But if setting aside of power dynamics and making oneself vulnerable is the key to accessing love in the romantic context, surely, but also in the societal context, I mean, what are the channels for that? I mean, I suppose there is the argument, not mine, that everyone should just take a boatload of psychedelics and see the interconnectedness of things. But that seems like an unrealistic route. I just don't see that being, you know, 12th grade graduation curriculum, nor do I think it would be healthy. To be clear, I think that we'd end up with a lot of expression of problems there.

• 1:15:23Andrew D. Huberman?

  But short of a magic substance that could increase feelings of connectedness among everyone simultaneously,

• 1:15:30Andrew D. Huberman?

  how are you going to save humanity, Robert?

• 1:15:32Speaker 05

  Well, because I'm concerned about young people in particular with hookup culture, with pornography, et cetera, et cetera. It's kind of rewiring the human brain and we're losing what I was just describing. And I see particularly a lot of young people, and I don't blame them because they've grown up in a world that's very chaotic and very hostile.

• 1:15:53Andrew D. Huberman?

  Could I say, I think it's, and not to be nitpicky here, but I, I love what you just said. I think, in my mind, it's high, things like that are hijacking the hardwiring of the brain.

• 1:16:02Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:16:03Andrew D. Huberman?

  And I'm just, no, and I'm not, again, forgive me, my, the audience is probably going, ah.

• 1:16:07Speaker 05

  You can't really rewire the brain like that.

• 1:16:09Andrew D. Huberman?

  Well, I think we can expand and rewire upon our hardwiring, but so much of what you, you talk about in your books is about finding one's essence, but then, also, what I love about your book so much, among many other things, is that it's about that dance between the hardwiring and, and the possible of, through effort. So, anyway, forgive me for.

• 1:16:26Speaker 05

  No, no, no, no, it's, it's very accurate.

• 1:16:29Andrew D. Huberman?

  So, yeah, what, what, how do you get us out of this?

• 1:16:32Speaker 05

  Well, you're putting a big burden on me, but.

• 1:16:34Andrew D. Huberman?

  I am, but I think you're up to it, you know?

• 1:16:36Speaker 05

  Well, I tried to do it in this chapter because I wanted to seduce the reader into the idea that this is something extremely pleasurable and extremely healthy, and the feeling of being vulnerable is a very positive attribute that will infect not just your romantic relationships, but will infect you mentally. So, creative people are extremely vulnerable. They're extremely vulnerable to ideas. They're extremely vulnerable to the environment. And closing yourself off into your own ego, into yourself. So, the chapter is called Escape the Prison of the Ego. And you're, you're kind of trapped inside of yourself

• 1:17:18Speaker 05

  and your own thoughts and your own desires. And it's like a prison. It's enclosing you and you want to escape somehow. And you escape through drugs, you escape through porn, but it doesn't lead to actually escaping. You want to be able to let go of the self and get out of this, this prison that you're in, right? And so, it's a desire that, that we all have. And so, I wanted to frame it as this incredibly positive dynamic that you can engage in, and the ability to be vulnerable to other people, to open yourself up and to say that, yeah, they might hurt me, but I'm strong enough to take it. And if they hurt me, I'll learn from it and I'll rebound. And I know that's a bit naive on my part, but I want you to at least have that feeling.

• 1:18:02Speaker 05

  Because a lot of young people write to me and they say. I can't fall in love anymore. I can't, I don't like that feeling. It makes the loss of control is too much. You know, and, and a lot of that, their behavior patterns are in creating this sense of control, which you can have when you're locked inside of yourself.

• 1:18:21Andrew D. Huberman?

  Hence, over indulgence in pornography.

• 1:18:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:18:25Andrew D. Huberman?

  And masturbation, et cetera, as a way to avoid the, you know, the understandable fear about interrelational dynamics.

• 1:18:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:18:34Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:35Speaker 05

  So, you know, when you're young, you're, you're idealistic, or at least a lot of young people are, and you have these dreams and these hopes. And to let go of this possibility, which is deeply pleasurable and deeply therapeutic to the human animal, as a social animal, it's like the highest form of interaction that we can have. So my strategy in that chapter was to paint such a wonderful portrayal of the pleasures that are awaiting you by letting go of your defenses, of letting go of all of your natural resistance factors and opening yourself up to other people is, is a key to not just

• 1:19:16Speaker 05

  a romantic relationship, but to career success, to mental energy, to creativity, to being open in general, right? And so I don't think I could have a, a, a why, you know, a huge impact, but we'll see when, when the book comes out. But I'm advocating that sense of opening yourself up to the universe, to the cosmos itself, as an energy that permeates the world. And so that you don't want to, the feeling of being closed inside of your ego, inside of yourself, I want to make it so you feel the pain of that, because you don't really feel the pain of it. You feel like it's comfortable for you.

• 1:19:59Speaker 05

  But I want to make it clear to you that it's not comfortable. It's deeply, deeply painful and it's disconnecting you from some of the best experiences you can have in life. So I have that strategy. The only other hope I have is in the human spirit itself. So a lot of this is being caused by social media, I believe, right?

• 1:20:21Speaker 05

  And, and the instant, and the, the kind of immediate gratification we can get in so many ways. And my hope is that young people.

• 1:20:32Speaker 05

  Get fed up and get disgusted with all this disconnection and alienation in their life and that they hunger from actually something more communal, more interactive, more real as opposed to virtual. And so that the human spirit can't be completely squashed by technology, et cetera. So I have that hope because we've gone through these cycles before in history where people have become very invulnerable and very locked and closed. And suddenly there's an explosion, a creative explosion, like in the 1960s, like in the 1920s, like in 18th century Europe with the Casanova, where seduction reached its kind of apogee, et cetera.

• 1:21:14Speaker 05

  So it has kind of swung back and forth between these moments where humans get incredibly closed and bitter and partisan and everything's conflict and everyone's divisive, et cetera. And suddenly it goes in the opposite direction. I have hope in that possibility and I structured my chapter to perhaps sweep that a little bit along that tide and see if I can have any effect.

• 1:21:37Andrew D. Huberman?

  Well, I think what you just described in conversations like it and that stem from it are likely to have a tremendous effect. I think it's exactly what's needed now and certainly I'll be to amplify that message. I agree with everything you said and not just because you're sitting here as a guest on this podcast, but because it's clear to me that while power dynamics and seduction are wired into our human relations since the beginning of time, that we have reached a very challenging period in our history. It's somewhat of a relief to me to know that it's happened before, but in a very different context. We hear a lot about the swinging back and forth of the pendulum.

• 1:22:20Andrew D. Huberman?

  Someone, in fact, Peter Attia, online physician's brother actually said, so we'll credit him. He said, no, it's not a pendulum that swings back and forth. Unfortunately, now it's become a wrecking ball. So it's swinging back and forth and doing damage as it reaches its, you know, its extremes. And I think that I also look forward to a time where people.

• 1:22:44Andrew D. Huberman?

  Acknowledge that the injustices around them and that have been done to them and others, but somehow are able to transcend that. And the word that I'd like to pick up on there is the word justice. It was pointed out to me by someone I respect very much that, you know, having a sense of justice is a wonderful and important thing, and as humans, it's important to how we structure society. But I do think that a lot of the negative things that we see out there nowadays have something to do with the availability of, ready availability of pornography, high-density calorie food, et cetera, a bunch of things like that. But that one of the issues with social media, because it does have its positive aspects, but one of the negative issues in my mind is that it's a steady flow of examples of

• 1:23:29Andrew D. Huberman?

  injustice. So all day long, you're just seeing things that piss you off and that piss other people off and for different reasons. But what was pointed out to me is that one of the key things about a sense of injustice is to be able to determine whether or not there's anything that you should do about it. And I think that everyone now feels a bit hijacked by all the injustices we see because we feel like, well, we're supposed to do something about it. But it may be that, while we can't let every injustice pass, that being bombarded all day long with things that upset us is hijacking our creativity, it's distracting us from our deeper purpose, it's preventing a sense of vulnerability that would lead to a sense of deep love. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And on and on.

• 1:24:10Andrew D. Huberman?

  So I don't think it's just about the tantalizing lures of sex, food, and looking at, you know, bodies and hearing voices on social media. I think there is some validity to that, but that it's also that, you know, there's just ample opportunity to go down the gravitational pull forces of injustice, like, ah, that's so frustrating. Why are they doing that? I mean, I catch myself doing that, talking to coworkers when I walk in about, did you see this thing? This is crazy. What's going on with it? They're crazy. When, you know, as opposed to thinking about anything else in that moment. And I try and yank myself out of that. But I think that...

• 1:24:47Andrew D. Huberman?

  You're not gonna do it alone, but I think you will play a major role in saving us from this. Because people, I do, I think because people just need to see themselves through a different lens.

• 1:24:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:24:56Andrew D. Huberman?

  And realize this is distracting me from who I'm supposed to be.

• 1:24:59Speaker 05

  Well, a lot of what what modern life should involve is the ability to ignore certain things. So for instance, I don't know if you know that app Nextdoor?

• 1:25:09Andrew D. Huberman?

  Oh, right. I used to have it. But then I'd see all the the packages being stolen off my neighbor's porches in Oakland. And then I started enjoying living in Oakland less, and I love the city of Oakland. It's got its problems.

• 1:25:21Speaker 05

  I lived in Oakland, too.

• 1:25:22Andrew D. Huberman?

  But as an East Bay kid, you know, and went to school out there and, you know, like, I have deep love for the East Bay. And it's always had those problems. But when you see stuff being stolen on your phone in the middle of the night when you wake up, it creates a sense that like, they're out to get my stuff.

• 1:25:37Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:25:38Andrew D. Huberman?

  It's terrible.

• 1:25:39Speaker 05

  Right, and so I have it in my spam filter, but I look at it and and every headline is people stealing, somebody broke into somebody's house, this purse dog bit me, this this rabid dog going around, there's this homeless person that's yelling and attacking people, on and on and on. I feel like I'm living in this neighborhood, it's like Beirut or something in the 1980s. I can't even walk out my door. I just got, I don't look at Nextdoor anymore, I just ignore it. I don't open it ever. Because I know that that they're designed algorithmically to put that in front of you every single time so that you click on it. Because that's, we respond to that kind of stuff naturally, we can't help it.

• 1:26:19Speaker 05

  So you have to be able to shut that stuff up and look at what you can actually control in your life. So I have this visceral dislike of what's going on in Ukraine. Because I was in Ukraine recently and I feel I've identified very strongly with their struggle, right? And it just, I can't, that outrage feeling, it's just every time I read an article about it, it just drives me crazy. So the only thing is I stop reading as much as I can. I read things that are kind of rational and intelligent and I send them money. And I, you know, I donate as much as I can and I help them practically. But I don't allow myself to get that kind of outraged feeling all of the time. So.

• 1:27:03Speaker 05

  Somebody has to write a book. Somebody has to instruct us in what to ignore and what to actually pay attention to. So there are things that you can control, injustices that are out there that you could control by voting, by certain, by amassing a movement, by, you know, dealing with climate change, not by trying to recycle every little thing in your house, but actually doing something really much more macro in the world, you know, joining a cause. There are things you can do, and that's positive. And that's a way of channeling that kind of dark energy in you for a positive purpose. But it's totally disruptive, and it totally distracts you and weakens you and drains you of energy to fall into those rabbit holes

• 1:27:48Speaker 05

  and let them, and let yourself fall into them. So you have to learn the art of what to ignore and what not to pay attention to and understand that you're wired to see those kind of red alert buttons on Facebook or on Nextdoor, wherever they are. And it's just, it's negative. It's like a candy rush, and you have to avoid it.

• 1:28:09Andrew D. Huberman?

  And it's taking us away from our purpose, which we each have. I mean, I think, to me, that's the most deleterious aspect of it.

• 1:28:16Speaker 05

  Unless, unless your purpose is to organize and be an activist. People ask me, I wrote a lot about, in my Human Nature book, about the shadow side of human nature. Right? And we all have it. We all have a dark side. We all have hidden aggression. We all have feelings of envy. We all have feelings of grandiosity. We all have aggressive impulses. How do you deal with it? And I say, the way to deal is to channel it into something positive and pro-social. And that can be putting it in your artwork, venting that anger and that outrage in something that people kind of can identify with. Or it can be in organizing something. That could be your purpose in life in actually doing something positive. So that's the only way that you could actually use that energy

• 1:29:00Speaker 05

  for some kind of actual life task or purpose.

• 1:29:04Andrew D. Huberman?

  You've been discussing lately a bit on some of your channels about masculine and feminine.

• 1:29:13Andrew D. Huberman?

  Let's say roles. And crises of the masculine feminine dance, as well as the crisis of masculinity per se, crisis of femininity per se. Do you care to expand on that a bit? I think we could probably take three, four hours to explore all this in full. But I was struck by some of the things that you said, because I agree completely that just as we are not given a roadmap when we arrive in the world as to how to find our purpose, I think there's also a very conflicted roadmap that's thrown in front of us and indeed conflicting multiple roadmaps about what it means to be masculine or feminine

• 1:29:56Andrew D. Huberman?

  or some combination of both, which of course, everybody is some combination of both, just to varying degrees.

• 1:30:02Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, so men have a feminine side to them, which if you try to repress it, will come out in other ways. And women have a masculine side to them. I think Jung described this very well with the anima and the animus, which I think is extremely real. It's very, very confusing times for both men and for women right now. We don't know the roles that they're... Everything is just so fluid and it's very, very difficult, particularly if you're young. So, young women are getting this idea that everything should be equal and that women should have, and of course, it's right, should have been paid the same, it should have the same career opportunities, there should be no prejudice or harassment or anything.

• 1:30:47Speaker 05

  But at the same time, on social media, it's all about looking perfect and looks are incredibly important and if you're not hot, you're in terrible trouble. And a lot of young girls are extremely confused by this, they're getting mixed signals, right? And boys are even in perhaps even worse circumstance, where being masculine is seen as something negative. So, we don't have any ideals out there anymore of what constitutes a good positive form of femininity and a good positive form of masculinity. In fact, we even think that there shouldn't be anything like that, that there's no such thing as being masculine or feminine, whatever. It's very, very confusing.

• 1:31:29Speaker 05

  And so, you know, I think of masculine traits that I think are very positive and that should be out there to kind of counteract the sort of Andrew Tate. Seduction that a lot of young men are falling for. And it's a kind of an inner strength. Where you're sort of in control of your emotions. You're not invulnerable, et cetera, et cetera. But you can take criticism. You can take, you know, you can have moments of failure and you'll bounce back. But you have a kind of inner resilience and a kind of inner strength. A kind of a quiet calm.

• 1:32:09Speaker 05

  That I think used to be exemplified in movie icons, like a Gary Cooper type thing, right? And that kind of sense of inner calmness where you're not hysterical. You're not getting upset about everything that happens. Where you have a kind of an inner strength and a confidence. And you can withstand kind of what Ryan Holiday talks about, a lot about with Stoicism. You can withstand all of the hardships in life, but you have that citadel within you. Is a very, very powerful form of masculinity. As opposed to it's all about sleeping with a lot of women, having really fast cars. You know, being abusive and being a bully, et cetera, et cetera. These are signs of weakness, of insecurity.

• 1:32:52Speaker 05

  And to be masculine should be a sense of security and inner confidence and inner strength. Right? And that's what we should venerate in our culture and we should have icons like that. Okay? It doesn't mean that that there's no role for men who are not masculine or who have more of the feminine virtues. That's also, there's definitely a role for that. And, you know, we see a lot of that in all sorts of arenas of life. And then there should be a positive model for women. You know, where instead of their appearances being judged by their appearances and having to conform to the ideals of what's hot or not. It's about being incredibly powerful and competent

• 1:33:35Speaker 05

  and have expertise and being really successful in your career. And as opposed to being continually judged by your appearances, which is very damaging. So.

• 1:33:48Speaker 05

  These are terrible times. I mean, I feel fortunate that I grew up in a time where there were these kind of models for me to go by. And I think of my father, who was a very quiet man, and he was, he was just a middle-class salesman is basically what he was. He just sold for all his whole life. He sold chemical supplies for one company. But he was very dignified. He treated people well. He was very calm and very quiet, but he also was very empathetic. That was my role model for what I think is a good masculine energy. And I think a lot of people just don't have that and they're very lost. And so I don't know what the answer is to that. I can't really produce that out of thin

• 1:34:33Speaker 05

  air, but I wish I could.

• 1:34:35Andrew D. Huberman?

  Well, certainly nowadays, there are many more, let's say, examples and options of masculine and feminine qualities out there for observation because of social media and because of the internet. And as you pointed out before, a key feature to becoming a functional human being, especially nowadays, is learning what to ignore. I mean, there's an interesting idea in the circles around nutrition and health that, you know, never before in human history have human beings been able to access such a wide variety of foods that differ from what their ancestors ate. And I don't even mean ancient ancestors.

• 1:35:14Andrew D. Huberman?

  I mean, if you grew up in the Bay Area, as I did in the 1970s and 80s, there were a few ethnic restaurants, but we ate the same, you know, 15 or 20 foods over and over again.

• 1:35:27Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:35:27Andrew D. Huberman?

  And then eventually that exploded into dozens of options and more, and fusion foods and all sorts of things. And so there is this idea in the nutrition communities that we are not hardwired to think about and discern so many different food options that, you know, that's, and to taste so many distinct flavors, whereas before people in one portion of the planet or country ate generally one way, given season, their seasonality, et cetera, et cetera. In a similar vein, we are now, and children

• 1:35:58Andrew D. Huberman?

  Two are now overwhelmed with a number of different options of how to express oneself, both masculinity and femininity, but generally speaking. And so the question is then, how does one choose? Right? How does one decide what's functional, what works, what's best, what's me? Right? Everyone asking themselves, who am I? Right? I think all teenagers, I find this fascinating, ask themselves, who am I? Adults don't tend to ask themselves that question, but who am I?

• 1:36:24Speaker 05

  I still ask myself that question.

• 1:36:25Andrew D. Huberman?

  Okay, well, that's good. Maybe I should ask myself that more often. But I think that we clearly have gone over a cliff with this stuff. I don't think we're still at the point where we're kind of veering towards the edge of confusion. I think young people are really confused because the moment one assumes one clear and, let's say, balanced set of masculine feminine attributes, or maybe veers a bit more masculine or a bit more feminine, it's like there are a million examples telling you that that's wrong.

• 1:36:56Speaker 05

  I know.

• 1:36:57Andrew D. Huberman?

  And then sometimes has the tendency to anchor to, well, no, no, I'm right because this is who I am. And then all of a sudden, you're in a larger battle. So, you know, Gary Cooper's great, love his movies. But we're like, we now have a million variations on Gary Cooper that don't look anything like the Gary Cooper you and I are talking about, and a lot of people won't even know who we're talking about.

• 1:37:18Speaker 05

  I know they won't.

• 1:37:19Andrew D. Huberman?

  Right.

• 1:37:19Speaker 05

  I know, I'm a dinosaur.

• 1:37:21Andrew D. Huberman?

  But perhaps it illustrates the point, no, not that you're a dinosaur, but that there is no single or even set of masculine or feminine ideals. So picking role models is something that I really truly internalized from your book, Mastery.

• 1:37:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:37:37Andrew D. Huberman?

  You know, there were a lot of lonely years for me, and I won't get into the stories of just wondering like, I'm like, what am I gonna do? You know, I'm 13, my home was completely broken, no semblance of... The reality it was before, you know, who are the males in my life I'm going to orient to? And fortunately for me, I assigned mentors to me, whether or not they knew it or not.

• 1:37:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:37:56Andrew D. Huberman?

  That really helped me along and I changed them up, as you recommend. There wasn't one.

• 1:38:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:38:00Andrew D. Huberman?

  Um, I understood there was a breaking up process, an integration process, combining and threading together different things. I think, I truly believe that that's what's required. Then, um, it doesn't have to be 100% Gary Cooper. It can be 10% Robert Greene, 10% someone else.

• 1:38:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:38:17Andrew D. Huberman?

  You know, 5% this and creating a pie chart of sorts of, you know, who one wishes to be in a given context. But that takes work. It takes a bit of work and discernment, but gosh, that's powerful. Um, and really credit goes to you because I, you know, you were a mentor of mine. You didn't even realize it.

• 1:38:35Speaker 05

  Oh, I did.

• 1:38:36Andrew D. Huberman?

  In the way that you forge and organize information. And there were others and, but mastery is where I learned to do that. And this is not a podcast, it's a, a sales pitch for mastery, but gosh, it really taught me. Okay, I have a graduate advisor. She was wonderful and brilliant, but she didn't know how to explain a lot of things to me. So I'd find someone else for that.

• 1:38:56Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:38:57Andrew D. Huberman?

  And someone else for the other thing, and someone else for the other thing. And together create a patchwork of, of really excellent mentors that made a lot of sense to me.

• 1:39:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:39:04Andrew D. Huberman?

  So I, I think there's a, a role for that process that you spell out in mastery in the larger context of like, who to become as a person, and that includes masculine and feminine ideals.

• 1:39:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, and it, and it's an ongoing process throughout your life. So who you glommed onto when you were 14 or 15 will change when you're 19. I had a series of people like you're talking about. My high school English teacher had an enormous impact on me, who taught me basically how to write. I internalized his voice. When I went to Berkeley, I had a professor there who became my kind of surrogate father at Berkeley, who I deeply admired for his level of scholarship. So he became kind of an intellectual role model. Later in life, when I finally wrote my first book, I met a man, Yo Stelfers, who was a book packager, who understood the business, et cetera. He kind of saved me. He was sort of my mentor for the next phase in my life.

• 1:39:59Speaker 05

  So on and on and on I found people, but they have positive qualities, qualities they admire. They're not perfect. Everyone is flawed.

• 1:40:08Speaker 05

  And so at some point, maybe you see too many of the flaws. You go on, I need somebody new in my life. But there's nothing wrong with that. It's not like you're violating any codes or hurting them. You move on to somebody else. But the sense of finding people whose qualities you admire. We don't learn from people just by following their ideas. We pick up their energy, their spirit. Now, you didn't necessarily pick up my energy or spirit from reading Mastery, although maybe you did, I don't know. But when you're interacting with that professor at Stanford or whatever, it's not just verbally. There's kind of a nonverbal communication going on. You're internalizing some of the positive qualities that you saw in them.

• 1:40:52Speaker 05

  And finding these series of mentors, because I call it surrogate parents. You can't choose your father and mother, but you can choose these ideals for you. You can choose these mentors in your life. You can kind of rewrite your family history and find that father figure you never had by glomming onto this person. But it has to be the right fit. It has to be someone that you connect to emotionally and intellectually and that has the positive qualities you wish for yourself.

• 1:41:22Andrew D. Huberman?

  Well, I'll embarrass you perhaps by saying that since I was a freshman in college, which is really when I turned my academic life around and really my life around, I've maintained the same notebook with a list of names of people that I admire and who I'm, you know, trying to emulate in some way, not in every way, certainly. And certain names have been crossed off, but most of them have survived. And certainly after reading Mastery, your name made that list. And

• 1:41:49Speaker 05

  I hope I'm not being crossed off at some point.

• 1:41:51Andrew D. Huberman?

  No, not at all, not at all. And through reading Mastery, there were additional names. You know, I had the great misfortune of having all three of my academic advisors die, suicide, cancer, cancer, which sounds tragic. The joke in my field is you don't want me to work for you. That's what everyone says. But by being essentially scientifically orphaned, because there's a strong mentor-mentee relationship in science and progression through the career track, it forced me to go out and find other people and also to learn how to quote unquote "mother and father myself" in the context of profession. And I got a lot of help. But I can't emphasize enough how valuable that practice is. And so when one looks out on the landscape of social media options, I mean, these are literally just options of people to, you know, we call it following.

• 1:42:37Andrew D. Huberman?

  But, you know, it probably should be called something else. Because following, you know, it falls short of emulating or attempting to emulate. But I think that in the context of masculine and feminine ideals, this is so critical. But it's like the buffet of food is so enormous now. Right? I mean, you've got every cuisine on the table.

• 1:42:56Speaker 05

  And we're not, we're not wired for that.

• 1:42:57Andrew D. Huberman?

  No.

• 1:42:58Speaker 05

  And I know personally, I, I get very agitated and upset. If I go to the market and I have to choose between thirty items and I have no idea what I want. It makes me really cranky and upset. Whereas if I know, okay, I cannot have this food, I can't have that, I'm only looking for this. Okay, it's easy, it doesn't take two hours, waste my time. Too much choice is very detrimental to the human being, I think. And that's why, going back to what I originally said. When you have that sense of purpose about your life, about what's important. It not just infects your career, but infects everything you do. So you know, eating this food is going to drain me of my energy that I need to create this thing

• 1:43:42Speaker 05

  that means so much to me. And energy and feeling my, my brain active and alive is incredibly important value. All right, I'm not going to eat all that sugar because it's bad for me, right? It means I'm not going to get outraged by these things on the internet because it's a waste of time. I can't do anything about it. It's just feeding on my, you know, on my, I forget the part of the brain that's, that's like the amygdala or whatever, right? So, no, I don't want to go there, right? And on and on and on, all these things in social media, some of it's good, some of it's interesting. I can follow Andrew Huberman's podcast and I enjoy that and I learn a lot from him. But a lot of these podcasts are useless, they're, they're not helping me in any way.

• 1:44:23Speaker 05

  So it gives you this kind of filter and this radar to cut out those hundred different choices that drive us absolutely crazy. And I know maybe I'm partially, I, maybe I'm a little bit, I don't know, I hate to say that, maybe I'm partially on the spectrum or something. But I can't trans, can't stand too many choices. It completely drives me nuts. So I always have to kind of funnel my energy into something, to things that are productive. And having a sense of your purpose whenever you discovered in your twenties, hopefully, gives you that ability to say. These are the positive role models I want in my life. These are the mentors. And the thing about following people on social media, it's so easy. It's just a click.

• 1:45:08Speaker 05

  It doesn't mean anything. A mentor relationship takes work. It takes courage because you have to actually go up to somebody and physically ask for their help. And a lot of people write to me saying, I'm afraid of asking this important, powerful person to be their mentee. Right? So it involves a sense of social courage where you have to literally engage with another human being who you admire and who you think is powerful. So it's building your social skills, et cetera. But it's a skill you develop. You can't just follow someone. You can't just watch their lectures. You have to engage with them and you have to get over some of your fears and your anxieties in the process.

• 1:45:47Andrew D. Huberman?

  And I might add to it. I think everything you say is absolutely true. And I think engaging in the various tools that they recommend is immensely helpful. Like, I think hearing about a book is great. Reading a book is even better. Thinking about a book that you read is even better than that. And then writing down your own ideas and writing a book, well, that's the big win. Right? And that's what the world, I believe that's what the universe wants from us. Not necessarily to write a book, but, you know, translate what I just said to any number of different endeavors.

• 1:46:20Speaker 05

  You want to be able to think for yourself. Right? So you're not just absorbing ideas from other people and kind of mimicking them and kind of just learning the exteriors of their ideas. You want to kind of digest them and then have them slowly become your own ideas by interacting with them and by creating and by putting them through your own lens. So someday, it's a book stirring in me, is The Art of Thinking and how to use that kind of process and go deeper into it. And I talked a lot about it in one of my podcasts, which might be the seed of a book. But it's the difference between dead thinking and alive thinking.

• 1:47:05Speaker 05

  Ideas can be either alive or they can be dead. And an alive idea is something that enters your brain from an external source, a philosopher, an article, somebody you admire, somebody you hate. And then you absorb it and you think about it and you decide, I'm going to turn it around into this and I'm going to make it alive. And make it something that's part of me. Another part of an alive idea is, you have an idea that comes to you about a book or a project or something about the world. And you go, maybe that's not actually true. Maybe the opposite is true. And you go through a process and you cycle through it on and on. And you reflect on it and you refine this idea. And maybe it turns into its opposite.

• 1:47:50Speaker 05

  And through the process of reflecting and correcting and revising it, you turn it into something living, something alive within you, right? On and on and on. And what prevents people from going through that process, which would be the subject of my book, is basically anxiety. Because I think how you handle anxiety is the most important kind of quality in life. It'll determine whether you will be successful, whether you will find your career path, or whether you won't be able to. I don't know if you can follow that idea at all. But anxiety is a signal to you that you don't understand something, that there's a problem out there that you can't resolve.

• 1:48:32Speaker 05

  And so what happens to most people if you're insecure is you glom onto something instant and easy to get rid of your feeling of anxiety. I don't understand this problem. Oh, it must be A. A must be the answer because this person said that, right? And so you don't develop the ability to think. You don't develop the ability to go to the next level. But if you take that anxiety and you go, all right, maybe A is an answer. And then you start going through A and then you go, no, maybe A isn't the answer. Maybe B is the answer. You're able to surmount your anxiety and go past it, come further and further and further. You don't rush for the first available answer that's out there, right? You're able to go through a process of refining things.

• 1:49:17Speaker 05

  And so in your career, if you're anxious for success, if you're anxious for money, you're going to make the wrong choices. But if you're able to deal with that anxiety and say, Maybe I have to think more deeply about where I'm going. I have to come up with other alternatives. Then you're going to make a much better choice, on and on and on. So how, if you're a creative person, it's very, very challenging to have that blank piece of paper before you, that book that you haven't written, that film, or whatever. You're filled with a lot of anxiety, and you have to deal with it. And if you're able to turn it into something creative and productive, then great things will happen. You'll create a masterpiece. So the ability to deal with anxiety

• 1:50:01Speaker 05

  and to not give in to the most instant gratification that you can get is, to me, a marker of somebody who will be creative and will invent something, as opposed to people who just recycle old and dead ideas.

• 1:50:13Andrew D. Huberman?

  Amen to that. I was once told that anxiety makes children of us all, and not in the positive sense of being childlike. You know, it regresses us to a mode where we feel a complete lack of control. And I completely agree that being able to manage anxiety and dance with it, since we can't rid ourselves of it.

• 1:50:35Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:50:36Andrew D. Huberman?

  Perhaps nor should we, right? Because it's a signal, as you point out, that we don't understand something, that there's something to get curious about.

• 1:50:42Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:50:43Andrew D. Huberman?

  A process, or something out there, or both. I think that really resonates.

• 1:50:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:50:48Andrew D. Huberman?

  And I think a lot of people will benefit from hearing that, because I think we hear the word "flow", and we just all imagine... I even catch myself imagining that, you know, when Robert Greene sits down to write, it's like there's a blank sheet, and then he just kind of meditates, and then boom, out come these books. But if I get realistic for a second, I'm sure that there's a lot of inner turmoil and anxiety.

• 1:51:10Speaker 05

  Oh my God, you have no idea. So my process is 95% pain, and maybe 2.5% ecstasy. And I don't know what the other 2.5% would be. But, so, I write a story, because in my new book, and most of my books, I always begin with a story from history, et cetera. And it is so bad. I just, I can't believe how bad, how flat it is. Oh, it sucks. I'm so embarrassed. I hate myself. And then I go and I dig into it and I start changing the words in it. I start making it a little bit better. The second version, it's kind of palatable, but it still sucks. If I let it out into the world, it'd be very embarrassing.

• 1:51:54Speaker 05

  I work, I'm, it's anxious, you know? And my wife can tell you, I'm a miserable being when that happens. Everything looks black to me at that point. And I push through it. So if I gave in to my anxiety, and this happens with a lot of books and writers, I would just put out that second version, which isn't very good. It isn't very strong. It isn't thought through. Because my ideas, when I look at them the first time, I go, that's not real. That's not the actual thing that's going on here, Robert. You've missed the mark. You want to hit what's actually real in that story. So you have to go deeper and deeper and harder and harder and harder. So I don't just give up and go, here's the chapter. I go, it's gotta be better. It's gotta be better.

• 1:52:37Speaker 05

  Until finally, after two months of struggling, it seems like it's gone to the place that I want it to be in, right? But I, I use that anxiety to keep improving and making it better. And then when I reach that point and the story is good enough and I can let my wife read it and then my editor, I feel great. I have that 2% moment of joy. But it came through all of that anxiety. But I can tell you, the feeling of fulfillment when I finish a chapter is pretty damn great. When I finish a book, it's better than any kind of drug experience anyone could ever have. It's such a wonderful feeling of accomplishment and pushing past all the barriers, you know?

• 1:53:21Speaker 05

  So my process involves a lot of anxiety in dealing with. That's why I'm talking about it and why I want to write a book about it.

• 1:53:29Andrew D. Huberman?

  Thank you for sharing that.

• 1:53:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:53:31Andrew D. Huberman?

  I'm attempting to write a book and have been for several years and now I feel a little bit better. But clearly I need to ratchet down harder. But in other domains of life, I am familiar with the experience of tons of anxiety and just, you know, okay, I'm gonna just get to this one milestone and then I'll figure out the next milestone. But even that process of saying, okay, I'm gonna break this down into milestones itself is anxiety provoking.

• 1:53:54Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 1:53:54Andrew D. Huberman?

  It's just that, but at some point it generates enough inertia that you just,

• 1:53:57Speaker 05

  It does.

• 1:53:58Andrew D. Huberman?

  that you just sort of stumble forward into the process and then

• 1:54:00Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 1:54:01Andrew D. Huberman?

  keep going. So try not to bloody oneself.

• 1:54:03Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 1:54:03Andrew D. Huberman?

  Too much.

• 1:54:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:54:05Andrew D. Huberman?

  I think a lot of people will benefit from hearing about that. In fact, I'm certain they will. So speaking of anxiety, you have a clip on the internet that we will provide a link to in the show note captions, which I think is absolutely fabulous about how to find a romantic partner and/or get more out of an existing romantic partnership.

• 1:54:28Speaker 05

  I don't even remember what I said. You're gonna have to remind me.

• 1:54:30Andrew D. Huberman?

  Oh, it's so good.

• 1:54:34Andrew D. Huberman?

  One point in particular

• 1:54:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:54:36Andrew D. Huberman?

  that I remember, that I think is oh so true, is that there needs to be at least one and probably several points of like real convergence in terms of one's interests or likes that go beyond like what food somebody likes or, you know, what type of house they want to live in. But that actually traces back to these early forms of delight. And you mentioned that for you and therefore presumably your partner, that, you know, a mutual love and respect for animals happens to be one of those things within the context of your relationship, right? Not that a love for animals is required.

• 1:55:20Speaker 05

  For me, it sure as hell is.

• 1:55:21Andrew D. Huberman?

  Right, exactly.

• 1:55:22Speaker 05

  I could never go out with a woman who didn't love animals.

• 1:55:24Andrew D. Huberman?

  Right. My sister used to tease me that if a woman gave me a birthday card or a card that had a drawing of a particular animal, which I'm particularly fond of, my sister, I have an older sister and she used to say, oh no, it's over, he's gone. You know, that, you know, fortunately, it's not that simple. But there's some truth to what she was saying. It's certainly, it's necessary, but not sufficient. But maybe you could elaborate a little bit on this notion of convergent interests and contrast it with a lot of what people Tend to hear and say about what's important in partnership. Because I think this is something that a lot of people grapple with,

• 1:56:06Andrew D. Huberman?

  both in terms of finding a partner and in terms of building partnership.

• 1:56:11Speaker 05

  Well, you have to, you know, there's, you can, there's different relationships you can have. I mean, do you want like a one week, a one month relationship? Are you looking for something longer, more satisfying? That will entail, you know, maybe years of being together. And, you know, people can get very boring very quickly, right? Particularly if you can't have a conversation with them about subjects that interest you. And so you mentioned animals. Animals is a very good example because it's not, I'm not saying that you both have to be Democrats or Republicans. That's too banal and superficial. But the love of animals reaches into your character,

• 1:56:53Speaker 05

  reaches something deep inside of you, or your dislike of animals if that happens to be the case. But it signals something about it that's so primal, that's so connected to a child, that there's going to be a deep connection there. And it's not like you have to both love cats, which is good if that happens to be the case. But just animals in general, you love their energy. You love the fact that they're, that they're innocent in their own way. You love the fact that they're not playing games with you. You love the kind of instant love you can get from them kind of thing. And you connect to them on that level is a very, very positive sign. Because it goes beyond just intellectual things into something emotional and visceral.

• 1:57:36Speaker 05

  So really, the emotional connections, the values that you have together are very important. Money is another one that's extremely important. So if one of you is incredibly material oriented and it's all about money, is, is, is power and success and comfort, and the other... Isn't really into it, is into spending money, etc. A lot of people have endless fights over something like money, right? Where there's no convergence there. And money signals a deeper value about the person. So I'm not saying there's anything wrong if money motivates you. I'm not moralizing about it. Because that can signal a value that maybe you grew up without it.

• 1:58:21Speaker 05

  And that feeling comfortable and feeling like you don't have to worry about something is very, very important to you. And not being interested in money reveals something about your character. So I'm telling people, you want to look at the person's character and see a kind of convergence there, and something that can last. And I remember I was reading for one of my books about Franklin Eleanor Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt. And the thing of it was Franklin Eleanor Roosevelt was this incredibly handsome, vibrant young man before he got polio. Very active, very athletic, very handsome. All of the women were after him. He was like the perfect match. He was wealthy. And Eleanor Roosevelt was like the ugly duckling. She wasn't very pretty. She was kind of socially awkward.

• 1:59:06Speaker 05

  But he saw into her character. He saw that intellectually she was a match for him. He saw that they had kind of similar interests on that level that I'm talking about, that go beneath just the surfaces. And he chose Eleanor, and everyone was shocked about it, you know? Nobody was trying to court Eleanor. I remember her last name at the time. I think she might have been being a Roosevelt. So it was very shocking. And he said, "I looked at somebody who I could last with, who had some qualities that were much more important to me." And it ended up being a very satisfying relationship. Of course, later on, he had his dalliances, so it wasn't perfect. But it was a very, it was a very positive relationship.

• 1:59:48Speaker 05

  So seeing your values in life, you know? When it comes to like money, when it comes to like career, when it comes to comfort or lack of comfort. Some people like not being comfortable. They like being on the edge. They want challenges. They want to move from city to city, kind of thing. And if you partner with somebody who just wants to live in the same house, you're going to have conflict after conflict after conflict. The sex might be great, and that might be good for a month or two months. I have nothing against that. I'm not going to judge that either. But it won't lead to a long-lasting relationship. You know, sports and athletics are another thing. Is this someone that likes the outdoors?

• 2:00:31Speaker 05

  Or is it someone who's, you know, like Zsa Zsa Gabor and has to be in a Times Square, in a penthouse in Manhattan? You know, kind of thing. So values that reach inside of a person, character that are deeply ingrained, that you can almost not change, you can't control, there's a convergence there on several levels, is a sign that you can have a deep connection with that person and it's very important. And if those connections are good, and there's a physical attraction, because if without the physical attraction, it will kind of fizzle out. You've got a recipe for incredible success, for something that can really last. And having a lasting relationship, as I've had,

• 2:01:16Speaker 05

  is such an anchor in your life. You know, for me, for someone who works as hard as I do, and hopefully for her as well. It just grounds me and it makes life so much simpler and easier. And it's not just simple and easy. There's a lot of love and a great deal of deeper emotions involved. But having a long-term relationship, if you can have it, is something that pays off in so many dividends. So being able to find that kind of convergence. You know, when I first met my, now my wife, I had a cat at the time. I'd always been a dog person, but this was a cat I had and I loved that cat like hell. I can't believe he was such a wonderful cat.

• 2:02:01Speaker 05

  I brought her over to my apartment on the first date. I wanted to see her reaction to the cat, you know? Because I generally, and I don't know, people misjudge that, women who don't like cats, I don't, I can't get along with, right? Because there's something feline in the feminine nature that I love. And she loved my cat. And boy, that was the best sign of all. And things just blossomed. And she loved me for loving a cat. So there was a great convergence right there, that we saw right away. And there were other things, but that was the first one.

• 2:02:34Andrew D. Huberman?

  I love that story. And everything you just said suggests, I believe, that in order to find the right partner and to build an existing partnership that hopefully feels at least partially right to people, that it requires at least some knowing of self. Because unless you know your character, one's own character, then it's impossible to really determine if somebody else's character is going to mesh well with it or not.

• 2:03:02Speaker 05

  Self-awareness is actually the most important quality in life for all aspects. But yeah, I mean, if we go by social pressures, a man will choose a trophy wife who looks sexy and hot and will impress all of his male friends, et cetera, et cetera. You go by the things that culture tells you that these are the right images for you, right? And then there won't be any connection to you because you're choosing for purposes that don't connect to who you are. And so you have to know yourself. You have to know what you love. You have to know what you hate. I think most people know that they love animals or don't love animals. I think most people know that they like stability or they like things to be kind of slightly chaotic.

• 2:03:47Speaker 05

  I don't think you have to go through deep levels of introspection. But what you have to do is when you're involved in a relationship, you have to think that those things matter. That's the problem. You tend to think that those things matter. You think that sex matters more than anything. Physical attraction matters. Or you think that the person having a lot of money matters, et cetera, et cetera. You don't think that this other aspect is important. If you value what I'm talking about, then your self-awareness will kick in because you really basically know these essential, basic parts about your own character.

• 2:04:22Andrew D. Huberman?

  I think people sometimes get distracted by admiration of qualities that they might find.

• 2:04:29Andrew D. Huberman?

  Admirable, but that don't mesh with their own character. I've seen this many times before where, well, where someone will say, well, that someone will start listing off the positive attributes of the person that they happen to be dating. Like, he does this, blank, blank, and blank. She does this, you know, he volunteers, et cetera. And that's all great. I mean, volunteering for good causes, I'm all in support of that. But then, what they're overlooking often, it seems, is whether or not that's a core value for them, or whether or not it's just something that they admire. I hear a lot of admiration in the early days of relationships that later I hear about failing. And what you're talking about is something deeper, more aligned with one's own sense of self.

• 2:05:12Andrew D. Huberman?

  And it almost leads me to use the word, you know, sort of a, more about energetics. It's like merging of people's energies, which sounds very new agey, and that's not my intention. But, but I think it relates to something that we do hear a lot about, and I think is valid, which is how it feels to be around somebody in different contexts. Like, do we feel at ease? Do we feel lightness and ability to express ourselves and to, and do we enjoy and admire them in their expression? As opposed to just admiring what they do. They've accomplished blank, blank, and blank.

• 2:05:46Speaker 05

  I see.

• 2:05:46Andrew D. Huberman?

  Right? They manifest these qualities that I wish I had, right? You hear that, and aspire to have, which is very different than a meshing of energies.

• 2:05:56Speaker 05

  Also, are there a couple of other things? You have to understand their character as well, and people can be very deceptive and very slippery and can wear masks. One telling sign that I've noticed in my own relationships in the past is that the woman would be a certain way with me that I thought was very good and I liked, and then the moment we were with other people, she acted in a way that was very irritating. It's like a different character, and I really kind of fell out of love with her when I saw her in social interactions. She revealed, so with me, she was almost wearing a mask and playing a game, but the moment she entered a different circumstance, I saw another aspect to her character. So you also have to be very attentive to their character, what lies underneath, that

• 2:06:41Speaker 05

  they have some of these values, that they're not just trying to win you over for whatever and are playing along with you. The other thing that's very important... Is a sense of mystery. So a partner can become boring very, very quickly. Right? After a year, you know every single thing about them. Right? They're gonna say the same things. Those conversations go around in circles. It's just you've reached an end. There's no surprises. There's no mystery. You want somebody where they have corners that you don't really see at first, that they surprise you sometimes. Suddenly, there's a quality that you hadn't suspected before. So people who are too obvious, who are too familiar,

• 2:07:25Speaker 05

  who show everything instantly, they're gonna end up boring you. Right? But people who have a bit of reserve. I mean, I don't know. Maybe I'm projecting my own values on the world. But people who who kind of intrigue you that you don't fully understand, that make you wanna know more. And if they can be like that after two years or three years or five years, wow, that's fantastic. But the sense of I know every single thing about this person. They never surprised me anymore is what kind of breaks the enchantment and leads to the end of the relationship.

• 2:08:00Andrew D. Huberman?

  Well, the idea of more to learn about somebody, perhaps also suggests that they are continuing to evolve into forage in the landscape of life.

• 2:08:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:08:08Andrew D. Huberman?

  You know, that they're not fully baked.

• 2:08:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:08:10Andrew D. Huberman?

  Right? That which I think is an interesting idea. During the four-episode series that we did on mental health, Paul Conti, a psychiatrist, said that a matching of generative drives, which he defined as the desire to create something in the world of one's own expression is really critical in relationship. And he said, you know, it matters less whether or not one person likes classical music and the other person rock and roll, provided that their relationship to music is similar or something of that sort. Like that it's about a drive to of a certain sort to engage in the world. So one person could love music. The other person's not into music. But the way that they approach life is one of, perhaps, mutual curiosity, desire to find out, et cetera.

• 2:08:54Andrew D. Huberman?

  And that this exists on a continuum. I'm curious if it seems to jive with what you're with what you're saying.

• 2:09:00Speaker 05

  It does. But the only thing I would add is if you love classical music and they love like heavy metal music, you're gonna be driven crazy pretty quickly. It's gonna, you know, it's not gonna mesh with you. And I know I would have that problem.

• 2:09:14Andrew D. Huberman?

  You'll both be in headphones a lot.

• 2:09:17Speaker 05

  So the fact that you both have, because music is like animals in a way. So I agree completely with what you're saying, but I would say maybe music isn't the best example because music says something very deep about a person, right? You know, I'm not saying one is superior to the other, but it reveals something that's nonverbal that kind of gives you a window into who they are. So if they like punk rock, like you do, and I grew up on punk rock, there's a rebellious thing, there's an anti-authoritarian quality that's very strong. You get to see that through them. If they like Mozart and soft string quartets,

• 2:10:00Speaker 05

  there's somebody that kind of values softness and tranquility and peace, and you're not like that. So the music kind of shows you something, a quality about their character that can be very telling and be very eloquent. And so it doesn't mean that you both have to love The Clash or The Dead Kennedys or whatever, showing my own generation. But that you both have that rebellious streak. And that rebellious streak could be you like, there's classical music composers who could be pretty damn rebellious and angry, you know, and I actually kind of like them. So that convergence, I think, is a positive one, kind of thing. But in general, I agree with that.

• 2:10:41Andrew D. Huberman?

  I'm curious about the nonverbal communication component of all types of relationships, but let's stay in the landscape of romantic relationships for the moment.

• 2:10:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:10:51Andrew D. Huberman?

  Maybe include professional relationships too, because what you just described is really about a resonance around the nonverbal stuff. I mean, it can be articulated with words.

• 2:11:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:11:02Andrew D. Huberman?

  I love animals, I love this music, this is the best song, like, did you see that? Like, otters are amazing, right, this kind of thing. But language is just an attempt to place, you know, words on a feeling in those instances. So it can be classified as nonverbal.

• 2:11:19Andrew D. Huberman?

  With respect to nonverbal communication, you've written fairly extensively about the fact that people often communicate with their body and facial expressions. I'm certainly familiar with the somewhat, if not very eerie sensation of somebody smiling, like a toothy smile. And then, as they pivot away, that smile just dissolving very quickly. And you don't have to be a neuroscientist or a psychologist to realize that there was something quite false about that experience, or that this person experiences emotions like step functions, on, off, on, off, which is not how most of us experience emotions.

• 2:12:02Andrew D. Huberman?

  Most of us experience emotions with some pervasiveness. Like, I was happy walking in the door because of something that happened before, and so I'm gonna smile while I'm walking in the door. If I see something shocking and dismaying, of course, I'm gonna frown. I'm gonna wipe away that smile. But those are rare instances. So, let's talk about the mouth, the eyes, the face, the body, in the context of communication. What are some important things to pay attention to?

• 2:12:24Speaker 05

  There was one thing that I wanted to go back on as far as convergence is sense of humor is extremely important, right? So, it's not like you both like the same comedians, but if one person likes raunchy humor and the other person doesn't, that's a problem. And also, the fact that the person doesn't have a sense of humor or doesn't make you laugh is a very, very bad sign. So, I wanted to add that one component in there.

• 2:12:47Andrew D. Huberman?

  I'm so glad you did. Someone who can make me laugh has, you know, necessary but not sufficient. But, boy, it's approaching sufficient.

• 2:12:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'd say so. You know, when it comes to the art of seduction, the art of seduction is a nonverbal language that you must master. It's a language of the gifts that you give. It's a language of how you smell. It's a language that you communicate through the eyes, et cetera, et cetera. And the thing you have to understand about the human being is that we evolved for a much longer period of time without words than the small 40, 35,000 years that we have symbolic language. So, during that vast period of darkness where we did not have words, We were non-communicating, non-verbally. We were picking up signals from people.

• 2:13:41Speaker 05

  We were watching every little detail of their behavior because we didn't have words to decipher it. So it's wired into our brains to have an amazing sensitivity to people's nonverbal communications. We can almost be telepathic that way if we learn that language. The problem is, we have the capacity, but we don't develop it at all because we are so word-oriented. You're just listening to people, if you're even listening to them at all. You're just hearing the words and you're so thinking that the words mean something, that the words are sincere, which they're often not. At the same time that you're listening so much to words, people are shuffling in their chair. They're kind of looking away. They're looking at other women or other men.

• 2:14:26Speaker 05

  Their voice is kind of trembling when they say something where it shouldn't tremble. Their eyes are dead. The smile is kind of fake. You're not watching any of it. So the most important thing in nonverbal communication, law number one, is pay attention to it continually. Develop the practice of shutting off the words and watching people almost as if you took the television and muted it, right? And just watch their behavior. It's not easy and it's not natural because it's the words. The words, the words, we want to focus on them, right? But your ability to turn that television off, to mute it, will suddenly open up so many things about people. They reveal so much things. Sigmund Freud said,

• 2:15:10Speaker 05

  "People are continually oozing out all of their secrets through their nonverbal behavior." You can read them like an open book if you master this language. And I have The Laws of Human Nature. I described the story of Milton Erickson. I don't know if you're familiar with Milton Erickson. Perhaps the greatest modern master of nonverbal communication. He was an amazing psychologist. He's sort of, is the inspiration behind N... what's it called? N... help me out here. Neuro-linguistic.

• 2:15:44Andrew D. Huberman?

  Oh, the NLP.

• 2:15:46Speaker 05

  I mean, it's kind of a bastardization of his ideas, but he's, he created hypnotherapy. He's the person who created hypnotherapy.

• 2:15:52Andrew D. Huberman?

  Certainly, hypnotherapy is a valid psychiatric practice. I mean, it's excellent clinical data to support.

• 2:15:58Speaker 05

  Well, Milton Erickson had polio when he was 19. And he was paralyzed, his entire body was paralyzed. He couldn't even move his eyeballs, right? And he sat in bed and he had a very active mind. And he was gonna just die from sheer boredom. And what he did during the two years of being paralyzed like that was just watching people's nonverbal communication and making notes in his brain and learning every single... He learned the 20 different forms of yes, the 100 different forms of no, right? Every intonation, how somebody entered the room, how they left the room, you know, how they looked at him with the pity or empathy or something. He mastered it.

• 2:16:42Speaker 05

  And then, when he became a psychiatrist and he treated people, they thought he was psychic. He could see everything into them. It's because for two years, that's all he could do was observe them. He couldn't speak. He couldn't do anything. He couldn't read a book. So you have that same power, but you don't have polio, obviously. But you have to first pay attention to it, right? It's an amazing thing once you do. It's a lot of fun, actually. And I tell people, "Go to a cafe one day in your city, wherever you live, and just watch people, because you can't hear them, they're a few tables away. Watch their nonverbal behavior as they interact and see if you pick up cues from them."

• 2:17:26Speaker 05

  And there are things that are signs of genuine emotions. So for instance, an exercise you can do is, you go up to somebody from an angle where they can't see you coming up to them. And you surprise them, you go, "Hey, hey, Mike," whatever. They turn. For that second, their expression reveals how they really think about you. You'll detect if you can pick up micro-expressions, and you can. They're only like 1/150 of a second, but they're there. You can express a kind of... And they smile. You can see the little disdain in their eyes, right? Then the mask comes on, right? Or you're talking to them, they're looking at you, but their feet are facing in an opposite direction.

• 2:18:11Speaker 05

  That means that they're dying to get away from you, kind of thing. These are signals that you don't necessarily pay attention to. Their posture will tell you everything about their levels of confidence, right? On and on and on. The fake smile, if you can just master the ability to detect the fake smile, it will go wonders for you because you're able to see, what you really want to do is to see the person with a genuine smile. Particularly in romantic relationships. Someone whose face lights up, a real smile, lights your whole face up. It doesn't light your mouth, that these parts of your face go up, your eyes get alive. There's like, there's like a neuro thing going on in your brain

• 2:18:54Speaker 05

  that's changing your whole facial expression. And it means that someone genuinely likes you, they're genuinely interested in you, they're genuinely laughing or connecting to you. Man, if you can see that, it'll help you so much in the romantic realm. And then it'll help you get away from those toxic people that are continually faking interest in you. Because a narcissist, a toxic person thrives by deceiving you with a charming, alluring front that makes you come into their world. Then they can hurt you, then they can do something to you. Or then they have you in their, you know, in their trap, right? So being able to see that they're not genuinely interested in you,

• 2:19:37Speaker 05

  that they're faking it, will help you avoid very toxic relationships. And as I said to you, I don't know if we were on air or not, but deep narcissists have dead eyes. They, they almost can't help it. They can fake the smile, they can fake everything else, but the eyes, you have to be able to read it because you say, well, what are dead eyes? You'll know it when you see it. There's no life in them. They're like looking through you, they're not looking at you, they're looking through you. What can I get if you, you're what they call a self-object. They're an object for you to use. And that's how they're looking at you, like they would look at a hammer or something.

• 2:20:12Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, the concept of dead eyes and...

• 2:20:16Andrew D. Huberman?

  Also alive eyes is so fascinating because as audience of this podcast will know that because I've said it too much, but I'll say it again, that the eyes are the only two pieces of your brain that are outside the cranial vault. I mean, they're literally two pieces of brain lining the back of your eyes.

• 2:20:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:20:32Andrew D. Huberman?

  And the dynamics of the pupils, those changes, of course, reflect how bright or dim it is in the room. But they also reflect levels of arousal that are on the millisecond timescale. So as one expresses, you know, words of glee, right, the pupils constrict a little bit, believe it or not, or excuse me, dilate a little bit. I got it backwards there for a moment. And vice versa, you know, as one feels less, less excited, sort of moments of despair, expressions of despair, the pupils should get a little bit smaller because arousal is going down. And so I think, you know, we pick up on these things at an unconscious level.

• 2:21:08Speaker 05

  We do.

• 2:21:09Andrew D. Huberman?

  The deadness of the eyes is, is kind of the, the, the conclusion that pops out at us before paying attention.

• 2:21:16Speaker 05

  But the problem is it registers unconsciously, but we don't give it any value to it. We trust our words, we trust our rationality as opposed to our intuitions about people. Sometimes when you meet a person for the first time, signals go up in your mind, brain, something's wrong about them. And then you forget it because you don't trust those initial unconscious signals that your brain is giving you, right? So you have to, you have to first kind of trust that these intuitions are very valuable. The other thing is pay deep attention to the tone of voice. The voice, as actors will tell you, is like the hardest thing to fake, right? It's very hard to fake excitement.

• 2:22:00Speaker 05

  Your voice either has it or it doesn't. It's very hard to fake confidence. And you can, I mean, books have been written about that. I'm not going to go into all the details about it. But a person will reveal so much of their emotional, of the emotions that they're experiencing, particularly levels of confidence, you know, like a trembling voice or something, or a booming confident voice, which some people can fake, but often it's very difficult. You can still see through it. And on the level of seduction.

• 2:22:34Speaker 05

  Women, men are very, very attuned to the voice of a woman, but we're not aware of it. Because the voice of our mother had an incredible impact on us in early, early, early childhood. Her singing, the tone of her voice, that was probably the first seduction that we ever went through. And a woman's voice has tremendous power over us, right? And so, hearing a voice that kind of grates or irritates you is something that's a bad sign. And that goes deeper than all the characters that we were talking about. But a woman's voice that kind of reminds you of that mother, that sing-song, whatever feeling it was, that's somebody that can very easily seduce you.

• 2:23:18Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, there's a place for naming this, it's like subcortical courtship. You know, below the cortex, as the geeky neuroscientists like myself say, you're getting down below the cortex with all of this stuff, you know, convergence of real loves and desires. I mean, we express with words. We sense the world using, of course, our cortex. But really talking about getting into the subcortical stuff that is the stuff of our history, the stuff of our hardwiring and our uniqueness. I couldn't help but think about the fact that earlier we were talking about the now infinitely vast number of choices, of things to engage in, people to engage with, et cetera. But at the same time,

• 2:24:03Andrew D. Huberman?

  as you were now talking about these microinflections and the subtleties of voice and bodily communication, that whether or not it's emojis or people sending filtered images or the default to text message communication that is so prominent now, it seems like we now have more choices, so more input. But... The sort of qualitative differences between the inputs have been binned into a couple of simple bins, as if it's as if we've regressed to primary colors only. But the canvas is huge, or I don't know if that analogy works, but you get the idea. Because ultimately, in order to develop good choices about profession, romantic relationships,

• 2:24:48Andrew D. Huberman?

  friendships, you need a lot of examples and a lot of information that allows you to glean the subtlety. But as long as it's emojis and filtered pictures taken at a particular angle, you know, usually from above, ask for the picture head on and below, send me a picture of your worst expression, all of that. It seems that there's now increased opportunity for deception, and I don't just mean people misleading others, I also mean us misleading ourselves. Like, oh my goodness, how could I be so disappointed yet again about a particular landscape of life? It doesn't just have to be romantic interactions, it could be other landscapes, like, how could I be fooled?

• 2:25:29Andrew D. Huberman?

  Well, you're fooled because the inputs were deficient, not good data, as we say.

• 2:25:37Speaker 05

  Well, the thing is, if things are, you're immersed in the virtual realm, it's very, very hard to master the nonverbal communication aspect, which is so important. So if you're dating from an app and you're flipping through and then you find that person, you've missed out on the greatest experience of life, which is actually having to go out to a bar, or go to a restaurant, or go to a social event, and have to literally encounter another person and deal with looking at their behavior and kind of assessing who they are. It's a muscle that you have to pay attention to nonverbal communication.

• 2:26:19Speaker 05

  And if you're just, you know, going through the emojis or going through the Tinder apps, that muscle completely atrophies. You have no power, you're not able to decipher anything. And that's what's happening with a lot of people who are using these apps. The social skills are like any skill at all. You have to develop them, it's a muscle you have to develop. And you've all noticed this probably in your own life, if you've gone through a period where you're Kind of retreating, you don't want to be around people and you spend a month like that. And then you go out, you feel awkward. It takes you like a couple of days to get used to being around other people. You say stupid things, your body language is awkward.

• 2:27:02Speaker 05

  But if you're in a situation for months where you're constantly interacting with people, you're on a film set and day in, day out, day out, that skill starts developing. But you have to be out there in the world, you have to be interacting, you have to be looking at people's emotions, you have to be gauging them in real time. We're not built for virtual encounters. We're creatures of human, of flesh and blood. And we need to be looking at each other in the eye and paying attention to all these little details, these nuances that you can only get in person.

• 2:27:33Andrew D. Huberman?

  Along those lines, what are your thoughts about AI and how that's going to shape our sense of self, sense of others and relationships? As if that's a topic that could be covered in a series of minutes. But what are your, what are your top contour, maybe even deeper thoughts about AI?

• 2:27:52Speaker 05

  Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna piss a lot of people off, but I'm, I'm kind of very concerned about it. I mentioned before about anxiety, the role that anxiety plays in thinking. You come upon an idea and you go, yeah, that's so good. And then you go to the next level and it becomes better. And you go, oh, maybe that's not so good. Then you go to the next level, you go to level three and it gets better and better. You have anxiety. Another aspect of intelligence is self-awareness, right? The ability to look at yourself, go, I have biases. I have confirmation bias. I have conviction bias. I have recency bias. I have to counteract these things. I also have a dark side. I have aggression. I have to be aware of how they color my thinking, my emotions.

• 2:28:36Speaker 05

  The third quality that goes into, I'm talking about now, intelligence, not artificial. Intelligence is to be able to deal anxiety and go to a third level. Intelligence is the ability to look at side of yourself and see your own biases. And the third thing is the ability to see a holistic picture. The kind of aha moment that scientists have, where you accumulate all kind of data points and then out of nowhere, an image comes to your mind of, yeah, there's the answer. You see the whole thing, you see the whole gestalt, right? Simone Weill compared it to a, a square cube.

• 2:29:11Speaker 05

  You can only see a cube from one side. You can never see a square cube. You can only see a side of it. If it's rotating, you're still only seeing sides of it. Only in your mind can you picture the whole thing. So the mind has to go through a process to have holistic thinking. If they can invent a machine that can deal with anxiety and has anxiety and can go to level three. If they can make a machine that can be self-aware, that can go, "The people who program me have biases. Therefore, I have biases. I also have a dark side because people have programmed me who have a dark side." If this machine can also think holistically beyond all of the data points and all the massive information it's combining,

• 2:29:55Speaker 05

  it can have that aha moment. All right. I can see a human consciousness. I can see creativity there. The other thing I would say is, when I was a student at Berkeley, going way back, I was 19 years old. I decided one summer, it's a big paradigm shift for me. I'm gonna take this class in Ancient Greek. In six weeks, they teach you a year of Ancient Greek. That means every day you have an exam. Every Friday, you have a final exam. Eight hours every day of a dead language. I thought this would be the best discipline for me after someone who didn't been doing too many drugs, to be honest with you. Okay? And so finally, at one point, they give us this paragraph of the hardest Ancient Greek writer of all to read.

• 2:30:41Speaker 05

  This was near the end. Thucydides, or Thucydides, as they say. I stared, so I had like the whole night to try and translate one paragraph. I couldn't figure it out. You have to understand the weirdness of Ancient Greek. All the endings, the weird ways of thinking. The whole picture, that aha moment, was eluding me. At one point, I thought I got it and I translated it. And I gave it to the teacher next day. I remember he was this kind of hippie that you'd have at Berkeley, Dennis. Classics professor, but also a hippie. The fact that you knew his first name is very telling. I can only remember his first name, Dennis. He said, "Robert, I can see your thinking, but you need to go to another level. You missed, you didn't have that aha moment. You didn't put the whole thing together. You were close, but you didn't. You have to try harder."

• 2:31:27Speaker 05

  And that's stuck in my mind forever. Like, whenever I have a problem, I have to think harder. I have to go to that next level. Now, what would happen if I had pulled out my translation of Thucydides and just copied that out, right? Or what if happened if I put it through ChatGPT and it gave me the translation? That muscle in my brain that I have developed for forty years that allows me to write books would never have developed. And that muscle is, I don't know the answer here. I have to go to another level. I have to try harder. I have to think, I have to think, I have to have that engine whirring around, right? But if I just grab for ChatGPT, it's deadened. And then we're gonna have a whole generation of people who stop thinking, who don't go through that process.

• 2:32:12Speaker 05

  You know, you've heard Douglas Hofstadter, I think, he said, people are trained to go to Mount Everest. It takes months, physical exertion, it's painful. Then they climb Mount Everest, they see the top. Whoa, what a great moment. He said ChatGPT would be the equivalent of taking a helicopter to the top of Mount Everest without any of that training and having the same moment. It's not the same, right? You need to go through that process, you need to go through that pain. And if you just, and the thing of is ChatGPT, we think we're so modern, so sophisticated, but really, we're just seduced by magic. You put it in there and you see the

• 2:32:52Speaker 05

  whoa, it's like magic, it's like a magician, but it's empty. It's like not your brain functioning, right? It's pay, it's the pagan part of us. We like that kind of magic, as opposed to actually having to go through the thought process itself. So, I'm not in fit against having tools. I use tools, I use the internet, I use Google. I'm searching for like some factoid for my book. I find it, I use it, I, I like it. But I've also learned to develop my brain to think, to get that engine constantly moving. And I'm deeply concerned about people who can't learn a foreign language, who can't master anything, who just immediately grab the first answer that it generates, et cetera, et cetera.

• 2:33:37Speaker 05

  I have concerns.

• 2:33:39Andrew D. Huberman?

  I am too, and I was thinking a moment ago that, you know, like, some people might hear what you just said and say, oh, well, the same thing was probably said about the automobile. Like, how many amazing experiences of walking from one place to another are going to be lost when people start driving from one place to another. But I think a key difference, and this certainly aligns with everything you just said, is that what you're talking about is not just arriving at the same destination. You're saying the destination itself is different when one exerts some effort and experiences some anxiety to get there. So it's not the same as automobile versus horse versus walking versus airplane.

• 2:34:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:34:16Andrew D. Huberman?

  It's fundamentally different because the the journey transforms the outcome.

• 2:34:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:34:21Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, I I'm in agreement with you about many aspects of AI. I'm also excited about it in the context of certain things.

• 2:34:28Speaker 05

  I I I agree with you. It could be a tool, but are we operating the tool or is the tool operating us is what I'm talking about?

• 2:34:36Andrew D. Huberman?

  I am concerned a bit too, especially in the context of what we've been talking about for most of today's discussion, about avatars replacing our online personas too much. You know, the avatarization of ourselves is already taking place through through filters, through a reduction of emotional expression to emojis, through reduction of of language to a diminished number of words to explain one's feelings. You know, a prior guest on this podcast, Lisa Feldman Barrett, who's an expert in emotions, talked about how the moment that a culture has a word for a particular subset of anxious feelings. So for instance, she taught me that in Japanese, there's a word for the sadness one experiences

• 2:35:21Andrew D. Huberman?

  when they get a bad haircut.

• 2:35:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, I know.

• 2:35:24Andrew D. Huberman?

  You know, and so that normalizes the feeling and leads to feelings of less despair.

• 2:35:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:35:30Andrew D. Huberman?

  As opposed to what now many kids, especially grew up learning was, I'm anxious, I'm sad, I'm depressed.

• 2:35:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:35:36Andrew D. Huberman?

  That, you know, in science, we say there are lumpers and there are splitters. And they've been arguing for years about like, is that one brain structure? Well, if I name those two things next to each other, two different things, not only can I name one after myself, which is what tends to happen, so to speak, but when you have too many lumpers or too many splitters, things are either overly simple or overly complex. That of course, the right answer, the the best use of naming things. Arrive someplace in the middle.

• 2:36:01Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:36:01Andrew D. Huberman?

  That's how a field progresses. Because if you if you lump things together too much, a field can't progress. You give yourself the illusion that it's progressing, but it's not progressing. But if you split things up into a million different subcategories, like just even the word adrenaline is also called epinephrine. And that's has to do with basically people arguing over who got credit. Crazy, and it's confused people for

• 2:36:20Speaker 05

  Really?

• 2:36:20Andrew D. Huberman?

  For decades. Yeah, and there's a there's another story there that, and I know far too much about the scientists involved, and that there was a love triangle about naming of certain parts of the nervous system. Oh, yeah, people sleeping with other people's partners and love triangles have have created more drama of nomenclature in science. I I could do a whole hour on this. In any case, I what I'm hearing from you is that we cannot afford to lose our sense of nuance. And also, because that sense of nuance taps into what we're really experiencing. And AI threatens that, that we can become avatars of ourself.

• 2:36:57Speaker 05

  Well, look at it this way. We we worship technology. It's our new religion. Okay? And we worship ChatGPT as if it's a god. I'm seriously, there's religious elements going on here. What we really should worship is the human brain, which is the greatest creation in the known universe, I'm afraid. It is the most complex piece of matter in the entire universe. The number of neurons, the number of synapses, the number of possible connections between neurons is infinite, practically infinite. It is a wondrous instrument. It is so powerful, we've we've barely scratched the surface of what we can use for it. Let us worship that brain that's in your head. You only have so many years to use it. You have so many years to develop it.

• 2:37:42Speaker 05

  It is so wonderful and powerful, it can bring you such pleasure, so much power in life. So tools are fine. We all need tools. We all need we need hammers, we need nails, we need saws, et cetera. But the real thing is the hand that uses it, the brain that connects the hand to the hammer, that knows how to hit things, you know? I think of the of the the great painter Renoir in the 19th century. He had like a A stroke or something than the last years. He couldn't move his right arm, which she painted with. It was disastrous. So what he did is he put the brush in his mouth. And he painted and he painted some beautiful paintings that way.

• 2:38:25Speaker 05

  Because his brain had mastered the art of painting. Not his hand, but his brain had mastered it so well. That he could actually paint well with the brush in his mouth. Because he could direct it and he had the knowledge of how to make something perfect. The brain is absolutely incredible. The plasticity of the brain, which I'm discovering after my stroke is absolutely a miracle. You know, I don't know, is it Professor Schwartz at UCLA? Who was studying OCD? And how he was able to kind of cure people of OCD through certain plasticity exercises that he had? Making them aware of their kind of brain lock, et cetera? And getting them out of it?

• 2:39:07Speaker 05

  That plasticity of the brain is far, far the greatest miracle of all. And it goes on until your sixties and seventies and onward. Let's all get down on our hands and knees and worship the brain. And if we did, it would create a complete shift in our values. And we wouldn't be so instantly seduced and enamored and worshiping the technology. We would worship the brains that create the technology instead of, you know, the other way around.

• 2:39:36Andrew D. Huberman?

  I certainly got a fan of brains and their potential for plasticity sitting over here. I have the benefit of having my scientific great grandparents are Hubel and Wiesel, who won the Nobel Prize for neuroplasticity during the critical period.

• 2:39:51Speaker 05

  So that again?

• 2:39:51Andrew D. Huberman?

  So my scientific great grandparents are David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel. David's dead, Torsten's still alive, he's ninety six. And they won the Nobel Prize for essentially discovering the critical window early in development, where plasticity is especially robust. They did other things too. They should have won two Nobels frankly, for their other work on vision. But one thing that they missed, however, was something that you mentioned and is worth highlighting again, which is that the brain maintains the capacity for immense plasticity throughout the entire lifespan. That's absolutely clear. The conditions change from early to later in life. But your specific situation really highlights that. And it's something I'd really like to talk about for a few minutes, if you're willing.

• 2:40:34Andrew D. Huberman?

  As you mentioned, you experienced a stroke. And perhaps. It was aware to some, but perhaps not all, especially the people just listening to this podcast and who are not watching on video, that your shirt, while very nicely designed, in its original state, also includes some unique stitching. So maybe you could share with us what the... And for those listening, there's a jagged line of stitching that extends from Robert's left short sleeve to his midline, to where the buttons on his shirt are, and from his right short sleeve also to the midline, offset from one another. This is the sort of stitching that looks like perhaps I had been at the sewing machine

• 2:41:16Andrew D. Huberman?

  and not somebody was skilled. But they did a good job, basically, of putting it back together. Why are those stitches in your shirt? Tell us about the stroke and let's talk about neuroplasticity.

• 2:41:25Speaker 05

  It could also seem like a fashion statement, you know, but it really, it isn't. Well, it was May of 2018. It was my birthday and my wife gave me this shirt. I have a love of plaids. It's like, I don't know why, I just love patterns. And plaid must be like some Scotch part of me, some ancestor thing, but I love plaids.

• 2:41:47Andrew D. Huberman?

  Can I interrupt you just briefly? Forgive me, everyone's gonna get upset that I interrupt. Do you know that there is a fundamental circuit in your visual cortex designed to detect plaid patterns?

• 2:41:57Speaker 05

  No, I do not know.

• 2:41:58Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yes, and we can talk about why that is. It's tightly, tightly linked to your ability to perceive motion.

• 2:42:03Speaker 05

  Really?

• 2:42:04Andrew D. Huberman?

  Yeah, and we can go over it some other time, but yeah, so we'll talk about it. Just as a cue. So, okay, yes, back to your birthday.

• 2:42:09Speaker 05

  Okay, so she gave me a plaid shirt, knowing how much I loved it. And I love this shirt. I love the colors in it, et cetera, et cetera. And then, two months, three months later, August 17, 2018, I was driving my car. She was with me. I was pulling out into traffic. I started driving. And suddenly she's saying, "Pull over, Robert, pull over." "Why? Why? I can drive. I'm fine." And then, suddenly, everything started getting really strange. Everything looked strange. My voice didn't sound the same. And she was like freaking out. She was actually fairly calm, which was amazing. I was undergoing a stroke. I had a blood clot that was blocking the blood flow to my brain.

• 2:42:53Speaker 05

  I actually, at one point, got out of the car. Like, I was, I don't know what the hell I was thinking. And then she pulled me back in, then the rest goes blank. And I had some weird sensations that still remain with me because, essentially, I was on the verge of dying. Because blood not flowing to your brain is basically the end of you, right? Unless something happens very quickly. And she, either that, or you're gonna get severe brain damage. So she called 911 right away. She recognized something. My whole face was looking funny. And they got there. I was unconscious. And essentially, they took this shirt and they just scissored the thing in half and took it off my head.

• 2:43:37Speaker 05

  And then they intubated me, I believe, in my hip area to get something. The blood clot was in my neck. And they were able to free it up. And they rushed me to the hospital. And I'm unconscious. And then I wake up and I'm in a gurney in the hospital. And I don't, for a moment, I'm thinking, maybe I'm dead. Because I'm lying in a gurney and I almost feel like I'm in a coffin. I don't know what's going on. And I have all of these weird sensations. And I tell people, we're so curious about death. We think about death a lot. And, you know, is it final? What does it mean? We really should pay attention to dying.

• 2:44:21Speaker 05

  Dying is actually much more interesting in some ways than death. And people who have died go through a process, if it's long enough. And people who have had near-death experiences, like I do, have gone through that process of dying and have come back to life. And in the process of dying, strange things happen to the brain. Right? So particularly with a stroke or something like that, where blood stops flowing to your, oxygen stops flowing to your brain, you have kind of visions and things that you might think are hallucinations, but that later seem like actually, you are actually glimpsing the reality as opposed to the illusion that the brain creates.

• 2:45:05Speaker 05

  So I've written about this in my new book. But my idea of the brain is that it creates endless series of illusions for you. It creates this seamless version of reality, the sense of a self, the sense of a continuous self through time, right? It creates a linear sense of time progressions. It creates colors, it creates a world that visually you can, seems familiar and et cetera, et cetera. But it's all illusion. It's all a construction, right? Images come into your brain and they're not organized in any way. And the brain organizes in a way that you can understand it. Well, when you're dying, all of that scrambles up. And you actually are seeing something else.

• 2:45:48Speaker 05

  So I saw, for instance, that I really don't have a self. That it doesn't really actually exist. That I'm, and the image that came to my mind, because it was in, sitting in that gurney, was a weird feeling of, like, I can almost not explain it. But it's as if you took an image of something real in the world and you completely scrambled it up and it was all wavy and you couldn't see what exactly it was. To me, that was the image I had of the self. There are like fifty different selves inside of you that are all competing. And you think there's just one and you think it's consistent, but there's not. It's an illusion. The self is literally an illusion that your brain constructs.

• 2:46:33Speaker 05

  When you're dying, you see these things. When you're dying, you see other things like that. You see that time is something very weird. So I had an experience of, when I got out of the car and I got pulled in, I thought like ten seconds had passed. My wife told me, no, this was like ten minutes. I had no sense of time. Everything was scrambled. And so it was very, very elegant. It taught me so much, things that I can, I can barely even express now. I'm always now thinking of strange things that come to me because my brain was damaged. It made me realize that the brain creates everything.

• 2:47:14Speaker 05

  So I can't communicate with my hand, my fingers. I can't communicate, my brain can't communicate with my leg, right? So you think that walking and riding and handling things is just your, your body operating a certain way? It's your brain telling you how to move these different things. When that brain stops functioning, you realize how much your brain determines everything. It all starts there. And when there's damage to your brain... Your whole thinking alters, et cetera. Not to mention how you look at life itself after something like that. So it was a terrible experience. It's ruined so many things that I loved in life.

• 2:47:56Speaker 05

  But it's given me an awful lot as well in return that I could go on for hours and talk about because it was the most powerful experience of my life.

• 2:48:07Andrew D. Huberman?

  When you were going through your reemergence to consciousness in the hospital, did you feel as if you were observing these multiple versions of yourself? Maybe a different way to phrase it is, did you feel you were sort of behind the circuit board that is your brain, observing how you normally function and you could see multiple versions of self? Or was it something else where you were sort of outside of your body and brain?

• 2:48:34Speaker 05

  I think it was more outside of my body and brain. I also had this other thing that happened where, you know, sometimes you can't reme- your memory might be playing tricks on you. So I also have to realize that maybe I'm not remembering exactly what happened or that I've since translated in a different way. So that's a caveat here and I'm aware of it. But I had this vision that I was dead at first, when I first became conscious and that I was up in the sky and I was looking down and my mother and my wife were talking and it's like over my grave, I suppose. And I had this feeling, ah, everything's okay. I'm gone, but life goes on. They're doing fine. It's okay, right?

• 2:49:18Speaker 05

  So I don't know about that sense of self, whether it was like I'm aware of it happening, but I have a feeling it was something from the outside. I don't really know the answer to that because it's very confused. The other feeling I had was life, when I was having the stroke, was life draining out of me and my bones getting softer and softer and softer. And I can't really logically explain that, the feeling of bones softening up and dissolving. But for weeks and months afterwards, I could access that feeling of my bones dissolving, et cetera. It was a feeling of-

• 2:49:57Speaker 05

  All your energy draining out of you and you're dying, literally. So, um, reading books about near-death experiences, because that's a lot of what I'm, a big part of my next book. God, it's fascinating. There's so many interesting things to go in because it teaches us so much.

• 2:50:14Andrew D. Huberman?

  I'm so glad, A, you survived your stroke, B, that your mental faculties-

• 2:50:20Speaker 05

  You're not more grateful than I am, I can tell you.

• 2:50:22Andrew D. Huberman?

  I, I probably not, but still very grateful. So there, it just illustrates how grateful you must be. B, that you've maintained, if not grown, your mental faculties. I mean, you seem extremely sharp. Um, I promise you, you're not missing a beat, uh, you know? One always wonders, right? Actually, one of the most common fears people have is that somehow they're losing their mind or their memory and people aren't, and they aren't aware of it. Uh, you know, you hear, uh, I have family members who have asked that if they ever start to exhibit signs of severe dementia, that I, um, well, put an end to them, which I won't. Um, that's not my place in this world. Um, but I think it's a common fear among, uh, among people. But you're still extremely sharp and thank goodness for it.

• 2:51:03Andrew D. Huberman?

  And you mentioned that, um, while you've lost certain abilities, that new appreciation and new abilities have surfaced. Um, could you perhaps share what some of those are and, and what they mean to you? Um, because I think that when one hears about somebody having a stroke, we tend to focus on what's, what's lacking, but clearly this has been a transformative experience, also in positive ways.

• 2:51:26Speaker 05

  Well, uh, I had to confront some of my own demons. I had to confront the sense that, um, I expected things out of life and here I, they're taken away and I'm, I'm, I'm kind of ungrateful for being alive. And here I'm pissed off that it takes me 10 minutes to tie my shoes and I can't really button my shirt. I had to learn what really matters and to have patience and stuff. The other thing was-

• 2:51:53Speaker 05

  I used to love hiking and was very physically active. And I'm sitting at my window in my office and I see people running up and down, bicycling, walking their dogs. God, I'm so envious. If I had, if I could walk a dog right now, I'd be the happiest person alive. But then I go through a thought process, which maybe isn't completely healthy, which is, they're not aware of how wonderful it is just to walk a dog, but I'm aware of it. So when I go out in my backyard and I can't walk and I'm seeing like, I know this is gonna sound really triacly and sentimental, but I see, you know, butterflies or things in my garden. I'm like, whoa, that's incredible, you know?

• 2:52:38Speaker 05

  Things like that that I couldn't appreciate before. Because I'm sedentary and I can't move, I have to suddenly pay attention to what's around me, not take it for granted, and find and suck all of the pleasure out of it that I can. So now, when I sit at my desk to write my new book, it's four hours, because that's all I can stand, maybe three sometimes. Those four hours are like such bliss for me. I truly appreciate it now because I know that my brain was almost gone, right? So it means so much for me. And to just be alive, you know, is just a wondrous experience.

• 2:53:21Speaker 05

  I have a chapter in my new book called Awakened to the Strangeness of Being Alive. And it's about the fact that if you think about it, and how unlikely it is that we humans evolved at all, even that we even exist, all the bottlenecks in evolution that we had to pass through, including the disappearance of the dinosaurs and the emergence of mammals. But there are 20 other huge bottlenecks throughout the history of evolution. We had to pass through all of those. We nearly went extinct 80,000 years ago from some virus that infected, there were only 8,000 people, humans on the planet. All these different things, and here we are with Zoom meetings, et cetera, et cetera.

• 2:54:03Speaker 05

  It's like the strangest story you can ever do. It's beyond science fiction. But nobody thinks about it. Nobody sits down and goes, God, I'm alive. If you went back to the chain of people that had to connect and have children leading up to your parents, the unlikeliness of you ever being born is astronomical. I mean, unless my science is all wrong, you know, 70,000 generations of people meeting, et cetera, et cetera, finally ending at your DNA. I mean, unless I'm missing something, it's, it's pretty unlikely. But nobody thinks about it. Well, I certainly think about it now because I almost died. I had nothing else to think about. I have to entertain my brain

• 2:54:47Speaker 05

  the way Milton Erickson had to entertain himself by observing people. So it's taken a lot away from me. I can't swim. I'm riding my, my recumbent bike, which I love. And 80-year-old grandmothers are zipping by me and God damn it. How awful. I'm so envious. I'm so, my insecurities all well up. But then I realize, hey, I'm like, I'm like on a boat. I'm sailing. It's wonderful. I'm outside. You know, I have to go through these processes, but I think it's developed me in some way. That's, that's in the end, very positive.

• 2:55:21Andrew D. Huberman?

  Sounds like you've had to adjust to a new frame rate on life. Like the, the old movie had a certain frame rate. This movie has a certain frame rate. But that within that frame rate, there are gifts to be had that you certainly missed in your prior version of self. Is that, is that about right?

• 2:55:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, but also like, I tell people this. I totally took my life for granted. I, I was swimming all this time. It was fantastic. I was bicycling. I was traveling. But I never sat back and thought, wow, this is wonderful. How grateful it is could be taken away from me. I tell people, don't do that to yourself. I try and teach them. It can be taken away from you tomorrow. When you're out walking the dog, think of me. Think of me that can't walk a dog and appreciate those things, which I didn't appreciate. So I try and help people in that way when I can, you know?

• 2:56:13Andrew D. Huberman?

  I think a critical message is also to inspire a sense of urgency in people.

• 2:56:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:56:20Andrew D. Huberman?

  You know, I think people hear a sense of urgency and they go, oh, God, I'm already under so much pressure, life's so hard. But we're not talking about a sense of urgency to take on more of what life has to offer. I think we're talking about a sense of urgency to find one's purpose, which takes work and is an ongoing process, but to really get out of modes of apathy, laziness, languishing, and to start, as you've described it, paying deeper attention. I mean, this is a concept that was super important for me to hear about, and I learned about it from you, was how do you get yourself out of a rut? You start paying deeper attention to the things around you and inside you.

• 2:57:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:57:04Andrew D. Huberman?

  And perhaps not coincidentally, you referred to that as, quote, "death ground."

• 2:57:11Speaker 05

  Yeah. So it's what, it's a strategy from my book. I wrote a book on strategy, My Version of the Art of War. It's called Thirty-Three Strategies of War, where it's really about strategy, the strategic thinking. It's inspired from Sun Tzu, the great Chinese strategist, but it has vast philosophical implications. The idea is, you can almost think of it like barometric pressure. When necessity is pressing in on you, like your back is against the wall, like you have to get something done, and there's like this pressure around you, you find energy in there that you never believed before. William

• 2:57:54Speaker 05

  James talks about this, and when he talks about getting a second wind, he explains it very eloquently. When you feel like your life's in danger, suddenly you can, you can leap over things that you never could leap over before. So Sun Tzu says, "Put an army on death ground, and it will fight until it wins," meaning, put an army with its back to the ocean or a back to the mountain, and it's either win or die, they're gonna fight 10 times harder. You're gonna find the energy in you that you normally lack when death is facing you in the face, or urgency, or deadlines, or people pressing in on you. When that barometric pressure loosens up, and there's none of it, you think you have all the time in the world, you get nothing done.

• 2:58:41Speaker 05

  Wow, man, I'm twenty-three. I've got all these years ahead of me. I'm gonna figure it out, right? I'm not gonna die. I've got fifty, seventy, eighty years ahead of me. No, you don't. That pressure now is gone and you're wasting time. You're, you're, you're doing all sorts of things that aren't leading to any kind of skill. You're not learning or anything. You need to put yourself on death ground. You need to feel that barometric pressure, which is the actual reality. The actual reality is you could die tomorrow. You could have a stroke tomorrow. You, you could be fired tomorrow. Everything could fall apart. You need to have that sense of urgency now because that's the reality. You're fooling yourself by thinking you have all of this time.

• 2:59:23Speaker 05

  And so when you feel that pressure, suddenly you can move mountains. You, you have energy, your life, you know, you just have focus, et cetera. Neurologically, everything clicks in, you know? And people who've had that experience where they've, where they've felt like the, the ship was going under and they better get their act together and survive. They talk about all these physical processes. I have a story in my new book. I, I hope I'm not boring you with all this.

• 2:59:54Andrew D. Huberman?

  No, but please, they're quite the opposite.

• 2:59:56Speaker 05

  About a mountain climber who, um, he, he, he was climbing this mountain by himself and he was having a great time, but there was a storm coming and he had to get down. And he suddenly fell and he cut his leg open massively. And there was like a branch sticking in it. And he, he broke all these bones and he was, he was gonna die. He was on a ledge. He could see that it was getting dark and, and storm clouds were, were amassing. There was gonna be, this was in the Rocky Mountains. He was alone and suddenly he managed to get up on his two feet.

• 3:00:35Speaker 05

  And he can't explain how, but all of this energy, all this adrenaline started flowing in him. And he said he was like a mountain goat. He was like going down the ledge. He jumped. He was able to kind of get down to another ledge. He got out of it. And for the next 20 years, he was haunted by how did that happen? I want that feeling again, because it was actually the most ecstatic feeling. I had energy that I never suspected in myself. And so he tries everything to get that feeling back. He tries climbing other mounts. He tries going to Mount Everest. He tries, and it doesn't come back. And finally, he kind of figures out the formula for it and why it happened. He studies a lot of neuroscience.

• 3:01:18Speaker 05

  It's a great book. I'm using it in my new book. It's called Bone Games. It's a very interesting book, a lot of science in it. And he got the feeling back in a smaller sense. But it was the feeling of your life is in danger. I better get my act together, or it's the end. And suddenly adrenaline, dopamine, all the other things were occurring in him. And he got, and he found that energy. So that's the ultimate kind of death ground right there.

• 3:01:53Andrew D. Huberman?

  The human will to live is truly incredible. And so now I have to say, as I said before, I'm so grateful that your stroke didn't take you out. Because clearly, there's still so much in there. And you're continuing to share what is really exquisitely useful knowledge.

• 3:02:16Speaker 05

  Oh, thank you.

• 3:02:17Andrew D. Huberman?

  It's just, it's just kind of astonishing to me. I started off today's discussion expressing my gratitude for what you've already done for my life and for the lives of so many other people through your books. You know, it's clear you've been on a foraging exploration. And that foraging for organizing and communicating information, mainly in the form of written books, but also online content. You have a terrific YouTube channel, which I've subscribed to and follow and listen to with rapt attention. And the other venues with which you share information, including this one today, are Really truly valuable and appreciated.

• 3:02:57Andrew D. Huberman?

  So I, I wanna say on behalf of myself and for those that have known you and your work for a number of years, but also for the many people that are now sure to know who you are and what you're about, that it's just so clear that like this stuff comes from the heart and that it, whatever early seed planted this, you know, that we're all grateful for and better off as a consequence of that, that seed. So I could make this list very, very long with the, the number of specific ways in which you've improved the journey through life and made it clearer. I mean, you know, life is, certainly can be hard, but it also can, can be really confusing.

• 3:03:38Andrew D. Huberman?

  And I feel that the, the Robert Greene roadmap, even though it's but one roadmap, is an extremely valuable map to have and to use, certainly has been for me. So just an enormous thank you, Robert. Thanks for sharing today and thanks for all you do and all that you're still doing and sure to do in the future.

• 3:03:59Speaker 05

  Oh, thank you. I, I wish I could find the word for explaining the kind of weird emotions that I'm feeling when I hear that. There isn't maybe Yiddish, maybe for clemmed or something, I don't know, but thank you. Yeah.

• 3:04:12Andrew D. Huberman?

  We'll have to have you back here again when your next book comes out. Can't wait, but we will wait.

• 3:04:18Speaker 05

  Okay. Yeah, hopefully I'm still around.

• 3:04:20Andrew D. Huberman?

  I, I, I'm confident you will be.

• 3:04:23Speaker 05

  Okay. Okay, good.

• 3:04:24Andrew D. Huberman?

  Thank you. Come back again.

• 3:04:26Speaker 05

  Thanks very much. I hope I will.

• 3:04:28Andrew D. Huberman?

  Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Robert Greene. I hope you found the conversation to be as stimulating as I did. If you're learning from and are 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 both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five star review. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast, or guests, or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. Not on today's episode, but on many previous episodes of the Huberman Lab podcast, we discuss supplements. While supplements aren't necessary for everybody,

• 3:05:12Andrew D. Huberman?

  many people derive tremendous benefit from them, for things like improving sleep, for hormone support, and for focus. To see the supplements discussed on the Huberman Lab podcast, you can go to LiveMomentus, spelled O-U-S. So that's livemomentous.com/huberman. If you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, Threads, LinkedIn, and Facebook. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, it's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. If you haven't already subscribed to our monthly Neural Network newsletter, the Neural Network newsletter is a zero-cost monthly newsletter

• 3:05:55Andrew D. Huberman?

  that includes podcast summaries as well as toolkits. The toolkits are brief PDFs that you can download that give you tools for things like neuroplasticity and learning, for managing dopamine, for enhancing sleep, for physical performance, flexibility, deliberate cold exposure, and on and on. To join the Neural Network newsletter, you simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the Menu tab, scroll down to Newsletter, and enter your email. We do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Robert Greene. And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.