#2195 - Andrew Huberman

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The Joe Rogan Experience. Show me my day Joe Rogan podcast my night. All day. All right. We're good. Mr. Healyman. How are you, sir? Good to see you. Good to see you. So what we just saying about dog breeds that like we're talking about Carl, like the little bulldog breeds have more mastiff than wolf. So mastiff is a different thing. Well, so don't they all come from wolves?

Yeah, they all originate from wolves, but then dog selection has been twofold mainly for phenotype like morphology, the shape we call it and then temperament. Right. So there's this chart have might be a little hard to find online about the dosing of wolf versus mastiff genetics essentially.

And there's a bunch of other things woven into dog genetics. First of all, cool point dogs are among. I don't know if they are the most maybe whales are the most, but they are among the greatest variation in body size within a given species. You think of Chihuahua and great. Right. And it looks like it's dosing of the genes controlling IGF one.

Which makes sense. Yeah, but kind of wild, right? Like you we got some big humans and some smaller humans, but not dogs, not like dogs and then Chihuahua was and then what those enormous shepherd dogs those one of those ones those insane dogs used to fight off wolves. What the fuck are those things called those gigantic hairy things? You know what I'm talking about? We've talked about them before.

Terrifying looking dogs. Yeah, I mean, just a what's it called? Oh my goodness. Yeah, those things. What the fuck is that thing? What is that called again? But we've seen it before. That doesn't say the name of the dog. Well, find the name of those dogs because there's Brian Calon those all this shit. Right. So I have a colleague at Stanford, Sumo Connell who Joe's oh Joe's oh dogs. No, that's on it. There's a name for them though.

Oh, Tibetan master Tibetan master. Yeah, they're really furry and they're like 250 pounds. Look at that puppy. That's seven weeks old. That's so great. How many they have in the litter? How could they have very many? Yeah, it's gonna be just for you. Poor, poor mama. So this colleague at Stanford, Sumo Connell, she's one best in show at some of the big events for poolies. She breeds horses and she's into that hole. What's up poolies?

The poolies, the ones that look like Rostafarian dogs, you know, their eyes are covered. They're amazing. They're amazing. And she had this chart on her door. I was going to meet with her about something. She handles a lot of undergraduate education at Stanford.

And I see this chart and the chart essentially shows the dosing of kind of the original wolf line genes versus more master heavy genetic background. And there are a lot of breeds on this chart, but it essentially shows up in the following way.

The dogs that are more sight and scent, right? And with longer snouts like a shepherd, like a shepherd, have more have a dosing of the wolf gene still in them. Then you get to the shorter snout, kind of snub nose like the French bulldog, the English bulldog, and some master breeds, pugs, right? And the amount of wolf in them is like niltonon.

And then what's up with the ultimate, but they all start off as well. So they have some genes that relate to the wolf origin origin lineage, right? But over time, they've been bred, for instance, the English bulldog, but all dogs originally come from wolves.

Yes, that's my understanding. Even mastiffs. That's right. That's my understanding. But then as they were crossbred with different dogs. Right? So for instance, like the English bulldog, that line came from the crossing of essentially pug, like short snout, right?

But with mastiffs, with mastiffs, or with dogs with heavy mastiff genetic dosing, why? Well, the idea was the short snout gives them a good lever for holding onto things, right? And the mastiff genes lead to, and we know this for sure, both of the droopiness of the face, it also relates to less presence of pain receptors in the front of the body.

So if you've ever had a bulldog, where you know, their feet can be really sensitive, but their face, you can hold on to those jails. My bulldog Costello would go picking up stuff at the beach and you can get a fish hook on his mouth and it looks super painful. And he's like, you know, so not not very many pain sensors in the face.

They have a they have a disruption and or mutation in the gene that controls the elasticity of skin. That's why they have the droopingness. And they are a brachysophalic short snout. That's why they're not very good breathers.

And they essentially have sleep apnea. That's why they're not sure. Okay, they do so they do snore a lot. I can attest like girl does it's crazy. And so what were dogs being selected for? Well, unless you're showing dogs, dogs were selected for the kind of work they were capable of doing like sheep dogs or great herders, this kind of thing.

But when people essentially designed bread up and cross bread to get the English bulldog or the old English bulldog, which doesn't have as much of an underwrite. So I had an old English bulldog. So whereas the English bulldog is elbows out. So inward rotation. The thing we're all supposed to not do an underwrite.

The old English bulldog looks like this. It looks more like a pit bull looks more like a pit bull. And they were originally used for bull baiting for grabbing on to the nose of the bull. And then being able to let go and get called off and coming back to their to their protector and then basically then it was for it was to rile up the bull right for bull fighting. So you can still find some of this stuff online.

You can find some old descriptions in some cases, even some old videos. But of course now bull baiting with dogs is not allowed. Right dog fighting everybody looks down on.

But then if you start asking about the toy breeds, what were the toy breeds, quote unquote, designed for bread for they were basically designed to sit next to you. Some of them will seek out, you know, like the terrier breeds will find vermin. Right. They'll go find rats. They're really good radders actually jack russles are great. Rattles are great radders the West Island Terriers, the Westies, the Karen Terriers. They're always they're really great hunters.

And then finally, the dragon King and the base on the basis of mostly behavior and phenotype shape and thinking like I want a smaller dog that will just sit near me or I want a small dog that will that will give rats and sitting near me know I want a big dog that's going to guard you start breeding for paint tolerance. And a guy that I think was on your podcast a long time ago, Sam Sheridan.

Yeah. Yeah. In a fighter's heart, there's a great chapter where he talks about, I think it's dog fighting in the Philippines. And he talks about how brutal that sport is, which indeed it is. But he talks about the love between the owner and the dog can predict, and of course the dog and the owner, it's reciprocal, one presumes, that the strength of that relationship predicts how hard the dog will fight for the owner.

And he uses this as kind of a parallel construction for why, and you tell me if this is true or not, that many of the fatalities in boxing were the consequence of sure 15 round as opposed to 12 round fights, but also when the corner man, where the coach was the parent. And so, and so that gets into this very complicated psychology.

I actually think that's a really terrific book, because I think it speaks to a lot of really interesting aspects of bonding between humans bonding in that case between animals and humans. Of course, dog fighting, like, I don't know if there are many things that people look down upon as much as they look down upon dog fighting, but he speaks to the relationship between the dog and the owner as a loving one, which was super surprising to me.

Anyway, that's a bit of a tangent, but I don't know, maybe it's possible to find that chart. I don't want to send you on a ridiculous expedition, but if you just say, so genes, that's a simple one. Okay, this one, the one I'm thinking about is a vertical one that was in Science Magazine or Scientific American, but it's wild. Again, I don't want to send you on an expedition that has us paused, but. Yeah, sorry about that. No worries, but it's just we get an rough understanding of it all.

Yeah, so now when I see like, okay, like a colleague, like I see a colleague down there, I think long snouts are probably has a better nose than a than a mastiff breed. You can ask an owner, how good is their vision? Are they a sight hound or a centound? And of course that they're both, but some dogs like I'm really interested now in part because of you and Cam Haynes and others about dogs that hunt or go on hunts. And like the Kuhnhound breeds are amazing.

Yeah, I've always wanted a red bone Kuhnhound. They're ears wafed up smell. That's why they're so long. I didn't know that. Yeah, the reason why they have those long floppy ears is as they're running, their ears are wafting up smell and it gives them a better sense of the chase. Amazing. I read this incredible description of why dog scent and sense of smell is so much better than ours.

There's a guy named Noem Sobel who's been on my podcast, he's over in Israel, who claims that human olfaction is just as good as dog olfaction. But how do they, how do they outdo us? The frequency of sniffs and this is really cool. You know those little notches on the side of the nose, like our nostrils look more or less symmetric. They have those little notches. They create little vortices for the dog so that the scent stick around.

They're actually getting longer exposure to a scent. So when they, they're getting something like 10 or 20x the exposure to the scent in the olfactory bulb. And are able to assess both directionality. They can do right nostril, left or an nostril. They can sense odor plumes to steer in one direction or another. But Noem has done these crazy experiments when he was back at Berkeley where he had people hands-mitted eyes covered.

So they can't sense touch. They can't see everything's covered and they can follow a scent of chocolate buried seven inches below the ground. Why? Yes. And you can see this. This you can find if you say tracking sorry Jamie my goal wasn't to come here and send you on these. These people have a nose like Irish affair. Oh boy. Or are you dream Brody? Oh my. If you say kind of Berkeley chocolate tracking a sobel or something like that it should come up.

So he would do these aerial views of these people tracking these scents on the ground. And it turns out people are really good at this. They can track a scent. Yeah. And if you sniffers show that humans can track scents and that two nostrils are better than one. Okay. So if you but if you go images I think you'll probably through the grass. Yeah. If you go images. And then I'll lay off the track sense. So if you go to images of the dammit and you say of Berkeley just say.

There it is. Right. So they compared the tracking of a scent town of a bloodhound to human tracking of a scent buried in the case of the the bloodhound it wasn't buried. So that person what do they have a mask on? Yeah. They got a mask on. Their hands are covered with thick gloves. They can only use the only thing exposed are their nostrils. And they're but that line that yellow line is not a line with a bunch of chocolate on it. It's buried below the surface.

I always thought it was above. And then when I talked to Nomi said no no they buried the chocolate scent. And people were able to track it like a like a hunting dog tracks. I think they cut a trench and then they covered it up. So he insists that this thing that you see in all the textbooks which is that humans have you know like one one thousandth or something of the number of factory

recepers that's that's total bullshit. Really? Total bullshit. In fact our friend who by the way wanted me to say hello Rick Rubin turned to a good friend of mine who's the chair of neurosurgery of a major department medical school department not Stanford I promise and said what percentage of the things in medical textbooks. Okay this is Rick asking this chair of neurosurgery.

Yeah. What percentage of things that you find in medical textbooks basic in advance do you think are false based on your understanding of what we actually know now compared to when the textbooks were written. And he said 50% and then he's and then Rick said and yep and then Rick said I know I was wide I too and then Rick said and what is the extent of impact on treatment of patients modern day and his answer was one word incalculable.

Oh my god. 50% 50% in currently used medical textbooks meaning that the literature has been updated with new understanding new scientific papers. But it is not yet been incorporated into the medical education. Let me let me say something because I know that bears have insane sense of smell that are many times stronger than a bloodhounds and famously can smell people from hundred 200 yards way.

Like there's got to be levels to it and I just can't imagine that a bloodhound doesn't have a better sense of smell that a person. Right so they absolutely have a better sense of smell. And under the definition that they use it they use the same number of receptors differently in other words the resolution of your vision and a mouse's vision is dramatically different.

The resolution of your vision is very sharp at the fovee towards the center of your eye and actually towards the periphery you could anyone can just do this you wiggle your fingers out here in the periphery and you can't see any detail right as you move that forward you can see detail. Okay so and that's because the density of pixels so to speak in the retina is much much higher near the fovee and near the center than it is at the periphery.

Okay so what he's saying what non-sobles laboratory has found and others have found is that the number of pixels the the the potential for olfactory resolution in humans and in bloodhounds is essentially the same this is his argument but the bloodhounds sniff much more so it's the equivalent of having their eyes open much more right in the same so to speak they have these vortices that are created by the structure of their of their nose and nostrils.

So they have longer exposure and in the case of the bear for instance I don't know how many olfactory receptors they have relative to a human or bloodhound but that the bear is likely spending a lot more time and can pull more air perhaps we don't know but is using the the mechanical aspects of the olfactory system differently.

In fact and here's now I'm recalling the experiment that led to this conclusion that humans have exceptional olfaction which is that there's a particular compound that when introduced to a swimming pool people can detect a difference in the smell of the water at a dilution that is outrageously small. Like skunk spray. Like skunk spray.

Forgive me because I'm not remembering the name of the chemical but he said you can essentially add a drop of this to a swimming pool and then people can smell the difference between the water and so his argument is not that humans are walking around sensing all these smells consciously as well as a bloodhound or as well as a bear but that we have a tremendous capacity for olfaction that you know that the chocolate tracking experiment exemplifies but it requires some removal of our most dominant sense vision.

And hearing our second most dominant sense and in that case tactile orientation as well and so the idea is that you know we have an amazing olfactory apparatus in fact he he makes the argument and there's evidence for the fact that as soon as people meet and they've done these beautiful experiments people meet they shake hands and you know the next thing they do they tend to within about a minute they wipe the scent of the other person on their face typically. I guess I wasn't paying attention.

And they don't realize it? People don't realize this and he's done it unconsciously. But unconsciously. So, more captains. Also known as the oil how do you say that? Theoles? Where is it? Self-ocontaining organic compounds of the strong unpleasant owner they are colorous and yellows, liquids it can be flammable. More captains are found in nature and in living organisms as a waste product of metabolism and in oil and gas.

They are also present in certain foods such as some nuts and cheese and in decaying organic matter and marshes. So, we're probably sensitive to the odors that matter. That can kill us. That can kill us. He also has this idea that I think is starting to take hold in real data. That we are constantly sensing our own odor plumes. That we you know that we we smell ourselves a lot of times per day. That's actually very normal behavior. Right.

You know there are all sorts of ways people do that that nobody talks about. Yeah you like check a sniff. People check their sniff. Yeah. And it's an indication of hormone status and immune status when you have babies or puppies like you know you're looking at like oh is a good poop or a bad poop? You know you're also paying it people some people will smell the poop. I'm not a proponent of that. But we're constantly sensing the scent and taste of for instance our partner saliva. Right.

Actually an ex girlfriend of mine wrote to me recently. I don't know what this question represented but she said. Do you think that when you become unattracted to somebody the taste of their mouth becomes bad to you or the other way around? When you become unattracted. I'm unattracted. I guess she might have been dating somebody and like maybe had fallen out of favor and she was kind of not attracted and she was sort of noting that.

The taste of their mouth no longer like it tastes kind of aversive now as opposed to before. I bet that's in your mind. I bet you don't like them anymore because if you're really in love with someone you don't even care if they have bad breath. That's true. You still want to kiss them. That's true too. Because you just love them. That's true too. Yeah. That's true too. You don't care. You just you love them but if they're gross and then they smell you like. Right. You fucking stinky asshole.

This is a mule deer skull. So you know this is not as extreme as an elk but you get a look at the internal. Okay. If you look inside of that and you see. Oh yeah. Because they can wind you from 100 yards away easy. So see this spongy stuff. I don't know if they can see it on video. There's this spongy stuff there. That's something called the crib reform plate.

The crib reform plate is a bunch of Swiss cheese like thin bone and the olfactory neurons which basically sit like right behind your back of your nostrils. They send axons. They're little wire like connections back into the brain. And when somebody gets hit hard on the head that crib reform plate shears it and that's why people become a nocemic. They lose their sense of smell. Yeah. They look at that pictures.

Now what's amazing about the olfactory neurons is that they are among the very few neurons in the human and other mammalian nervous system that regenerates throughout the lifespan. So there's a little area of your hippocampus where there's some neurons that everyone makes a big deal of that frankly don't do a lot to regenerate throughout the lifespan. So called neurogenesis, new neurons.

But the olfactory neurons even though they're a central nervous system neuron just like you're retinal neuron or your cerebral cortex. They can regenerate throughout the entire lifespan. And they do every time someone takes a head hit or there's some you know shearing off of these axons axon excuse me. They regenerate. Now under conditions like we saw this a lot during COVID where people were complaining about loss of smell. We see this when people age.

Some people are thinking that loss of smell may be a correlate not the cause but obviously but a correlate of age-related cognitive decline to mention Alzheimer's things like that. There are a few things actually I think I recommended to a couple of friends of ours now this is there very little data on this but I will say and I'll catch heat for this but these days I catch heat anyway so I don't care.

There are good data in my opinion small amount of data but let's call it decent enough data to explore that alpha-lipobic acid at 600 milligrams per day. During the time when you starting to lose your smell might rescue some of that smell so by someone getting COVID and they start to lose their sense of smell. Or any viral infection where they are losing the sense of smell. What other viral infections cause a loss of sense of smell?

Well anything that clogs the sinuses certainly but they're influenza viruses that do this. Now I know as we're saying this that some people say in fact nom sobel told me that he felt that the data about alpha-lipobic acid were kind of on the weak side but when people are losing their sense of smell and taste it's really scary. I mean it's one of those things where you kind of feel like so much of pleasure in life unbeknownst to us is the murderous food.

Oh I'll never forget when I got a viral infection and I took and I lost my sense of smell and I ate a handful of blueberries which I love and it just tasted like bags of water. I was like oh goodness I don't there are worse things in the oven. Is it COVID that you lost your smell? It was and I did the smell training which has also been shown to work because these old factory neurons this is amazing. Their survival is activity dependent.

They require electrical activity driven by sniffing and smelling. It is true that the behavioral tool of taking a lemon and really just like getting it close to that nostril and just really trying to get whatever little wif of lemon you can and then taking your coffee and getting that little wif of coffee.

Whatever little remnants of smell that you can get in there has been shown to improve the survival and eventually the durability of not just the olfactory neurons but sent in other words the behavioral training works. There are the alpha-lapoc acid thing is debated. The thing about alpha-lapoc acid is diabetics and people blood sugar issues probably shouldn't take it. They can kind of reduce blood sugar a little bit but when I had that happen lost my sense of smell.

I was like listen I don't I want my smell back so I took 600 milligrams of alpha-lapoc acid and I was doing the scent training. I was like sniffing lemon sniffing coffee sniffing parmesan cheese sniffing anything that was pungent that I could recognize and my smell came back in a couple of days but then again I don't know because I didn't run the control experiment. What whether or not it would come back anyway.

Is it only positive smells or what about if you smelling salts or something like really intense? Smelling salts I've never used but I guess what do we have some I've got some right here. I'd be willing to try I think are they legal before I do something illegal. Yeah these are totally legal. I'll give it a shot. These are the one this is a jujumufu who is a real athletic freak who uses these. I don't know him but shout out to him because this is the strongest shit we have ever tried.

I will just this one sealed too so I'll just do a little bit. Oh you're going to get all up in. Come on. This is like the cold plunge. I got a funny story about the cold plunge to tell you later but that relates to you but we'll get to that in a moment. But you're about to get your mind blown here son. So this stuff is so strong that it's sealed in this bag. Wait is it going to kill my olfactory nerves? No you'll be fine.

It's so strong that even though it's sealed in this bag I have to rip this bag open and oh my god damn my hands are slippery. Got a knife. Okay. It's so strong that I've broken the seal of this bag just slightly look. It's still kind of sealed. Yeah. Look you could smell it through the bag. Let's try it. Just give us a sniff. Oh yeah. Yeah. Right? Okay. This bag is still sealed. I haven't even cut the bag yet.

So as somebody who had a laboratory with chemicals in it for a long time now we run clinical trials on humans but so no more chemicals in my lab. Okay now take a sniff. It's still sealed. You learned to wafed it. You learned to model. The bottle is not even out of the thing. Oh yeah yeah yeah. The bottle is still sealed. Oh this is just the beginning. You know when you go to a park and you go into a public bathroom in a park that has a pool. It's getting nervous. Yeah I'm getting nervous.

I'm not Elon Musk but I saw what happens when people do substances on this. Oh look that was legal in the state of California. And I think everybody's getting a lot out a little out of hand. Yeah you got trouble. You're like we're down here in Texas so. Okay. Now again this is totally legal. Now what you're going to do here is take this. Is it amazing that the word legal when said fast sounds like illegal? Yeah legal. And then you go wait what did you say? It's totally legal.

And vice versa right? Yeah. Alright so what do I do? Unscrew the cap. I like it's my initials. Ah. Unscrew the cap. Alright. Put it about six inches from your nose. Dig a big sniff. Get in there. Alright. Yeah baby. Let's go. Now imagine if you had COVID. Wait wait wait hold on they just kind of experience that first. Yeah take it in. I'm going to have to have a look. Well you know what's interesting or wouldn't be fair. You know what's interesting? Oh man. The fresh ones are so powerful.

I feel it in my eye because the sinuses run. Oh now would imagine if you had COVID you get smoked over there huh? I imagine if you had COVID and you lost your sense of smell. Like this might be the key to getting it back. As long as it's not killing olfactory neurons. I don't think it's killing it. You can smell everything after. I mean that's true. I'm obviously biased. So because I like that thrill for whatever reason. I actually enjoyed that. Thank you.

We have in the green room of the mother. You prompted me to take several new experiences. No. As we can talk about. But one other thing before I forget. I know I go down these like nerdy rabbit holes here. But when I did those smelling salts a moment ago. I sniffed with both nostrils. But it came in mainly through my left nostril. Right. And so I asked no more so. What's the deal with this left nostril, right nostril stuff? You know you have the yogis, the switching, the nostril things.

Here's what's wild. This is so wild. It turns out that every two hours or so. The dominant breathing nostril switches. Now. Really? Now that could be interesting or that could not be interesting. Right. There are a lot of things in biology that happen. But like what is the meaning? It turns out it's a direct reflection of a shift in your so-called autonomic nervous system from parasympathetic dominant to sympathetic dominant. Meaning from more relaxed to more alert.

And this is happening periodically throughout the day like a seesaw. Enduring sleep. So this whole thing with the yogis of you know, breathe through one nostril or the other nostril. Look, it's the olfactory bulbs. There's a lot of crossing over of information at later stages and even some early stages. Once the information gets to the brain. So that whole thing is probably a little bit like weak sauce.

But this idea that you're breathing easier through one nostril or the other is reflecting an underlying brain state and body state. That is absolutely true. He tells me. And the last thing is you said why would bears or bloodhounds have such better smell? Well, in the case of a bear, the size of the olfactory bulbs. And the amount of brain real estate devoted to processing that information is much more. So we have a huge visual cortex.

Most of our brain, frankly, is devoted to vision and to movement. Whereas, you know, the brain of, let me think of like a turtle. It's mostly movement. They have very low cerebral cortex. Maybe that's not the best example. But certainly in a centound, the olfactory bulbs are much bigger than they are in a sight-hound. And both of those have olfactory bulbs that are much, much bigger than Jamie's bulldog over there.

Those guys sniff all the time, but they're mostly snorting trying to get sense in. Their smell, sense of smell, is much, much worse than marshals than your dog. Because marshals are retriever. Yeah. That makes sense because he can smell his ball. Like, if I throw his ball and he misses it, he just starts doing a circle. And then he finds it with his smell. This episode is brought to you by Zippercruder.

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In fact, four out of five employers who post on Zippercruder get a quality candidate within the first day. See why Zippercruder is the hiring site employers prefer most based on G2. Try it for free at this exclusive web address. zippercruder.com slash rogan. Zippercruder the smartest way to hire. This episode is brought to you by Simply Safe. I talk a lot about taking care of yourself, you know, working out and eating right. But that also means you should be doing what you can to stay safe.

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So be sure to order today that's SimplySafe.com slash Rogan. There's no safe like Simply Safe. Which is crazy. Yeah, smells is ball. You know, yeah, incredible. So what NoM is saying is not that humans have smell that is as good. But that when you push the conditions, you can reveal a heightened sense of smell that most people don't think humans have. Now, as I say this, there are a lot of people out there and it's usually women who are like, oh no, I can smell everything.

I can smell the subtlest difference. And so it may be something related to maternal behavior. It might be something related to estrogen. It might be something in the Y chromosome that suppresses that we don't know. But some people are very olfactory. They can smell when somebody's not feeling right or when they're not feeling right.

Yeah. But it's absolutely the case that we're constantly taking the chemicals off other people through shaking hands, through hugging, rubbing them on ourselves, analyzing our own smells unconsciously. I always say that I can smell bullshit. You probably can. But I don't know if I really can smell it. But when someone's lying, I feel like there's a smell. There could be the stress. It could be a certain... You know, we talk about stress as one thing.

But stress is the dosing of different levels of cortisol. All epinephrine, people that are pathological liars, they can probably do it without evoking those things. Then you have things like pupil size, bigger the pupil's more rousal, right? The more stress somebody is. We know this, right? That's why if somebody takes a stimulant, the pupils will get huge. There's a thing that people do when they're full of shit or they're anticipating your response in a different way.

Like when someone's telling the truth, like if you tell me the truth, you seem relaxed to my response. Like you're telling... Even if it's something that you're not proud of, you're telling me the truth. This is the thing. When someone's lying, it's almost like they're waiting to see how you buy it. So that's like their defenses are up. They counter punch quick. Will they're selling it? They say it and they're like, does he buy it?

Like you feel the doesy buy it and like, oh, you're full of shit. Oh, interesting. So let me think about this. So you are able to sense the... they're anticipation of your responses. Like they've got queued up some counter... Some evaluating where you're going. Yes, no, or maybe. Yeah, but it's not reliable. Like I just speak to be completely honest. I've been bullshitted before. But I think I'm better at it than most.

And I think maybe that's because I've had more conversations with people than most people have. But it's not 100%. Sometimes people are full of shit and you're not sure. Or you have your defenses down. I mean, I've been badly manipulated before. Yeah, it happens. Yeah, especially if you like someone. That's part of the problem. You don't want them to be full of shit.

Yeah, and some of the best manipulators, certainly in my experience, are people that have really figured out the combination lock of the things that I have felt deprived of. And they come in and... Sure. And they tend to be unique things, like that you can't get out anywhere. And boy, somebody said to me recently, like there are certain categories of humans that I just... I can't be seduced by. I'm not talking about just sexual seduction. Right, right, right.

Yeah, I'm saying it just can't be seduced by. And then there are some people that are just able to get past that force field. And so I consider myself pretty good at threat sensing, except in that domain. Right. My threat sensing is like the equivalent of a stuffed animal. My friend Tony always says that erotic and psychotic are so close to each other, that, you know, like it crosses over back and forth.

And I think there's something to that too, that some of the craziest people are also some of the sexiest people. For some weird reason, like you want to be with them, even though you know they're dangerous, like they're crazy. Like there's some weird thing going on there. Almost like you want wild kids, because wild kids could survive better. That's an interesting one. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I mean, I think that the...

Well, I'm listening to a really good book that a really smart person suggested to me, called Five Types of People that Were Roon Your Life. And I only wish I had read it years ago. And here's the main takeaway, that there are about 10% of people out there. And it cuts across all the standard labels of like narcissists, and borderline, and all that. Like they're, they include some of that. But they, they depart from that. And they just focus on what...

This is a guy whose psychologist, it's written by a guy, a psychologist who's worked a lot on conflict resolution over the years, courtroom type stuff, et cetera. And he says, in this 10% of people, they are high conflict people. But within, they like conflict. They feed off it. They like drama. They like conflict. They like creating it. But within that category, it's pretty evenly divided. He claims between women and men.

And then there's a further division where about half of them play passive and victim, but are highly manipulative. They use other people to try and, you know, basically harm. And then the other 5% are very like aggressive and abrasive. And so he has this great set of protocols. I love protocols that are essentially like, don't move in with Mary or getting engaged to or have a child with somebody in the first year. And this cuts in both directions. Just don't make that agreement in year one.

As well as for any behavior that kind of cues those senses, gets your spidey senses up like you were describing, ask yourself, would 90% or more of people do that behavior? And if it's a no, like you have to pause. In other words, what he's saying in this book is that most people are actually pretty healthy but that most of the woes of the world are created by about 10% of people which he calls these high conflict people. But they don't always come out high conflict like screaming and yelling.

They're often very tactical and manipulative and very vindictive. They'll leverage victimhood, they'll leverage a lot of different things. And again, cuts across, men and women equally, he claims. And again, I don't know the data behind this book, but the book itself just feels like a very useful thing that everybody should know about. So I'm enjoying reading this book going, oh my god, I wish I had this book years ago. Plus, I'm realizing like, oh yeah, like we always hear this.

Like most of our problems come from a very small set of people and things. And most of society's problems. And so who are these people? So we tend to call them narcissists or sociopaths or psych. But those labels, while very useful in the clinic, I think have been overused in the general public. And like we're not clinicians, we're not diagnosing anybody. And so, but difficult people that can ruin your life, abound. But it turns out it's only about 10%.

So, and it has some very specific protocols of how to deal with the people who are more outwardly aggressive versus play victim, et cetera. Very useful book. I think it's a success that you have to think that way though. I can't just enjoy someone. Enjoy their comfort. If they're in the 90%. Yeah, but that's the problem. Yeah, zig when you should a zagged and run into a 10% or take a year. Yeah, but a year's a long time though.

Yeah. Also, people can learn like what you tolerate and don't tolerate and hide certain types of behavior from you. Yes. Yeah. Which could be a real issue. I've definitely experienced that. And it's, and again, I think we are often, you mentioned that the relationship between erotic and manipulative and crazy or just erotic and crazy. I think there's also that when we finally receive the sorts of out-of-love or affection, it's not always sex. It's not always sexual, right?

Right. Like somebody like, I don't like rubbing your feet or paying, you know, paying a little extra attention to what you say or something. For some people, that's intoxicating. It's a lot of it is paying attention to you. A lot of it is like listening to what you have to say or asking you questions about your thoughts and your feelings, which a lot of people are unaccustomed to. And that's intoxicating to people. Because a lot of people just want to talk about themselves.

So when someone wants to talk about you and really is asking questions about your feelings, you know, that can kind of manipulate you in a weird way. Yeah, it almost feels like a, like a parental type of care that we're probably wired to look for. I mean, I always marvel at this and also just kind of shake my head and go, why? Why did God design us this way?

But, you know, the circuitry in our brain that creates infant child attachment is the same circuitry that is repurposed for all other relationships in adulthood. It's not like you get your, like, your childhood attachment stuff. And then you go, okay, well, you know, you're like 15, 16, you're moving on in the world, you're hitting puberty, you're starting to date a bit, whatever. Now let's like work with a different set of mechanics, a different set of algorithms.

No, it's the same set of algorithms repurposed. We know this based on the studies of infant child, infant parent attachment and on the basis or infant caretaker and on the basis of studies of romantic love. It's the same circuitry. So you're using a set of algorithms and circuitry that were designed for one thing in a very different context. That's interesting. And that's probably makes sense why a lot of men with like very overbearing mothers seek overbearing wives.

Yeah. You know, I've learned so much recently about just how it is that, you know, we can lose our vision of like other people, right? And I think this, this thing that we hear like manipulation, it often sounds like, oh, it's like really like tactical someone's rubbing their hands. I think the really tricky part about is I do think that most people in the world are just like doing their best to feel safe, to get their needs met. They're very few evil people.

But in this sort of pattern of repurposing childhood attachment patterns and then people bringing that forward into their adult attachment patterns. I think what ends up happening is that, you know, people could unquote trying to get their needs met oftentimes like the worst ones, sometimes called trauma bonding, but they kind of go lock and key.

Or somebody identify somebody that's really healthy and they're like them, I'm going to latch onto them because like they're healthy and they can, and you say, well, the healthy person should be able to spot all the landmines. But if somebody is able to really tap into like something you didn't have or something that just feels like oxygen, right?

Goodness gracious, like you could be the smartest, most, you know, well acclimated person with the best parents or whatever upbringing, which most people aren't. Some people do have that and still fall kind of into this fog that is like gosh, like you want to be with this person, but it doesn't feel good, you know, that that mishmash. And I think the thing I've learned clearly is that when you feel that trepidation, run, don't walk.

Like it's not like the gray zone is actually the thing to just exit fast. Gray doesn't mean like hover and check it out and like run some experiments here. Taking bomb. Get out. Yeah, yeah. Run. Just run. Yeah, just run. It's also I think there's some people that are very sheltered and they've been well taken care of and they're not accustomed to manipulative people and they're not accustomed to dangerous people.

And so they don't know. I've seen that before both with people choosing the wrong friends and people choosing the wrong partners. Yeah, that certainly hasn't been my pattern, not that I had the hardest upbringing, but it was easy. I always say easier than some harder than others, but I always had great friends, great friendships, but my threat sensing. It wasn't always great in romantic relationships, for sure. I've also had some great relationships.

I think what tends to happen is that if we're very busy, we have this tendency to be easily manipulated by certain things that are unusual that we just that really feel like extra oxygen to us or just feel strict. So just feel so nourishing and because I think people always were often default to sex, like it's all about sex. Depending on who you are, like sex is either more or less readily available to you, right?

Like I think that for some people it's nurturing, like to a certain form of nurturing. And then there's also this thing of we know how to survive certain things so they don't feel as dangerous. So people who've had like very, you know, overbearing or complicated childhoods or abusive childhoods, sometimes they're set to proceed with the same thing. They're set to perceive danger at way too high a threshold. Right. Right. So their perception of what's dangerous is like way too high.

And so they walk into even still dangerous situations, but they don't think of them as dangerous. And they're like, oh, I can navigate this. They're good at navigating difficult people or they're good at navigating borderline people or something like that. I think it's also exciting, which is part of the problem.

People like excitement. And if you have a boring life in a life that doesn't have a lot of stimulation in it, and then you find someone even if they're bad for you, but they're exciting. There's some conflicts, some something. There's fights and breakups and then makeups, which are exciting. And so then you get locked into this stimulation pattern, which is, or I've seen that multiple times with people. It's a real problem.

I think it's more of a problem with people that like excitement and adventure and are super curious, but like excitement and adventure. So I'm thinking comics, I'm thinking people who like high intensity sports that they seek relationships that are higher intensity, because I've received great advice from people like Rick, who said, you know, your relationship should be a sanctuary.

That should be where peace is. And actually I don't pay a lot of attention to Instagram, kind of little moddos and things, but someone sent me one that I was like, yes, that feels so true, which is that men eventually settle where they feel peace. Yeah, I think that's probably the healthiest way to do it. But I think people like, like I said, I think people like stimulation.

And I don't think a lot of people are stimulated by their day-to-day existence. I think they're bored. I think a lot of people are just like trudging along every day. And then when someone comes along that makes you excited in your life, you know, someone who's just a little wilder, a little crazier, maybe some lady's got a bunch of tattoos, like look at her. You know, people get excited by people that are a little bit dangerous.

Yeah, because the idea that anything could, like anything could happen. They could do anything. They're risky people, you know. Someone's got tattoos on their hands, like Jesus. What is she doing? Yeah, you and I both have a lot of tattoos, but I've kept it, intentionally kept it off the hands and necked face. I thought I'd done my hands, but it's the face is a real problem. Like that's a little wacky.

But I have a lot of friends, like jelly rolls, good friend of mine, he's got tattoos all over his face, post-moloned, good friend of mine. I think you've got a bunch of written shit all over his face. Yeah, I mean, they're the nicest people. The thing about like jelly roll and post is like once you talk to them, once you're talking to them, you don't see the tattoos anymore.

You just see the human, you know, it's just like they're wearing a shirt. It's like, no, it's nothing, you know. It's normal. And things have changed a lot. Like I was born in 75, right? So I'm heading towards 50 quick. Back then, tattoos on the face was crazy. Oh, yeah. One of my childhood heroes and somehow by the grace of God, he's become a close friend of mine. And Marmsdrog, lead singer from Rancidate, has a tattoo of a spider web on his head and a spider on his neck.

And I remember seeing him when I was a kid at a show, and he like, dude, scary. And Lars Regis and from Rancidate says skunks on his forehead. They're super nice guys. I mean, they're Travis Barker's super nice guys. Yeah, Tim and Travis through the transplants. Yeah, Tim and Travis do transplants. And like, you see those guys, you're like, whoa, but now I think it shifted a little bit. But back then, I remember thinking like, that's an hardly, that's a tough guy.

Yeah. You know, and certainly Lars is a tough guy and Tim too. But the, you know, I remember seeing it like you only saw it on bikers and like gnarly punk rockers. People that had checked out a society completely. Mohawk used to be, you're not getting a job. Right. A nose ring used to remember when a nose ring or an eye ring cover, you go into Starbucks and the person would have it covered up. You know, like, because they weren't allowed to have it. Right, right, right.

Now it's icy medical students with eyebrow rings and nose rings and stuff. So things have definitely changed. Yeah, we're a little bit more open-minded of decorations, but it's, it is a thing though that you're taking a giant ass chance by tattooing your hands. Well, friend of mine, who's admittedly as a psychologist, said, you know, tattoos are largely an expression of what you feel on the inside, put to the outside. And I was like, that sounds good. Yeah, yeah. Sort of.

I don't know. It's just art. I like art. I like art on my walls. I like art on my arms. I like art. There's some Rogan tattoos out there. I saw Lex Friedman face tattoo. There's a bunch of Lex Friedman face tattoos. That's so good. You just had a very good, oh, you did too. Happy birthday. Thank you very much. And Lex, happy birthday. Yeah, there's a lot of, that's the weirdest one. It's tattoos of people's faces on your body forever. And there's, I don't know how many of them are me.

There's thousands of them. I mean, I used to post them on Instagram all the time, but then I thought I was encouraging people to get my face tattooed so that they can, so I put it up on my Instagram, but it's kind of crazy. There might be some reward loop circuitry going on there, but... One hundred percent. But before I forget this, can I ask you this? The people that are into this smelling salt stuff, they're power lifters. And they take a big sniff of that stuff before they lift weights.

Why would that help them? A adrenaline. A adrenaline. So, a couple more things about olfaction. And by the way, I love this stuff. This is so wild, because it's the most primitive part of our brain and nervous system. We were chemical sensors before we were light sensors. We were sensing chemical environments. Is this a safe chemical environment? Right. And we evolved from that.

We know that, for instance, memories that are associated with smell, like the people say, the smell of my grandmother's kitchen or somebody's hands, my grandfather's hands, that those memories stick with us longer than anything. Because the olfactory bulb has a direct line to a couple of structures in the brain. So we have an olfactory bulb, which is the main thing for smell. There's something called the accessory olfactory bulb.

And so it divides into primitive smells that are like aversive getaway quick. Those tend to go through a really fast line through the old accessory olfactory bulb. It takes us straight to the amygdala to the piriform cortex that says, move your body and face it away from that. Like I didn't sit there on the smelling salt. It's like, boom, get away. It's like a reflex. It's like in fish, there's this thing called the maldener neuron, where you touch on one side of the body, what does the fish do?

It goes the opposite direction. A big, huge neuron, hardwired circuit. Well, they have those lateral lines that detects the sense sounds and things and vibrations in the water. They're sensing an electro sensing in a distance. And these maldener neurons are incredible. You touch, boom, the fish heads the opposite direction. It doesn't go like, oh, are you another friendly fish you want to mate? They go, I'm out of here. Oh, and then they check you out. Right. And so it's a reflex for safety.

The olfactory system has these two pathways, the olfactory bulb for kind of like, oh, this is black rifle coffee. And then there's the smelly salt one that goes to the accessory olfactory bulb, straight to the amygdala, which is associated with threat detection and other things, straight to the pier form cortex, and then to a motor circuit. Boom, turn the head the other way, get out, exhale, don't inhale more. Aversive, okay?

So the thing about smell is that it's got these very hardwired components. And they're set up for either a petitive, like, hmm, let me explore more. And if in more versus a versus as opposed to aversive behaviors, like get get me the hell away. And the these brain areas are among the more ancient brain areas. Now I say ancient people nowadays start picking apart. Like, well, it's not just limbic and cortex. It cortex is part of limbic. That's all true.

But if you look at our brains and you look at the brains of like a turtle or even a snake, all the stuff we're talking about right here are all they're not exactly the same, but they're all present. When you get to humans, what you really add is a lot of cerebral cortex for the thinking and association stuff. Like, you know, I've been here before, so I'm a little bit less, you know, like looking around as much as I did last time.

Like things that, you know, context dependent learning, context dependent stuff, whereas all the highly reflexive stuff is going to be hardwired, circuitry you find in every animal, every person. And you need to divide things into three different responses in humans, okay? In order to survive, yum, I'm going to move toward it, yuck, I'm going to move away, and meh. There's basically three motor responses to anything, yum, yuck, or meh.

Now there's a, there's a matter of degrees like you might see somebody, you really like, you want to, I don't know, joy, d-as or something. You know, you see him, like, I want to run over, see him, right? So there's an repetitive circuit moves you towards it. See something as a little odd, you might pause, I don't know what that is, or something aversive, like something happens in the parking lot, and you're like, I'm getting the hell out of here.

So the brain as complex as it is needs to divide things into one of three different motor responses, forward, pause or retreat. Okay, I was playing with Jamie's dog out there before, I was like, I couldn't get him to back up, so it's kind of cool about the bulldog. You charge him and he just goes, I'm like 20 times his size, but he's just like, well he's also never experienced anybody being mean to him. So every, except a little, a few dogs, apparently.

But most of his experiences are play, like he knows you can just run up to you and bite you and you'll play with him. Right. So you said about why the smelling salts and adrenaline, so here's the deal. When we have this aversive response, the move away, the yuck response, get me away. There's a parallel response in the brain and body of the release of epinephrine adrenaline, it's the same thing, sorry for the dual naming. Epinephrine and adrenaline are the same thing. Same thing.

Long complicated boring history as to why it's named two things. Nor adrenaline nor epinephrine, same molecule. So, so let's just call it adrenaline for sake of simplicity. Adrenaline is released from the adrenals in the body and it's released from a area in the brain called the locus ceruleus, which sends out a bunch of little wires axons to sprinkler the brain with adrenaline.

And both systems work in parallel. So when you smell something aversive, it goes inhale, okay, okay, certain all factory neurons, cue that to the accessory olfactory bulb, bam, straight to the amygdala. Amygdala sends a signal, brah, down to the adrenals atop the kidneys. They release adrenaline. I believe we're not a signal up to locus ceruleus. It sprinklers the brain with adrenaline and you just had within a couple hundred milliseconds.

You just got a parallel adrenaline response in brain and body that allows you to do what more easily move. Now you're ready for motion, you're ready for movement. In fact, I'm sure if you put that under the deepest sleepers nose, the middle of the night they're going to wake up. Like a gunshot one. They used to give it to boxers and they got hurt in the corner that give them smelling salts and wake them up. Yeah, because one of the best pain killers is adrenaline.

Because you've been hit hard before, isn't it amazing how little it hurts when it happens and how much it hurts later? Yeah, it's kind of crazy. It's crazy. That's the thing that's weird about fights, like while they're happening, your shins are getting battered, things are getting hurt. You don't really feel much adrenaline. Unless you get kicked hard to the body. The liver shots doesn't matter how much adrenaline you have pumped in. There's something about getting hit in the liver.

When you get hit like right here, if you get kicked or punched right here, it's a crazy feeling. It's just shuts everything off. It's real weird. Your body just shuts off. I've seen these images of somebody just like melt. It looks like they melt and it's not. It looks like they take a few paces and they're ready to counter punch or something and then it hits slowly. I don't know. Well, some shots go away.

So like some pain, like if you get punched in the gut and you're you know, you're you're tidying up in anticipation, it still hurts. It hurts. But then you move a little bit and then you're okay again. But the liver is the opposite. The liver you get hit and then there's this like sharp pain and a delay and then... Everything just shuts off. It's very it's very hard to fake and that you're fine and move away.

You see like telltale sons, like one thing guys will do all the time when they get hit in the liver, they drop the right arm down and they pin it to their body. So maybe they're fighting like this, they're moving, they whack the liver and you see them do like that and they're still moving. But they can't help it. They have their own pre... because they know one more shot there and they're fucked. So they barely can keep a poker face and move around.

But there's telltale signs that you see that are just instinctive. You see them just drop their hand. And a lot of times guys will use that to set them up with a head kick. So like they'll hit you a bunch of... a good example of that is Islam Makchew and Alexander Vokynowski. He hit them with a left kick to the body multiple times in that fight and then fired off one to the head and knocked them out. So it's like they're just hiding this. You just slowed the leg.

You see the leg come up and it's very hard to wreck. There's a kick called the question mark kick. And it's called the question mark kick because in Taekwondo he's called a fake front kick roundhouse kick. And what it is is you're lifting the knee up as if you're kicking to the body in a straight line and then you whip it over and go like that and turn it to roundhouse kick.

Pull up a Glaube Fatosa. Glaube Fatosa was the best at it. So much so that a lot of people started calling it the Brazilian kick. Because this guy was a K1 champion who had the most flexible hips and the craziest question mark kick. And he would literally bring it up and down over the guard. So your hands would be up this like you think your hands would protect your head. He would bring it up around like this and drop it down in your head and knock people out.

So wild because to this day I don't know anybody you can kick as good as him with that kick. Like to this day he has the best highlight. There's a lot of people that are really good at that kick. But Glaube had a very unusual flexibility of his hips. Watch this. Look at this. Well that's just a regular one. But he's got some of them that go over the distance. Some of his highlights. Look at that. See how it does that. See how it just goes up and around.

It also sick as knee just got. Yeah watch this. Watch this. He's going to do it in slow motion. Watch the whip of it. Look at that. That's so crazy. So you don't even know it's look how he just whip it down. And it's just there's a lot of people that are good with that. But he was the best at it. I mean the best. It was just weird to see how he could do it. I'm always amazed how people can kick standing so closely.

Oh yeah. Well Glaube it was it's just flexibility of the hips. It's leg dexterity. But the way he could do it man. It's just the finest question mark kick of all time. I mean here's knocking out semi-shilt to his seven feet tall with it. It was bizarre to watch that kind of flexibility and also bizarre that no one else seems to have really kind of captured that technique as well as he did. And Glaube used to fight. I mean this was like K. Well there's Israel out of Sonya.

A really good one too. It still has a really good one. Look at this one. Wow. But that's a little bit more straightforward. I mean that's like straight to the chin and it's a beautiful kick. But the way Glaube used to do it it would go over the top and down. See that? Like that is so crazy. I can't do that. I've been throwing kicks in my whole life. I can't throw it like that. I'm always watching their eyes and these fires eyes. It's amazing to me like years ago I saw a Mayweather fight.

And it was obviously on pay-per-view. And he was just getting paid for sure. Right? That was his thing. It was always amazing me in the slow mo like where he would slip punches by like centimeters. They may think that like his depth perception and the depth perception of fighters must successful fighters must just be exquisite. Because I mean like slipping at that distance would just touch in movement.

That's one thing but it's also a pattern recognition. You've been doing it so many times and you know. So really good fighters. One of the things that you see is they don't just charge out in the first round. The first round is like a feeling out process. So you're downloading a lot of data points. You're downloading foot movement and a lot of guys watch tape and they download it from that. But then you don't really know until you're in there with a person. So they're downloading positions.

They're downloading what a guy does. Like if you pivot to the left, does he move forward? Does he move back? Does he throw the left hook? Does he throw the right hand? What does he do? And how good is he at closing distance? Does he try to fire from where he's at? Or does he skip forward in fire? Does he give any telltale signs? Does he telegraph? So there's a lot of things that a fighter looks for. May whether it had some of the best counter punchers in the history of the fucking sport.

He was so good at like staying in the pocket. So he was an elusive guy there. Yeah. Yeah. He's slipping. Pattern recognition. Pattern recognition. So he knows that left hook is coming. And so look how straight he throws that right hand. See how straight he threw that? So Canelo is throwing these big wide punches and Floyd is just cutting them off at the path and then moving his head out of the line of those hooks that come his way.

So do you think it's conscious? I'm obsessed with this notion of unconscious genius, like different domains of super high performance where the people don't exactly know how they do it, but they do it. Well, you know how you do it, but you've also done it so many times in the gym and in fights that it's second nature. So you're not thinking of it as you're doing it.

One of the things about countering people is when I was in my prime when I was fighting all the time, I would throw kicks and they would land before I even knew I was going to do it because someone would do something and as they would do something I instinctively knew because a pattern recognition.

And I would say if someone lifts his left leg, if he's standing with his left leg forward and he lifts his left leg and he's coming towards me with his left leg, I know that he's balancing on that right leg and that the left leg is coming this way. And if I spin and catch him, I can catch him as his momentum is going this way and I'll catch him that way and it'll double the power of the punch or the kick.

And I would say, I'm going to have to teach you because there's like a conscious and awareness of how you do it. I guess what I'm, I think this notion pattern recognition, it's interesting because earlier we were talking about pattern recognition for finding people are lying. Right, you have this pattern recognition thing that, you know, you're not saying it's perfect, but you can sense something. There's things.

And so it's a combination of things that we aren't always aware of that's the unconscious part of the unconscious genius thing that I'm referring to. And so there's this idea like our brains are pattern recognition prediction machines. And so do you think like in other words, two questions.

Do you think may weather was ever pulled aside and said, listen, pay attention to their left shoulder and keep your eye on his right eye. I'm just 100% OK. And were you ever told, hey, if his left leg comes up, that means he's balancing on his right. So you need to prepare a counter attack or an attack. That's where drills come in. OK, so you do drills and you do drills constantly. And one of the things that may may weather's father was a great fighter may with his father fought sugar.

Ray Leonard back in the 1970s when sugar ray was in his prime and gave him a hell of a fight and his brother or his uncle rather his uncle Roger was Roger may weather the black mom. He was a great fighter. So he grew up as a child around some of the best boxers in the world. And so he was constantly seeing the successful motions that they did and constantly seeing them exploit weaknesses in other fighters and then constantly sparring.

So in sparring, you're not just sparring, you're not just fighting when you're sparring, but you're sort of downloading data, you're downloading data points for a real fight. And then you're doing drills where a guy will, you know, some guys they'll do it with mitts, well, they'll throw a hand at you and they'll slip and counter here.

Here, let me show you this. This is guy, Ilya Toporia and Ilya Toporia is one of the absolute best fighters in the world. He's the current UFC featherweight champion and the dude is just fucking phenomenal.

But when you, one of the things that's phenomenal about him is his technique, his technique is, is perfect. There's like no fat in his technique. There's no wasted movement. So when an opportunity presents itself, everything is so fast because the technique is so streamlined, but like look at how he hits the pads. And when you watch, he hits the pads and may weather is a great example that as well. Did I send it to you? No, didn't go through. I totally sent it. Hold on.

So does I sent it? No, yeah, it's on Instagram. I sent it to you though on a text message. Really? I sent it to you. You got it. Okay. Ilya Toporia, like I said, one of the some of the best hands in the sport, current UFC featherweight champion and knocked out Volkanovsky, who was maybe the greatest of all time. Watch him hit the punches. Look at this. He's moving his head when the guy throws punches, just slipping just slightly.

It's like total economy of movement and the speed, man, the fucking speed of that. Look at the hand. Look at the hand speed. Fucking incredible. I mean, if you know how difficult that is to do and do it that fast, give me that sound again. Let me hear this. I mean, these are like five, six punches a second. It almost looks like it's sped up by one and a half times. And just phenomenal technique.

But see how those punches like they're not even talking. So when he's throwing the mitts at his head to get him to duck, there's no communication. He just sees that hand coming towards him and he's ducking. He sees this hand coming towards him and he's ducking. It's all like slight slips away and it's slight motions, which is all you need to get away from a punch, right? You just, you don't want to move too far. You're wasting a lot of energy and you can't counter attack.

One of the best things about Floyd and one of the most brilliant things about him. He's one of the most elusive fighters of all time, but he didn't move around. He stood right in front of you and you couldn't fucking hit him. That's true mastery of space and true mastery of technique. I mean, he was, in my opinion, he's the best boxer that's ever lived. Yeah, I mean, I'm not qualified to rank people, but I watched when he was making that ascent towards it ended up being 50, you know?

He just fought last weekend, this weekend. Yeah, he fought a match against John Gotti's grandson, which is crazy. That's scary for a lot of reasons. This is the second time they fought. The first time they fought it ended in a brawl. Like a bunch of people jumped in the ring. It was crazy because they stopped the fight because they were talking too much shit to each other and holding on to each other too much. So the referee stopped the fight for whatever reason. I don't know.

And in this fight was even crazy too because the referee was, the first referee was terrible. And the referee called Floyd, said Floyd Mayor, whether it hit him behind the head, absolutely incorrect call. Floyd threw a right hand and it caught him on the side of the head and the referee claimed that it was behind the head. So Floyd fired the referee in the middle of the bout. He stops the bout. He's like, get the fuck out of here. Get out of here.

Does he have a promoter? Well, I guess. I mean, also, it's Floyd Mayor, whether like what's the referee going to do? Fuck you. You know, I'm going to stop the fight. Like also they're in Mexico City. Like you get killed. Like just get out of the ring, buddy. So Floyd throws this punch and he's 100% correct. The punch landed the side of the head. It's a right hook. It's a perfect punch. And the referee was saying watch the back of the head.

He's like, what the fuck are you talking about? That wasn't the back of the head. And so he kicks the guy out and they bring in a different referee who finishes the fight. It was insanity. And Floyd won. It was an exhibition. It's kind of a bullshit money grab. Honestly. So this is, you see the punch? That's the punch right there. It's just a right hook. He's saying back of the head. Like so Floyd's like get the fuck out of here. Just get out of here.

Fuck you. Get out of here. He's like get the fuck out of here. And if anybody's qualified to say get out of here, it's fucking Floyd Mayor, whether the best box or all time. He's 100% correct. That referee made a giant stupid error. He's like get out of here. Get out of here. He's like get out of the fucking ring. This is domain. Yeah. And he's right. Everybody watching and is right. No one thinks it's a bad punch.

If you let's see it again, we can see it one more time. It's a counter right hand. Let's do it. We can see it in slow motion. So he throws the punch. Boom. It's just a perfect right hook. It's a perfect right hook. What it does is a punch that goes over the top of the guard and catches him in exposed area of the head.

It's a perfect punch. And for the referee to interfere there. And also it's like it's literally like someone who probably doesn't know how to box at all telling the greatest boxer of all time that what he's doing is wrong. Which is just banana. So he got rid of the guy in the middle of the fight. But he's still doing these bouts at 46 years old. Still boxing these young kid. Again, this John got to the third. Who is a very good up and coming MMA fighter. So you know, he has all the weapons.

Take down submissions, kicks, all that jazz. But he's choosing to fight Floyd in a boxing fight just for money. Just like Conor McGregor did. It's really a trick. He gets these people to box with them. They have no business boxing with them. And he's making millions and millions of dollars doing this way after his competitive career is over. Which is because he's earned that right. Hey man. He's a genius. He really is a genius. He's a genius in figuring out a way to keep making money.

And one of the reasons why people watch him fight is not because he's like Mike Tyson just goes out and destroys people. They're like watching a fight because they hate him because he talks so much shit. And he's like, look at my million dollar watch. Look at my fucking jet. Look at my house. Look at this. He's like constantly showing you all these things that he has. Like he'll lay out watches in a hotel bed.

Like this is a million dollars where the watch is. This watch goes for two million dollars. And they're like, this is my small watch that takes some time. But I want to show you when I show up. I bring out the big boy and it brings out this watch is covered in diamonds. It's like fucking five million dollars. And so you hate him. He'll hate him. He creates envy. Yes. Yeah. He creates envy and you want him to lose. But he's not gonna. He's not gonna. He's too. He's so good.

But the other thing is discipline. Right. You don't he's not just this cocky guy who's like really good at boxing. He also has incredible discipline. I've seen a dozen parties running in the middle of the night. He would go to a nightclub with everybody else. Be drinking water. Everybody's party and having a good time. Floyd would leave the nightclub at 2 a.m. have his bodyguards drive the car and he would run in front of the car for hours.

Run home two o'clock in the morning. Run five six miles. And did it all the time. Just always did. It was always fit. Always in shape. Never got fat. Never got lazy. Always was ready. And so never really experienced decline. And then decided at a certain point in time like after the con of a Gregor fight.

Okay, I'm done. Done. Did it all beat everybody. Undefeated by. And now he just has these these demonstration fights where there were little exhibitions where he just beaten people up that have no business in the ring with them. And one of them he was walking around with a fucking a card a ring card. He took it from the ring card girl and started dancing around. So he's like under no threat whatsoever.

He's enjoying life. Well, people like to be angry. I'm always calling to mind a study. I'll keep this really brief. But there's a famous study by a guy named Robert Heath who is a neurosurgeon. And he put a bunch of stimulating electrodes into the brain of some humans getting neurosurgery. And he offered them the opportunity to stimulate any area they wanted. And he's to me. Some areas and they feel happy or giddy or drunk or sexual rouse or whatever.

You know that one area that all there were only three subjects but for human neurosurgery that's not a terrible subject number. The area that all three of them preferred vastly over the other areas to be stimulated evoked the sense of anger and frustration. Really? Yeah, people like to be angry, which is why Twitter is so popular. Yeah. And to some extent Instagram and I don't know.

Sure, but Twitter is the one the most because it's mostly just talking or mostly just text Instagram is photographs and you can just I don't comment on people's very, very rarely. I might have commented on photos 12 times in my life.

You know, just a friend like that's awesome way to go. Something nice. But I don't even read comments. But I look at pictures. I go, that's cool. Look at that video. That's fucking crazy. I'll give you a little tap double tap. Give you a little heart. Give you a little love. And they move on about my day.

And Twitter, I'm constantly just engaging with people's thoughts and arguments and debates. And that's why I think Twitter is the most addictive of all the social media platforms in terms of engagement but not as addictive as TikTok in terms of it compels you to continue to watch. I want to keep going with this but I have to piece hope out. I did the sauna before we got here and I drank 64 liters of water. So 64 ounces rather. All right, we'll be right back.

We were at people like to get angry and you were saying that you had another urge to take another sniff of these smelling salts. So I'm observing something interesting about the smelling salts. Like it's definitely like, it's hard and then feel really good afterwards. You can feel it in your body. You feel it in my body. And then I noticed there's kind of a hunger for it. Right. Like another hit. Yeah, like maybe in 20 minutes or so.

Just like a cocaine thing. Oh, allegedly. I've never tried coaxies. Me neither good for you. But that's what I hear. Yeah, I wonder I doubt that hits the dopamine circuit. But the little valuable science tidbit. We hear so much about dopamine adrenaline. Look, there are three molecules. They're called the cataclysmines dopamine epinephrine adrenaline and nor epinephrine nor adrenaline.

And they are actually about summer biochemical derivatives of others. And they are cousins. They work like a little like a little clan of molecules to raise alertness and focus and drive. I think the great Robert Sapolsky said it best. He said dopamine is not about the pursuit of pleasure. It's about the pleasure of pursuit.

That makes sense. That's why he's Robert Sapolsky. Yeah, it's all about the journey. It's right. So you combine motivation with adrenaline, which gets your body in a position to move better and nor adrenaline, which kind of works in between those two. It's a little more complicated and not worth going into. But they work as kind of like a gang of three to raise alertness directional motivation and go.

And so I wouldn't be surprised if there was a little bit of a dopamine orgic aspect to those smelling salts. I have to look it up and see. But I certainly like it feels good. It feels good. Everybody likes it. That's weird. And I like, you know, that's why I've never tried cocaine or amphetamine. Like I like upstates as they call them. Me too. Same thing. I've never tried to add her all either, but I've been tempted.

People tell me, but I'm like, Jesus, I've never tried it. I'm working. I'm trying to think that there's some, you know, there was a chart out on Twitter. We were just talking about Twitter where all the different neutropics or let's not call them smart drugs, but things that can enhance alertness. Things like alpha GPC as you know, 600 milligrams alpha GPC. I don't care who it is. That's like, where's the double blind.

A placebo controlled study that shows it raises alertness and focus. Look, as much as I believe in science, you don't need a double blind placebo controlled study to know the switch kick in the shin hurts and that 600 milligrams of alpha GPC is going to make you more alert. Is it safe?

Well, we did double blind placebo controls studies for alpha brain. Right. Right. And so they exist. And certainly that's one that I would put kind of high on the tier of things for if you want alertness and focus. It's certainly more benign than a lot of prescription drugs that create alertness.

But the Indian is also really effective for that too. And I don't know how many studies that are on that. Not as many. Theanine takes away the jitters like 100 to 200 milligrams of theanine will take away the jitters associated with stimulants, which is why it's now in a lot of energy drinks.

So you'll see alpha GPC, theanine, sometimes L. Tyrosine, which is a precursor to dopamine. But there were a couple of things on that list, including prescription drugs like Modaphanil, for instance, which was originally designed for the treatment of narcolepsy. Was it designed for that or was it designed as a performance enhancing drug, but they needed a way to prescribe it both. Yeah. So it for the treatment of narcolepsy.

It also has been shown to improve alertness and cognitive function in sleep deprived individuals. So you can imagine military finding that very useful. That's new vigilant, ProVitual, right? Correct. I took that stuff for a while. I was taking it and you know what I would really like to take it like say if I had a gig in San Diego and I was done with my gig at like 11 o'clock, I was like, I want to go home. I don't want to stay in a hotel.

Fuck it. Let me drive home. And if I would drive home, there'd be that risk of the sleep coming on because of the, there's a weird thing about being on the highway about those lines. They fucking hypnotize. Oh, yeah, it's really. Oh, yeah. And the room. Yeah. And so for anybody out here, listen to this because this is my manager told me this. It's really important. If you think you're going to fall asleep, there's a great way to mitigate it. That's pain free.

Get a rag like a wash cloth and some ice and some water and have like a little thing next to you with a cold wet rag and just wipe that rag on your face. And then you're good for like five more minutes. Reach in there and start home. Man, I'm just gonna sleep again. Wipe that rag on your face. You wake right up. This is a great one. This is a great one. And it fits right in with what Matt Walker says to do the opposite to fall asleep.

Will you wash your face with warm water to go hot shower? I go the sauna or going the sauna. Everyone says, well, you're heating up your body. You need to cool down to fall asleep. But you heat up the surface of your body and the mediocre optic area of your hypothalamus, which is your brain's thermostat says, hey, the surface of the body is heating up. What should I do? Cool down my core temperature and that puts you asleep.

Would it be bad to do sauna and then cold plunge and then try to go to sleep? I do that. If I'm late in the day and I'm tired, it's not a problem. But I end with kind of a warmish shower.

If I want to be alert, I end on cold. If I want to go to sleep, I end with warm. Which is why I start the day with cold to wake up. And when you get in the cold, the surface of the body gets cold. That's kind of a no brainer. And the core body temperature goes up because the mediocre optic area your brain's thermostat says, wait, the surface of the body is cooling down. I'm going to heat up and waking up in the morning is largely the consequence of body temperature going up.

So why do you wake up more quickly in the cold? Well, body temperature goes up more quickly. Also big shot of adrenaline from cold water. Nobody escapes the adrenaline from cold water. Right. At least upon getting in as long as it's cold enough. And last time you picked on me about how warm I'm keeping my eyes back. Can't even be called in my spas. So my cold plunge is now set at mid 40s. That's better.

Getting better, but I still go into the sauna at 210 220. By the way, I don't know if I'm right. I'm probably wrong. My wife doesn't want she wants to get a second cold plunge because she doesn't like how cold mine is because mine is ice in it. Yeah, you're probably in the 30s. Yeah, 34. It's fucking cold.

It's a beast mode kind of that I've got a new one that I got from Morocco for we have to so we have one here at the gym that's a blue cube that's this one's insane because you can crank it and you turn up the knob and it'll be like a flowing raging river.

Well, and the flow breaks up the thermal layer on the outside. You're right. When you're sitting in the cold plunge, I always say those stoic things where people are in the cold plunge real still. Yeah, look and tough. Tell that person to sift their arms around. Let that cold water getting your armpits.

Well, what's happening is you're breaking up the thermal layer that keeps you a little bit warmer. This is why we huddle in there because it's not like you're making yourself like it's not like you're wearing a jacket. If you move or if the water is moving, yeah, much more effective.

It's painful for me to just check my watch to see how much time I got left. Yeah, I have a system down. If I count slowly to 10, two times. So I count to 20 and I know exactly how long my breath is for it to be three minutes. I know how to do it. So I do it now. That's awesome. It's a little cheating. You know what I do? Yeah, and I can't believe I'm going to admit this publicly. You know what I do? I got two little rubber duckies in there.

One's a tougher looking rubber duckie and his name is Rogan. I'm not kidding. I shot a video of this. I'll send it to you. My producer is going to kill me. But then there's another one. And that's Hubertman. And it's you basically teasing me about what a whoo I am. And I do that for the entire time. I'm in the cold plunge. So I forget that I'm in the cold plunge. And then at the end you go, okay, you can get out now. And I'm like, okay.

Well, here's what it is. I don't know if the cold is any. If it's any better to be 34 degrees or if it's any better to be 45 degrees or 50 degrees. But what I do know is that I don't like 34 degrees. So that's why I do it. Because if I feel like I can get away with making it a little bit easier, I feel like a bitch. So that's why I do it as cold as it can get before it frees a solid.

Which is C to be 34 degrees. Well, this gets to something that I know we've talked a little bit about before offline, not on microphone, which is doing hard things translates to an ability to do hard things and probably translates provided doesn't kill you to a longer life. And you've explained that there's actually a part of your brain that grows.

So there's a brain area that most neuroscientists aren't aware of called the anterior mid-singulate cortex. Scientists who are in the know know about it. I teach an anatomy medical students at Stanford. It's an area that we cover in passing, but there are a lot of brain areas.

You got to get, you know, can't get to everything. But in the last couple of years, there have been studies of this area, the anterior mid-singulate cortex that make it super important for everybody to know about, not just neuroscientists.

So, let's see. Colleague of mine at Stanford, Joe Parvizis, a neurosurgeon. He's in there stimulating different brain areas, including anterior mid-singulate cortex and areas near it in human patients while they're awake, preparing them for neurosurgery for other reasons.

Stimulates anterior mid-singulate cortex. And what do all people who have their anterior mid-singulate cortex report? They feel like there's something about to happen. Something's kind of looming, a challenge, a storm, some report as a storm or a physical challenge.

But their overall sensation is one that they want to lean into it. They want to challenge it. Now, this area has subsequently been imaged. And people who are successful dieters, it grows larger. And people that fail at a dieting or nutrition program, it gets smaller. People that embrace a new form of exercise, and here's the key point that they don't want to do, this area gets bigger. People that are just doing things that they enjoy doing, does not change in shape or size.

Now, here's where it gets even more interesting. The anterior mid-singulate cortex is larger in volume in a group of people called super-agers. That's a bit of a misnomer because it implies the age faster. They actually age more slowly as it relates to cognitive decline. The slope of cognitive decline is not as steep in these people, meaning they're holding on to cognitive abilities longer than other people into older age.

And the universal quality among these super-agers is not just a larger enter mid-singulate cortex, but that they challenge themselves to do things that are challenging and they don't want to do or really don't want to do. So when we hear, oh, you know, people should do crossword puzzles to maintain their memory, probably good to keep some cognitive flexibility going. But if you love crossword puzzles, you're not going to grow your enter mid-singulate cortex.

If you love 45 degrees in the cold plunge after an hour-long run in the hills, which I do, probably not going to do much to grow this area. If you really don't want to do something and you do it, this area gets bigger. And it's got inputs and outputs from all of these different brain areas that make all of this make sense, like the dopamine system, like the learning and memory system, like the areas of the brain that say, no, I'm going to retreat from that. It's aversive.

So, you want to push yourself to do something that you don't want to do. This area gets bigger. And the best part is it translates to an ability to do harder things elsewhere. This, to me, I get obviously super excited about because it's nested in human data and animal data in real world examples of dieting and exercise and aging and longevity and all of that.

And it speaks to much of what you've talked about on this podcast for years and years, which is do hard things. It will give you an ability to do other hard things. But if you love doing deadlifts, honestly, even sets to failure on those deadlifts, enjoy them, benefit from them, all the wonderful things that come with doing deadlifts, great. But you should probably also do something that you don't enjoy doing if you have an interest in the kind of benefits that we're talking about.

Well, it completely makes sense that your brain would have to develop an ability to continue to do difficult things and that ability to not hesitate and push through the ability to not procrastinate and go forward. And that thing is probably like all things. It's like cardiovascular endurance, muscular endurance. Like you develop an ability to do more of it because of that.

Because your brain recognizes this is something that we're going to have to deal with. Let's figure out how to respond to this. And movement itself, like physical movement or cognitive movement, if you're learning new things like comedy, preparing new things or learning poetry or drawing, like I used to draw a lot, start drawing again, carry around this notebook everywhere. I'm not going to show the drawings. They're just for me.

But pushing myself to do something that I enjoy, but that like there's a barrier there. Are you any good? I mean, I do anatomical drawings. I'm going to say what you got. I got a lot of it. No, it's like super bad. I think you're super bad. These are just my favorite. These are actually just my journal book notes. But my, but I've actually, I used to post my drawings on Instagram. That's how I started.

In 2019, I wasn't thinking about having a podcast. I was just posting pictures of the retina talking about the retina. So 2019, I started posting on Instagram. 2020, I came on this podcast for the first time. But you were in LA at that time. And yeah. And then I went on Lex's podcast a little bit later. And then he goes, you should start podcasts.

So I started January 21. Yeah. Okay. So here's some of each. Oh, wow. Pretty good. They're just for fun. They're just for fun. They're just for fun. Not bad at all. But I like to use them to teach. So they're not listening. I'm no DaVinci. But that's pretty good. Actually, but the point. I'm obsessed with this thing that somewhere between perfect accuracy and total representation of biology, like a brain or a set of cells.

And at the other end of the continuum, like ball and stick, there's like a perfect sweet spot for teaching. And so what I'm doing there is what I do in the classroom. I go, okay, listen, we're going to talk about how muscle releases a micro RNA that helps you burn fat. And then I kind of remind people like there's fat. There's a, you know, so I don't want too much detail, but I don't want too little detail.

That's good. Like the anatomy of the hand is dead on. That's really good. So I'm trying. I'm trying. Now that's really good. And of course, that's not anatomically correct. Like the nerves don't spit out of the tip of the finger. Right. But when you're trying to teach.

Yeah, that's good. I. Yeah, that's really good. Yeah, like I'm just trying. Yeah, I'm not again, I'm not trying to be DaVinci. I just want people to learn the information. One of my daughters is insanely good. Yeah. Well, I wanted to be a conical illustrator when I was young. And I always wonder like how much of talent gets passed on to kids.

It's hard to separate nature and nurture there. But honestly, I think there's something there. There's something there. There's some because there's certain people that like if their parent was a singer. But then you go, well, maybe they were singing around the house a lot when they're growing up.

People are going to think I'm weird for saying this, but I don't care. I am weird. I'm going to say it anyway. Shoals. The way he moves, like how live he is. As parents are like dancers and performers, right? Right. Right. Also, he's a good boxer.

Is he really? Yeah. Yeah. Like just his movements are so atypical. And like he's he's like it's like watching him is is cool. Like he looks cool the way he moves. He's free. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a skateboarder named Jimmy Wilkins who's like breaking every barrier on skateboarding. And he actually uses his knees to contact the board and move the board while his hands are free. And he's a smaller guy.

A real small real-life super loose ankles. And I said to him like what are your parents do? And he goes my mom's a ballerina and my dad's an orchestra conductor. This guy's using his knees on the board. So like he does everything. Not everything. But he does a lot of things hands free at mock speed. For people in skateboarding, they probably just want to see flips and 900 variables. And that stuff's cool. But he makes everything look so good.

For those that are in the know, Jimmy Wilkins is the next is like the next like Tony will say Tony Hawk everyone will say like watching Jimmy look see the whole thing here is that Jimmy's skateboarding is like perfect poetry. So the reason but his back knee is often used to stabilize the board because he's got that hip looseness that you were talking about earlier. And so his he's he's incredible. He won X Games last year or not this year. This year he took third.

So those guys get banged up though. He gets guys get a lot of concussion. He's big on the nicotine. I'm trying to get him to quit the nicotine. So he because he loves the nicotine. But between why you getting him to quit? I don't have a problem with people taking nicotine. But it is it's a vasoconstrictor raises blood pressure. As long as you're healthy in other ways. I just think that I see people go from like one pouch to a canister a day.

Oh yeah. It's just they ramp up the dosage to I like threes. Okay mild three milligrams. But I Lucy sent me some that are 12s. Jesus Louise. I can do like half a piece of nicotine. I put that the 12 in my mouth for like 30 seconds and my body's like get it out of here.

That's a lot. I mean it seems like you're good at keeping things in that useful but not excessive domain. Yes. Well I'm a control freak in that way. I know I want to be in control. I don't ever want to be out of control. Like I've never been addicted to a sub other than coffee I guess.

But I've I've taken time off a coffee too just because I know that I like it too much. But coffee doesn't overwhelm me. Right. So if I felt like coffee was overwhelming me or if it was difficult to acquire or illegal. I probably would quit coffee. I struggled but at the rate the world's going to be like well it's always good. The reason why coffee is legal and is the reason why they created math really because it's good for productivity.

Like coffee keeps you from getting tired. It's good for productivity. It's also enjoyable. People like a nice warm liquid. I love a and and since I really got into coffee from doing this podcast really. I drink it black. I like coffee. I like taste. I look forward to it. I have one every morning. I look I like it. But I love it in the afternoon. But if I thought it was fuck with my life 100% I would quit.

Yeah. You know I mean I've had times when I was drinking too much. Mostly because of comedy because of nights you're out with your boys and everybody wants to drink. They're all drinking. My friends are all drunk. Like a good solid. No, Whitney doesn't drink. No Whitney does not drink. But a good solid percentage of my friends drink a lot. They drink all the time. They drink at clubs.

I tried to get it to quit. Bert is not going to quit. Well he asked me to help him. Otherwise I want you to talk to him. Just talk about Bert. That's what he wants. But that's what he wants. Let's talk about me. Let's talk about me about how I have to quit. Come on talk to me about me. Let's make it all about Bert. That's a Bert legs. He's not going to quit. Well he was doing better with his health and then he posted that photo himself in the wetsuit. Come on Bert. Like get with it.

Did you get fat again? Did you send me a picture the other day he was all skinny? Is he lying? No, he's looking more like a melted candle. Son of a bitch. He got big at least. He got jacked. He started lifting weights. I feel bad making fun of him but I'm not making fun of him. I'm just worried about his health. Oh yeah, that's not good. I'm worried about your health. Well the thing is Bert is on tour. Right? He's got painted toenails too. What the fuck are you doing?

He's on tour. So he's on this fully loaded tour. He's doing all these arenas with all these friends. And they're doing activities constantly. They go to water parks. I don't think they go to water parks. You know shit like that. Can you bring in a kettlebell or something? They do that too. But he gets drunk every night. Yeah, that's it. And it's not just like a little bit of beer. It's a lot of beer. It's a lot of they have a vodka company now. That's not good.

Now they have their own vodka. So he's trying to get it. What's that saying? Everybody loves a young drunk. But as time goes on, it does not look pretty. Yes, but there's a curve when it comes back around again. You see a 90 year old guy that's hammered. That guy's fun. Oh, then they're wild again. You know, a 90 year old guy with like a fucking straw hat on and a gun. He's drunk.

Yeah, I must say like kind of rest time. So when he was before he died, oh man, I must say I thoroughly enjoyed your comment, your live comedy. Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. Wash it three times. Thank you. That's another. So that one was another example of doing something I didn't want to do. Because they offered me to do it live. And I was like, fuck that. I want to be able to edit mistakes out. I want to have, you know, have four shows and pick the best one and do that.

I want to do it fucking live. That's who fucking needs that pressure. It was so good. I watched the first one of my girlfriend. We watched it as it was happening. Then I watched it with my friend Tim when he was out. He's out on tour. Like Green Day Rants. All these 90 bands, 90s bands, smashing pumpkins are out on tour. Like stadiums with 90,000 people. That's crazy. It's crazy.

Crazy. I went out because I like, you know, big rancid fan and I like the other guys too. But I'm big, big rancid fan. I was like holy cow. Like people love this stuff. Yeah. Again. Anyway, we watch it again there. And then I've watched it again. I will say it felt very cathartic to me. I don't know how it felt for you. But it felt really cathartic.

Oh, the subject matter. The subject matter. And also like the next day was pure like delight and just baffled and shocked all at the same time when on Twitter. I see a clip taken completely out of context about a bit about taking things out of context. Just like life had like looped back on. So you were talking about things being taken out of context and they were taking it out of context. They had like cut it. Yeah. And I was like wait, wait, wait, wait. I remember that very differently.

Because I remember things I hear pretty well. And I was like went back and I was like wait, he's talking about things being taken out of context and taking it out of context. Yeah, they don't care. But there's always some people that are just they're not this is not in good faith.

Everything they're doing is just trying to find something wrong with everything you're doing. And it's usually people that life their life is a mess. There's no one who does that who is a healthy accomplished person who has great relationships in their life and is doing really well at some skill or chosen profession that they enjoy very much. They're not fulfilled. Right. They're not trying to politicize something. Yeah. Yeah.

Or they're trying to get clicks off your name. There's a lot of that for sure. So there's a business in that. And then there's also people that are doing like MSNBC did this recently. And there's they this has gotten so popular that my fucking stepdad contacted me to tell me he's happy that I'm suing MSNBC. I'm like, I'm not suing it. But this is what MSNBC did. They took a clip of me talking about Tulsi Gabbard. And they edited it up and made it look like I was saying great things about

the virus. Wait, what? Yeah. I mean, you and I have been mashed up on other stuff and AI. And I don't want it. Like you said, we don't want to draw attention that they got taken off the internet. Thank goodness. But it was bullshit. It was like it was AI and mashup. Yeah. There's a lot of AI out of us with us. They did that about politics. Yes. They did about

politics, but they didn't do it like AI. They just deceptively edited the things that I was saying took a completely out of context where I was talking about first of all is talking about Tulsi Gabbard. And then I was talking about that the media behind Kamala Harris all this surge and all these people

was deciding that she's good. She could win. And they put the two of those together and made it seem like I was praising Kamala Harris and saying a bunch of things that aren't even true about her. Like I was talking about Tulsi Gabbard being a congresswoman for eight years and about how she served overseas. Two deployments in medical units dealing with people who are blown up from the war. Like that's something Kamala Harris did. Something Tulsi Gabbard did.

I was just saying things about her and they put it out there as a clip of me praising Kamala Harris, but they don't care about the truth. They just want a narrative to get out there amongst enough people because most people are just surface readers. They read a headline and I've been guilty of that many times. You read a headline. Oh, I know what that is. And they shut your laptop. I got it now. I got the whole.

So if you read an article that says, you know, Andrew Schultz is a liar. Like, oh, he's a liar. I heard he's a liar. And then you just start repeating his a liar. It doesn't have to be real. And so all they have to do with how many people are actually going to watch my Netflix special.

Well, it's a lot, but it's compared to the amount of people in the country, not a lot, you know, small percentage. So all you have to do is take something out of context from someone who's never going to watch it in the first place, put it in front of them. Like, oh, that piece of shit can't believe he said that. Even though I'm literally talking about things being taken out of context.

The part about this is so frustrating to me is that like at some point, especially as a scientist, right? Like that's data selection. Right. But if you look at data and like, and you look at a scientific experimentation starts with a question, you generate a hypothesis, you collect data, you publish the results, and you get to state your conclusions. Now, now let's talk about what you're talking about.

In the world of science, you, I don't think there's a lot of outright data fraud, but a lot of experiments that don't work. People come up with excuses to eliminate those data fraud.

Oh, there certainly is some data. The Amoled plaques thing with their, there's only some data fraud. And there's a range of underlying reasons. One of the more common reasons that people don't talk about, which is something to really strongly inoculate in laboratories against is when a laboratory is known for doing very, very good work.

Often times the graduate students and postdocs get there that go there feel like they need to give the boss the result. So sometimes it's unbeknownst to the person running the lab. There have been a lot of cases in recent years of papers being discovered as having major issues. And that's like, what do you do after the lab head? Or do you go after the person did it? Lab heads are responsible for everything in their lab.

AI is helping with this because you can scan data and look at things, but you know, ambition is a dangerous thing. If somebody puts ambition ahead of accuracy. So there's that kind of thing. And then there's outright data fraud. I mean, there was this nanotechnology guy from some years back, I think his last name was shown who had like 20 papers in science in nature in two years.

And it turns out he wasn't even bothering to he was fabricating data. The papers were all retracted. And I don't know what he's doing now. But the noise plots, the random noise plots in these papers were the way he got caught. What it turned out is that I mean, I'm struggling because it's like he was so lazy, ambitious, but so lazy that he didn't even bother to use new random noise plots from one paper to the next. So somebody said, wait, random, random should be random.

Why is it the same in these two papers boom and then the whole thing unraveled? Eventually. So he was particularly, he was particularly ambitious lazy and that was outright fraud.

There are all sorts of other cases and things like that. And you know, there's people who make this their sport to talk about most scientists are trying to get the correct answers. I do believe that most scientists have good faith. They're trying to get the answer, but it's hard. Science is hard. Now what you're talking about to me sounds like people deliberately grabbing from the palette of facts.

That is the words that are spoken by anybody on the internet, especially people with podcasts, you or me or anybody else. And then literally cutting and pasting things together to create a story, which is fiction. Do you know, Pink Trip is? No, you know, no, Pink Trip. Pink Trip is hilarious. He's a guy on the internet who takes clips of podcasts and creates narratives of things that are totally not happening.

Oh, yeah, I've seen some of you recently me and Tucker Carlson are having an argument. I haven't seen that one. It's good. Somebody said to me, who the fuck is on it? See if you can find it. I remember one of you and Elon several perhaps. Yeah, so I know that so

Pink Trip is no, it's a dude. His name is pick. You see here it is pink trip. So it's visible. What is real? Are you joking? You're a science denier. What? Stop. The bodies of science have bestowed the truth. If you ignore it, another fucking lecture from you, I'm going to go crazy.

What did you start having shut the fuck up? Bitch, you're fucking idiot. Don't do that anymore. What are you going to do about it? Bitch. What are you going to do about it? You are literally powerless. Yeah, I'm just going to do whatever I want. You could get your ass kicked. Are you threatening me? Yeah. I think you are a far right white supremacist racist respect for you like my dog. Does it ever hurt you?

You're like just like vulgar. If I were sort of narrowed down my bigotry since like people like you, I just think you're disgusting. So these are actual spoken words. I clooch together. Yeah, yeah, about completely different things. It's really masterful. Do you want to die? If I take a nine millimeter router, 762 by 39 and shoot you, can you catch the bullet? You can't do that. What are you going to do about it?

I got a bigger one. Why would you hide that? Isn't that funny? But this is funny. Right. He does that with a lot of stuff. Like people pretending to be in love with me makes it like there's a romance.

So good. Me and different people. But it's that's funny. He's doing that's art. Right. He's making a story that doesn't exist. It's really funny. Right. But there's people that do it just to either in this case, it was to promote Connolly Harris to get the, you know, the passive listener, the people that are, you know, the casual to go, wow, Joe Rogan likes Connolly Harris.

I heard you're endorsing and not endorsing all sorts of people. Yeah, you can't say even say I like somebody without it being an endorsement and people getting mad. But I think the mega people are happy now the Robert F Kennedy is now with Trump. So I think they've unified. They've unified the belts. Yeah, I think we're in a very weird time with the media. And I think truth is super important.

I think someone that's willing to do something like that. That's a real offense. It's a real offense. It's not a small thing. It's a real lie. And it's a lie that changes other people's opinion.

Like what's perceived to be an influential person and you distort their views in either a way to shame them, make them look bad or to promote someone else. Like that's a real lie. That's a dangerous lie. It's a, it's a real offense. And I think that there's no laws against that right now. It's except lie, the law. I mean, you could take someone to court, I guess. But there's, it's a real bad. It's a real gross lie. And it's used right now to manipulate public opinion.

Yeah, completely out of context in the example you gave. Yeah, certainly I'm familiar with examples where context is completely cut off at the point where it leads to a false conclusion. Oh, sure.

The story is completely different. The reason I gave the counter example of of sciences, you know, when you're trained as a scientist, you're trained to try and parse what's real and what's not real and give the best, you know, version of that that you can. And then you are allowed to state your conclusions. But I have a question.

What point do you think the general public will come to understand that this is the way that a lot of things that they see out there are constructed to some degree or another and stop actually believing it. It depends on who the public is that this is the issue right now with boomers, right, old liberals in particular. All they do is watch the news and read the newspaper and whatever is printed, they believe. And it's very difficult to get them to consider like, hey, maybe someone's lying.

Maybe this propaganda campaigns, maybe there's like this widespread media narrative that they're pushing because corporations are behind it and advertising is behind it and they're figuring out a way to manipulate the public opinion on things. It's very hard to get old boomers to believe that because they're old. Okay. So they're setting their ways.

Their mind has formed around, you know, I am a liberal. I'm a Democrat. I've been a Democrat my whole life. This is how I feel about these issues. This is this is my community. This is my tribe. These are my people. And the news says this and I'm with them and oh, great. We're up in the polls now. And for them, it's like they're on a team. It might as well be the dolphins versus the Raiders. It's the same kind of mentality in their head.

They don't want to be challenged. That little part of their brain that exists when you challenge yourself and do things you don't want to do. That bitch is shriveled up to almost nothing. And they're real boring and their lives are entirely excited by political discourse. Do you think it's all boomers? Yeah. It's mostly boomers. I think young people are way less likely to buy into bullshit now. There's young people that are ideologically captured for sure.

You see that both with right wing people with left wing people. Sorry. I mean, do you think that all boomers believe in the traditional media like this? Yes. It's mostly because they grew up with it. They're the ones. The kids today. They don't buy it at all. Like Gen Z kids and whatever the fuck that. What's the newest? Is this what's the latest?

Whatever these kids are. These young kids coming up today. Like people in their 20s. They don't believe it at all. Well, I'll tell you, you know, I'll non-relectantly tell you, you know, my dad. And I over the years like we had some early issues and we resolve them and we're good now.

But when some not-so-kind press came out about me, they interviewed a lot of people. They interviewed a lot of people from my high school class and friends and co-workers and then cherry picked for the story they wanted to create. But they talked to my dad. Okay. And I would not put my dad into the political camp that you described or any camp really. But he's the first generation immigrant moved here from Argentina. It did his PhD under a scholarship from the Navy.

You know, it's like a story of an immigrant who came here and became a scientist. It wasn't a lot of science to do in Argentina. There's not a lot of funding for it. Right. So came here. I would say that when they reached out to him, he was like, oh, yeah, the reporter was super nice. You know, they asked me all these questions. And then he called me. He was like, I'm shocked. I didn't say that. That was completely flipped and twisted. And I said, you know, and I said, you got to record those kind of conversations. And I said, it's okay. You know, it's okay. In fact, and that changed his perception.

I can't speak for him, but based on conversations we've had since. Yeah, change his perception. He's like, I can't believe this that they would sort of leverage this for a false narrative. You're allowed to do it for whatever reason. You know, I have a friend who used to work at New York Times. They said they were encouraged to do it. They were encouraged to just try to take someone down. Like that was the whole idea of a piece. Yeah. Well, that was made clear by the fact that many people reach out. Like I had the best conversation with this person or my former when I was a kid, I grew up skateboarding and I wrote for this brand. You know, they were like, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going

to do it. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it. and ex-girlfriend of mine said the same thing. Like I talked to her and I told her, like, what a great relationship we had. And then like what she printed kind of alluded to something kind of slightly different. And I just said, listen, that, you know, that thanks for talking to me. You know, like the goal is to collect a bunch of data. Like this is where I compare it to science, my domain, compare it, take a bunch of data, cherry pick.

Only the things that could work if those only were true. And some of them are just outright lies. And then publish that, that is data fraught. So I agree with you. Like many, like many. And at the same time, you know, like, we're enjoying the Cateen here or you are, because I will say I'm not in defense of the pharmaceutical industry. Nor am I on attack of them. But there are certain things that, you know, push through traditional science. You get great information about dosage and safety.

Look at ozemic. Right, I get asked about this all the time. I don't know how this became politicized. I will say, if you do things to offset the muscle loss for certain people reducing their appetite with it might be a useful tool. It's expensive as their dependents. Those are important issues. But we learn one thing for sure from ozemic, mongaro, et cetera. The main cause of the obesity crisis is people eat too many calories. On average, about 3,500 calories per day, and they don't move enough.

They don't exercise enough. And then we can get into what they eat, et cetera. You know, we'd have a discussion about seed oils. If we really want to cause some friction, I don't like seed oils. I don't eat them. But I'm not aware of any randomized control trial that says that they're bad. I just don't like them. I like olive oil and butter. And I like cooking beef and beef fat. Tastes better. And I feel better. I feel better. And that's enough of a reason for me.

Business science about why they're bad for you? So there's this whole thing about ratios of omega-3s versus the omega-6s. And you get a lot of omega-6s with the seed oils. And I think olive oil is good for us. I think I will conclude that. I think drinking less alcohol or no alcohol is good for you. I think I'm of the belief that high quality meat is good for you. I'm also of the belief that fruits and vegetables can't feel like. I think all the data point to these things.

I think that there isn't an abundance of data yet that says seed oils are bad. And I think Lane Norton would support that statement. And he's kind of my go-to in terms of what the randomized control trials say. But in my experience, I feel better when I'm not eating them. So I choose personally not to eat them. And frankly, there may be something to it. I mean, now we're hearing all about microplastics. We're hearing about all that. But when it comes to the GLP1 agonist, right?

We've spent a lot of time on this on two podcasts or more, one with an expert, one solo, et cetera. Of all the peptides that broke through, we've talked about peptides, we've talked about more. There's this one peptide. GLP1 like peptide, one, that when raised to levels about 1,000 fold over normal levels, leads to massive suppression of appetite. And people lose weight, which for some people is an emergency situation. They're really fat. And there's nothing they can do to lose the weight.

And they're getting sicker and sicker. My hope would just be that those people would also try and eat correctly and exercise. And so the debate has become, is it good for you? Is it bad? Well, there's muscle loss. So offset the muscle loss. But let's be realistic. Most people won't offset the muscle loss. Right. If you could do both, it'd be better. Yeah. Or come off the ozemic manjar eventually by replacing your behaviors. It's hard to move when you're, I've never been big and overweight.

But the way that Goggins talks about it, or it's got to be uncomfortable. Like when you're feeling kind of just not great, just to move, you can get injured easily. I would say one of the best ways to get and stay in great shape your whole life is yes, exercise, eat, ride, et cetera. But also don't get badly hurt. Yes. That's a huge one that nobody talks about. Oh, yeah. And the number one way, in my opinion, to get badly hurt is do a workout that a friend suggests without at 10 out of 10.

Well, especially with heavy stuff. Right. Or go to a lot of these boot camp things. Like I want to sweat a lot. You go in, you do a bunch of circuit training for an hour and two days later, your shoulders, like, a whole boy. So you got to build up to that kind of stuff. So I think there are a lot of themes here. But I'm not opposed to certain pharmaceuticals. I think certain people need drugs for ADHD a lot don't.

And dose response curves and lethal dose analysis and that kind of stuff is super valuable. What I don't like because I don't think it's necessary is when people default to the most expensive side effect risky kind of reflexive option. Because I think that the basics sunlight, exercise, you know, cardio and weight training. I mean, we're in a, like, these things work. They work so well. They've always worked well and they'll always work well.

Yeah. And I also think there's great data emerging that they transform mental health. I mean, the data on resistance training two or three times a week and mental health is striking. I mean, compare that to what people get from certain SSRIs. And you're like, goodness sake, 45 or 60 minutes a week, lift some heavy objects. Yeah. You feel better and it literally has better statistical results. Absolutely. And SSRIs are just great nuts.

And I know you've talked about this recently and I'm kind of like hitting a bunch of things here. But I think a lot about this relationship between traditional science, FDA, NIH, I reviewed grants for the NIH for years until very recently I was a regular study section. Remember, I understand the process, I understand the limitations and the benefits.

And I also understand that like in the cases recently where the FDA decided to not approve MDMA for the treatment of PTSD, you go like, whoa, what's it going to take? I think I had a lot of feelings about that ruling. I think it's unfortunate given the really strong data that support the use of MDMA for the treatment of PTSD. I mean, more than 60% successful in air quotes, plus some people just go into total remission. But the hazards are there.

And if there aren't safe guards in place for the practitioner patient relationship, which is one of the major concerns, if those aren't there, well then it's never going to be legalized. So what is the hazard of the participant with the person that's helping them? So there were two major issues, plus some others. But the ones that I'm most aware of is that lack of an adequate control group, people don't know if they got the drugs or they didn't.

And then the other one is during the course of the trials, there were some issues that came up about improprieties between practitioners and patients that... Oh, like sexual stuff? They were relationships. My understanding is that there were, that there were certain things may have arisen that kind of like, picked up, you know, people's ears. But the major issue was this, is a person who's under the influence of MDMA in a position to advocate for what they need during the course of the session.

Like, are they in a quote unquote, truly safe space? But the same thing could be said of psilocybin trials. So the solution there is, my understanding is that you have two therapists there. It's not one therapist, one patient, two therapists. That there are safeguards in place. The same way that, you know, when somebody, a brain surgeon does a brain surgery, there's an anesthesiologist there, and multiple nurses, and staff to get things, and hema stats, and you know.

So I think that there needs to be, I think a next phase evolution of the way that we think about, things like MDMA assisted treatment for PTSD, because I do think by my read of the data, and I've looked closely at these data, despite a few retractions, there's still a body of data that really point to how powerfully helpful it can be for certain people under the right conditions. It's just striking.

And there's a tremendous amount of anecdotal data, just people who haven't been in a study, but talk about the benefits they've had from it, and how much it's, especially war veterans. Right. With both psilocybin and MDMA. And I began the work of veteran solutions is doing with a guy at Stanford, Nolan Williams, in our department of psychiatry.

He's been doing brain imaging before and after, I began with the veterans that are taking I began followed by DMT, and those are looking very, very interesting. You know, so to me, it's also the kind of emotional loading of things like MDMA.

When we call it MDMA, if I tell you, this is MDMA, this is a drug that raises serotonin dramatically, raises dopamine dramatically, opens neuroplasticity, and allows people to rewire their brains if adequately supported, to feel relief, if not remission from PTSD. You'd say, awesome. How do we move this forward safely? But if I start using words like ecstasy, I start using, now I call it what it really is, MDMA, methylene dioxy, methamphetamine. You hear methamphetamine, you hear ecstasy.

You start hearing a bunch of stuff, that starts shifting your brain towards, okay, this is like a party drug, they want to know what I'm doing. But the same thing was said about cannabis, I've done multiple episodes about cannabis. I'm not anti-canibus. I think there's case studies where, excuse me, that's a specific thing inside, use cases where, or examples where people with a propensity for psychosis should probably not be doing high-tiered cannabis.

I learned something really interesting, by the way, about this. We brought on an expert, brought on in part, there was a little bit of a Twitter battle, I put out a solo episode about cannabis years ago. No one had a problem with it, put a clip on X. Oh, people came at me, like crazy. Like crazy. So I invited one of the main academics in that area onto my podcast, he eventually agreed. What was his disagreement with? He didn't like a bunch of things I said, but mainly three statements.

One was that I said that there was evidence, because there is a published paper, I must say, there is a published paper looking at the differences in subjective effects that people experience with sativa versus indica strains. And he said, there's no evidence that there is a different experience from sativa versus indica strains. That's just all bud tender lore. You shouldn't be saying this. He doesn't smoke weed. I don't think so. That's just not true. So I said, wait, here's the paper.

Here's the paper. Then there were a couple other things. One is, I didn't agree once he read the paper. He said he would like to see more evidence. When he came on, he was very gracious, offered a lot of useful knowledge, but he really didn't counter with that much. There were some issues around CBD biology versus THC, but what is his field of expertise? He works on animal models, but focuses on cannabis biology. So he's very knowledgeable.

And I don't think he's anti cannabis at all, but he was checking me on some things that he felt that I... He just smoked weed. Yeah, that he was... He was very nice guy. He was checking me on some things that he felt I had not gotten correctly or that weren't adequately supported. So my response was, I did this publicly, come on the podcast. Like, I'm not afraid to talk science. That's what I do. Like, let's go. And not in a combative way. He agreed to come on the podcast.

We had a great discussion. And one of the things that he said was the whole idea that there's so much more THC in weed now that's leading to all these problems. Like the weed of today is not the weed of yesterday. He said when people inhale, they take it by, you know, vape or they smoke it or whatever, there's his words are that there's far fewer cases of people taking in more. They're able to reach that point that they want to be at without going too far.

However, even though it's higher potency, however, when people take it by edible, there are cases where people get to genuine freak out in psychotic episodes because they're taking in far too much too quickly because you can eat the edible quickly. You don't, they're not layering in until they hit that plane that they want to be. Well, it's also the conversion to 11 high-droxy metabolite. It's five times more psychoactive than THC. I used to do a joke about it that, let's talk to dolphins.

This is a true story about the animals and dolphin experience. So he was an anti-canibus. In fact, I think it was a case where maybe this brings us back to Twitter where Twitter was a very valuable tool. So I put out something, I was going off the literature that I cited. He said, no, no, no, no, listen, there's some issues here. You should adjust this. We brought him on the podcast. He was reluctant to come on the podcast. He thought I was gonna set him up for a fall. We've never done that.

He comes on the podcast, got the information out there. And then it all just kind of went to like a quiet simmer or nothing. And in the end, I think that's the way that all of this stuff should be handled. Whether you're talking about one medical treatment or another is, and this is the way you've done it. And this is the example you've laid out for me and for others, right? Which is talk about both sides.

Talk to vegans, talk to carnivores, talk to omnivores, talk to people who are pro cannabis anti and worried about psychosis and not. Talk to people that are really pro-MDMA for the treatment of PTSD, talk to people who are very reluctant. I think only there can we get the overlap in the Venn diagram about what the agreements are and move forward.

And this is actually long form because then you get to understand how a person thinks about things, not just the subject at hand, but maybe other things. That's right. You get to hear their speech patterns and their thinking patterns. And I think direct experience is real. Yeah. You know, Cam Haines pointed this out recently and I'm not saying this to like focus, you know, the positive energy on us, but it will invariably do that or inevitably do that. Excuse me.

Which is, he said, you know, it's kind of interesting that all of the top podcasters like really fit, you know, like all the people that are like really into their health, right, like you and you know, there's their David's out there like influencers.

He was saying like there's a healthy, a health component or a fitness component, not always, but I think most of them, I think he may have said all of them, he may have said many of them, but you know, Chris Williams and you know, Lacks, like there's a tendency to merge kind of intellectual discourse with physical.

And I think that's a unique theme of podcasting also, at least of certain, let's just say what it is, like a lot of the top podcasts, that's like a pre-consistent theme for the female podcasters too. Like Whitney works out, that's a podcast, like there's a kind of merging of those things. And I think that when it comes to the discussion about anything about health, it also is beneficial if people are engaging in healthy behaviors, right?

If they're, or if they've tried things, like they're trying to be fit, I see Rhonda posting pictures of herself deadlifting now, right, you know, and like Peter's talking about his workouts, and he's a physician, he's an MD. So I think it's not sufficient to just study something, right, to just look at the data and papers. I think it really helps if you're able to get close contact with the things that you're hearing about. What also it helps me to know whether or not you have any discipline.

So there's people that think about a certain thing because it comforts their own thoughts about their decisions that they've made. And there's certain rationales that people make. They rationalize certain aspects of their life and certain things that are going on in society to sort of make up for the fact that they haven't done the work that they probably should have done in the first place.

So when I see a guy that's built like Chris or Lex, or someone who I know, or yourself, that I know stays very physically fit and takes care of their health, then I have more respect for them. Because I go, okay, I have more respect for this person's opinion, because this person is doing difficult things on a regular basis and confronting their own hesitations, their whatever procrastination, discipline issues, and the physical ability to put in work which requires mental strength.

And for the longest time for whatever strange reason, people have had this mutually exclusive notion that a person who is physically fit is probably stupid. And a person who doesn't care about their body and only concentrates on the mind, for some reason that is admired, that this person has no ego at all and doesn't care.

But that I think that person's a fool, because you don't have as much energy to think, because you're a physical body that you have, you've let decay to this terrible point where your posture's down. I've had some unfortunate conversations with older intellectuals that don't take care of themselves. And you realize that at certain point of them, they got lazy physically, and they don't have the energy to engage.

And so they sort of just sort of repeat things that they've said over and over and over again. And when you ask them to think on the spot, they almost don't have the will to do it anymore. You know, there's sucks. Yeah, it does suck. And there's a direct correlation between this ability to continue moving your body and your intellectual ability. I mean, you have to still go and learn and read and acquire knowledge and try hard things.

You just can't just work out, but I can think of a number of key examples that are historical. The greatest neurobiologist of all time, supernatural levels of ability was a guy named Ramoni Kahal when the Nobel Prize in 1906. He was the one who first defined the synapse, et cetera. He carried an iron umbrella to work. He lifted weights. Oliver Sacks, one of the greatest neurologists and writers of our time, passed away in 2015, had a 600 pound squat.

Okay. Yeah, he had the state power, state by powerlifting record at one point, just a beast of a guy who was also a neurologist and wrote all these beautiful books about how the mind works. The man who mistook his wife for a hat, he was behind the movie Awakenings, et cetera, et cetera. Don Kennedy, former president of Stanford, ran into his late 70s, and then after that, had a hip replacement and then was doing other stuff.

So Richard Axel, as a Nobel Prize from Columbia University, the first person to find ways to introduce genes to novel genes to cells, played racquetball. I don't know if he's still playing racquetball. I'll name one more. These are incredible people, like the guy who essentially defined the understanding of the visual system and neuroplasticity. My scientific great grandfather, there's David Hubell and Torrance and Riesel. Torrance and just turned something like 95 or something, maybe it's 93.

He still runs, he runs slowly, but he still goes and he is mentally sharp. So this is not an accident. This is not just a correlation. This is the anterior mid-singulate cortex in action, and of course cancer, abuser, a bullet can still take you out, but assuming you make it into your 67s, 80s, movement, movement, movement is the way to stay mentally strong and to continue to have the capacity to learn.

I mean, just to kind of weave these two things, if we're talking about MDMA, psilocybin, or some other agent that raises serotonin and dopamine, or we're talking about movement, all we're really talking about are ways to increase these neuromodulators, like dopamine, acetylcholine, serotonin, epinephrine, and they create the opportunity for neuroplasticity. They don't create plasticity on their own.

They create a milieu that's very much like the young brain, where it's like, okay, what's new here? This is why adrenaline is such a powerful tool for plasticity. Probably, I'm not gonna suggest people use smelling salts to try and do better on their exams. There are other ways to do better on their exams. I probably will take another one. Okay. I can tell you were thinking about it. Get in there, sir. All right, take a step. I almost, oh, yeah, they're good.

And now it's the right, no, it's good. Because we alternated, remember it all. Let me see if I alternated. I don't remember which one. It was left before it's definitely right. Oh, man. Woo-hoo. Make sure eyes water a little bit, but boy, it does shock your system. Wow. Why is it a little adrenaline like lift more? Why I told myself I wasn't gonna cry on this podcast. This is a cried on a podcast recently in mine. We kept it in, but like, now I'm crying, but these are tears of lead to the smell.

Yeah, this is tears of the chemicals rot in your brain. Are you supposed to not do that more than twice a day, but we've done it many times. So it's just this thing, neuroplasticity, like that. Does it really? That's from your sinuses. I'm gonna, you have some skulls around here. Like, this sinuses run from, you know, through to the, that's why when you get a sinus infection or you clear your, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, but neuroplasticity is the most impressive feature of the human brain.

It can rewire itself. But when you're a kid, you rewire in response to a passive experience for better or worse. It's an adult. You can rewire your brain, but you have to create a problem but you have to create the milieu, the environment that the brain wants to rewire itself. So these neuromodulators, like adrenaline or dopamine or seroton, they need to be spiked.

And nicotine, what you're now taking in another one, is we know comes, it does many things in the brain in body, but got that stuff strong. Yeah, man. But there's a brain area called nucleus basalus, which sits in the base of the brain. And it can serve as a spotlight by releasing a cedocoline onto what, onto nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in certain circuits and provide focus.

So that's what nicotine's doing, unless you take so much of it every day, that those, you're kind of baseline levels of acetylcholine either drop or become kind of regulated to the point where you're not getting that spotlighting anymore, which is why people then are taking more and more. But as our, you know, your former guest and my colleague, Dr. Analemki, has said, the worst thing you can do when you're in a trough of dopamine is try and boost dopamine again.

You just got to wait for it to come back. So if people want nicotinic continue to work, they should use it sporadically, or when they feel like it's not working, any more take a break. That's what McKenna used to say about cannabis. McKenna, who would, Terence McKenna would, would freely admit that he had a problem with cannabis because he was like a daily cannabis user.

But he said, the real way to take it, he said is to take a long time off, a long time off, so that your body's completely decentralized to it and then take as much as you can stand in like one doe. So like that's, you know what I mean? He was interested in it as a psychedelic, you know, especially if you do that in edible form, it is a very, very potent psychedelic. But there is that concern. And I think this is a very important thing to bring up. It's not benign and certainly not to everybody.

Nicotine. Marijuana. Everybody has a different reaction to it. And some people have a terrible reaction to it. Psychosis. Yes. And I don't understand it because I don't get it. It doesn't happen to me, but I also know that it's real and to deny it as a zealot. And to say, oh, Marijuana's just great. Everybody should be high. Like no, no, don't know. Everybody should need peanuts either. You know, some people have a weird reaction to things.

And there's a certain, I mean, Alex Baronson wrote that book, tell your parents or tell your children, tell your children. It's all about that. About there needs to be some recognition, but there's a certain percentage of people that have a tendency towards gets a frenion or maybe psychotic breaks. And they can get triggered by high doses of cannabis. No, no, no question. So I know people that's happened to. Yeah. And I covered that in my solo episode on cannabis.

Then this person, this researcher from Canada, who's, I don't think he's pro or anti-cannabis, but had differing views, came on my podcast. And then what's his name? Matt Hill. And he's a respected researcher in this area. And I thought his stance was very, very nuanced.

And then after he came on the podcast, other people, not Baronson necessarily, although I haven't checked my DMs that closely, contacted me, he said, no, I have counters to that guy, which just told me everything I already know, which is that science is a field with people with differing opinions, right? Which is good. Which is great. I mean, you don't have a field until you have differing opinions. You don't want to be the only person working on something. You want that.

It's something that, you know, you can tell I get really impassioned, smelling salts or no about this, because somehow in the media version of, it's cannabis good, it's cannabis bad. And honestly, the political aspects to it, like I wasn't tracking the fact that cannabis was just about to be approved for more legalization, right about the time that that clip got amplified. But I wasn't saying it should or shouldn't. I'm just giving you the information. Same as I did for alcohol. Right.

I would love to put this to rest once and for all. Every couple of weeks or months, you're gonna see media outlets say, some drinking is good for you. Others will say, some drinking, any drinking is bad for you. Here's the deal. Zero's better than any. A little bit's probably fine, especially if you do other things to offset the sleep loss and microbiome stuff. If you're gonna drink, probably should be doing other healthy behaviors anyway. No one's saying it's terrible.

I'll have a drink everyone's. Well, I'm not an alcoholic. If you're a non-alcoholic adult, one or two, I love a good white tequila with soda and lime. So good. But I don't really like alcohol enough to be able to comment past that. But, and I haven't had drinking years. But the reality is that one study after another saying, moderate drinking is good for you. No drinking is better for you. Cancer is, this is never gonna stop. It's a field. Now we have enough data. People can make their decision.

Right. Everyone who's sleep is important. There's no field to be had, except to how to figure out to get sleep better, in my opinion, okay? Sleep deprivation is bad, but you're not gonna get to measure die from a couple bad night sleep. That's also true. So it's almost like the way things have split politically has become the way that health information has split.

And I'm fighting tooth and nail and I know you are and other people are as well to try and continue to shine light on the field that is psychedelics. The field that includes cannabis. The field that includes things like weight loss, no zempic, but also exercise and all the other good things. And somehow, and maybe you can tell me, because I'm new to the media thing, newer than you, certainly. For some reason, people don't like that. It's like the brain needs like a black and white thing.

It's like they can't seem to just deal with the fact that like, look, you'll find evidence for it, evidence against it, you just gotta make the best decision for you. Well, there's also people that write articles with a specific narrative because they're gamifying the social media algorithms, they're gamifying clickbait. So it's business. Gamifying clickbait is real. I mean, that's a, unfortunately, one of the things that happened in journalism is people stop buying newspapers.

And when people stop buying newspapers, the only way someone can, you can get someone to go to your website and click on a link. So you have to have some sort of inflammatory headline, something that excites you, something that angers you, something that like gives you some information, some secret information that wasn't available for. Oh, let me click on that. I didn't know that. But science to me is about facts. And I totally agree.

I just, you know, I think that Rick Rubin, I seem to, he seems to come to mind a lot to me. But, you know, he once said to me, where in discussion I discovered a bunch of lies in somebody's life and I was like, oh my God, and he just said, very calmly, he said, look, it's all lies. And I'm like, what do you mean? I'm like, that's the problem. I'm realizing it's all lies. And he said, listen, it's all lies back to nature. That's the only truth. And I'm like, yeah, I became a scientist.

And then he said, oh, wait, and professional wrestling. Because everyone knows that's made up. So it's real. And I actually went to the AW with Rick. He was wild. And he loves that shit. Well, they're jumping around in the ring and they'll stop everyone's wild and look and go, hey, Rick Rubin, like it's wild. Like he's that much of a fixture. It's so great. He's there with his red light, with his red lens glasses and the whole thing. He does the sunlight. He's gotten much healthier.

He looks great. He takes really great care of himself. But I think he's right. I think nature has a truth. It has an order to it. Science is job is to try and unveil that truth to the best of our abilities. But wrestling admittedly, it everyone agrees it's made up. So at least we agree on that. Whereas I think so much of what we've been talking about today is like the media, like at what point do we realize there are portions there true, there are portions that are made up?

Well, they're making themselves obsolete. And this is what I believe. I believe that human beings should be able to differ on opinions. But I should know that you're being honest and you're telling the truth. So as soon as you write something that I know is biased and twisted and you've distorted things and taking things out of context, well, I know that you're not in the truth game. So your opinion is nonsense. Whatever you say is horseshit.

I want to talk to someone that's trying to figure out what's right and what's wrong. Not someone is trying to win. And everybody's trying to win. This is a real problem. And it's a real problem. It's win the discussion. They attach whatever the, whatever the discussion is, whether it's weightlifting is more important than cardio or you should be a vegan versus you should be a carnivore. They attach whatever this argument is to their own sense of self-worth.

And it's very important to them that they counter your arguments and win this little chess match. And that's what it is. They're playing a little game. I play games. So I don't like playing games when I talk to people. I like playing pool. I like to, the game is like making people laugh. The game is jujitsu. How do I get your back? Like, these are games I like. I like games. So when I communicate, I don't like games.

But I recognize that especially earlier in my life before I started recognizing patterns in podcasts. Like what don't I like when people are, I don't like when someone's biased. I don't like when someone is talking over people. I don't like when someone's misrepresenting someone's words or someone's trying to win rather than considering what the other person's saying.

So when someone's considering what the other person's saying and then you get this beautiful sort of sharing of ideas without ego. And the real problem is the ego, the ego getting attached to winning a conversation and being correct. Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they get in this fucking frenzy where they can't even communicate anymore. And they're completely attached and married to their ideas.

The best thing, the best advice I can get people in this is, don't be attached to your ideas. They're just ideas. Examine why you believe them. There's many times in my life where someone has hit me with some facts and I thought about my, I go, you know why I believe that? This is why. Because I thought this. And then I was saying, well, if you believe that then this has to be untrue and I'm, but I don't want to say that.

So I have attached myself to this thing and now I've connected my, and when I'm engaging with someone, I'm not just engaging in this pure intellectual sharing of ideas and a discussion of merit, discussion of merit. I'm now in a win lose situation. I'm trying to win. I could win by deception. And you see people do that all the time. And it's so gross when you catch people doing that on a podcast.

When you realize, you're not even considering these other possibilities because you're just missing them without any consideration because you just want to achieve a goal of victory. Just want to play checkmate. And that's all they're doing. And that's why the media is going to make themselves obsolete because that's not happening in podcasts in the best podcast, whether it's Chris Williamson, whether it's Lex Frieden, the best podcast are a true conversation.

And I want to know why you think the way you think. And when I get that in my head, I can consider it. And then I can say, well, this is why I don't think that's true because I think this way, this is my perspective. I might be wrong, I might be right. Who knows? But this is just how I feel. And it's when you can do that and learn how to do that. It took me a while to learn how to do that. It makes all conversations better. It makes all friendships better.

Like you get to really understand why a person, like maybe you and a buddy had a disagreement about something, you say, well, what did you think? You're like, I thought you were going to do that. I'm like, I never said I was going to do that. Why would I do that? Like I thought you were going to do that, but we didn't talk about that, did we? No. So you're mad at something that you didn't even talk to me about. Like you thought that I should have just known. Like come on, man, that's crazy.

Like you just like attributing all these negative things to a person. And then you can work things out. You could talk about things. And if the long as the person's not bullshitting you, as soon as you get people in your life that are bullshitting you, it's like, oh, you're not even having real conversations. You're playing a stupid game of TikTok toe all day long with your friends. When your friends can open up to you.

And this is one of the reasons why people like sharing embarrassing information with friends, because I now can trust you. I can tell you the stupid fucking thing that I did. And you go, oh my God, I did that too. You're like, ah! And then you, no, but when a person goes, oh, I would never fucking do that. I had to figure that out long time ago. I would have done it that way. Like, oh, well, that guy's dick.

He's not willing to be vulnerable with me, because he always wants to be socially a step up. He wants his status to be in a position of, this is the guy that doesn't make those mistakes. Which is crazy. That's crazy, especially among friends. I've always been blessed that there's been very little if any hierarchy in my friends. We knew who was better at certain things than others. And this should never be. We're just human beings.

There are people that are way better at certain things than I am that I'm friends with. That's how it should be. There's people that I am friends with that are way smarter than me. You included. And I, with this okay. So I'm not smart. It's just different form of intelligence. I will say, and I'm not just saying that, you know, with each passing year, and I've looked forward to approaching 50, because I'm like, now I can say things like with each passing year, or by this stage.

Yeah. But I also realized the other day, I lived a long period of my life where I didn't really have a sense of the fact that I would die. I'd watched the Steve Jobs commencement speech at Stanford, 2005 where he talks about this notion that we're gonna die is so critical. And I couldn't get in touch with it. Recently, I'm like, oh, like, time's gonna come up. Every time I go down from meditation, I do this like non-sleep deep rest, yoga, knee, dramatic, I like to do long exhale.

And I'm like, someday it's gonna just be last exhale. And I'm not looking forward to dying. Lord knows I'm not looking forward to dying. But I realize, I'm like, this is great. It's very freeing, because I had this realization the other day in a meditation. No psychedelics involved in this one. And I was like, I can continue to just be curious and explore. And I think it's that ego detachment, a little slice of that. Like, this is bad, this is good.

I'm learning from this, this was good, this was hard, I learned a lot from that. I learned what I needed to change from that and just be moving forward. It's this removing this thing of like you said, like this game all day long of like, not that I was in that mode or I didn't think I was, but this need to win, right? It's sort of like being an explorer. I'm a brain explorer. I've been a brain explorer for a long time. I love biology, love animals. Like I'm an explorer.

And I think the definition of curiosity to me is that you're not attached to the outcome. Right. You just want to know what's real. Right, but too many people are attached to the outcome and I think that's a tremendous trap. And that's why I wanted to talk about it because it's something that I had to learn because I was always attached to winning an argument. If I got into discussion, I disagreed with someone. I was always attached to being the one who was correct.

When did that fall away for you? I wonder what you're about. 57. All right, so you're teaching me. It's, you know, I've gotten way better at it over time. I don't, I wouldn't want to like sit and figure out when I figured it out, but I figured steps of it out along the way. You know, I remember being 21 and watching a comedian go on stage and I wanted him to bomb. And I realized that there was a terrible weakness. And I was embarrassed that I had that feeling.

So interesting, I will say we know how we feel about people when we see them succeed. Because I think there's this natural reflex like when you hear like, oh, that like that really shitty person that you knew been school, like they got pancreatic cancer, everyone just goes, oh, like that sucks. That sucks. But when you hear, hey, you know that person that needs to really dislike or that you had friction with and like they just like IPO'd, like they're doing great.

You know, you know immediately, do I like that person or not? Because if you're happy for them, presumably you like them. Right. Rarely is it neutral either. I mean, I can't think of anyone that I don't want to see succeed except maybe a few individuals I think are actually evil, but those are extremely rare. But I think it sounds like you're also a competitive person. I didn't do a lot of competitive sports. I'm very curious about this.

Like I'm competitive with myself, but like you did combat sport, right? I did skateboarding, play a little soccer, did some swimming, running, weightlifting, you know, like your brain was weaned in fighting a lot of the time. Well, it was also how I developed as a child. I mean, I went from all my puberty years competing. So that like from 15 on, that's literally what I did all day long. And your goal is to knock the other guy out. Yeah, it's a fucked up way to develop your mind.

If you do develop like this insane kind of hyper competitive, because it's the consequences are so grave, you know, I would say about MMA that it's high level problem solving with dire physical consequences. And that's really what it is. It's high level problem solving. You're you're you're literally doing combat and hand in hand combat with your body with someone who's an expert at it, which is so crazy. Like so you're fighting a black belt is so crazy.

Though this is a person who's dedicated to life to kicking people into the shadow realm. And you're deciding to try to kick them first for the kick you. Just just nuts. It's a nutty way to live. But the negative aspects of it are you you develop this hyper competitiveness because you're you're also developing at an accelerated rate when you're a teenager, right? So when you're when I was a teenager, I had no bills. I had no problems. I lived at home.

I didn't have any real like an adult type stress, you know, bills, a family to feed dealing with the community work problems. I had nothing. So my entire focus was just on this one thing, martial arts. And you can get way better when you're a kid. It's like this neuroplasticity involved. Until 25, your brain is a plasticity machine. Yeah, there's a lot. It's there to to map according to your experience.

I mean, like literally come into the world, babies flopping, like you know, like little bug move, move, move, move. Neuronal connections are being removed by the thousands, tens of thousands by the day so that you get fine tune movement. It's like you're a plasticity machine. And then you're thinking and your notions about about boys and girls and teachers and parents and good things and bad things and what that means and what that means and who's a hero and who's a villain.

Like the brain is just placing things into boxes and symbols. It's like it's an unbelievable phenomenon. And it's happening when you're a teenager, then you throw hormones into the mix. People often don't talk about this. Then you add hormones and now you're adding the drive that is hormones related to like really hard wired, evolutionarily selected things like reproduction, fighting. Right? We all have brain circuits for fighting. There's a brain area.

David Anderson's laboratory at Caltech has studied this. I think we talked about before. You stimulate this little region of the ventramedial hypothalamus, the specific neurons and the animals will mate. The mount or the females will go into Lordosis. They'll arch their back to expose their genitals. You stimulate other neurons in that exact same area. Ventramedial hypothalamus. You know what happens? They go into a rage. They want to rip apart the other animal. Their videos of this online.

You can put the mouse in there with a plastic glove filled with air, stimulate these neurons and the animal just attack that thing. And then you stop the stimulation. And they all just. Wow. A little robot. Our brains have these circuits. As Jung said, we have all things inside of us, the extent to which we learn to suppress or exacerbate depends on experience, its nature and nurture. But we come into this world hard wired with the capacity for most any of these behaviors to emerge.

Your daughter fortunately got very good at drawing, right? That probably is handed off through some slight genetic bias handed on through you and your partner, your wife, to create a slight bias towards looking at the world in a particular way, an artistic sense, something about aesthetics, pay attention to curved corners versus square corners, whatever it is. But what we do feeds back on that circuit. So if you draw more, you get better at drawing. This is the big thing. This is the nature.

This is the nature that I've had a long day. And she's been doing it. She was really little. But also like going back to Floyd Mayweather. Floyd Mayweather started boxing. He was a little kid. And there's a thing about striking.

And it's not a hard fast rule because there's some freaks out there, there's some athletic freaks, and there's some people that come from other sports that have incredible speed and dexterity and an understanding over their body that allows them to pick up striking better than other. But there's something about people that learn when they're young that are always better than everybody.

No matter how good you are, there's certain guys like Anderson Silva or there's certain fighters that learn at a young age and you just can't fuck with them. They're just too good. Their nervous system was shaped in fighting. The same way Tiger Woods' nervous system was shaped golfing. That's why when Floyd sees those punches coming, he knows all he has to do is this. And it's just gonna just barely touch his chin. And then he fires back.

Like he knows he's been in those patterns for his whole life and his body evolved. It literally developed in those patterns. This is why when people say like, what should I do? I always think, I don't know what people should do. And I took a formal education path eventually. But if we look back to the things that really delighted us and that we naturally oriented towards when we were young, there's often information there. For me, it was animals and fish tanks and biology.

I wanted to understand things. And parse things through an understanding of some structure because the world just, that's what it pulled out of me. My dad's a scientist, so it's probably some genetic thing and probably some nurture stuff as well. I went up to, I'm a big track and field fan and went up to the Olympic track and field trials in Eugene, Oregon. I love the town of Eugene. I go to every trials I can for the last, gosh, four Olympic trials.

And earlier that summer, I ran into a guy named Cole Hawker. This is a shorter guy for a runner. He runs the 1500, so that's about a mile, right? And he took the first position there, so he went off to Paris and he came from, it's an amazing race. If you didn't watch the 1500 race at this year's Paris Olympics, it's amazing. If you need, if anyone needs motivation, you should get it from the inside as my belief. But if you need to look outside, which we all occasionally do, check out this race.

Cole comes from like fourth or fifth position against the world record holder. He's shorter, he doesn't have the stride that these other guys have. And they box him in and he goes out and around and beat some all, takes the go. It's one of these like crefontane moments, right? Now here's what's crazy and relates to what you're saying. He's posting on Instagram afterwards, I happen to know him a little bit. Cam and I went and watched the trials together, which is a real pleasure.

And Cam's like a legend, these Olympic gold medal winners were coming up to him. And running, we got great seats, right? And I gift him a seat, because I'm very grateful to Cam for, okay, here's Cole, right? Cole's a USA in fifth position, all right. I don't know where this is, and there's a fairly long race. So there he is going on the outside? No, so you might wanna just go a little further because this is a lot, this is a lot of race.

He's the guy with the man bun, because now he has the man bun bun. He's the man with the man bun. But he's man with a capital M.A.N. I'll tell you what, you'll see. Super nice guy too. So this guy from Norway, Ingrid Bitson, he and his brothers have like a reality TV show. They're like famous over there. He's world record hole, also great runner, but cocky, he's like talking a lot before us. So check this out. So I don't know how far along we have to go before. Damn, they're running fast.

Okay, a flock for a mile, that's so crazy. Did they get run at that speed? So this is, right, final lap. So watch this. So he breaks from fifth position after they box him into win. Wow. I don't know if you caught that, but he's fifth position. So he kicks it at the end and takes it all at the end against the world record holder. Now here's where it gets, even, oh, here we go. So he's way back there. Yeah, so he's way back and then they box him in later, and he wins.

How would he mean by box in the end? So he'll see what happens. So it seems like he's going on the outside now. No, right. So he wants, he knows he's got a great kick. So it's like calculating when to go 100%. So Ingrid Britson went out really fast in this race, fast pace. So now he's trying to come around, right? So now watch this. So now he's trying to, this is the box and you'll see. He's trying to take the inside track. And these two guys don't want him to do that.

Exactly. He actually touches Ingrid Britson. He actually touches them on his back hip with the outside of his arm. It's weird to say there is, there it is. There it is. He sees if there's space. Ingrid Britson's not going to let him in. And so he goes, you know what? How about this instead? How about I come out? He doesn't, sorry, he stayed inside track and he breaks through. So it's just like they try to keep you from, they kind of fit two people in the lane.

And they try to keep you from boxing. Yeah, they do. They boxing. So here's what's wild. So afterwards there's a bunch of posting on Instagram. Then they show a picture of Cole Hawker when he's like eight years old, holding a medal. Where he was running the 1500 and he's doing like four minutes in change. That's a mile. A mile is a kid running foreign, some change as a little kid. That's crazy.

So this brings it back to your point, which is like nowadays we're seeing the selection of people who are probably have a genetic bias towards something, a love of it like running, right? Plus immense amounts of experience. And their nervous system like he was shaped miling. That's a nervous system that miles. I'll tell you, you can also walk and talk and eat because I've met him. But that's a nervous system that was shaped around running the 1500.

So when you see it, they're like the top, top, top, top 1%. It's so different than like my field where you can't go to graduate school to get a training in neuroscience until you're in your 20s unless you're a phenom. So you can't go to school for this. And so I think when people look at what they naturally oriented to when they were young and they stayed with that, that's the thing that you had a maybe a genetic, probably a genetic leaning toward.

Do you think there would be maybe a shift today because there's so much more material that's available to young people. If somebody has an interest in science, you're a science today. Absolutely. I think because of the online learning platforms, I think of because of, I even like the sport that I grew up, unfortunately wasn't very good at or maybe fortunately, who knows, I was skateboarding, right? So many of my friends went on to start companies, became pro skateboarders, a lot of them didn't.

But I didn't have a propensity for it. I kept getting hurt, broke my foot three times. I was so frustrated, it was unbelievable. So I went in different direction, I went in the science direction, turned out to be my thing.

But now, the little kids, literally, little kids, boys and girls, like this girl, Reece Nelson, she skates with power on vert, not like a little kid, going, she's got power and technical and guys like Tony Hawk are like, whoa, it's because they have all this exposure to 900s and tricks and ramps and there's just way more people feeding the pool of potential professional skateboarders.

So when you look at the Olympics or the X Games now, you're getting a much greater selection of the huge pool, bigger sample size feeding into it, you're getting the genetic gifts, her mom travels with her everywhere, she dedicates near 100% of her time to this. So it's a lot of what you were saying, like we're selecting earlier, we're pulling from a larger pool, so you're gonna get the genetic freaks, the pole vault or guy keeps winning world records, or beating his own world record.

I saw him get the world set Eugene last about two years ago, broke the world record, he keeps beating the world record. This guy's been pole vaulting his whole life, it's been a little kid. So the earlier you get him, the more the nervous system can be shaped that way. Well, this is a problem that I see in combat sports, because in combat sports, you have guys who have a championship mentality, like they could have been a champion, but they didn't start early enough.

And even though they have this extraordinary mind, so do the people that started when they were four. Like this idea that you're tough or you see the only one that's tough, that's an egocentric idea that a lot of men have. And it's a very bizarre conversation to have with these men. I don't think he's tough. I think if they go and get something, you're never gonna find out that going gets tough, he's gonna fuck you up. Like he's not even gonna be hard for him.

You don't even understand what you're saying. Like there's the mind, the ego plays this cruel trick on you that doesn't allow you to accurately assess your abilities. So you have this bizarre notion that you are exceptional for no reason whatsoever. And there's a lot of men have that. A lot of men have that bizarre thing. The problem with if you have an incredible drive, an incredible discipline, but you didn't start striking into your 26.

If you have a tie boxing fight against like a guy, there's a guy right now who's one of the best in the world's name is Ta-Wen-Chai, and he has this insane left kick. He's like so left kick dominant. Like most of his game is his left kick, but it's so goddamn good. He just slams into the guy's arm, slams into the guy's legs, and he has his snake-like movement of his ability to just slide out of the way and then counter and then slam you with a hard left low kick. He's terrifying.

And I don't care how tough you are. You don't have that ability, and you probably are never gonna get there. Like the margins, the differences of tense of a second, hundreds of a second here and there, he's so good. You're not gonna catch him. So even if you're the baddest fucking dude in the world, in your mind, this is Ta-Wen-Chai. Let me hear some of this. But go for the beginning. Go to the beginning so you can hear the volume of him hitting the pads.

This is not what we're looking for exactly. This was like a highlight reel. Yeah, but it's fine. Like go to the beginning where he hits the pads. Oh, it's just gonna music over it. Oh, okay. It's just music over, but this guy is fucking nasty, but he's all left kick. Like it's like 80% of his game, man. It's crazy how much of his game. I mean, he'd do everything. The guy does everything. But his left kick is so fucking powerful that every time it hits you, your power bar goes down.

If he hits your arms, if he hits your body, it's just like all left kick, bang, bang, bang. And it's so smooth. He's so good, man. He's so good. So if you're a guy and you're some bad ass Navy SEAL dude in your 30 years old and you make it to the Moitai gym and you decide, hey, I'm only 30. I'm gonna fight pro. You know enough time. There's not enough time in the world for you to get to where he's at and he's gonna get better quicker. Yeah, that guy's brain has a circuit.

I'm willing to wage my entire career on this. That is a left kick circuit. Like he's the same way that a tool like a bow is designed for a specific thing. That circuit is like left kick. Left kick. Mostly how to saying that don't fear a man who knows 10,000 kicks, fear a man who's practiced one kick 10,000 times. And that's the, there's a thing about a guy who's got this one thing that's so like Ryan Garcia has this nasty left hook. It's the super fast. Yeah, it's a crazy left hook.

It's so goddamn good. It's so much better than most people's that everybody who fights him doesn't understand what he can do until he does to. Just whips. Fast, powerful. Fast, powerful, distance management, angles that it comes from. It comes up. It comes around. It just hits you faster than you know it's supposed to get there. It's so much quicker and has so much pop on it. It's so dangerous. And he fought Devon Haney, who is one of the best pure boxers in the sport. He's so good.

But he just didn't have the understanding yet that a guy can whip that left hook so fast and catch him and fuck him up in these weird angles. It's, I don't want to. Watch this. He's left for here. There's his liver shot. That's it. Melted. He melts a lot of guys, that liver shot. See if you could just see, give me a highlight of Ryan Garcia's knockouts. He's got one of the, I'm sure there's some of those online, but it's all left hook.

He's got a right hand, but so left hook dominant and it's so much better than most weapons. It's got a nasty left jab too, but it's just, he's got distance management and timing and just the ability to just uncork a shot, like right there. Ooh, fade away left hook. He's been out of time. Oh, it's just, well, he's speed is just different than other guys, so you don't know that he can, like look at that. My goodness. Look, it's a fade away left hook. It's so perfect.

And when he connects, everybody goes night night. It's really extraordinary. And it's extraordinary because it's that one weapon that's so good. And when he fought Devon Haney, who was like, Devon Haney is like, he's only a left hook. Whatever. He's like saying, Tallah and Chai only has a left kick. It's so good. You got it. First bet is that wins. A left hook that's so much better than everybody else is. He's got a right hand too, but that left hook is just freakish. It's freakish.

Pink right there. So if we look at this through the lens of nervous systems, you know, I know that there have been conversations that you've had here and elsewhere, like would crocodile versus a gorilla? These kind of crazy things. We don't need to reignite that. But I think when we're at the discussion around true peak performance, like somebody grew up running miles, who grew up throwing left hooks, who grew up slipping punches. Right. Yes, they're both homo sapiens.

They're both humans, but you're talking about two different animals. When you're talking about the person that got into in their 20s and 30s versus the person that started off young, you're talking about two different nervous systems. If we were to look at their brains under magnetic resonance imaging, you'd see a lot of things that are similar, the breathing centers, the stuff that controls the heart rate.

Everything's mostly in the same place, but I'd be willing to bet everything that you look at Ryan Garcia's brain. You go, that left hook, if you were able to throw the left hook in the thing, you see it light up, you'd be like, wow, either more efficient, more maybe more space allocated to it, maybe less space, but the speed of transmission is just faster.

You're talking about a different nervous system, which is just a different way of saying a different person, but it's more meaningful in my view, because what you're talking about is cars with extra cylinders. You're talking about a race between two different vehicles. And so I think if somebody is very educated in the fight game or is educated in any domain, they're able to see that difference and give people really good advice. Whereas the person themselves, they can't see that.

It's like, we look the same, they eat trains, eye trains, eye train harder, I'm driven, it's like, no, it's not the same. And I think that's why to me, something like a Cole Hocker win over a world record holder is in pretzels the other stuff we were just watching, incredibly impressive, because you say he's in fifth position, and he's got a shorter stride, and the other guys got all this world record stuff under his belt, and he's done great as well.

I think he won the 5,000, Inger Britson won the 5,000, but Cole just like pulls something out, like they're very close in terms of their abilities. They're roughly the same species, right? In the context that we're talking about. And then somehow through sheer will is he able to out kick him? Sure will, numbers, there's a lot of things going on, like what kind of conditioning he went through as opposed to the other guy, like what edge he got?

And he's from Kentucky, I've never been to, I've been to Louisville once, but someone told me, I don't know if this is true or not, but they're more, if you looked at the number of metals from people from Kentucky, it's almost like in a complete country. Really? I don't know what's going on in Kentucky. Was there a great program there?

No, not just in track and field, like across the summer Olympics, if you look at the number of like American versus Chinese metals, it like tears out with ego, like Kentucky was a pretty good quote unquote country. Well, it wasn't Muhammad Ali from Louisville? Yeah, yeah, there you go. There's somebody about people from Kentucky are doing very well in the, in the, how are they in neuroscience?

I have a friend who just retired as chair of the of the neurobiology department, it's actually neuroanatomy, they're my friend Bill Guido at University of Louisville. Isn't it unfortunate though that like Kentucky's not associated with intellectual prowess? Not so much, but it's a great department. It's a great department. No, no, Bill Guido is a great, he ran a great department there. I'm sure someone got great chicken. Great friend chicken. Maureen McCall does great vision research there.

So I, I, one of the great things about being a scientist was, you know, my lab now is run it, you have much smaller scale and, you know, but for years I just traveled the country these places I would never think to go to, right? I had a great Argentine meal in Louisville. I went to St. Louis, I had one of the best meals in my life.

I don't think I'd ever go to St. Louis, but I was visiting Washu, you know, and then, and then there are certain cities that you hear terrible things about and they're true. One of the greatest, but not those areas in the history of the world came from Paduca, Kentucky. Okay. Guy's name was Buddy Hall, the rifleman. Like to this day, one of the all time grades. And great horses. Oh yeah. Great horse races. Yeah, great horses.

Like I've been learning more about horses because he, it's like dog selection and horse selection. Is it, I mean, the genetic breeding and the selection of horses for particular traits like this whole warm blood thing. I don't know much about it, not enough to comment on it. But these people have been around horses their whole lives. They've done horses worth millions of dollars, right? They know that, that full, that's the one. And they put tons of money on it.

Like they have this unconscious genius based on all this life experience. Right. So it's almost like they're selecting the same way. Like someone, if you wanted to build a Floyd Mayweather, you would select, you know, great father was a great box or uncle's a great box, your boxing to the family, starts up young. He's got great genetics, the whole deal. Yeah. Or the Williams sisters, like that movie, like the King James movie. Or Tiger Woods. Yeah, or Tiger Woods.

Yeah. Or the kids that I grew up with, skateboarding, like there's this kid, you know, Guy Mariano, like, when he, I know when he was a little kid, he would waddle. The board felt like look bigger than him. And now growing up, he's so good. He's kind of in my generation. So he's kind of like in the late 40s, he's still just kills. Because he developed, he's developed it, developed, he grew up with it.

Yeah. Went through all the trials and tribulations and this has been public, you know, got, you know, had his issues and got sober and came back to skateboarding and just skateboarded the year for Thrasher, which is a huge deal. You just see like the young Danny Waite Tony Hawk grew up skateboarding. His body, his nervous system is skateboarding. Yeah. And I love this aspect to people in sport because we see it.

But it's, you know, I think, I remember listening to like and hearing conversations like this and thinking, yeah, but like if you're not into that, where is it? And this is where, man, I can just keep thinking about all the time, but forgive me. Rick has always said, the key to being really great at something is to just be you. And I'm like, that sounds like about his mystical wrapped in a riddle as possible. I get hear it in his voice, but he said it.

But what he's saying is, what he's saying, and I finally got it, it's like, what are the things that really pull that energy out of you? What did that when you were young? And if you're fortunate enough to get into something young, that's a beautiful thing. And you know, Rick's superpower is his ability to close to things, people, music, et cetera, and feel it. He can feel that thing and he encourages them to do more of that thing as opposed to the thing they think they should do.

And then what's also remarkable about him is he's able to disengage and just be Rick again. Like he has this empathy, but it doesn't take him over. It's so wild, the guy that grew up in music and did all the things he did for music. You know, he's never had a sip of alcohol or done a drug. How many people who hang around musicians? I know. To pull that off. Well, he's just a fascinating guy, period. But I think what he's locked on to is getting out of your own way.

And there's a lot of self-chatter that comes in whenever you're creating something, where you're instead of engaging with the idea and you're thinking about, how can I make this better for me? What would people like more? What would get a better response? And you lose the magic. The magic is in the individual thought. 100%. And this is, all right. So I go over there to spend time with him. He's out of the US right now. And it was the weirdest visit ever. I go over to visit Rick.

And we tread water in the morning and we listen to this podcast, a history of 100 Rock and Roll songs by Andrew Hickey. It's sort of like Cuban lab podcasts, but Rock and Roll. Like super nerdy lungs. Like, you know, drawn out. There are a few podcasts like that. Like founders podcasts I love, that one, mindless, like super nerdy, right? About a given topic. So we do that. And then we would just like sit around. And I'm like, what are you going to do? He's like, well, it's just like sit.

And we would just sit with eyes closed. And I was like, all right. And we have lunch and then he was like, well, it's just sit. And then at one point, I'm like, Rick, what are we doing? And he's like, well, when you keep your body still, and your mind is really active, amazing ideas come forward. And that's when I was like, oh my goodness. Because my first guest on my podcast was a guy named Carl Dysroth. He's a world's best bioengineer. He's a psychiatrist. He raised five kids. He's a phenom.

He'll probably win a Nobel Prize. And he told me his practice of coming up with ideas is after his kids are asleep at night, sits down, and he keeps his body completely still. And he forces himself to think in complete sentences. Keep his mind super active. And I was like, wow. And it turns out that if you look historically, a number of scientists have talked about this, a number of creatives have talked about this. And then I don't have any studies to support this.

But then I realized, what is the state of our brain or time when the brain is very active in our body is still and our mind is coming up with all sorts of ideas? It's rapid eye movement sleep. We're paralyzed during rapid eye movement sleep. We have sleep atonia. And everybody knows, based on dream studies and studies of creativity, that during rapid eye movement sleep is two things happen.

There's a removal of some of the emotional load of previous day's experiences, which is why rapid eye movement sleep is so critical for emotion regulation afterwards, and for the regulating depression and things like that. But also we come up with new configurations. And so Karl Dyseroth Einstein, their reports of this, of him walking and then closing his eyes and stopping and describing his mind moving forward while his body was still. Very kind of subjective. Rick has this practice.

And I thought to myself, like, wow, so I've started trying to do a sort of meditation where I force myself to be very bodily still with my mind very active. I can't, you know, to start at this. Kind of interesting and light of creativity. But the other thing, and this goes to what you were saying before, you know, Rick came up through punk rock, punk rock in hip hop. Right? And I love punk rock music grew up on it. That era in the 80s punk rock in New York was amazing.

But the whole thing like BC Boys, he was close with the Ramones, Joe Strummer, all this, and then hip hop. What he understands, and I can't speak for him, but what he understands is that there's this energy in an early field, let's say of music, where they're not thinking about making money doing it. Like, NWA, those guys were just being themselves when they were making music, right? I watch that movie on the Defiant Ones, about Dre and I think it's Jimmy Iveen about Beats.

But it's really about the energy of hip, early hip hop. And then they talk about M&M and a bunch of other things. Are you watching Rick and I at night, we'd watch Ramones documentaries or clash documentaries? And it's like, it's the energy of something that's new where people are just being themselves, and they're not thinking about making a ton of money on a record. A really great producer comes in and captures that energy and rolls it forward.

And usually what ends up happening is then the general public falls in love with it. And then a bunch of things happen to those people, and then whatever just function exists in their world gets amplified and then we hear about it. There's kind of a consistent theme over and over.

But it's like, and then one of the things that came up when I was visiting Rick, because I was like, you know, I feel like, like I came up through skateboarding, punk rock music, I'm not a musician, that incredible energy. I don't know much about hip hop. I was like, science had that when I first got into neuroscience. Like no one talked about neuroscience, it didn't even have a name.

We're just like brain explorers, cutting up brains, figuring out what to do, trying to figure out what these structures did and all this stuff, and then podcasting. It's like, I really feel like the podcasters, at least some of us, right? It's like punk rock, it's like hip hop, because we're not thinking about, I wasn't sitting down and like start my podcast, I'm like, I'm gonna start the Kewermin Lab podcast.

I was like, I've just got all this stuff in me that I wanna tell people, because I think it's super cool. And a lot of it I think might also be really useful to them. And you're just being used. So when Rick or Lex is just being Lex, and Chris Williams is just being Chris Williams, and Whitney Cummings is just being Whitney Cummings. So when a podcast works, I think it's because you're just being you. And it seems so obvious it's kind of almost trite, but Rick is like exactly.

And the biggest mistake is to take the feedback, the comments, whatever, the hit piece, and whatever, and to change who you are. Now there is sometimes useful information that comes back to us in ways we could do better in life, and certainly I am doing that.

But the point is at its essence, it's like the things that makes podcasting beautiful to me, is that I think we're right now, thanks in large part to you and some of the other early, early entrance guys that paved the way, is that it's a real thing. It's a real discussion. Like, there's no script, we didn't talk about what we're gonna talk about before. Whereas when you go out there and you see these highly overproduced or like a media infused podcast, like it's not like real.

It's not real, it's like out in an angle, they have a story they wanna tell. It's not independent anymore, it came produced. All right, and let's be real honest, if you look, you are consistently, this podcast is consistently miles and miles ahead of everybody else in terms of the amount of consumption of it, why? Cause it's a place where people immediately and consistently go, oh, it's like Joe's just being Joe. It's just like a real thing.

And when I say a real thing, this is what Rick means, people just being themselves, which like your loves, the things that bother you. Like, and so I think that podcasting to me, it's like skateboarding, it's like punk rock, it's like a pop. It's like a sport. It's like an art. Like if you watch the movie, one of my favorite movies, the Baskia movie, right, with Benyusildil Toro and Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walker and David Bowie, like why was he so amazing?

Is cause Jami Shobasca was just being himself until the fame got to him, an article got written about how he was, you know, Warhol's a lap dog, they called him or something like that. And you can see him obsessing about it. And there's this amazing riff. I don't, some, if people haven't seen it, they should just look up on YouTube, like how long does it take to get famous from the movie Baskia?

And it's Benyusildil Toro, who plays the young Vincent Gallo, telling him, here's what happens when you get famous. And it's an amazing clip because it explains the arc of fame and people becoming famous for being themselves. And then doing the things that they think they should do, to stay popular and it destroys the whole thing. And so Rick's message is, like Rick's talent is to like feel real energy. He can tell what's real and what's fake. That's why he likes wrestling. He knows it's fake.

And then feel that and encourage somebody to do more of that, less of other stuff. He's a creativity guru. He's a creativity guru, then step back. And but the message he just has keeps saying. And most of our conversations end with him just saying, like, yeah man, just continue to be you. You, curious, adventure, whatever makes Andrew Andrew, I know what those things are. It's not about me.

This is really about, hopefully if, like people, here, like Rick is saying in that book and in all his messages, like, we all have some little spark or gift or genetic bias towards something. Yeah. And if you feed that, like, and it's a benevolent thing, you become that, it's like, it stays real. The moment you also show a path to other people. Right, right. Right. When you can actually just be yourself, people realize, maybe I can be myself too. Right. You know, like, and people love that.

People love that. Like, again, I don't know hip-hop that well, but like, you don't have to see M&M very many times or watch eight mile more than a couple of times or listen to his amazing understand, like, there's an energy there. It's not manufactured. That's him. People love that. They love authenticity. That's where they love old dirty bastard. You know who that guy was? Yeah. Yeah. Well, like, I'm a huge show, Strummer fan.

And I remember asking Rick, I was like, hey, like, what do you think it was about Strummer? The clash only around for like five years. Like, he was like, come and go on, right? And he said, very Rick. You know, there's something about Joe where everything he said, he brought his entire life experience to that. And I'm like, well, that's about as mystical. And gets like, what do you mean? And he's like, he just was purely himself that day with no concern about how you would perceive him. Right.

He wasn't trying to impress you or look punk or not look punk. He just, you know, like, he just was. Strummer fell in love with hip-hop. He'd bring out hip-hop artists and the punks would boo, which is when he realized the punks aren't even punk. You know, like, like, they're, they're, and so there's something so beautiful about the energy of something really pure. Like a Ryan Garcia left hook. It's this, or early BC voice, right? Or later BC or whatever.

Or podcasting my work now is so much about, like, you said, like, don't read the comments, shut out the noise. You know, like, Lex wants to go into the darkness and the light. He like wants it. He needs it. Yeah, but that's always why he's down the dumps too. But you're taking in too much negativity, bro. I know, and not, but I feel like if he didn't do that, it would be as weird as him not wearing that suit. Maybe, maybe.

There was, you know, if he didn't drink, he wouldn't be Mike, you know, maybe, maybe Mike shouldn't be drinking every day. You know what I mean? It's like, they're just destructive aspects. Yeah. I mean, it can go too far, right? It can, like, there's a, there's a great quote in the Oliver Sacks book. They said, he said to get a teacher that said, Oliver will go far provided he does not go too far.

And I saw that, I read that right about the point that I recently saw the documentary Roadrunner about Bourdain. And I actually had a chance to sit down and talk to Morgan Neville who made that movie. And I didn't know much about him.

But like, what I saw there was just like an adventure, like a super curious person, an adventure, and a punk rocker, like he was from that era of like, Ramones, like, and it was just a spectacular, like, I don't know why I didn't know more about him I should have because we have this kind of overlap in interest sets around like the, you know, New York punk rock, that era that I've always been fascinated by, a few years behind there.

But I was like, wow, like I just saw like a kind, like genuine curiosity in people and things. And I realized like the food part was kind of incidental. It was like the person. It's just being him. And that's why I think so many people loved him is because he was just being him. And I don't know any more about it. But like I feel like people just being themselves is like the ultimate in personal development. Yeah, he was also brilliant as a writer. And he would write all of his own narratives.

All the narration was all his writing. And he was just so good at it. So good at expressing his joy for different cultures and trying out their cuisine and what he admired about them as human beings and about their spirit. And he loved people. He loved people. He loved being around people. He did not love being famous though, man. That guy got fucked up by fame. He did not like it. It was very uncomfortable.

And that thing that you were talking about, Boschiat experienced, I think everybody experiences. You get, there's a temptation towards audience capture. There's a desire to appease those and please those who love you. Maybe at the expense of your own self-esteem and your own perspective. Because you see things through others' eyes and how they perceive you to be rather than who you actually are. And you're so aware and so painfully self-aware that you lose your ability to just be yourself.

What Rick's talking about, to just be you. And that happens to most people because it is a complicated drug, which is why it's a terrible drug to give to young people. Fame is a terrible drug to give to young people. And one of the ways that I mitigate all this stuff is through voluntary adversity, voluntary physical adversity, and then mental adversity, doing difficult things. And the more difficult things that I do, the easier this weird state that I find myself in is.

And I think one of the reasons why I'm so comfortable with it because I'm uncomfortable all the fucking time. I'm voluntarily uncomfortable most of the day. So regular uncomfortable is like, yeah, whatever. It's not 196 degrees for 25 minutes. That's what I did that this morning for I got here. That shit's hard, that's really hard. That's like you're gonna die hard. You're gonna die hard is so much harder than, oh, if somebody doesn't like me.

Oh, if somebody took my clip and took it out of context. Because you're gonna die if he is a real thing. That's what Rick says like nature is a truth. Like he heat up too much too long, you can die. And you're playing with that a little bit. It's playing and it's hard and you do it correctly in your game. And cardio is really important for that. Cardio is one of the very best things for alleviating anxiety.

And I know there's a lot of studies that have been done on weightlifting and about resistance training and alleviating anxiety. And I think that's the fact. I think that's true as well. But there's something about I might die cardio. I might die cardio is a different kind of cardio. It's like if you can swim into the point where, you do laps in the pool and you do laps in the pool where you're like, I don't know if I'm gonna make it to the end of that fucking pool.

And when you do get out of that pool, regular life is way easier. Period, full stop, no discussion. I think when people are talking about cardio, they're engaging in maybe zone two type cardio. Which is a walk. Which is very good for you. Very good for you by the way. I do zone two cardio. I will get on the assault bike and not go very fast. And do 20 minutes and watch television. You know, I will do that.

But I also do Tabata sprints on that motherfucker where I do 20 minutes sprinting 10 seconds. Excuse me, 20 seconds sprinting, 10 second rest, 20 seconds sprint. And I do that in sets of four, four eight reps. So eight reps four times. It's only like 20 minutes. I do something similar. I do. Fucking horrendous. I like to walk or hike. I use one of these vests. I don't have any relationship to them. But a morpho makes these ones that are really close to the body.

Yeah. And so I use that because you can really move easily in that. I don't like a heavily loaded military vest. It doesn't feel right to me. And if I load from the back like a rock, I feel pitched forward. So I like how smooth it goes. And more for like a nice smooth fit feel. And then I'll walk far that way. But then I'll do the same thing. Except I do a little different. I'll go 10 seconds sprint, 20 second rest, do that eight times. That's my Friday morning hit workout.

And I feel like I want to die by the last one. But I think that I have an observation that's not backed by any formal science. I'd like your thoughts on it. I've known a lot of people who are kind of compulsive, anxious, or even outright addicts, who then get really into running or any kind of cardio long distance endurance type sport. And they seem to, again, not a scientific study. They seem to get and stay sober.

Yeah. Whereas I find that while weightlifting is really healthy and I really enjoy it, I've observed that it can create a kind of like tension in the body that doesn't like release completely, maybe even builds energy into the nervous system, so to speak. And I do know a number of people who have had challenges with drugs and alcohol. I'm grateful that I haven't had those challenges, but have had challenges with drugs and alcohol. And they've gone the way of just weightlifting.

And they've been like multiple relapses. Now that's not a knock against weightlifting. I think people should do resistance training and cardio. But it is kind of remarkable that people that do a lot of cardio seem to successfully beat their addictions. Right. And maybe it's just the time involved. Who knows? It's a lot of time involved. It's also overwhelming. So it takes over your mind, your body. I think if you're doing a marathon, you're just, you're grinding for hours.

You're doing three hours if you're really fast. What's the longest distance you've ever run in a single bound? I don't really run. So the longest distance I've ever run is only a few miles. I did a 5K once, my friend, well, Cam, you know, Cam, Cam had a 5K once in Vegas. And it was, I had zero training. I didn't run at all. And I did, I was like, wow, it was hard. At the end of it, I was like, that's a lot harder than I thought. I thought I was in pretty good shape. I'd be able to run.

What is it? Three point, something miles. Yeah, he's a sicko. He's got a broken foot right now. And he's still running on it. And he's got to get surgery. But you can't have surgery right now because he has an alkanic season coming up. He was on his way to Alaska when I last sent me some meat, which I'm very grateful for, it's delicious. He told me that I said, you know, what's the pain level in that foot? Because he showed the X-ray. It's still very broken.

Yeah. And he said, you know, 10 out of 10 being max pain, like excruciating cannot stand it. He was like, I don't know, maybe a four or five. But he's running. He's like, yeah. He came and stayed recently. He stayed at my house a few times and I've set up some archery in the backyard. And I like, he can use my son and co-plunge. I love it when people just spontaneously come and stay. Lex is coming stay. And I wake up and this is literally, we didn't post about it.

Literally how it happened was I woke up in the morning, hadn't yet started work. So that was added later to the post. And Kim Hans is on my roof shooting arrows at my targets, which he's moved beyond the fence line. And so the neighbors are like, this is God. This is Los Angeles, right? Right. You know, so he's a wild man. I love him. Hitting bulls eyes the whole way through just to rub it in. I just bizarre that he's running on that foot. He knows he's going to have to get fixed.

But if they get it fixed, he's probably going to have to be off of it for like six weeks or something. I know. And I keep trying to get him to do some of the, what I know to be very useful things like BPC157, et cetera, which yes, there isn't any clinical data for it's a land of the day. But so many people report feeling better. It's very hard to get now. Right, but he's got a gap in that broken foot. He needs to mend that thing. Yeah, they need to put some screws in that bitch.

But he will run out of stumps. Guys like him and Goggins will run on stumps. Goggins got another knee surgery recently. Yeah, he's had a bone. He's bone on bone and he's essentially getting surgeries to shape his bone. So his bone on bone is flatter. Because when you have bone on bone, it just storts and grows weird. So what does he do? Does he stop? Does he get a fake knee? Nope. He gets it cut flat and put, he gets a wedge cut in the bone and shifts it down. So it's flat.

So bone on bone, at least it has the correct geometry. Like what? He's a phenom. Well, there's a guy where in his whatever it was, late 20s, took a look at his childhood. And was like, well, I wasn't, you know, being, you know, my nervous system shaped to be a great athlete or a Navy seal, et cetera. Looked at everything he had become and he basically said a big hard no. He's like, whatever it was that happened before then, he was going to shape his nervous system by putting in endless hours.

So it's 20s. It's 20s. Right. So it runs counter to everything that we talked about earlier, which is that one has to start early. But he's making up the time and then some, you know, I saw a poster where he was where he couldn't move his legs for whatever reason. Maybe just had surgery. So he's running on his hands on the treadmill. Yeah. With his feet positioned kind of like plank position. Yeah, he's a ridiculous person. It's amazing. Super inspiring. He's like a now and a verb.

You know, I just, I just wish that there was stem cell technology and regenerative technology available now to help his joints stay healthy. Because the problem is that will, that mind, that power is eventually going to break down his body. And mechanically, it's not going to work anymore. Titanium is pretty good. This is what the neurosurgeons understand. Like, you know, you take out a little flap of skull, you replace it with titanium. It's a lot stronger, you know?

I mean, you mean titanium knees? Is that where you're suggesting? Yeah, or other, or other, other bio materials, right? They're close. They're real close. There's been some studies recently that regenerate cartilage, you know, and so I think they're real close. I think if you could just hang in there for a few more years, they're probably going to be able to fix things. Yeah, exosomes are exciting. BPC157, while only animal data, it's very clear.

It has the propensity to encourage fiber blasts, which he sells that, you know, make up things like tendon and cartilage, et cetera, and can really repair tissues. I mean, I mean, you know, and I certainly have experience. It can help repair things. Yeah, it's legit. It's legit. And unfortunately, the FDA is trying to get rid of it. There's a lot of things that are really good for you that unfortunately are not regulated correctly. Yeah, sucks.

Well, my wish, I mean, I have no plans to go to Washington, but my wish is that things like BPC157, some very interesting, I would say, not cutting edge, but even further out, like bleeding edge things, like pinealin, which can help with regeneration of the pinealocytes are incredible for sleep potentially. Like, we need these things explored. And everyone, for a while, was like, pep, pep tides.

Oh, it sounds really kind of gray market weird and it can be, but let's face it, GLP1 agonist, Osempic Monjaro. That's a peptide that existed for years in the FITS and Bodybuilding industry. Now it's probably approaching a trillion dollar industry someday. That has a tremendous windfall in terms of the amount of money you can generate from it. BPC157 can be made by virtually any laboratory and it's probably going to cut back on orthopedic surgeries.

And that's the gross reality of a lot of this stuff. A lot of this stuff is going to cost companies money because people won't be taking pain medication. They won't be taking anti-inflammatory medication. They won't be getting as many surgeries. And that's where it gets fucked up. Because the healthcare system, the business of healthcare, is really set up not looking at people.

It's like, what's the best way and the most efficient way and the most cost effective way in terms of for the actual patient to treat them? No, it's how do I make the most money from this person? Well, we did an episode on back health and strengthening the back and back pain we had stuma gill on and it was wild. I've never received emails and stuff like that. Like half of the people or more saying, the McGill Big Three helped me so much, might stabilize my back.

It's not like a, you know, he's got his three movements. He can look it up on YouTube. They're easy to find there. But it's all about, and he's in great shape in his late 60s. Incredible, incredible shape. Chop's a word, he's up in Canada. So he basically is giving behavioral tools to stabilize and strengthen the spine and deal with back pain. And then the other half where like, what is this? You know, you can't treat back pain. There's a pseudo science.

And then everyone telling me how much benefit they got out of McGill's Big Three. And then the war among the physios, like the physios. That's an ugly field. I'll tell you. And I asked someone, why is this field of, you know, exercise physiology so brutal? I asked Andy Galpin. I asked, and it turns out it's because it's very hard to get a lot of clients. And the moment that somebody comes out with knowledge that's very useful for a lot of people, they're potentially taking away their livelihood.

Right. So, you know, to say nothing of the pain treatment world, we had a guy on our podcast named Sean Mackeys and MDPHC runs our pain clinic at Stanford. And he talks about the biosyclic social model of pain. And he's very open-minded. Meds work in some cases. So does your emotional or cognitive interpretation of the pain? What does it mean? So do things like meditation. Like he's basically trying to incorporate all these different things. He's very holistic for lack of a better word.

But if you look at most pain docs, they're not that evolved. They're just like, OK, this is what you use. It might be addicted, it might not be addictive. But they're not ever talking about strengthening the systems that gave away in the first place. So I totally agree with you. Like there is no replacement for self-care. There's just no replacement, no pill, no potion, no injection, no nothing. There are things that can help, but there's nothing that can replace behaviors.

Because our nervous system was evolved for these behaviors. Yeah. Yeah, listen, man, it's always a fascinating conversation with you. I appreciate you very much. I'm really glad you have your own podcast. And that it's so popular. And I love it. I was doing it all the time. Thank you. You put out a lot of great information, man. I really appreciate you. Well, thank you. I really appreciate you.

You've been a great friend to me and a great source of support through a bunch of different aspects of podcasting and supporting the discussions about health and exercise. And forcing me to make my cold plunger a little colder. I'm a sniff-smelling salt. All of it. I might be wrong about the cold. I don't know. No, but really, right back at you.

You know, there are very few places in the world where you can have a real discussion about real things from all the angles and know that the person sitting across from you has been truly open-minded about it. So, really appreciate you. My pleasure. I appreciate you, too. All right. Bye, buddy. J своest persönlich. Sioux crevices. So why hasn't you called 저희가 como människor fled?