0:00

The following is a conversation with my dear

0:02

friend, Andrew Huberman, his

0:04

fourth time on this podcast. It's my

0:06

birthday, so this is a special

0:08

birthday episode of sorts. Andrew flew

0:10

down to Austin just to wish me a happy birthday,

0:13

and we decided to do a podcast last second.

0:16

We literally talked for hours beforehand, and

0:18

a long time after, late into

0:20

the night, he's one of my favorite human

0:23

beings, brilliant scientist, incredible

0:25

teacher, and a loyal friend.

0:28

I'm grateful for Andrew. I'm grateful

0:30

for good friends, for all

0:32

the support and love I've gotten over the past

0:35

few years. I'm truly

0:37

grateful for this life,

0:39

for the years, the days, the minutes, the seconds

0:41

I've gotten to live on this beautiful earth

0:43

of ours. I really don't want

0:46

to leave just yet.

0:48

I think I'd really like to stick around.

0:50

I love you

0:52

all. And

0:54

now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor.

0:57

Check them out in the description. It's the best way

0:59

to support this podcast. We got InsideTracker

1:02

for bio data, Acesleep for naps,

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my friends. Also, if you want

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onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads

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in the middle. I try to make this interesting, but

1:24

if you must skip them, please still check out our sponsors.

1:27

I enjoy their stuff, maybe you will too.

1:29

This show is brought to you by InsideTracker,

1:32

a service I use to track biological

1:34

data. That's data that comes from my

1:36

own body.

1:38

It's really interesting to consider all the different

1:40

signals that we send from our body,

1:42

conscious and subconscious. That's something

1:44

I talked to Andrew in this podcast about.

1:48

Of all the thoughts and ideas and memories,

1:51

real or fabricated

1:53

or morphed or modified or recycled

1:58

that lurk somewhere in the unconscious. that

2:01

one brought to the surface can bring a kind

2:04

of relief or reinvigoration

2:07

of

2:08

the way we see the world around us. So

2:12

many signals and those little

2:14

neurons firing together to

2:17

construct the experience of the reality we see

2:19

around us.

2:21

And that's not just the brain, that is

2:23

deeply rooted in all the different systems, including

2:26

the immune system.

2:28

The billions and billions and billions of organisms,

2:32

half of which are cells, the

2:34

other half are bacteria, all working together

2:37

to create this experience that we humans

2:40

call life.

2:41

And it's so interesting that by

2:43

collecting that data, by listening to

2:46

the signal

2:47

that this entire gigantic,

2:49

complex biological systems create, we

2:52

can start to try to figure out

2:54

how to improve the

2:56

functioning of it.

2:58

At first, top down, in a centralized

3:00

manner, sort of listening to the music that

3:02

the orchestra creates and trying

3:05

to maybe rewrite

3:07

the music or adjust the music or edit the music.

3:10

It's interesting, this whole journey we're on.

3:13

And I'm glad there's people that

3:15

turn that kind of journey into a company

3:17

and try to help people by making

3:20

the data from their body accessible and giving

3:23

advice based on that data, making

3:25

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3:33

This episode is also brought to you by Asleep

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boy, does a cool bed

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even with air conditioning. The air conditioning

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3:55

even then, the ability to have a cold bed

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surface when you go in for a power nap.

3:59

with a little bit of a blanket,

4:02

it's just heaven. It's

4:05

a refuge from the fire that burns

4:08

outside the castle.

4:10

And that refuge for me is a biological one

4:12

and a psychological one. It's

4:14

kind of incredible in

4:16

terms of just energy,

4:18

how much better you can feel after a nap, and it's also

4:21

incredible psychologically in

4:23

terms of the positivity, the

4:25

joy you can rediscover after a good

4:27

nap.

4:28

Everything you can do,

4:30

you should put behind great sleep and great

4:33

naps, because it can just do magical things

4:35

to your mind.

4:37

Books like Man's Search for Meaning reveal

4:40

that it is indeed in the mind where

4:44

the interpretation of the

4:46

world's catastrophes lie.

4:50

And so you have to equip your mind

4:53

with the best tools in order to interpret

4:56

those catastrophes, those tragedies, those hardships

4:59

correctly.

5:00

Anyway, check it out and get special savings

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This show is brought to you by Athletic Greens

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this is the one thing you can kind of control,

5:48

is the nutrition you put in your body. And

5:50

so, you know, to do the

5:53

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5:56

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That's, I go to AG1, you should too. They're

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a bunch of people requested that

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8:26

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Lex. That's netsuite.com

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checklist.

9:19

This is the Lex Friedman Podcast. And

9:21

now, dear friends, here's

9:23

Andrew Huberman.

9:42

Trying to run

9:44

a little bit more. Are you losing weight? I'm

9:46

not trying to lose weight, but I always do the same

9:48

fitness routine. I have

9:49

for like 30 years, basically. Lift

9:52

three days a week, run three days a week. But

9:56

one of the runs is a long run. One of them's medium.

9:58

One of them's a sprint type thing. What

10:00

I've decided to do this year was just extend

10:03

the duration of the long

10:05

run. And I like

10:08

being mobile.

10:09

I never want to be so heavy

10:12

that I can't move. Like I

10:14

want to be able to go out and run 10 miles if I have

10:16

to. So sometimes I do. And

10:18

I want to be able to sprint if I have to. So

10:20

sometimes I do. And lifting

10:23

in objects feels good. It

10:25

feels good to train like a lazy bear and

10:27

just lift heavy objects. But I've also started training with

10:30

lighter weights and higher repetitions

10:33

for three month cycles. And it

10:36

gives your joints a rest. And yeah,

10:38

so I probably, you know, I think it also

10:40

is interesting to see how training differently changes

10:43

your cognition. That's probably hormone

10:45

related, you know, hormones downstream of training

10:47

heavy versus hormones downstream of training

10:49

a little bit lighter. I

10:51

think my cognition is better when I'm doing more cardio

10:54

and when the repetition ranges

10:56

are a little bit, higher,

10:59

which is not to say that people who lift heavy are dumb,

11:03

but there is a, because there's real value

11:05

in lifting heavy. There's a lot of angry people

11:07

listening to this right now. No, no, no, but lifting

11:09

heavy and then taking three to five minutes rest

11:12

is far and away a different

11:14

challenge than running

11:17

hard for 90 minutes. That's

11:19

a tough thing. Just like getting in an ice bath, people say, oh,

11:21

well, how is that any different than working out? Well,

11:24

there are a lot of differences, but one of them is that it's

11:27

very acute stress within one

11:30

second you're stressed. So I

11:32

think subjecting the body to a bunch of

11:35

different types of stressors in space and

11:37

time is really valuable. So yeah,

11:39

I've been playing with the variables in a pre-systematic

11:41

way. Well, I like

11:43

long and slow for, like

11:45

you said, the impact it has on my

11:47

cognition. Yeah,

11:50

the wordlessness of it, the

11:52

way it puts you in the

11:54

way it seems to clean out the clutter.

11:57

Yeah. It can take away that hyper-focus.

11:59

and put you more in a relaxed

12:02

focus for sure. Well

12:04

for me it brings the clutter to the surface at first. Like

12:07

all these thoughts come in there and then they

12:09

dissipate. You know I've been, because I got knee

12:12

barred pretty hard. That's when somebody tries to break

12:14

your knee. That was just what's in the bar. They try and break

12:16

your knee? Yeah. Oh yeah, so you tap. So they.

12:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's, you know, hyper extended

12:21

knee that direction. I got knee barred pretty hard.

12:24

So

12:25

in ways I don't understand, it kind of hurts

12:27

to run. I don't understand what's happening

12:30

behind there, I need to investigate this. It

12:33

basically, the hamstring flex,

12:35

like curling your leg hurts a little bit. And

12:38

that results in this weird

12:40

dull,

12:41

but sometimes extremely sharp pain

12:44

in the back of the knee. So I'm working

12:46

through this. Anyway, but walking

12:48

doesn't hurt. So I've been

12:50

playing around with walking recently,

12:53

like for two hours and thinking. Because

12:55

I know a lot of like,

12:57

smart people throughout history have

12:59

walked and thought. You

13:01

have to like, you know, play with things that

13:03

have worked for others, not just

13:05

to exercise, but to like integrate

13:08

this very light kind of prolonged

13:11

exercise into a productive

13:13

life. So they do all their thinking while they walk.

13:15

It's like a meditative type of walking. And

13:18

it's really interesting. It really works. Yeah,

13:22

the practice I've been doing a lot more of lately

13:24

is I walk while reading a book. In the yard,

13:26

I'll just pace

13:27

back and forth or walk in a circle. No,

13:30

a hard copy. Well, you're just holding. I

13:32

hold only in the book and I'm walking and I'm reading. Yeah, and

13:34

I usually have a pen and I'm underlining. I have this whole system

13:36

like underlining stars, exclamation

13:38

points, goes back to university of what things I would go back

13:40

to, which things I export to

13:42

notes and that kind of thing. But

13:45

from the beginning,

13:46

when I opened my lab at that time in San

13:48

Diego, before I moved back to Stanford,

13:52

I would have meetings with my students or postdocs

13:54

by just walking in the field behind

13:56

the lab. Right,

13:58

you know. during my

14:01

Bulldog Costello, Bulldog Mastiff

14:03

at the time. And he was a slow walker. So

14:05

these were slow walks, but I can think much

14:08

more clearly that way. There's a Nobel

14:10

Prize winning professor at

14:12

Columbia University School of Medicine, Richard Axel, won

14:15

the Nobel Prize, co-won Nobel Prize with

14:17

Linda Buck for the discovery of the molecular basis of olfaction.

14:20

And he walks in and voice dictates his

14:22

papers. And now with Rev

14:25

or these other, maybe there are better ones than

14:27

Rev, where you can convert audio

14:29

files into text very quickly and then

14:31

edit from there. So I will often voice

14:33

dictate first drafts

14:35

and things like that. And I totally

14:38

agree on the long runs, the walks, the integrating

14:41

that with cognitive work, harder to do with sprints. And

14:44

then the gym, are you weight trained? You

14:47

just seem naturally

14:48

strong and like thicker jointed. It's

14:51

true. It's true. I mean, we did the

14:53

one very beginner, because I'm a very beginner

14:55

of jiu-jitsu class together.

14:57

As I mentioned then, what

14:59

if people missed it? Lexus freakishly

15:02

strong. I think I was born genetically

15:04

to hug people. Like Costello. Exactly.

15:08

You guys have a certain similarity. He had risks

15:10

like, you and Jaco and Costello

15:12

have these like wrists and elbows that are

15:15

super thick. And then you look around,

15:17

you see tremendous variation. Some people have

15:19

like the wrist

15:21

width of a whippet or Woody Allen.

15:24

And then other people like you or Jaco. There's

15:26

this one

15:27

Jaco video or thing on GQ

15:29

or something. Have you seen the comments on Jaco? These are the best.

15:32

No. The comments, I love the

15:34

comments on YouTube, because occasionally they're funny.

15:38

The best is when Jaco was born, the doctor

15:40

looked at his parents

15:42

and said, it's a man. It's

15:46

like Chuck Norris type comments. Yeah. Oh yeah.

15:48

Those are great. That's what I miss about Rogan being on

15:50

YouTube with the full length episodes. Other comments.

15:53

So this is technically a birthday podcast.

15:56

What do you love most

15:57

about getting older? It's

16:01

like the

16:03

confirmation that

16:05

comes from

16:07

getting more and more data, which basically says

16:10

the first time you thought that thing, it was

16:12

actually right because the second, third, and fourth and fifth

16:14

time, it turned out the exact

16:17

same way. In other words, there have

16:19

been a few times in my life where

16:22

I did not feel

16:24

easy about something I felt

16:27

a signal for my body. This

16:29

is not good, and

16:32

I didn't trust it early on, but I knew it

16:34

was there. And then two

16:38

or three bad experiences

16:40

later, I'm

16:41

able to say, ah, every single time there

16:43

was a signal from the body informing

16:46

my mind, this is not

16:48

good. Now the reverse has also

16:50

been true that there have been a number of instances

16:52

in which I feel sort of immediate delight.

16:55

And there's this kind of almost astonishingly

16:58

simple experience of feeling

17:01

comfortable with somebody or at peace with

17:03

something or delighted at an experience.

17:06

And it turns out all,

17:08

literally all of those experiences and people

17:11

turned out to be experiences and people that

17:13

are still in my life and that I still

17:16

delight in every day. In other words, what's

17:18

great about getting older is that you

17:22

stop questioning

17:24

the signals that come from the, I

17:26

think, deeper recesses of your nervous system to

17:28

say, hey, this is not good or

17:31

hey,

17:32

this is great, more of this. Whereas

17:34

I think in my teens,

17:37

my 20s, my 30s, I'm 40, almost 48, I'll be 48 next month,

17:44

I didn't trust, I didn't listen. I actually

17:47

put a lot of work into overriding those signals

17:50

and learning to fight through them thinking that somehow that was

17:52

making me tougher or somehow that was making

17:55

me smarter

17:57

when in fact in the end, those people that you

17:59

know, that you meet that

18:01

are

18:02

difficult or there are other names for it. It's

18:04

like in the end, you're like, yeah, I'm versus a piece of shit. Or

18:07

this

18:09

person is amazing and they're really

18:11

wonderful. And I felt that from go. So

18:14

you've learned to trust your gut versus

18:17

like the influences of other people's opinions.

18:19

I've learned to trust my gut versus the forebrain

18:22

over analysis,

18:23

overriding the gut.

18:26

Other people

18:28

often

18:29

in my life have had great optics. I've

18:32

benefited tremendously from an early age of being

18:34

in a large community of what has been mostly guys but

18:37

I have some close female friends and always have as

18:40

well who will tell me that that's a bad decision

18:42

or this person not so good or be careful or

18:44

they're great or that's great.

18:47

So oftentimes my community and the people around me

18:49

have been more aligned

18:52

with the correct choice than

18:54

not. Really? Yes.

18:56

Really, when you were younger, like like friends,

18:59

parents and so on? I don't recall

19:01

ever really listening to my parents that much.

19:04

I grew up in a, you know, we don't have to go back to my childhood

19:06

thing but my sense was that, thank

19:09

you. I learned that recently in a psilocybin

19:11

journey. My first high

19:14

dose psilocybin journey, which was done

19:17

with a clinician, thank you very much. Thank you. I

19:20

was worried there for a second at one point am

19:22

I not coming back. But in any

19:24

event, yeah, I grew up with some

19:27

wild kids. You know, I would say about a third

19:29

of my friends from childhood are dead or in jail. About

19:32

a third have gone on to do tremendously

19:35

impressive things, start companies, excellent

19:37

athletes, academics,

19:40

scientists and clinicians.

19:43

And then about a third are living their lives as kind

19:45

of more typical. I just mean that

19:48

they are happy family people with

19:50

jobs that they mainly

19:54

serve the function to make money. They're not sort of career

19:56

into their career for career sake, but.

20:00

So some of my friends early on gave me some bad

20:02

ideas, but

20:05

most of the time my bad ideas came from

20:08

overriding the

20:11

signals that I knew that my body

20:13

and

20:14

I would say my body and brain were

20:16

telling me to obey. And

20:19

when I say body and brain is that there's this brain region,

20:21

the insula, which

20:24

does many things, but it represents our sense

20:26

of internal sensation, interoception.

20:30

And I was talking to Paul Conti about this, as

20:32

you know, I respect

20:35

tremendously. I think he's one of the smartest people I've

20:37

ever met. I think for different reasons,

20:39

he and Mark Andreessen are some of the like smartest

20:42

people I've ever met, but Paul's level of insight

20:44

into the human psyche is absolutely astounding.

20:48

And he says the

20:50

opposite

20:51

of what most people say

20:55

about the brain, which is most people say, the

20:57

supercomputer of the brain is the forebrain. It's

20:59

like a monkey brain with a extra real estate

21:01

put on there. And the forebrain is what makes us human and

21:06

gives us our superpowers. Paul

21:09

has said, and

21:11

he's done a whole series on mental health that's coming out from

21:13

our podcast in September. So

21:16

this is not an attempt to plug that, but he'll elaborate

21:18

on what I'm about to say. Wait, you're doing a thing with Paul? We

21:20

already did. Yeah, so Paul Conti shot,

21:22

he and I sat down and

21:24

he did a four episode series on mental

21:27

health. So it's not mental illness, mental health

21:29

about how to explore one's own subconscious,

21:32

explore the self, build

21:35

and cultivate

21:36

the generative drive. You'll learn more about

21:38

what that is from him. He's far more eloquent

21:41

and clear than I am. And

21:43

he provides essentially a set

21:46

of steps to explore the self that

21:48

does not require that you work with a therapist. This is

21:50

self exploration that is rooted

21:52

in

21:54

psychiatry. It's rooted in neuroscience.

21:56

I don't think this information exists anywhere else.

21:59

I'm not aware that it exists. anywhere else and

22:01

he essentially distills it all down to one

22:04

eight and

22:06

a half by 11 sheet which we provide

22:08

for people and

22:11

he says there I don't want to give

22:13

too much away because I would detract from what

22:15

he does so beautifully but if I tried

22:17

and I wouldn't accomplish it anyway but

22:20

he said and I believe that the subconscious

22:24

is the supercomputer of the brain all

22:27

the stuff working underneath our conscious awareness

22:29

that's driving our feelings and

22:31

what we think are the decisions that we've

22:33

thought through so carefully and that only

22:36

by exploring the subconscious and

22:38

understanding it a little bit can

22:40

we actually improve

22:43

ourselves over time and I agree.

22:45

I think that so that the mistake

22:48

is to think that thinking can override

22:50

it all. It's a certain style of introspection

22:53

in thinking that allows

22:55

us to

22:56

read the signals from our body, read the signals from our

22:58

brain, integrate the knowledge

23:00

that we're collecting about ourselves and

23:03

to use all that in ways that are really adaptive and

23:05

generative for us. What do

23:07

you think is there in that subconscious? What

23:09

do you think of the Jungian shadow?

23:12

What's there?

23:13

You know there's this idea as you're familiar with

23:15

too I'm sure that this Jungian idea that

23:18

we all have all things inside of us that

23:20

all of us have the capacity to be evil, to be

23:22

good, etc but that some people express one

23:25

or the other to greater extent but he

23:27

also mentioned that there's a unique category

23:30

of people maybe two to five percent of people that

23:33

don't just have all things inside of them

23:35

but they actually spend a lot of time exploring

23:37

a lot of those things the darker recesses,

23:40

the shadows, their own shadows.

23:44

I'm somebody who's drawn to

23:47

goodness and to light and to joy and all those

23:49

things like anybody else but I think

23:51

maybe it's part of how I grew up, maybe

23:54

it was the crowd I was with, but then

23:56

again even when I started spending my time, I was a

23:58

little bit more more time with academics

24:01

and scientists. I mean, you

24:03

see shadows in other ways, right? You see pure

24:05

ambition with no passion. I

24:07

recall a colleague in

24:10

San Diego who, it was very clear

24:12

to me, did not actually care about

24:14

understanding the brain, but understanding the brain

24:16

was just his avenue to exercise

24:19

ambition. And if you gave him something

24:21

else to work on, he'd work on that. In fact, he did, he left

24:24

and he worked on something else. I realized he has no passion

24:26

for understanding the brain like all, I

24:28

assumed all scientists do, certainly why

24:30

I went into it, but some people's just raw

24:33

ambition. It's about winning. It doesn't

24:35

even matter what they win, to which

24:37

to me is crazy, but I think that's a shadow that

24:40

some people explore, not one I've explored. I

24:43

think the shadow parts of us are

24:45

very important to come to understand and look, better

24:47

to understand them and know that they're there

24:50

and work with them

24:52

than to

24:54

not acknowledge their presence and have them

24:56

surface in the form of addictions or

24:58

behaviors that

25:01

damage us and other people. So one

25:03

of the processes for achieving mental

25:05

health is to bring those things to the surface. So

25:08

fish the subconscious mind. Yes, and

25:10

Paul describes 10 cupboards

25:14

that one can look into for exploring

25:16

the self. There's the structure of self and the function of self.

25:19

Again, this all be spelled out in the series in

25:21

a lot of detail, so in terms of its relational

25:24

aspect between people, how to pick

25:26

good partners and good relationship, it gets really

25:28

into this from a very different perspective. Yeah,

25:31

fascinating stuff. I was

25:32

just sitting there just, I will say this,

25:35

that that four episode series with

25:37

Paul

25:38

is at least to date the

25:41

most important work I've ever been involved in

25:44

all of my career, because it's

25:47

very clear that we are not taught how to explore

25:49

our subconscious and that very few people

25:52

actually understand how to do that. Even most psychiatrists,

25:56

he mentioned something about psychiatrists. If you're a cardiothoracic

25:58

surgeon or something like that, and 50% of your

26:01

patients die, you're considered a bad cardiothoracic

26:04

surgeon. But with no disrespect

26:06

to psychiatrists, there are some excellent

26:08

psychiatrists out there. There are also a lot of terrible

26:10

psychiatrists out there because unless

26:13

all of their patients commit

26:15

suicide or half commit suicide, they

26:17

can treat for a long time without it becoming

26:19

visible that they're not so good at their craft.

26:21

Now he's superb at his craft. And

26:24

I think he would say that, yes, exploring

26:27

some shadows, but also just understanding the

26:29

self, like what,

26:31

you know, really under understanding

26:34

like, who am I and what's

26:36

important? What are my ambitions? What are my strivings?

26:39

Again, I'm lifting from some of the things that he'll

26:41

describe exactly how to do this. People

26:43

do not spend enough time

26:47

addressing those questions. And as a consequence,

26:50

they discover what

26:52

resides in their subconscious through the sometimes

26:56

bad, hopefully also good, but

26:58

manifestations of their actions.

27:00

We are driven by this

27:03

huge 90%

27:04

of our real estate that is not

27:06

visible to our conscious awareness.

27:09

And we need to understand that, you

27:11

know, I've talked about this before, I've done therapy twice

27:14

a week since I was a kid, I had to, I was a condition

27:16

of being let back in school. I

27:18

continue, I found a way to either

27:21

through insurance or even when I didn't have insurance, I took an extra

27:23

job writing for Thrasher magazine when I was a postdoc,

27:25

so I could pay for therapy at

27:28

a discount cause I didn't make much money as a postdoc.

27:30

I mean, I think for me, it's as important

27:32

as going to the gym and people think

27:35

it's just, you know, ruminating on problems

27:37

or getting, no, no, no. If you work with somebody

27:39

really good, they're forcing you to

27:41

ask questions about who you really are,

27:44

what you really want. It's

27:47

not just about support, but there should be support,

27:49

there should be rapport, but then it's also,

27:51

there should be insight,

27:53

right? Most people who get therapy, they're getting support,

27:56

there's rapport, but

27:57

insight is not easy to arrive

27:59

at.

27:59

and a really good psychologist or

28:02

psychiatrist can help you arrive at deep insights

28:04

that transform your entire

28:06

life. Well, sometimes when I look inside and

28:08

I do this often,

28:10

you know, exploring who you truly are, you

28:13

come to this question, do

28:15

I accept once you see parts,

28:18

do I accept this or

28:20

do I fix this? Is

28:23

this who you are fundamentally and

28:26

it will always be this way or

28:28

is this a problem to be fixed? Like for

28:30

example, one of the things,

28:33

especially recently but in general, over time

28:36

I've discovered about myself,

28:38

probably has roots in childhood, probably has

28:41

roots in a lot of things, is

28:43

I deeply value loyalty, maybe

28:46

more than the average

28:49

person. And so when there's disloyalty,

28:51

it can be painful to me. And

28:54

so this is who I am. And so do I have to

28:57

relax a bit? Do I have to fix

28:59

this part or is this who you are? And

29:02

there's a million, that's one like little. I

29:04

think loyalty is a good thing to cling to provided

29:07

that when loyalty is broken, that

29:09

it doesn't

29:11

disrupt too many other areas of your life.

29:13

But it depends also on who's disrupting that

29:15

loyalty, if it's a coworker versus a romantic

29:18

partner versus your exclusive romantic

29:21

partner, depending on the structure of your romantic partner life.

29:24

I mean, I have always experienced

29:26

extreme

29:31

joy and

29:32

feelings of safety and

29:35

trust in my friendships.

29:36

Again, mostly

29:39

male friendships, but female friendships too, which is only to say

29:41

that they were mostly male friendships. The female

29:43

friendships have also been very loyal. So

29:48

getting backstabbed is not something I'm

29:50

familiar with. And

29:52

yeah, I love being crewed up. For

29:56

sure. And I'm with you and you and

29:58

I very much have the same.

29:59

and values on this, but that's one

30:02

little thing, and then there's many other things, like

30:04

I'm extremely self-critical, and

30:07

I look at myself as I'm regularly

30:09

very self-critical, there's a self-critical engine in my

30:11

brain, and I talked to actually Paul about this,

30:14

I think on the podcast quite a bit, and

30:17

he's saying this is a really bad thing.

30:19

Like you need to fix this, you

30:21

need to be able to be regularly very

30:24

positive about yourself, and I kept disagreeing

30:26

with him, no, this is like who I am.

30:30

And it seems to work,

30:31

don't mess with the thing that seems to be working, it's

30:33

fine. Like I oscillate between being

30:35

really grateful and really self-critical, but

30:38

then you have to like figure out

30:39

what is it, maybe there's a deeper root thing, there's

30:42

an insecurity in there somewhere that

30:44

has to do with childhood, and then you're trying to prove

30:47

something to somebody from your childhood, this kind

30:49

of thing. Well, a couple of things

30:51

that I think are

30:52

hopefully valuable for people here, one is

30:56

one way to destroy your

30:58

life is to spend

31:00

time trying to control your or somebody else's

31:03

past. So

31:05

much of our destructive behavior and

31:08

thinking comes from wanting

31:10

something that we saw or did or heard

31:13

to not be true,

31:16

rather than really working with that and getting

31:18

close to what it really was, and

31:21

sometimes those things are even traumatic and we need to really

31:23

get close to them and for

31:25

them to move through us. And there are

31:27

a bunch of different ways to do that with support

31:29

from others and hopefully, but sometimes

31:32

on our own as well. I don't think

31:34

we can rewire our deep preferences

31:37

and what we find despicable or joyful.

31:41

I do think that

31:43

it's really a question of what allows us peace.

31:46

Like can you be at peace with the fact that you're very self-critical

31:49

and enjoy that, get some distance from it, have

31:51

a sense of humor about it, or is it driving

31:53

you in a way that's keeping you awake at

31:55

night and forcing you back to the table

31:57

to do work in a way that feels self-flattening?

31:59

and doesn't feel good. Can

32:03

you get that humility and awareness

32:05

of your

32:06

one's flaws? And I think that

32:09

that can create, this

32:11

word space sounds very new agey, like get space

32:13

from it. You can have a sense of humor about

32:16

how neurotic we can all be. I mean,

32:19

neurotic isn't actually a bad term

32:21

in the classic sense of the psychologist

32:23

and psychiatrist, the Freudians, so that

32:25

the best case is to be neurotic, to

32:28

actually see one's own issues and work with them,

32:30

whereas psychotic is the other way

32:33

to be, which is obviously not good. So

32:35

I think the question

32:37

whether or not to work on something or to just

32:40

accept it as part of ourselves, I think

32:43

really depends if we feel like it's holding

32:45

us back or not. And I think

32:47

you're asking perhaps the most profound question

32:50

about being a human, which

32:52

is, what do you do with your

32:55

body? What do you do with your mind? I mean, it's

32:57

also a question we started off talking

32:59

about fitness a little bit, which is for

33:01

whatever reason.

33:03

Do I need to

33:05

run an ultra?

33:07

You marathon?

33:08

I don't feel like I need to.

33:11

David

33:12

Goggins does and does a whole lot

33:14

more than that. So for him, that's important. For

33:17

me, it's not important to do that. I don't think he does

33:19

it just so he can run the ultras.

33:21

There's clearly something else in there for

33:24

him and guys like Cam Haines and

33:26

tremendous respect for what they do

33:29

and how they do it.

33:32

Does one need to make their

33:33

body more muscular, stronger, more endurance,

33:36

more flexibility? Do you need

33:38

to read harder books? I

33:41

think doing hard things feels good. I

33:44

know it feels good. I know that

33:46

the worst way

33:49

to feel

33:51

is when I'm procrastinating and

33:53

I don't do something. And then whenever I do something and I complete

33:55

it and I break through that point where it was hard and then

33:57

I'm doing it, at the end, I actually feel like

33:59

I... was infused with some sort of super

34:02

chemical. And who knows if it's

34:05

probably a cocktail of endogenous made

34:07

chemicals, but I think it is good to do hard

34:09

things, but you have to be careful

34:11

not to destroy your body, your mind in the process.

34:14

And I think it's about whether or not you

34:16

can achieve peace on her. Can

34:18

you sleep well at night? Stress isn't

34:20

bad if you can sleep well at night. You can

34:22

be stressed all day, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. And

34:26

it'll optimize your focus, but can you fall asleep

34:28

and stay deeply asleep at night? Being

34:30

in a hard relationship.

34:32

Some people say,

34:34

that's not good. Other people like

34:36

it. Can you be at peace in that? And

34:38

I think we all have different RPM.

34:42

We

34:44

all kind of idle at different RPM. And some

34:47

people are big mellow Costellos and others are kind

34:49

of like, need more friction

34:52

in order to feel at peace. But

34:54

I think ultimately what we want is to

34:56

feel at peace.

34:57

Yeah, I've been through

34:59

some really low points over the past couple of years.

35:02

And I think the

35:04

reason could be boiled down to

35:07

the fact that I haven't been able to find a place

35:09

of peace, a place

35:12

or people or

35:13

moments that give deep inner peace. Yeah,

35:19

I, you know,

35:21

and I think you put it really beautifully. It's

35:24

you have to figure out, given who

35:26

you are, the various

35:29

characteristics of your mind, all the things,

35:32

all the contents of the cupboards, how

35:34

to get space from it. And ultimately

35:37

one good representation of that is to be able to laugh

35:39

at all of it. Whatever's going

35:42

on inside your mind to be able to step back and just kind

35:44

of chuckle at the beauty and the

35:46

absurdity of the whole thing. Yeah, and keep going.

35:48

There's this beautiful, as I

35:50

mentioned, seems like every podcast lately,

35:54

I'm a huge, rancid fan, mostly because I just think Tim

35:56

Armstrong's writing is pure poetry

35:58

and whether or not you like the music or not.

35:59

And he's written

36:02

music for a lot of other people too. He's not

36:04

doesn't advertise that much because he's humble.

36:07

But I- And by the way, I went to a show

36:09

of theirs like 20 years ago. Oh yeah. I'm going

36:11

to see them in Boston in September 18th. I'm literally flying

36:13

there for, or

36:15

I'll take the train from New York. I'm

36:17

going to meet a friend of mine named Jim Thebo, who's a

36:20

guy who owns a lot of companies, a skateboard industry.

36:23

We're meeting there like a couple of little kids to go see them

36:25

play. Amazing, people, amazing music.

36:29

Very intense. Very intense, but embodies

36:31

all the different emotions. That's why I love it, right?

36:34

They have some love songs, they have some hate songs, they have

36:36

some, and, but you know, there's going

36:39

back to what you said, I think there's a song,

36:41

the first song on the Indestructible

36:44

album. I think it there's a, it's

36:46

sort of, he's just talking about like shock and disbelief

36:48

of discovering things about people that

36:51

were close to you. And you know, it's, I

36:53

won't, I won't sing it, but you know, nor

36:56

I wouldn't dare. But there's

36:59

this one lyric where that's

37:01

really stuck in my mind for ever

37:03

since that album came out in 2003, which

37:05

is, you know,

37:08

that

37:09

nothing's what it seems. So I just sit here

37:11

laughing. I'm going to keep going on. I

37:14

can't get distracted. There is this piece of like, you

37:16

got to learn how to push out the disturbing stuff

37:18

sometimes

37:19

and go forward. And I mean,

37:21

I remember hearing

37:22

that lyric and then writing it down.

37:25

That was a time where my undergraduate advisor, who

37:28

was like a mentor and a father

37:30

to me, blew his head off in the bathtub

37:33

like

37:34

three weeks

37:35

before. And then my graduate advisor,

37:38

who I was working for at that time, who I loved and adored was

37:40

really like a mother to me. I knew her when she was pregnant

37:43

with her two kids, died at 50 breast

37:45

cancer. And then my postdoc advisor, first

37:48

day of work at Stanford as a faculty

37:51

member, sitting across the table like this from him, had a heart

37:53

attack right in front of me, died of pancreatic cancer at

37:55

the end of 2017. And I remember just thinking like, you

37:58

know, going back to that song layer over

37:59

over like, and where people would, you

38:02

know, I haven't had many betrayals in life. I've had a

38:04

few, but just thinking like, we're seeing something

38:07

or learning something about something, you just say, you can't believe

38:09

it. And I mentioned

38:12

that

38:13

lyric off that first song indestructible

38:15

on that album, because it's this,

38:18

the, like just the raw emotion of like, I

38:20

can't believe this, what I just saw

38:23

is so disturbing.

38:26

But I have to just keep going forward. There

38:28

are certain things that we really do need to push,

38:31

not just into our periphery, but off

38:33

into the gutter and keep going. And that's a hard

38:35

thing to learn how to do, but if

38:38

you're going to be functional in life, you have to. And actually

38:40

just to get at this issue of, do I change

38:42

or do I embrace this aspect of self?

38:46

About

38:47

six months, it was April of

38:49

this

38:50

last year, I did

38:52

some intense work around

38:54

some things that were really challenging to me. And

38:57

I did it alone and it

38:59

may have involved some medicine. And

39:01

I

39:02

expected to get peace

39:04

through this. I was like, I'm going to let go of that. And I

39:06

spent 11 hours

39:09

just getting more and more frustrated and angry

39:11

about this thing that I was trying to resolve. And

39:13

I was so unbelievably

39:15

disappointed that I couldn't get that relief.

39:18

And I was like, what is this? Like, this is not

39:20

how this is supposed to work.

39:22

I'm supposed to feel peace. The

39:24

clouds are supposed to lift. And so

39:26

a week went by and

39:28

then another half week went by. And

39:31

then someone whose opinion I trust very much,

39:33

I explained this to them because

39:36

I was getting a little concerned like what's

39:38

going on, this is worse, not better. And

39:40

they said, this is very simple. You have

39:42

a giant blind spot, which

39:45

is your sense of justice, Andrew,

39:48

and your sense of anger are linked

39:50

like an iron rod and

39:53

you need to relax it. And

39:56

as they said that, I felt the anger

39:58

dissipate. And so there was...

39:59

Something that I think is, it is true. I have a very strong

40:02

sense of justice and my

40:04

sense of anger

40:06

then at least was very strongly

40:08

linked to it. So it's great to have a sense of justice, right?

40:11

I hate to see people wrong. I absolutely

40:13

do. And I'm human. I'm sure I've wronged people in my

40:15

life. I know I have. They've told me I've tried to apologize

40:17

and reconcile where possible. Still have a lot of

40:19

work to do. But

40:22

where I see injustice, it draws

40:25

in my sense of anger in a way that I

40:27

think is just eating me up. But it was

40:29

only in hearing that link

40:31

that I wasn't aware of before.

40:33

It was in my subconscious, obviously,

40:36

did I feel the relaxation. It wasn't, there's

40:39

no amount of plant medicine or MDMA

40:42

or any kind of

40:45

chemical you can take that's naturally just going

40:47

to dissipate what's hard for oneself.

40:49

It needs, if one embraces that, or

40:51

if one chooses to do it through just talk therapy

40:54

or journaling or friends or introspection or all

40:56

of the above, there needs to be an awareness

41:00

of the things that we're just not aware of. So

41:02

I think the answer to your question, do you embrace

41:04

or do you fight these aspects of self is,

41:07

I think you get in your subconscious through

41:09

good work with somebody skilled or,

41:11

and sometimes that involves the tools I just mentioned in

41:14

various combinations and you figure

41:16

it out. You figure out if it's

41:18

serving you. Obviously it was not bringing me

41:20

peace.

41:21

It was undermining my sense of justice,

41:23

was undermining my sense of peace.

41:26

And so in understanding this link, now

41:28

I would say that the, in understanding this link

41:30

between justice and anger, now I think

41:33

it's a little bit more of like, it's

41:35

not like a Twizzler stick bendy, but it's at

41:37

least it's not like an iron rod. Like, when

41:40

I see somebody wrong, I mean, it used to just like, like

41:43

immediately. But you're able to step

41:45

back now. That's like, to me,

41:47

the ultimate place to reach

41:49

is laughter.

41:53

I just sit here laughing. Exactly. That's

41:55

the lyric. I like, I can't believe it. So

41:57

I just sit here laughing like can't.

42:00

get distracted just at

42:02

some point. But the problem I

42:04

think in just laughing at something, like that

42:06

gives you distance.

42:08

But the question is,

42:10

do you stop engaging with it

42:12

at that point? Like I experienced

42:14

this, I mean,

42:16

recently I got to see how, sometimes

42:18

I'll see something that's just like, what? Like

42:20

this is crazy, so I just laugh. But then

42:22

I continue to engage in it and it's taking

42:24

me off course. And

42:27

so there is a place where, you know, I mean, I realize

42:30

this is probably a kid's show too, so I want to keep it, you

42:32

know, G rated, but at some point for

42:34

certain things, it makes sense to go

42:36

fuck that. But

42:38

also laugh at yourself for saying

42:41

fuck that. Yeah, and then move on. So

42:43

the question is, are you gonna get stuck or do you move

42:45

on? Sure, sure. But like

42:47

there's a lightness of being that comes with laughter.

42:50

I mean, I've gotten, Sure. Like as you know,

42:52

I spent the day with Elon today, he just gave

42:54

me this burnt hair. Do you know what this

42:56

is? I have no idea. I'm sure there's actually,

42:59

it should be a human lab episode on this.

43:01

It's a cologne that's burnt hair and

43:04

it's like supposedly really intense smell and it

43:06

is. Give me a smell. It's not gonna leave

43:08

your nose. That's okay, well, that's okay. I'll take a gentle,

43:10

I'll whiff it as if I were whipping a chemical

43:13

in the lab. And you have to actually spray it on yourself because I don't know if you can. So

43:15

I'm reading an amazing book. Yeah. Called

43:18

An Immense World by Ed Young. He won a Pulitzer

43:21

for We Contain Multitudes or something

43:23

like that. I think it's the title of the other book. And

43:25

the first chapter is all about all faction and

43:28

the incredible power that all faction has.

43:30

That smells terrible. I don't even need

43:33

to tell you. I mean, it doesn't leave you. Oh, for those listening,

43:36

it doesn't quite smell terrible. It's

43:38

just intense and it stays with you.

43:41

This to me represents like

43:44

just laughing at the absurdity of it all. So

43:46

I have to ask, so you were rolling

43:48

Shajitsu? Yeah, we're training Shajitsu, yeah. So

43:51

is that fight between Elon

43:53

and Zuck actually gonna happen? I

43:55

think Elon is a huge believer of this idea

43:58

of the most entertaining.

43:59

training outcome is the most likely. And

44:02

he almost, like there

44:04

is almost the

44:06

sense that there's not a free

44:08

will and the universe has a kind of deterministic,

44:12

gravitational field pulling towards

44:15

the most fun.

44:17

And he's just the player in that game. So

44:20

from that perspective, I think it seems

44:22

like something like that is inevitable.

44:24

Like a little scrap in the parking

44:26

lot of Facebook or something like that. Exactly.

44:30

But it looks like they're training for real and Zuck has

44:32

competed, right? So

44:35

I think he is approaching it as a sport. Elon

44:38

is approaching it as a

44:40

spectacle. And

44:43

I mean, the way he talks about it, he's a huge fan

44:45

of history. He talks about all the warriors that I've

44:47

fought throughout history. If you look, he wants

44:49

to really do it at the Coliseum and

44:52

the Coliseum is for 400 years. There's

44:56

so much great writing about this. I

44:59

think over 400,000 people have died in

45:01

the Coliseum, gladiators. So

45:03

this is

45:04

this historic place that sheds so

45:07

much blood, so much fear, so much

45:10

anticipation of battle, all of this. So

45:12

he loves this kind of spectacle and

45:15

also the meme of it,

45:17

the hilarious absurdity of it, the

45:19

two tech CEOs are

45:22

battling it out on sand in a place

45:24

where

45:25

gladiators fought to the death and then

45:27

bears and lions, eight prisoners as

45:30

part of the execution process. Well, it's

45:32

also gonna be an instance where Mark

45:34

Zuckerberg and Elon Musk has changed bodily

45:37

fluids.

45:38

They bleed, there's one thing about fighting. I

45:41

think it was in that book, it's a great book,

45:43

A Fighter's Heart, where he talks about sort

45:45

of the intimacy of sparring. I

45:48

only rolled jiu-jitsu with you once, but there was a period

45:50

of time where I boxed and which

45:52

I don't recommend, I got hit, I

45:54

hit some guys and definitely got hit back. I

45:58

spar on Wednesday nights when I lived on San Diego.

46:01

And, you know, when you

46:03

spar with somebody, even

46:05

if they hurt you, especially if they hurt you, you

46:07

know, you see that person afterwards

46:09

and there's an intimacy, right? It

46:12

was in that book, Fighter's Heart, where he explains, you

46:14

know, you're exchanging bodily fluids with a stranger,

46:16

right? And you're

46:19

in your primitive mind. And

46:22

so there's an intimacy there that persists. You

46:24

go together through a process of fear,

46:27

anxiety, like- Yeah, when they get

46:29

you, you nod. I mean, you watch somebody like catch somebody,

46:32

if, you know, not so much in professional fighting, but if

46:35

people are sparring, they catch you, you

46:37

acknowledge that they caught you. Like, you got

46:39

me there.

46:40

And on the flip side of that, so we trained,

46:42

and then after that, we played Diablo IV.

46:45

I don't know what that is. I don't play video

46:47

games, sorry. But it's a video game. So it's like,

46:49

it's a,

46:51

you know, pretty intense combat in the

46:53

video, you know, you're fighting like

46:55

demons. Oh, okay. This video game I played

46:57

was Mike Tyson's Punch Out. There you go, that's pretty

46:59

cool. I met him recently, he went on his podcast. You

47:01

went, you went, wait. Hasn't come out yet. Oh, it

47:04

hasn't come out, okay. Yeah, I asked Mike,

47:06

his kids are great. They came

47:08

in, they're super smart kids. Goodness,

47:10

gracious, they ask great questions. I

47:14

asked Mike what he did with the piece of a vander's

47:17

ear that he bit off. Did

47:19

he remember? Yeah, he's like, get back to him.

47:21

Here you go. Sorry

47:23

about that. He sells edibles

47:26

that are in the shape of ears with a little bite out

47:28

of it. Yeah, that

47:30

his life has been incredible. He's,

47:33

and I met, yeah, his

47:35

family,

47:36

you get the sense that they're really a great

47:39

family. They're really-

47:41

Mike Tyson? That's a heck of a journey

47:43

right there of a man. Yeah, my

47:45

now friend, Tim Armstrong, like I said, Lee Zinner from Ramsey,

47:48

he put it best. He said, you know,

47:49

that Mike Tyson's life is, you know,

47:52

Shakespearean

47:54

and, you know, down, up, down,

47:56

up, and just that the arcs of his life

47:58

are just like. sort of an only in

48:00

America kind of tale too, right? So

48:03

speaking of Shakespeare, I recently gotten to know Nari

48:05

Oksman, who's this incredible scientist

48:09

that works at the intersection of nature

48:11

and engineering. And

48:13

she reminded me of this

48:15

Anna Ahmatova line. This

48:18

is this great Soviet poet that I really

48:21

love from over a century

48:23

ago, that each of our lives is

48:25

a Shakespearean drama raised to the thousandth

48:27

degree. So I have to ask, why do you

48:30

think humans are

48:31

attracted to this

48:33

kind of Shakespearean drama? Is

48:37

there some aspect, we've been talking about

48:40

the subconscious mind that pulls us

48:42

towards

48:43

the drama, even though the place

48:46

of mental health is peace?

48:48

Yes, and yes. Do you have some

48:51

of that?

48:51

Draw towards drama?

48:54

Yeah. If you look at the

48:56

empirical data. Yes, I mean, right.

48:58

If I look at the empirical data, I mean, I think about who I

49:01

chose to work for as an undergraduate, right? I was

49:03

at,

49:04

you know, barely finished high school, finally get to college,

49:07

barely, I think this is really

49:10

embarrassing and not something to aspire to.

49:12

You know, I was thrown out of the dorms

49:14

for fighting, barely passed

49:16

my classes, you know, the girlfriend

49:19

and I split up. I mean, I was living in a squad,

49:21

got into a big fight, I was getting in trouble with

49:23

the law. Then she got my act together, go back

49:25

to school, start working for somebody. Who do I choose

49:27

to work for? A guy who's an ex-Navy

49:30

guy who smokes cigarettes in the fume hood,

49:33

drinks coffee and we're injecting rats

49:35

with MDMA. And, you know,

49:38

I was drawn to like the personality,

49:40

his energy, but I also, he was a great scientist, worked

49:43

out a lot on a thermal regulation in the brain

49:47

and more, you

49:49

know, go to graduate school, I'm working for somebody

49:51

and decide that,

49:53

yeah, doing, working in her

49:55

laboratory wasn't quite right for me. So I'm literally sneaking

49:57

into the laboratory next door and working for the,

49:59

I'm a next door because I liked the relationships that

50:02

she had to a certain set of questions. And she

50:04

was a kind of a quirky person.

50:06

And, you know, so drawn to drama, but drawn

50:08

to, I like characters. I like

50:10

people that have texture. And

50:13

I'm not drawn to raw ambition. I'm drawn to people

50:15

that seem to have a real passion for what they do and

50:17

a uniqueness to them that I,

50:20

you know, you can kind of, not kind

50:22

of, I'll just say how it is. I can

50:24

feel their heart for what they do. And I'm

50:27

drawn to that. And that

50:29

can be good. The same reason

50:31

I went to work for Ben Barris as a

50:33

postdoc. It wasn't because he was the first

50:35

transgender member of the National Academy of

50:37

Sciences. That was just a feature of who he was. I loved

50:40

how he loved Glee. He would talk

50:42

about these cells, like they were the most enchanting

50:45

things that he'd ever seen in his life. And I was like, this

50:47

is like the biggest nerd I've ever met and I love

50:49

him. I think we're, I'm drawn

50:51

to that. This is another

50:54

thing that Conti makes, that elaborates on

50:56

quite a bit more in the series on mental health

50:58

coming out. But there are different drives

51:00

within us. There's this,

51:02

there are aggressive drives, not always

51:05

for fighting, but for intense

51:07

interaction. I mean, look at Twitter, look

51:09

at some of the, look at people clearly

51:11

have an aggressive drive. There's

51:13

also a pleasure drive. Some people

51:16

also have a strong pleasure drive. They want to experience

51:19

pleasure through food, through sex, through friendship,

51:21

through adventure, you know? But

51:25

I think the Shakespearean drama is

51:27

the drama of the different drives

51:29

in different ratios in different people. I

51:32

know somebody and she's incredibly kind,

51:35

has an extremely high pleasure drive,

51:38

loves taking great care of herself and people around

51:40

her

51:41

through food and through retreats and

51:43

through all these things and makes spaces beautiful

51:46

everywhere she goes and is gifts,

51:49

these things that are just so unbelievably

51:52

feminine and incredible, these gifts

51:54

to people and the kind and thoughtful about what

51:56

they like. And then, but

51:59

I would say.

51:59

very little aggressive drive

52:02

from my read. And then

52:04

I know other people who are just have a ton of aggressive

52:06

drive and very little pleasure drive. And I

52:08

think, so there's this alchemy that

52:10

exists where people have these things in different

52:12

ratios. And then you blend in, you

52:15

know, the differences in the chromosomes

52:17

and differences in hormones and differences in personal

52:20

history. And what you end up with is a species

52:22

that creates

52:25

incredible recipes of drama,

52:28

but also peace, also relief from

52:30

drama, contentment. I mean, I

52:33

realize this isn't the exact topic of the question, but

52:36

someone I know

52:38

very dearly, actually an ex-girlfriend

52:40

of mine, long-term partner, mine sent

52:43

me something recently. I think it hit the nail on the head, which

52:45

is that ideally

52:47

for a man,

52:48

they eventually settle where they

52:50

find and feel peace.

52:52

Where they feel peaceful, where they can be

52:54

themselves and feel peaceful.

52:56

Now, I'm sure there's a equivalent

52:58

or a mirror image of that for women, but

53:01

this particular post that she sent was about men.

53:03

And I totally agree. And so it

53:06

isn't always that we're seeking friction,

53:09

but

53:10

for periods of our life, we seek friction, drama,

53:12

adventure, excitement,

53:15

fights, you know,

53:17

and doing hard, hard things. And

53:19

then I think at some point, I'm

53:22

certainly coming to this point now where it's like, yeah,

53:24

that's all great. Checked a

53:26

lot of boxes, but had a lot of

53:28

close calls, flew really close to the sun on a lot

53:31

of things with life and limb and

53:33

heart and spirit. And some of

53:36

people close to us didn't make it. And

53:39

sometimes not making it means the career

53:41

they wanted went off a cliff or

53:43

their health went off a cliff or their life went off a cliff.

53:46

But I think that

53:48

there's also the Shakespearean drama of

53:51

the characters that exit the play and

53:53

are living their lives happily in the backdrop.

53:55

It just doesn't make for as much entertainment.

53:59

That's one other thing that's

54:02

a benefit. You could say it's

54:04

a benefit of getting older, is finding

54:07

the Shakespearean drama less appealing, or

54:09

finding the joy in

54:11

the peace. Yeah, definitely. I

54:13

mean, I think that, I think there's

54:15

real peace with age. I think the other thing is, this

54:18

notion of checking boxes is a real thing, for

54:20

me anyway. I have a morning meditation

54:23

that I do. Well,

54:25

I wake up now and get my sunlight, I hydrate,

54:27

I use the bathroom, I do all the things that I

54:29

talk about. I've

54:32

started a practice of prayer in the last year, which

54:34

is new-ish for me, which

54:36

is we could talk about it in the morning. Can

54:39

you talk about it a little bit? Sure, yeah. And

54:41

then I have a meditation that I do, that

54:44

actually is where I think through with the different roles

54:46

that I play. So I start

54:49

very basic. I

54:51

say, okay, I'm an animal. Like we

54:53

are biologically animals,

54:56

right? Human,

54:58

I'm

54:58

a man, I'm a scientist,

55:01

I'm a teacher, I'm a friend, I'm

55:03

a brother, I'm a son. I go through this, I have this list

55:05

and I think about the different roles that I have and

55:07

the roles that I still want in my life going

55:10

forward that I haven't yet fulfilled.

55:13

It just takes me, it's sort of an inventory

55:15

of where I've been, where I'm at and where

55:17

I'm going, as they say. And

55:20

I don't know why I do it, but I started doing it this

55:22

last year, I think because

55:25

it helps me understand just how many

55:27

different contexts I have to exist

55:29

in and remind myself that

55:32

there's still more that I haven't done, that I'm excited

55:34

about. So within each of those contexts, there's

55:37

like things that you want to kind of

55:39

accomplish to define that.

55:40

Yeah, and I'm ambitious. So I think, you

55:42

know, I'm a brother, I have an older sister and I love

55:45

her tremendously. And I think I want

55:47

to be the best brother I can be to her,

55:50

which means maybe a call, maybe just, you

55:52

know, we do an annual trip together for

55:54

our birthdays, our birthdays are close together, we always go to New York

55:56

for our birthdays that we've gone for the last three, four years. Like

55:59

really like reminding myself, myself with that role, not because I'll forget,

56:01

but because I have all these other roles I'll get pulled into. I

56:04

say the first one, I'm an animal because

56:06

I have to remember that I have a body that needs care,

56:10

like any of us. I need sleep, I need food, I need

56:12

hydration. I need that I'm human, that

56:15

the brain of a human is marvelously

56:17

complex, but also marvelously

56:21

self-defeating at times. And so I've been thinking

56:23

about these things in the context of the different roles. And

56:26

the whole thing takes about four or five minutes. And I

56:28

just find it brings me a certain amount of clarity

56:30

that then allows me to ratchet into the day. The

56:33

prayer piece, yeah, I

56:35

think I've been reluctant to talk about until now

56:38

because I

56:39

don't believe

56:42

in pushing religion on people.

56:44

And I think

56:46

that, and I'm not,

56:50

it's a highly individual thing. And I do believe that

56:52

one can be an atheist and still pray or agnostic

56:56

and still pray. But for me,

56:58

it really came about through

57:00

understanding that there are certain

57:03

aspects of myself that

57:06

I just couldn't

57:09

resolve on my own. And no matter

57:11

how much therapy, no matter how

57:14

much, and I haven't done a lot of it, but no

57:16

matter how much plant medicine or other sorts

57:18

of medicine or exercise or

57:21

podcasting or science or

57:24

friendship or any of that, I was just not

57:26

going to resolve. And so

57:30

I started this because someone

57:32

close

57:33

to me said, a

57:37

male friend said, you know,

57:39

prayer is powerful.

57:41

And I said, well, how? And I said, I don't know

57:43

how, but if you can

57:46

allow you to get outside yourself,

57:49

let you give up control and at the same

57:51

time take control. I don't even like saying

57:53

take control, but the whole notion is that,

57:56

again, forgive me, but there's no other way to say it. The

57:58

whole notion is that, You know, like God works through

58:01

us, whatever God is to you, he,

58:04

him, her, whatever, life force,

58:07

nature, whatever it is to you, right? That it works

58:09

through us. And so I do a prayer,

58:11

I'll just describe it, where I make an ask to

58:13

help remove my defects,

58:17

my character defects.

58:20

I pray to God to

58:21

help remove my character defects so that I can show

58:24

up better in all the roles of

58:26

my life and do good work,

58:29

like to, which for me is learning and teaching,

58:32

learning and teaching. And so you

58:34

might say, well, how is that different than a meditation? Well,

58:37

I'm acknowledging that there is something that

58:40

bigger than me,

58:41

bigger than nature, as I understand it, that

58:43

I cannot understand or control, nor

58:45

do I want to. And I'm just giving over to that. And

58:49

does that make me less of a scientist? I sure

58:51

as hell hope not. I certainly know. There's

58:54

the head of our neurosciences at Stanford

58:56

until recently.

58:58

You should talk to him directly about

59:00

it. Bill Newsom has talked about his religious life. For

59:03

me, it's really a way

59:05

of getting outside myself and then understanding

59:08

how I fit into this bigger picture. And

59:11

the character defects part is real, right? I'm

59:13

a human, I have defects like, I

59:15

got a lot of flaws in

59:18

me, like anybody, but, and

59:21

trying to acknowledge

59:23

them and asking for

59:26

help in removing them, not magically,

59:28

but through right action,

59:30

through my right action. So

59:32

I do that every morning. And

59:34

I have to say that it's helped. It's

59:36

helped a lot. It's helped me be better to myself,

59:39

be better to other people. I

59:41

still make mistakes, but

59:44

it's becoming a bigger, bigger part

59:46

of my life. And I never thought

59:48

I'd talk like this, but

59:51

I think it's clear to me

59:53

that if we don't believe in...

59:59

something, again,

1:00:01

doesn't have to be traditional,

1:00:03

standardized religion, but if we don't believe in something

1:00:06

bigger than ourselves, we

1:00:08

at some level will

1:00:10

self-destruct.

1:00:12

I really think so. And

1:00:15

it's powerful in a way that all

1:00:17

the other stuff, meditation and all the tools is

1:00:20

not because it's really operating

1:00:22

at a much deeper

1:00:24

and bigger level. And,

1:00:26

yeah, I think

1:00:28

that's all I can talk about it.

1:00:31

Mostly because

1:00:33

I'm still working out, the

1:00:35

scientist in me wants to understand how it works and I

1:00:37

want to understand. And the point is to just go,

1:00:41

for lack of

1:00:43

a better language for it, there's higher power

1:00:46

than me and what I can control. I'm

1:00:48

giving up control on certain things. And

1:00:50

somehow that restores a sense

1:00:52

of agency for

1:00:54

right action, better action.

1:00:56

I think perhaps a part of that is

1:00:59

just the humility that comes with acknowledging

1:01:01

there's something bigger and more powerful than you. And

1:01:04

then you can't control everything. You

1:01:07

go through life as a hard driving person, forward

1:01:10

center of mass. I remember being that way since I was little.

1:01:12

It's like in Legos, I'm like, oh, Legos.

1:01:15

I was like, on the weekends, learning

1:01:17

about medieval weapons and then giving lectures about

1:01:19

it in class when I was five or six years old. We're

1:01:21

learning about tropical fish cataloging

1:01:24

all of them at the store and then organizing it and making

1:01:26

my dad drive me

1:01:28

or my mom drive me to some fish store and then spending all my

1:01:30

time there until they throw me out.

1:01:32

All of that, but I also remember my

1:01:34

entire life,

1:01:36

I would secretly pray.

1:01:39

When things were good and things weren't good, but mostly when things

1:01:41

weren't good, because it's important to pray. For

1:01:43

me, it's important to pray each morning regardless.

1:01:46

But when things

1:01:48

weren't right, I couldn't make sense of them. I would secretly

1:01:51

pray, but I felt ashamed of that for

1:01:53

whatever reason. And then it was once in college,

1:01:55

I distinctly remember I was

1:01:57

having a hard time with a number of things.

1:02:00

And I took a run

1:02:03

down to Sands Beach, UC San Barbara. And

1:02:05

I remember I just, I was like, I don't

1:02:07

know if I even have the right

1:02:09

to do this, but I'm just praying.

1:02:12

I just prayed for the

1:02:14

ability

1:02:16

to be as brutally honest with

1:02:18

myself and with other people

1:02:20

as I possibly could be. About a particular situation

1:02:23

I was in at that time. I mean,

1:02:25

I think now it's probably safe to say I'd gone off

1:02:27

to college because of a high school girlfriend. Essentially

1:02:30

she was my family, frankly

1:02:32

more than my biological family was at

1:02:35

a certain stage of life. And we'd reached a point where we were

1:02:37

diverging and it was incredibly painful.

1:02:40

It was like losing everything I had. And

1:02:42

it was like, what do I do? How do I manage this?

1:02:44

Do I, you know, I was ready to quit and join

1:02:47

the fire service just to support us so that we

1:02:49

could move forward. And,

1:02:52

you know, it was just, but praying, just

1:02:54

saying I can't figure this out on my own. It's sort of like,

1:02:57

I can't figure this out on my own. And how frustrating

1:02:59

that is. No number of friends could tell me or

1:03:02

and inner wisdom couldn't tell me. And

1:03:04

eventually it led me to the right answers. And she

1:03:06

and I are friendly friends to this day.

1:03:08

She's happily married with a child and we're

1:03:11

on good terms. But I think,

1:03:14

you know, it's a scary thing,

1:03:17

but

1:03:19

it's the best thing when you, I

1:03:21

can't control all this. And asking for help,

1:03:24

I think is also the piece. You're not asking for some

1:03:26

magic hand to come down and take care of it. You're asking for

1:03:28

the help to come through you, right?

1:03:30

So that your body is used to

1:03:33

do these right works, right action. Isn't

1:03:35

it interesting that this secret thing

1:03:38

that you're almost embarrassed by that you did it as a child

1:03:40

is something you, it's another thing you do

1:03:42

as you get older, is you realize like those

1:03:44

things are part of you and it's actually a beautiful

1:03:47

thing. A lot of the content of the podcast is,

1:03:49

you know, deep academic content.

1:03:51

And we talk about everything from, you know, eating

1:03:54

disorders to bipolar disorder to depression,

1:03:56

you know, a lot of different topics, but the tools

1:03:58

or the protocols, as we said.

1:03:59

the sunlight viewing all the rest.

1:04:03

A lot of that stuff is just stuff I wish I had known when

1:04:06

I was in graduate school. If I had known to go outside

1:04:08

every once in a while and get some sunlight, not

1:04:10

just stay in the lab, I

1:04:13

might not have hit

1:04:14

a really tough round

1:04:16

of depression when I was a postdoc and working

1:04:18

twice as hard. And when

1:04:21

my body would break down or I'd get sick a lot, I don't

1:04:23

get sick much anymore. Occasionally, about once every 18 months

1:04:25

to two years, I'll get something. But

1:04:29

I used to break my foot skateboarding

1:04:31

all the time. I couldn't understand what's wrong with my body. I'm getting

1:04:33

injured. I can't do what everyone else can. Now I developed more

1:04:36

slowly, had a long arc of puberty. So

1:04:41

that was part of it. I was still developing, but how

1:04:43

to get your body stronger, how to build endurance. No

1:04:45

one told me. The information wasn't there. So

1:04:47

a lot of what I put out there is the information that I

1:04:49

wish I had, because once I had

1:04:52

it, I was like, wow. Like A,

1:04:54

this stuff really works. B, it's grounded in something

1:04:56

real. Sometimes certain

1:04:58

protocols are a combination of, animal

1:05:01

and human studies, sometimes

1:05:04

clinical trials. Sometimes there's some mechanistic

1:05:07

conjecture for some, not all,

1:05:09

I always make clear which.

1:05:10

But in the end, like figuring

1:05:14

out how things work so that we can be

1:05:17

happier, healthier, more productive, suffer

1:05:19

less, like reduce the suffering

1:05:21

of the world. And I think

1:05:24

that, well,

1:05:26

I'll just say thank

1:05:27

you and

1:05:30

for

1:05:30

asking about the prayer piece.

1:05:34

Again, I'm not

1:05:35

pushing or even encouraging on anyone. I've

1:05:38

just found it to be tremendously useful for

1:05:40

me. I

1:05:43

mean, about prayer in general, you said

1:05:46

information and figuring out how

1:05:48

to get stronger, healthier, smarter,

1:05:50

all those kinds of things. Part

1:05:52

of me

1:05:53

believes that deeply. You

1:05:56

can gain a lot of knowledge and

1:05:58

wisdom through learning.

1:05:59

But a part of me believes that all

1:06:02

the wisdom I need was there when I was 11

1:06:04

and 12 years old.

1:06:08

And then it got cluttered over. Well,

1:06:11

listen, I can't wait for you and Conti to

1:06:13

talk again, because

1:06:15

when he gets going about the subconscious and the amount

1:06:17

of this that sits below the surface like an iceberg,

1:06:21

and the fact that when

1:06:23

we're kids, we're not

1:06:25

obscuring a lot of that subconscious

1:06:28

as much. And sometimes that can

1:06:30

look a little more primitive.

1:06:31

I mean, the kid

1:06:34

that's disappointed will

1:06:36

let you know. The kid that's excited

1:06:38

will let you know. And you feel that raw exuberance

1:06:41

or that raw dismayal. And

1:06:43

I think that as we grow

1:06:46

older, we learn to cover that stuff up. We

1:06:48

wear masks and we have to be functional. And

1:06:50

I don't think we all want to go around just being completely

1:06:53

raw. But as you

1:06:55

said, as you get older, you also get to this point

1:06:58

where you kind of go, you

1:07:00

know, what are we really trying to protect

1:07:03

anyway? I mean, I have this theory that,

1:07:05

you know, certainly my experience has taught

1:07:08

me that

1:07:09

a lot of people, but I'll

1:07:14

talk about men, because that's what I know best,

1:07:18

whether or not they show up strong

1:07:20

or not,

1:07:21

that they're really

1:07:23

afraid of being

1:07:25

weak.

1:07:26

Like they're just afraid, like sometimes the strength is

1:07:28

even a way to try and not be weak, right?

1:07:31

Which is different than being strong for its own

1:07:33

sake. I'm not just talking about physical strength. I'm talking

1:07:35

about intellectual strength. I'm talking about money. I'm talking

1:07:37

about expressing

1:07:40

drive. I've been watching this series

1:07:42

a little bit of Chimp Empire.

1:07:44

Oh, yeah. So Chimp Empire

1:07:47

is amazing, right? They have the head

1:07:49

chimp, he's not the head chimp, but the

1:07:51

alpha in the group, and he's

1:07:54

getting older. And so what does

1:07:56

he do? Every once in a while, he

1:07:58

goes on these vigor displays.

1:07:59

He goes and he grabs branch, he starts

1:08:02

breaking him, he starts thrashing him and he's incredibly strong

1:08:04

and they're all kind of like watching. I mean, yeah,

1:08:06

I immediately think of people like they're deadlifting

1:08:08

on Instagram. And I just think displays

1:08:11

of vigor. This is just the

1:08:13

primate showing displays of vigor. Now what's

1:08:15

interesting is that he's doing that

1:08:17

specifically to say, hey, I still

1:08:20

have what it takes to lead this troop. Okay.

1:08:23

Then there are the ones that are subordinate

1:08:25

to him, but not

1:08:27

so far behind. It seems to be that

1:08:29

there's a very clear like numerical ranking.

1:08:32

There is. Like it's clear who's

1:08:34

a number two, number three. I mean, probably-

1:08:36

Who gets to mate first, who gets to eat first. This exists in

1:08:38

other animal societies too, but Bob Sapolsky

1:08:40

would be a great person to talk about this with, because he knows

1:08:43

obviously tremendous amount about it. And I know

1:08:45

just the top contour, but yes.

1:08:48

So number two, three, and four males are

1:08:52

aware that he's doing these vigor displays,

1:08:54

but they're also aware because

1:08:56

in primate evolution, they got some extra forebrain

1:08:58

too, not as much as us, but they got some. And

1:09:01

they're aware that the vigor displays

1:09:03

are displays that

1:09:05

because they've done them as well in a different context

1:09:08

might not just be displays of vigor, but might

1:09:10

also be an insurance policy against people seeing

1:09:13

weakness. Okay. So

1:09:15

now they start using that

1:09:17

prefrontal cortex to do some interesting

1:09:20

things. So in primate

1:09:22

world, if a male is friendly

1:09:24

with another male wants to affiliate with him,

1:09:27

and say, hey, I'm backing you, they'll

1:09:29

go over and they'll pick off the

1:09:31

little parasites and eat them. The

1:09:34

grooming is extremely important. In fact, if

1:09:36

they want to ostracize or kill

1:09:39

one of the members of their troop,

1:09:41

they will just leave it alone. No one will groom

1:09:43

it. And then there's actually a really disturbing sequence

1:09:46

in that show of then the parasites start to eat

1:09:48

away on their skin. They get infections, they have issues.

1:09:50

No one will mate with them. They have other

1:09:53

issues as well and can potentially die.

1:09:55

So

1:09:56

the interesting thing is, is number two and three start

1:09:59

to line up a strategy.

1:09:59

to groom this guy, but they are actually

1:10:03

thinking

1:10:05

about overtaking the

1:10:07

entire troop, setting in a new alpha.

1:10:09

But

1:10:11

the current alpha did that to get where he

1:10:13

is. So he knows

1:10:15

that they're doing this grooming thing, but

1:10:17

they're not, might not be sincere about the grooming.

1:10:19

So what does he do? He takes the whole troop on a raid

1:10:22

to another troop and sees who will fight for him and

1:10:24

who won't. This is advanced

1:10:27

contracting of behavior. For

1:10:31

species that normally we don't think of as sophisticated

1:10:34

as us. So it's very interesting and it gets

1:10:36

to something that I hope we'll have an opportunity to talk about

1:10:38

because it's something that I'm obsessed with lately is this notion

1:10:41

of overt versus covert contracts,

1:10:43

right? There are overt contracts where you

1:10:45

exchange work for money or you exchange

1:10:48

any number of things in an overt way. But

1:10:50

then there are covert contracts

1:10:53

and those take on a very different form and always lead

1:10:55

to, in my belief, bad

1:10:57

things. Well, how much of human and

1:11:00

chimp relationships are overt

1:11:02

versus covert? Well, here's one thing that we

1:11:04

know is true.

1:11:06

Dogs

1:11:07

and humans, the dog to human

1:11:09

relationship is 100% overt. They

1:11:13

don't manipulate you. Now

1:11:15

you could say they do in the sense that they learn

1:11:17

that if they look a certain way or roll on their back, they get

1:11:19

food. But there's

1:11:23

no banking of that behavior for a future

1:11:25

date where then they are going

1:11:27

to undermine you and take your position,

1:11:29

okay? So in that sense, dogs

1:11:31

can be a little bit manipulative in some sense, but

1:11:35

now, okay, so overt contract

1:11:37

would be,

1:11:40

we both want to do some work together. We're going

1:11:42

to make some money. You get X percentage,

1:11:44

I get X percentage.

1:11:45

Overt, covert

1:11:48

contract, which is, in my

1:11:50

opinion, always bad would

1:11:53

be we're going to do some work together.

1:11:54

You're going to get a percentage of money. I'm going to get a percentage

1:11:57

of money.

1:11:58

Could look just like the overt contract.

1:11:59

but secretly I'm resentful

1:12:02

that I got the percentage I got. So

1:12:05

what I start doing is

1:12:08

covertly taking something else. What

1:12:10

do I take? Maybe I take the opportunity

1:12:13

to jab you verbally every once in a while. Maybe

1:12:16

I take the opportunity to show up late. Maybe

1:12:19

I take the opportunity to get to know one of your coworkers

1:12:21

so that I might start a business with them. That's covert

1:12:23

contracting. And you see this

1:12:26

sometimes in romantic relationships. One

1:12:28

person, we won't set the male or female in any direction

1:12:30

here and just say,

1:12:32

it's I'll make you feel powerful if

1:12:34

you make me feel desired.

1:12:36

Okay, great. There's nothing explicitly

1:12:38

wrong about that contract if they both know and

1:12:40

they both agree. But what if it's

1:12:43

I'll do that, but

1:12:45

I'll have kids with you so you

1:12:47

feel powerful. You'll have kids with me so I

1:12:49

feel desired, but secretly I don't want to do that.

1:12:52

Or they, one person says, I don't want to do that. Or

1:12:55

both don't. So what they end up doing is saying,

1:12:57

okay, so I expect something else. I

1:12:59

expect you to do certain things for me, or

1:13:02

I expect you to pay for certain things for me. Covert

1:13:04

contracts are the signature

1:13:06

of

1:13:07

everything bad. Overt

1:13:09

contracts are the signature of all

1:13:11

things good. And I think about

1:13:13

this a lot because I've seen

1:13:15

a lot of examples of this. I've,

1:13:18

like anyone, we participate in these things,

1:13:21

whether or not we want to or not. And the thing that gets transacted

1:13:24

the most is,

1:13:27

well, I should say the things that get transacted

1:13:30

the most are the overt things.

1:13:32

You'll see money, time,

1:13:34

sex,

1:13:38

property,

1:13:40

whatever happens to be, information.

1:13:43

But

1:13:45

what ends up happening is that when people,

1:13:48

I believe, don't feel safe,

1:13:50

they feel threatened in some way. Like they

1:13:52

don't feel safe in a certain interaction. What they do is

1:13:55

they start taking something else

1:13:57

while still engaging in the exchange.

1:14:00

And I'll tell you,

1:14:02

if there's one thing about human

1:14:04

nature that's bad, it's that

1:14:06

feature. Why that feature? Or

1:14:09

is it a bug or a feature as you engineers like

1:14:11

to say? I think it's because

1:14:13

we were allocated a certain extra amount

1:14:15

of prefrontal cortex that makes us more

1:14:17

sophisticated than a dog,

1:14:20

more sophisticated than a chimpanzee,

1:14:23

but they do it too. And

1:14:26

it's because it's often harder

1:14:30

to deal with in

1:14:32

the short term, to deal with the real sense

1:14:34

of this is

1:14:36

scary. This feels threatening than it

1:14:39

is to play out all the iterations. It takes a lot

1:14:41

of brain work. You're playing

1:14:43

chess and go simultaneously trying to figure

1:14:45

out where things are going to end up and we just don't know. So

1:14:47

it's a way I think of creating a false

1:14:50

sense of certainty, but I'll tell you covert

1:14:52

contracts,

1:14:53

the only certainty is that it's going to end badly. The

1:14:55

question is how badly? Conversely,

1:14:57

overt contracts always end

1:15:00

well,

1:15:01

always. The problem with overt contracts is that

1:15:04

you can't be certain that the other

1:15:06

person is not

1:15:07

engaging in a covert contract. You can only take

1:15:09

responsibility for your own contract. Well,

1:15:12

one of the challenges of being human is

1:15:14

looking at another human being

1:15:17

and figuring out

1:15:19

their way of being, their

1:15:21

behavior, which of the two types of

1:15:23

contracts it represents, because they

1:15:26

look awfully the same on

1:15:28

the surface. And one

1:15:30

of the challenges of being human is the decision

1:15:32

we all make is are you somebody that

1:15:34

takes a leap of trust and trust other

1:15:36

humans that are willing to take the hurt? Are you

1:15:38

going to be cynical and

1:15:41

skeptical and avoid most

1:15:43

interactions until they're

1:15:46

over a long period of time, prove your trust?

1:15:48

Yeah, I never liked the

1:15:49

phrase history repeats itself

1:15:52

when it comes to

1:15:53

humans

1:15:54

because it doesn't apply if the

1:15:57

people or the person is

1:16:00

actively working to resolve their own

1:16:02

flaws. I do think that if people

1:16:04

are willing to do dedicated, introspective

1:16:07

work, go into their subconscious,

1:16:09

do the hard work, have hard conversations,

1:16:12

and get better at hard conversations, something that I'm constantly

1:16:15

trying to get better at, I think people

1:16:17

can change, but they have to want to change.

1:16:20

It does seem like

1:16:22

deep down, we all can

1:16:24

kind of tell the difference between overt and covert.

1:16:27

Like we have a good sense. I think one of the benefits

1:16:30

of having this characteristic of mine

1:16:32

where I value loyalty,

1:16:34

I've been extremely fortunate to spend

1:16:36

most of my life in overt relationships.

1:16:39

And I think that creates a really fulfilling

1:16:41

life.

1:16:42

But there's also this thing that maybe we're in this

1:16:45

portion of the podcast now, but I've

1:16:47

experienced this. This is late at night, we're talking. That's

1:16:49

right, certainly late for me, but I'm two hours,

1:16:51

I came in today, I'm

1:16:53

still in California. And we should also say that you came here

1:16:55

to wish me a happy birthday. I did. And

1:16:59

the podcast is just like a fun last

1:17:01

minute thing I suggested. Yeah, some

1:17:03

close friends of yours have arranged a dinner that

1:17:06

I'm really looking forward to. I won't say

1:17:08

which night, but it's the next couple of

1:17:10

nights. You know, your circadian

1:17:12

clock

1:17:13

is one of the most robust

1:17:16

features of your biology. I know you can

1:17:18

be nocturnal or you can be diurnal. We

1:17:20

know you're mostly nocturnal, certain

1:17:22

times of the year, Lex, but there

1:17:25

are very, very few people can get away

1:17:27

with no sleep, very few people can get away with

1:17:29

a chaotic sleep-wake schedule. So you

1:17:31

have to obey a 24 hour AK circadian

1:17:34

rhythm if you want to remain healthy

1:17:36

of mind and body. We also

1:17:39

have to acknowledge that aging

1:17:41

isn't linear, right? So-

1:17:44

What do you mean? Well, I mean, the

1:17:47

degree of change between years 35

1:17:49

and 40 is not

1:17:51

going to be the degree of change between 40 and 45, but

1:17:54

I will say this.

1:17:56

I'm 48 and I feel better in every

1:17:58

aspect of my psychology. and biology

1:18:01

now than I did when I was in my twenties.

1:18:05

Yeah, sort of quality

1:18:08

of thought, time spent.

1:18:13

Physically, I can do what I did

1:18:15

then, which probably says more about what I could

1:18:17

do then than what I can do now. But if you

1:18:19

keep training,

1:18:20

you can continue to get better. The key is to not get injured.

1:18:23

And I've never trained super

1:18:25

hard. I've trained hard, but I've

1:18:27

been cautious to not, for instance, weight trained more than

1:18:29

two days in a row. I do a split, which is basically three

1:18:31

days a week. And the other days a run, take one

1:18:33

full day off, take a week off every 12 to 16 weeks.

1:18:36

I've not been the guy hurling the heaviest

1:18:38

weights or running the furthest distance, but I have

1:18:40

been the guy who's continuing to do it when a lot

1:18:43

of my friends are talking about knee injuries. Hey,

1:18:45

hey, hey. But

1:18:49

of course, with sport, you can't account

1:18:51

for everything the same way you can with fitness. And

1:18:54

I have to acknowledge that, you know, unless

1:18:57

one is

1:18:58

powerlifting, you know, weightlifting and running,

1:19:01

you can get hurt, but it's not like skateboarding

1:19:03

where, if you're going for

1:19:05

it, you're going to get hurt. That's just you're landing on concrete.

1:19:08

And

1:19:09

with jujitsu, like people are trying to hurt you so

1:19:12

that you say stop. So

1:19:14

with a sport, it's different. And

1:19:17

these days I don't really do a sport

1:19:19

any longer. I work

1:19:22

out, to say fit. I

1:19:24

used to continue

1:19:27

to

1:19:27

do sports, but I kept getting hurt. And frankly,

1:19:29

now like a rolled ankle,

1:19:33

I may put out a little small skateboard part in 2024

1:19:36

because people have been saying, we want to see the kick flip. I'm

1:19:39

just saying, well, I'll do a heel flip instead, but okay.

1:19:42

I might put out a little part because some of the guys that work on our podcast

1:19:44

are from DC. I think by now,

1:19:47

I should at least do it just to show like I'm not

1:19:50

making it up. And

1:19:52

I probably will. But I think that doing a sport is different.

1:19:54

That's how you get hurt.

1:19:56

Overuse and doing an actual

1:19:58

sport. And so, you know.

1:19:59

hat tip to those to do an actual

1:20:02

sport. And that's

1:20:04

a difficult decision. Like I, a

1:20:06

lot of people have to make. I have to make with Jiu-Jitsu, for example.

1:20:09

Like if you just look empirically, I've trained

1:20:12

really hard from all my life in grappling sports and

1:20:14

fighting sports and all this kind of stuff.

1:20:16

And I've avoided injury for the most part. And

1:20:19

I would say, I

1:20:20

would attribute that to training

1:20:23

a lot. Sounds

1:20:25

counterintuitive, but training well

1:20:27

and safely and correctly, keeping

1:20:30

good form, saying no when they need to say no,

1:20:33

but training a lot and taking it seriously.

1:20:35

Now, when this training is kind of a side,

1:20:38

really a side thing, I find that

1:20:40

the injury becomes a

1:20:43

higher and higher probability. And when you're just doing

1:20:45

it every once in a while. Every once in a while. Yeah,

1:20:48

I think you said something really important, that

1:20:50

the saying no, I mean, the times

1:20:53

I have gotten hurt training is when someone's

1:20:55

like, hey, let's hop on this workout together. And it

1:20:57

becomes a let's challenge each other to do something

1:20:59

outrageous. Sometimes

1:21:01

that can be fun though. I went up to Cam Haynes'

1:21:03

gym and he does these very high repetition weight

1:21:06

workouts that are in circuit form. I

1:21:08

was sore for two weeks, but I learned

1:21:11

a lot and didn't get injured.

1:21:13

And yes, we ate bow hunted

1:21:15

elk after work. Nice. But

1:21:17

the injury has been a really difficult psychological

1:21:20

thing for me because

1:21:22

I've injured my finger,

1:21:24

pinky finger, injured

1:21:26

my knee. Yeah, your kitchen is filled with splints.

1:21:29

Splints. I'm trying to figure

1:21:31

out.

1:21:32

It's

1:21:35

like, if you look in Lex's kitchen, there's

1:21:37

some really good snacks. I had some right before. He's

1:21:41

very good about keeping cold drinks in the fridge. And

1:21:44

all the water has element in it, which is great. I

1:21:46

love that.

1:21:48

But then there's a whole like hospital's

1:21:50

worth of splints. Yeah, I'm trying. I'm

1:21:53

trying to figure out. So here's the thing. I

1:21:55

think I like pop out like this, right? Pinky

1:21:57

finger. I'm trying to figure out how do I.

1:21:59

splinted in such a way that I can still

1:22:02

program, still play guitar, but

1:22:04

protect this kind of torque motion

1:22:06

that creates a huge amount of pain. That's

1:22:09

what you have a jiu-jitsu injury. Jiu-jitsu, but it's

1:22:12

not the kind of, it's probably more like a skateboarding

1:22:14

style injury, which is,

1:22:16

it's unexpected

1:22:18

and a silly, and a silly

1:22:21

thing. That's the thing that happens in a second. I didn't break my foot doing

1:22:23

anything important. I broke my

1:22:26

fifth minute tarp stepping off

1:22:28

a curb. So that's

1:22:31

why they're called accidents.

1:22:33

If you get hurt doing something awesome,

1:22:36

that's a trophy that you have to work through.

1:22:38

It's part of your payment to the universe.

1:22:42

If you get hurt stepping off a curb or

1:22:45

doing something stupid, it's

1:22:47

called a stupid accident.

1:22:50

Since we brought up Chimp Empire, let me ask you about

1:22:52

relationships. I

1:22:54

think we've talked about relationships. Yeah, I only date

1:22:56

homo sapiens. I don't see. It's

1:22:59

the morning meditation. The night is still young. You are

1:23:01

human. No, but you are also animal.

1:23:04

Don't sell yourself short. No, I would say, listen, any

1:23:06

discussion on the Human Lab podcast about

1:23:09

sexual health or anything, the

1:23:12

critical fours, consensual, age-appropriate,

1:23:15

context-appropriate, species-appropriate.

1:23:17

Species-appropriate. Well, can I just

1:23:20

tell you about sexual selection? I've

1:23:22

been watching Life and Color with David Attenborough.

1:23:25

I've been watching a lot of nation documentaries. Talking about

1:23:27

inner peace, it brings me so much

1:23:29

peace to watch nature at its worst and

1:23:31

at its best. So Life and Color is a

1:23:34

series on Netflix where it

1:23:37

presents some of the most colorful animals

1:23:39

on Earth and kind of tells their story of how

1:23:41

they

1:23:42

got there through natural selection. So

1:23:45

you have the peacock with the feathers and it's just such

1:23:48

incredible colors. Like the peacock has these

1:23:51

tail feathers, the male,

1:23:55

that are like gigantic and they're super colorful and

1:23:57

there are these eyes on

1:23:59

it. It's like I like

1:24:01

areas and they wiggle their ass

1:24:04

like to show the tail. They wiggle the tails eye spots

1:24:06

The eye spots. Yes. Thank you. You know, this probably

1:24:09

way better than me. I'm just quoting it Continue

1:24:12

but it was it's just I'm watching this and then

1:24:14

the female is as boring looking

1:24:16

as pot Like she has no colors and nothing

1:24:19

but she's standing there bored just

1:24:22

Seeing this entire display and

1:24:24

I'm just wondering like the entirety

1:24:27

of life on earth well, not

1:24:29

the entirety post bacteria is

1:24:31

like in

1:24:33

At least in part maybe

1:24:35

in large part can be described through this process

1:24:37

of natural selection of sexual selection.

1:24:40

So

1:24:41

dudes fighting and then

1:24:45

women selecting it seems

1:24:47

like it's just the entirety of that

1:24:49

series shows some incredible birds

1:24:51

and Insects and

1:24:54

shrimp. They're all beautiful and colorful

1:24:56

and into shrimp meant to shrimp There's just

1:24:59

they're incredible. Mm-hmm, and it's

1:25:01

all about getting laid.

1:25:03

It's fascinating. I just and

1:25:07

There's nothing like watching that and champ Empire

1:25:09

to make you realize we humans.

1:25:12

That's the same thing That's all we're doing

1:25:15

And all the beautiful variety all the bridges in

1:25:17

the buildings and the Rockets and the internet

1:25:19

all of that is this kind is Is at least in

1:25:22

part

1:25:23

this kind of a product

1:25:25

of this kind of showing off for

1:25:27

each other In all

1:25:29

the wars and all this anyway Well,

1:25:32

there's a I'm asking well that ships. Yes. Well,

1:25:34

right before you ask about relationship.

1:25:36

I think what's

1:25:39

Clear is that every species

1:25:42

it seems

1:25:43

Animal species wants to make

1:25:46

more of itself and protect its young

1:25:48

Well, the protect this young is

1:25:51

none obvious. So not destroy

1:25:53

enough of itself

1:25:56

That it can't get

1:25:58

more to reproductive competence I

1:26:00

mean, I think that, you know,

1:26:02

we have a natural, I mean, healthy

1:26:05

people have a natural

1:26:07

reflex to protect children.

1:26:10

Well, I don't know that. And those that can't. Wait a minute,

1:26:12

wait, wait, wait a minute. I've seen enough animals

1:26:15

that are murdering the children of some other.

1:26:17

Sure. Sure, there's even Sybilicide.

1:26:20

First of all, I just want to say that I

1:26:22

was delighted in your delight around

1:26:25

animal kingdom stuff because this is a favorite theme

1:26:27

of mine as well. But there's, for instance,

1:26:30

some fascinating data

1:26:32

on, for instance, for those

1:26:35

that grew up on farms, they'll be familiar with free Martins,

1:26:37

you know, about free Martins. This is, there are cows

1:26:39

that have multiple calves

1:26:43

inside them. And there's a situation

1:26:46

in which the calves will secrete,

1:26:48

if there's more than one inside, will secrete

1:26:51

chemicals that will

1:26:52

hormonally castrate

1:26:55

the calf next to them so they can't reproduce.

1:26:57

So already in the womb, they are fighting for

1:26:59

future resources.

1:27:01

That's how early this stuff can start. So

1:27:03

it's chemical warfare in the womb against

1:27:05

the siblings. Sometimes there's outright Sybilicide.

1:27:08

Siblings are born, they kill one another. This

1:27:11

also becomes biblical stories, right? There

1:27:15

are instances of

1:27:17

cuttlefish, beautiful cephalopods,

1:27:20

like octopuses, and that is the

1:27:22

plural as we made the- Yeah,

1:27:24

that's a meme on the internet. Yeah, that became

1:27:26

a meme or a little discussion. Yeah, it spread

1:27:29

pretty quick. And now we just resurfaced

1:27:31

it. The dismay

1:27:34

in your voice is so amusing. In

1:27:37

any event, the male cuttlefish will

1:27:39

disguise themselves as female cuttlefish

1:27:41

infiltrate the female cuttlefish group

1:27:44

and then mate with them, you know,

1:27:48

all sorts of,

1:27:49

you know, types of covert

1:27:52

operations. So I think

1:27:55

that

1:27:57

it's like a drinking game where every time we say covert,

1:27:59

you know.

1:27:59

contract in this episode, you have

1:28:02

to take a shot of espresso. Please

1:28:04

don't do that. You'd be dead by the end. So

1:28:07

actually just a small tangent. It does

1:28:09

make me wonder how much intelligence covert

1:28:11

contracts require. It seems like not much. If

1:28:14

you can do it in the animal kingdom, there's some

1:28:16

kind of instinctual. It is based

1:28:19

perhaps in like fear. Yeah, it could

1:28:21

be a simple algorithm.

1:28:23

If there's some ambiguity

1:28:26

about numbers and I'm not

1:28:28

with these guys and you know, then

1:28:30

flip to the alternate strategy. I actually have a story

1:28:33

about this that I think is relevant. I used to have cuttlefish in my

1:28:35

lab in San Diego. We went

1:28:37

and got them from a guy out in the desert. We

1:28:39

put them in the lab. It was amazing. And they

1:28:41

had a postdoc who was studying prey

1:28:44

capture and cuttlefish. They have a very ballistic,

1:28:46

extremely rapid strike and grab of the

1:28:48

shrimp. And they, we

1:28:51

were using high speed cameras to characterize

1:28:54

all this looking at binocular. They normally have their eyes on

1:28:56

the side of their head. When they see

1:28:59

something they want to eat, the eyes translocate to the front,

1:29:01

which allows them stereopsis death perception allows

1:29:03

them to strike. We were doing some unilateral eye removals.

1:29:05

They would miss, et cetera. Okay.

1:29:08

This has to do with eye spots.

1:29:10

This was during a government shutdown

1:29:12

period where the ghost shrimp that

1:29:14

they normally feed

1:29:17

on that we would ship in from the Gulf

1:29:19

down here weren't available

1:29:21

to us. So we had to get different shrimp. And what

1:29:24

we noticed was that the cuttlefish normally

1:29:26

would just sneak up on the shrimp.

1:29:29

We learned this by data collection. And

1:29:31

if the shrimp was facing them, they

1:29:33

would do this thing with their tentacles of kind of enchanting

1:29:36

the cuttle, the shrimp. And

1:29:38

if the shrimp wasn't facing them, they wouldn't do it.

1:29:41

And they would ballistically grab it and eat them.

1:29:43

Well, when we got these new shrimp,

1:29:46

the new shrimp had eye spots

1:29:48

on their tails. And then the cuttlefish

1:29:50

would do this kind of attempt to enchant regardless

1:29:52

of the position of the ghost shrimp. So what does

1:29:54

that mean? Okay. Well, it means that there's some sort of algorithm

1:29:57

in the cuttlefish's mind that

1:29:59

says,

1:29:59

says, okay, if you see two spots,

1:30:02

move your tentacles. So it can be, as you pointed

1:30:04

out, it can be a fairly simple operation,

1:30:07

but it looks diabolical. It

1:30:09

looks cunning, but all it is is

1:30:11

strategy B.

1:30:14

Yeah, but it's still somehow

1:30:16

emerged. I

1:30:19

mean, I don't think that calling

1:30:21

it an algorithm doesn't, I

1:30:24

feel like- Well, there's a circuit there that gets implemented

1:30:26

in a certain context, but that circuit

1:30:28

had to evolve. You

1:30:30

do realize super intelligent AI will look at us humans

1:30:33

and we'll say the exact thing. There's

1:30:35

a circuit in there that evolved

1:30:38

to do this algorithm A and

1:30:40

algorithm B, and it's trivial.

1:30:43

And to us humans, it's fancy and beautiful, and

1:30:45

write poetry about it, but it's just trivial.

1:30:47

We don't understand the subconscious

1:30:49

because that AI algorithm cannot

1:30:52

see into what it can't see. It doesn't understand

1:30:54

the under workings of what

1:30:56

allows all of this conversation stuff to manifest.

1:30:59

And we can't even see it. How could AI see

1:31:01

it? Maybe it will. Maybe AI will

1:31:03

solve and give us access to our

1:31:05

subconscious. Maybe your AI friend

1:31:08

or coach, like

1:31:10

I think Andreessen and others are arguing

1:31:12

is going to happen at some point. It's going to say, hey,

1:31:15

Lex, you're making decisions lately

1:31:17

that

1:31:17

are not good for you, but it's because

1:31:20

of this

1:31:21

algorithm that you picked up in childhood that

1:31:23

if you don't state your explicit

1:31:26

needs up front,

1:31:27

you're not going to get what you want, so why

1:31:30

do it?

1:31:30

From now on, you need to actually make a list

1:31:33

of every absolutely outrageous thing

1:31:35

that you want, no matter how outrageous,

1:31:38

and communicate that immediately,

1:31:40

and that will work.

1:31:41

We're talking about coefficient sexual

1:31:44

selection, and then we went into some,

1:31:46

where do we go? And you said you were excited.

1:31:49

I was excited. Well, you were just saying,

1:31:52

what about these covert contracts and animals

1:31:54

do them? I think it's simple contextual engagement

1:31:56

of a neural circuit, which is not just nerd speak

1:31:58

for saying they do a different strategy.

1:31:59

saying that there has to be a circuit

1:32:02

there, hardwired circuit,

1:32:04

maybe learned, but probably hardwired, that

1:32:07

can be engaged, right? You can't build

1:32:09

neural machinery out of, in a

1:32:11

moment, you need to build

1:32:13

that circuit over time. What is building it

1:32:15

over time? You select for it. The cuttlefish

1:32:18

that did not have that alternate context-driven

1:32:20

circuit didn't survive

1:32:23

when there was a, when

1:32:25

all the shrimp that they normally disappear

1:32:28

and the eyespotted shrimp showed up.

1:32:30

And there were a couple that had some miswiring.

1:32:33

This is why mutation, right? X-Men type

1:32:35

stuff is real. They had a mutation

1:32:38

that had some alternate wiring and that wiring

1:32:40

got selected for, became a mutation that

1:32:42

was adaptive as opposed to maladaptive.

1:32:44

This is something people don't often understand about genetics

1:32:47

is that it only takes a few generations

1:32:50

to devolve a trait, make it worse,

1:32:53

but it takes a long time to

1:32:55

evolve an adaptive trait.

1:32:57

There are exceptions to that, but most

1:33:00

often that's true. So a species needs

1:33:02

a lot of generations. We are hopefully

1:33:04

still evolving as a species and

1:33:06

it takes a long time to

1:33:09

evolve more adaptive traits, but

1:33:11

doesn't take long to devolve

1:33:14

adaptive traits so that you're getting

1:33:16

sicker or you're not functioning as well. So

1:33:19

choose your mate wisely. And that's perhaps the good

1:33:21

segue into sexual selection humans. I

1:33:23

could tell you, you're good at this. Why

1:33:27

did I bring up sexual selection? It's the relationship,

1:33:29

so sexual selection in humans. I

1:33:32

don't think you've done an episode on relationships. No,

1:33:36

I did an episode on attachment,

1:33:39

but not on relationships.

1:33:41

The series with Conti

1:33:44

includes one episode of the

1:33:46

four that's all about relational

1:33:48

understanding and how to select a mate

1:33:50

based on matching of drives.

1:33:54

All the demons inside

1:33:56

the subconscious, how to match demons,

1:33:59

that they dance well together.

1:33:59

And how generative two people

1:34:02

are. What does that mean? Means

1:34:04

how, the way he explains it is, how

1:34:07

devoted to creating growth

1:34:09

within the context of the family, the relationship

1:34:12

with work. Well, let me ask you about mating rituals

1:34:15

and how to find such a relationship.

1:34:17

I mean, you're really big on friendships,

1:34:20

on the value of friendships. I am.

1:34:24

And that I think extends itself into

1:34:27

one of the deepest kinds of friendships you can have, which

1:34:30

is a romantic relationship.

1:34:31

What mistakes, successes and wisdom

1:34:33

can you impart? Well,

1:34:41

I've certainly made some mistakes. I've also made

1:34:43

some good choices in this realm.

1:34:48

First of all,

1:34:49

we have to define

1:34:50

what sort of relationship we're talking about. If

1:34:52

one is looking for a life partner, potentially

1:34:54

somebody to establish family with, with

1:34:57

or without kids, with or without pets, right? Families

1:34:59

can take different forms. I

1:35:01

mean, I certainly experienced being a family

1:35:04

in a prior relationship where it was the two of us

1:35:06

and our two dogs. And then it was like, it was family.

1:35:08

Like we had our little family.

1:35:14

I think

1:35:17

based on my experience and based

1:35:19

on input from friends

1:35:22

who themselves have very

1:35:24

successful relationships. I must say I've

1:35:26

got

1:35:27

friends who are in long-term, monogamous,

1:35:33

very happy

1:35:34

relationships where there seems

1:35:37

to be a lot of love,

1:35:40

a lot of laughter, a lot

1:35:42

of challenge and a lot of growth.

1:35:45

And

1:35:46

both people, it seems really

1:35:49

want to be there and enjoy being there. Just

1:35:52

to pause on that. One thing

1:35:54

to do, I think,

1:35:57

by way of advice is listen to people who are

1:35:59

in long-term.

1:35:59

successful relationships. That's like,

1:36:02

it seems dumb, but like, like

1:36:05

we both know and are friends with Joe Rogan, who's

1:36:07

been in a long-term, really great

1:36:09

relationship. And he's been an inspiration to me. So

1:36:12

you take advice from that guy. Definitely. And

1:36:15

several members of my podcast team are in

1:36:18

excellent relationships.

1:36:20

I think one of the

1:36:23

things that rings true over and over again

1:36:25

in the advice and in my

1:36:27

experience is, you

1:36:29

know, find someone who's really

1:36:31

a

1:36:32

great friend, like build a really

1:36:34

great friendship with that person. Now, obviously

1:36:37

not just a friend if we're talking romantic relationship,

1:36:39

but, and of course sex

1:36:41

is super important,

1:36:43

but it should be a part of

1:36:46

that particular relationship alongside

1:36:48

or meshed with the friendship.

1:36:52

Can it be a majority of the

1:36:54

positive exchange? I suppose

1:36:56

it could, but I think the friendship piece is extremely

1:36:59

important because what's required in a successful

1:37:01

relationship clearly is

1:37:04

joy in being together,

1:37:07

trust,

1:37:10

a desire to

1:37:12

share experience, both, you

1:37:14

know, mundane and more adventurous,

1:37:18

support each other, acceptance,

1:37:22

a real,

1:37:25

maybe even admiration, but certainly delight

1:37:27

in being with the person. You know earlier we were talking

1:37:30

about peace, and I think that that sense

1:37:32

of peace comes from knowing that the person

1:37:34

you're in friendship with or that you're in romantic relationship

1:37:36

or ideally both, because let's assume

1:37:38

healthy relation, the best romantic relationship includes

1:37:41

a friendship component with that person. It's like you

1:37:43

just really delight in their presence,

1:37:46

even if it's a quiet presence,

1:37:49

and you delight in seeing

1:37:52

them delight in things, right? That's

1:37:55

clear.

1:37:56

The trust piece is huge, you

1:37:59

know, and... And that's where people start, we

1:38:02

don't wanna focus on what works, not what doesn't work, but that's

1:38:04

where I think people start

1:38:07

engaging these covert contracts. They're afraid

1:38:09

of being betrayed, so they betray. They're

1:38:13

afraid of giving up too much

1:38:15

vulnerability, so they hide their

1:38:17

vulnerability. Or in the worst cases,

1:38:19

they feign vulnerability. Again,

1:38:24

that's a covert contract that just simply undermines

1:38:26

everything and becomes one equals two minus one

1:38:28

to infinity.

1:38:30

Conversely, I think if people

1:38:32

can have really hard conversations,

1:38:35

this is something I've had to work really hard on in recent years

1:38:37

that I'm still working hard on. But

1:38:40

the friendship piece seems to be the thing that rises

1:38:42

to the top when I talk to

1:38:45

friends who are in these great relationships.

1:38:48

It's like they have so much respect and

1:38:50

love and joy

1:38:52

in being with their

1:38:54

friend. It's the person that they wanna spend as much

1:38:56

of their non-working, non-Platonic

1:38:58

friendship time with, and

1:39:01

the person that they wanna experience things with and share things

1:39:03

with. And it sounds so

1:39:06

kind of canned and cliche nowadays, but I think if

1:39:09

you step back and examine how most people go about

1:39:11

finding a relationship, sort of like,

1:39:13

oh, am I attracted? Of course, physical attraction

1:39:15

is important and other forms of attraction too. And

1:39:19

they sort of enter through that portal, which makes

1:39:21

sense. That's the mating dance,

1:39:23

right? That's the peacock situation.

1:39:26

Hopefully not the cuddle for situation. But

1:39:31

I think that

1:39:33

there seems to be a history of

1:39:37

people close to me getting into great relationships

1:39:39

where they were friends for a while first

1:39:41

or maybe didn't sleep together right away,

1:39:44

that they actually intentionally deferred on

1:39:46

that.

1:39:47

This has not been my

1:39:50

habit or my experience. I've gone the more,

1:39:52

I think, typical, like,

1:39:54

oh, there's an attraction like this person,

1:39:57

there's an interest. You kind of explore all dimensions of

1:39:59

relationship really quickly. except perhaps the moving

1:40:01

in part and the having kids part, which

1:40:03

ideally, because it's a bigger step, harder to undo

1:40:06

without more severe consequences.

1:40:09

But I think the whole take

1:40:11

it slow thing, I

1:40:13

don't think is about getting to know someone slowly.

1:40:15

I think it's about that physical piece because

1:40:18

that does change the nature of the relationship. And

1:40:21

I think it's because it gets right into the

1:40:24

more hardwired primitive circuitry

1:40:26

around our feelings of safety,

1:40:29

vulnerability.

1:40:32

There's something about

1:40:34

romantic and sexual interactions

1:40:37

where it's almost like

1:40:39

it's like assets and liabilities, where

1:40:42

people are trying to figure out how much to

1:40:45

engage their time and their energy

1:40:47

and multiple, I'm talking about from both sides, male,

1:40:49

female or whatever, sides, but

1:40:52

where it's like assets and liabilities. And

1:40:54

that's where it starts getting

1:40:57

into those

1:40:59

complicated contracts early on, I think. And

1:41:01

so maybe that's why if a really great

1:41:03

friendship and admiration is established

1:41:05

first,

1:41:07

even if people are romantically and sexually attracted

1:41:09

to one another, then that piece can be added in a little

1:41:11

bit later in a way that

1:41:14

really kind of just seals up the whole thing. And

1:41:16

then who knows, maybe they spend 90% of their time having sex,

1:41:19

I don't know, that that's

1:41:21

not for me to say or decide,

1:41:23

obviously, but there's something