Dr Lex Fridman: Navigating Conflict, Finding Purpose & Maintaining Drive | Huberman Lab Podcast #100

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast,

where we discuss science and science-based tools

for everyday life.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a Professor

of Neurobiology and Ophthalmology

at Stanford School of Medicine.

Today, my guest is Dr. Lex Fridman Dr.

Lex Fridman is an expert in electrical and computer

engineering, artificial intelligence, and robotics.

He is also the host of the Lex Fridman Podcast, which

initially started as a podcast focus

on technology and science of various kinds,

including computer science and physics,

but rapidly evolved to include guests and other topics

as a matter of focus, including sport.

For instance, Dr. Lex Freedman is a Black Belt

in Brazilian jujitsu.

And he's had numerous guests on who

come from the fields of Brazilian jujitsu,

both from the coaching side and from the competitor side.

He also has shown an active interest

in topics such as chess and essentially anything

that involves intense activation and engagement of the mind

and/or body.

In fact, the Lex Fridman podcast has

evolved to take on very difficult topics

such as mental health-- he's had various psychiatrists

and other guests on that relate to mental health

and mental illness, as well as guest focused on geopolitics

and some of the more controversial issues

that face our times.

He's had comedians, he's had scientists, he's had friends,

he's had enemies on his podcast.

Lex has a phenomenal, I would say a 1 in an eight billion

ability to find these people, make them comfortable,

and in that comfort, both try to understand them

and to confront them and to push them so that we all learn.

All of which is to say that Lex Fridman is no longer just

an accomplished scientist, he certainly is that.

But he has also become one of the more preeminent thought

leaders on the planet.

And if there's anything that really captures

the essence of Lex Fridman, it's his love

of learning, his desire to share with us, the human experience,

and to broaden that experience so that we all may benefit.

In many ways, our discussion during today's episode

captures the many facets of Lex Fridman,

although no conversation, of course, could capture them all.

We sit down to the conversation just days

after Lex returned from Ukraine, where he deliberately

placed himself into the tension of that environment

in order to understand the geopolitics of the region

and to understand exactly what was

happening at the level of the ground and the people there.

You may notice that he carries quite a lot of both, emotion

and knowledge and understanding.

And yet in a very classic Lex Fridman way,

you'll notice that he's able to zoom out

of his own experience around any number of different topics

and view them through a variety of lenses

so that first of all, everyone feel included, but most of all,

so that everyone learned something new, that

is to gain new perspective.

Our discussion also ventures into the waters of social media

and how that landscape is changing

the way that science and technology are communicated.

We also get into the topics of motivation drive and purpose,

both finding it and executing on that drive and purpose.

I should mention that this is episode 100 of the Huberman Lab

Podcast.

And I would be remiss if I did not tell you

that there would be no Huberman Lab Podcast,

were it not for Lex Fridman.

I was a fan of the Lex Fridman Podcast

long before I was ever invited on to the podcast as a guest.

And after our first recording, Lex

was the one that suggested that I start a podcast.

He only gave me two pieces of advice.

The first piece of advice was, start a podcast.

And the second piece of advice was

that I not just make it me blabbing into the microphone

and staring at the camera.

So I can safely say that I at least followed

half of his advice, and that I am ever grateful for Lex,

both as a friend, a colleague in science,

and now fellow podcaster for making the suggestion that we

start this podcast.

I already mentioned a few of the topics

covered on today's podcast.

But I can assure you that there is far more to the person

that many of us know as Lex Fridman.

If you are somebody interested in artificial intelligence,

engineering, or robotics, today's discussion

is most certainly for you.

And if you are not, but you are somebody

who is interested in world politics, and more importantly,

the human experience, both the individual

and the collective human experience,

Lex shares what can only be described

as incredible insights into what he views

as the human experience and what is optimal in order to derive

from our time on this planet.

Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize

that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research

roles at Stanford.

It is however, part of my desire and effort

to bring zero cost to consumer information

about science and science-related tools

to the general public.

In keeping with that theme, I'd like

to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

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And now for my discussion with Dr. Lex Fridman, welcome back.

LEX FRIDMAN: It's good to be back in a bedroom.

This feels like a porn set.

I apologize to open that way.

I've never been in a porn set, so I should admit this.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Our studio has being renovated.

So here we are for the monumental recording

of episode 100--

LEX FRIDMAN: Episode 100 of the Huberman Lab

Podcast, which was inspired by the Lex Fridman Podcast.

Some people already know the story.

But I'll repeat it again for those that don't.

There would not be a Huberman Lab Podcast,

were it not for Lex Fridman.

Because after recording as a guest on his podcast

a few years ago, he made the suggestion

that I start a podcast.

And he explained to me how it works.

And he said, "You should start a podcast.

But just make sure that it's not you

blabbing the whole time, Andrew."

And I only sort of followed the advice.

LEX FRIDMAN: Yeah, well, you surprised me,

surprised the world, that you're able to talk for hours

and cite some of the best science going on

and be able to give people advice

without many interruptions or edits or any of that.

I mean, that takes an incredible amount of skill

that you're probably born with.

And some of it is developed.

I mean, the whole science community is proud of you, man.

Stanford is proud of you.

So yeah, it's a beautiful thing.

It was really surprising.

Because it's unclear how a scientist can

do a great podcast that's not just

shooting the shit about random stuff,

but really is giving very structured, good advice

that's boiling down the state of the art science

into something that's actually useful for people.

So that was impressive.

It's like holy shit, he actually pulled this off.

And doing it every week on a different topic--

I mean, I'm usually positive, especially

for people I love and support.

But damn, I thought, there's no way

he's going to be able to pull this off week after week.

And it's been only getting better and better and better.

Had a whole rant on a recent podcast, I forget with who,

of how awesome you are with Rana el Kaliouby.

She's a emotion recognition person, AI person.

And then she didn't know who you were.

And I was like, what the hell do you mean?

And I just went on this whole rant of how awesome you are.

Is hilarious.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Well, I'm very gratified to hear this.

I'm-- it's a little uncomfortable for me to hear

but listen, I'm just really happy if people are getting

information that they like and can make actionable.

And it was inspired by you.

And look right back at you.

I've followed a number of your structural formats.

Attire, I don't wear a tie.

I'm constantly reminded about this by my father.

LEX FRIDMAN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Who says what-- he'd saw my podcast.

And he was like, why don't you dress properly

like your friend Lex?

He literally said that.

And it's a debate that goes back and forth.

But nonetheless--

LEX FRIDMAN: How does it feel?

Episode 100.

How does it feel?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: You know, I think.

LEX FRIDMAN: Can you imagine you're here?

You hear after so many episodes and done so much.

I mean, the number of hours is just insane.

The amount of passion, the amount

of work you put into this, what's it feel like?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: It feels great.

And it feels very much like the horizon is still

at the same distance in front of me.

Every episode, I just try and get information there.

And the process that we talked about on your podcast.

We won't go into it of collecting information,

distilling it down to some simple notes,

walking around, listening to music,

trying to figure out what the motifs are,

and then-- as just like you, I don't use a teleprompter

or anything like that.

There's very minimal notes.

So it feels great, and I love it.

And again, I'm just grateful to you for inspiring it.

And I just want to keep going and do more of it.

And I should say I am also relieved

that we're sitting here because you recently went overseas

to a very intense war zone, literally, the Ukraine.

And the entire time that you were there,

I was genuinely concerned.

The world's a unpredictable place, in general.

And we don't always get the only vote and what happens to us.

So first of all, welcome back safely,

one peace, one alive peace.

And what was that like?

I mean, at a broad level, at a specific level,

what drew you there?

What surprised you?

And how do you think it changed you in coming back here?

LEX FRIDMAN: I think there's a lot to say.

But first, it is really good to be back.

One of the things that when you go

to a difficult part of the world or a part of the world that's

going through something difficult,

you really appreciate how great it is to be an American.

Everything.

The easy access to food.

Despite what people think, the stable, reliable rule of law.

The lack of corruption in that you can trust that if you start

a business or if you take on various pursuits in life

that there's not going to be at-scale manipulation

of your efforts such that you can't succeed.

So this kind of capitalism is in it's--

the ideal of capitalism is really still burning bright

in this country.

And it really makes you appreciate those aspects.

And also just the ability to have a home for generations,

across generations.

So you can have your grandfather live

in Kentucky in a certain city.

And then his children lived there, and you live there,

and then it just continues on and on.

That's the kind of thing you can have when you don't have war.

Because war destroys entire communities.

And it destroys histories, generations,

like life stories that stretch across the generations.

So--

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah yeah.

I didn't even think about that until you said just now.

But photographs, hard drives get destroyed or just abandoned.

LEX FRIDMAN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Libraries.

I mean, nowadays, things exist in the cloud

but are still a lot of--

LEX FRIDMAN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: --material goods

that are irreplaceable, right.

LEX FRIDMAN: Well, even in rural parts of the United States,

they don't exist in the cloud, right.

A lot of people still, well, even in towns, they still

love the physical photo album of your family.

A lot of people still store their photographs

of families in the VHS tapes and all that kind of stuff, yeah.

But I think-- there's so many things I've learned and really

felt the lessons.

One of which is nobody gives a damn when your photos are gone

and all that kind of stuff, your house is gone.

The thing time and time again I saw for people

that lost everything is how happy they are for the people.

They love the friends, the family that are still alive.

That's the only thing they talk about.

That, in fact, they don't mention actually

with much dramatic sort of vigor about the trauma

of losing your home.

They're just non-stop saying how lucky they are that person X

person Y is still here.

And that makes you realize that when you lose everything,

it's still--

it makes you realize what really matters,

which is the people in your life.

I mean, a lot of people kind of realize that later in life,

when you're facing mortality, when you're facing your death,

or you get a cancer diagnosis, that kind of stuff.

I think people here in America, in California,

with the fires, you you can still lose your home.

You are going to realize, like, nah.

It doesn't really matter.

It's a pain in the ass but what matters is still

the family, the people, and so on.

I think the most intense thing--

I talked to several hundred people, some of which

is recorded.

I've really been struggling to put that out

because I have to edit it myself.

And so you're talking about 30, 40 hours of footage, and it--

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Is emotionally struggling?

LEX FRIDMAN: Yeah. It is extremely difficult.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Are you like emotional struggle?

LEX FRIDMAN: It's extremely difficult.

So I talked to a lot of politicians.

The number two in the country, number three.

I'll be back there to talk to the president

to do a three-hour conversation.

Those are easy to edit.

They're really heartfelt and thoughtful folks

from different perspectives on the geopolitics of the war.

But the ones that really hard to edit

is like grandmas that are in the middle of nowhere.

They lost everything.

They still have hope, they still have love.

And some of them have--

some of them, many of them, unfortunately,

have now hate in their heart.

So in February, when Russia invaded Ukraine,

this is the thing I realized about War.

One of the most painful one lessons

is that war creates generational hate.

We sometimes think about war as a thing that kills people,

kills civilians, kills soldiers, takes away lives,

injures people.

But we don't directly think about

the secondary and tertiary effects

of that which lasts decades.

Which is anyone who's lost the father or a mother

or a daughter or a son, they now hate not just

the individual soldiers or the leaders

that invaded their country but the entirety of the people.

So it's not that they hate Vladimir Putin

or hate the Russian military.

They hate Russian people.

So that tears the fabric of a thing

that, for me-- my half my family's from Ukraine,

half of my family is from Russia.

But there is--

I remember the pain the triumph of World War two

still resonates through my entire family tree.

And so, you remember when the Russians and Ukrainians

fought together against this Nazi invasion.

You remember a lot of that.

And now, to see the fabric of this peoples torn apart

completely with hate is really, really difficult. For me,

just to realize that things will just never

be the same on this particular cultural, historical aspect.

But also, there's so many painful ways in which

things will never be the same.

Which is we've seen that it's possible to have

a major hot war in the 21st century.

I think a lot of people are watching this.

China is watching this.

India is watching this.

United States is watching this and thinking we can actually

have a large-scale war.

And I think the lessons learned from that.

Might be the kind that lead to a major World War III

in the 21st century.

So one of the things I realized watching the whole scene

is that we don't know shit about what's going

to happen in the 21st century.

And it might-- we kind of have this intuition like surely

there's not going to be another war.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Like we'll just coast.

LEX FRIDMAN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah.

LEX FRIDMAN: Yeah, pandemic.

Yeah--

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And back to normal.

LEX FRIDMAN: Back to normal--

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Whatever that is.

LEX FRIDMAN: But you have to remember,

at the end of World War I, as Woodrow Wilson called it,

the war to end all wars.

Nobody ironically, in a dark way,

it was also the roaring 20s when people believed this.

There will never be another World War.

And 20 years after that, the rise of Nazi Germany.

A charismatic leader that captivated

the minds of millions and built up

a military that can take on the whole world.

And so it makes you realize that this is still possible.

This is still possible.

And then the tension.

You see this-- the media machine, the propaganda

machine, that I've gotten to see every aspect of.

It's still fueling that division between America and China.

Between Russia and India.

And then Africa has a complicated thing

that's trying to figure out who are they with,

who are they against.

And just this tension is building and building.

And like it makes you realize like we might--

the thing that might shake human civilization

may not be so far off.

That's a realization you get to really feel.

I mean, there's all kinds of other lessons.

And one of which is propaganda.

Is I got to--

I get a lot of letters, emails.

And some of them are full of really intense language,

full of hate from every side toward me.

Or, well, the hate is towards me as representing

side X. And X stands as a variable for every side.

So either I'm a Zelensky show, or I'm a Putin show,

or I'm a NATO show, or I'm an America--

America show-- American empire show.

Or I'm a Democrat or a Republican.

Because it's already been, in this country, politicized.

I think there's a sense of Ukraine is this place that's

full of corruption.

Why are we sending money there?

I think that's kind of the messaging

on the Republican side.

On the Democratic side--

I'm not even keeping track of the actual messaging

and the conspiracy theories and the narratives,

but they are-- the tension is there.

And I get to feel it directly.

And what you get to really experience

is there's a large number of narratives

that all are extremely confident themselves that they

know the truth.

People are convinced, first of all,

that they're not being lied to.

People in Russia think there's no propaganda.

They think that, yes, yes, there is

like state-sponsored propaganda, but we're all

smart enough to ignore the lame propaganda that's everywhere.

They know that we can think on our own, we know the truth,

and everybody kind of speaks in this way.

Everybody in the United States says,

well, yes, there's mainstream media,

they're full of messaging and propaganda, but we're smart.

We can think on our own.

Of course, we see through that.

Everybody says this.

And then the conclusion of their thought

is often hatred towards some group, whatever that group is.

And the more you've lost, the more

intense the feeling of hatred.

It's a really difficult field to walk

through calmly and with an open mind

and try to understand what's really going on.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: It's super intense.

That's the only words that come to mind as I hear this.

You mentioned something that it seems that hate generalizes.

It's against an entire group or an entire country.

Why do you think it is that hate generalizes and that love

may or may not generalize?

LEX FRIDMAN: I've had-- sort of one,

as you can imagine, the kind of question I asked

is, do you have love or hate in your heart?

It's a question I asked almost everybody.

And then I would dig into this exact question

that you're asking.

I think some of the most beautiful things I've

heard which is people that are full of hate

are able to self-introspect about it.

They know they shouldn't feel it, but they can't help it.

It's not-- they know that ultimately the thing that

helps them and helps everyone is to feel love for fellow man,

but they can't help it.

They know.

It's like a drug, they say like hate escalates,

it's like a vicious spiral.

You just can't help it.

And the question I also asked is, do you

think you'll ever be able to forgive Russia?

And after much thought almost--

it's split, but most people will say no.

I will never be able to forgive.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And because of the generalization

you talked about earlier, that could even include all Ru--

LEX FRIDMAN: All Russians.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: In that statements,

they mean all Russians.

LEX FRIDMAN: Because if you do nothing

that's as bad or worse than being part of the army

that invades.

So the people that are just sitting there,

the good Germans, the people that are just quietly going

on with their lives, you're just as bad, if not worse,

is their perspective.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Earlier, you said

that going over to the Ukraine now

allowed you to realize just so many

of the positives of being here in the United States.

I have a good friend.

We both know him.

I won't name him by name, but we've

communicated the three of us from

tier-one Special Operations.

He spent years doing deployments.

Really amazing individual.

And I remember when the pandemic hit, he said on a text thread

you know, Americans aren't used to the government interfering

with their plans.

Around the world, many people are

familiar with governments dramatically interfering

with their plans.

Sometimes even in a seemingly random way.

Here we were not braced for that.

I mean, we get speeding tickets, and there's lines

to vote and things like that.

But I think the pandemic was one of the first times,

at least in my life, that I can remember where it really

seemed like the government was impeding what people naturally

wanted to do.

And that was a shock for people here.

And I have a what might seem like a somewhat

mundane question, but it's something

that I saw on social media.

A lot of people were asking me to ask you,

and I was curious about too.

What was a typical day like over there?

Were sleeping in a bed, were you sleeping on the ground?

Everyone seems to want to know.

What were you eating?

Were you eating once a day?

Were you eating your steak?

Or were you-- were you in fairly deprived conditions over there?

I saw a couple photos that you posted out

of doors in front of rubble.

With pith helmet on in one case.

What was that typical day like over there?

LEX FRIDMAN: So there's two modes.

One of them-- I spent a lot of time in Kyiv,

which is much safer than--

it may be obvious to state but for people who don't know,

it's in the middle of the country,

and it's much safer than the actual front.

The word the battle is happening.

So much, much safer than Kyiv even

is Lviv which is the Western part of the country.

So the times I spent in Kyiv were

fundamentally different than the time I spent at the front.

And I went to the Kherson region,

which is where a lot of really heated battle was happening.

There's several areas.

So there's Kharkiv.

It's in the Northeast of the country.

And then there's Donbas region, which is East of the country.

And then there's Kherson region, which, by the way,

I'm not good at geography, so is the Southeast of the country.

And that's where, at least when I was there,

was a lot of really heated fighting happening.

So when I was in the Kherson region,

it's what you would imagine.

The place-- I stayed in a hotel where all the lights

have to stay off.

So the entire town, all the lights are off.

You have to navigate through the darkness

and use your phone to shine, and so on.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: This is terrible for the circadian

system.

LEX FRIDMAN: Yeah. ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah.

LEX FRIDMAN: That's exactly--

I was this-- how can I do this?

Where's my element and Athletic Greens?

How can I function?

No.

There's I think it was balanced by the deep appreciation

of being alive.

[LAUGHTER]

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Right now I-- mean,

this is the reason that I asked--

LEX FRIDMAN: Stress-wise.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: This is the reason

I ask is we get used to all these creature comforts.

LEX FRIDMAN: Yes.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And we don't need them,

but we often come to depend on them

in a way that makes us feel like we need them.

LEX FRIDMAN: Yeah, but very quickly,

there's something about the intensity of life

that you see in people's eyes because they're

living through a war that makes you forget all those creature

comforts.

And it was actually--

I'm somebody who hates traveling and so on.

I love the creature habits.

I love-- I love the comfort of the ritual right

but all of that was forgotten very quickly.

Just the intensity of feeling, the intensity of

love that people have for each other, that was obvious.

In terms of food--

so there's a curfew.

So depends on what part of the country.

But usually, you basically have to scamper home like 9:00 PM.

So the hard curfew in a lot of places is 11:00 PM at night.

But by then, you have to be home.

So-- in some places, it's 10:00.

So at 9:00 PM, you start going home.

Which, for me, was kind of wonderful

also because I get to spend--

I get to be forced to spend time alone and think for many hours

in wherever I'm staying.

Which is really nice.

And everywhere there's a calmness and the quietness

to the whole thing.

In terms of food, once a day.

Just the food is incredibly cheap and incredibly delicious.

People are still-- one of the things

they can still take pride in is making the best

possible food they can.

So meat-- but they do admire American meat,

so the meat is not as great as it could be in that country.

But I ate borsch every day, all that kind of stuff.

Mostly meat.

So spend the entire day--

wake up in the morning with coffee,

spend the entire day talking to people.

Which for me is very difficult because

of the intensity of the story.

It's one after the other after the other.

We just talk to regular people, talk to soldiers,

talk to politicians, all kinds of soldiers.

I talked to people there who are doing rescue missions, so

Americans.

I hung out with Tim Kennedy.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Oh, yeah?

The great Tim Kennedy.

LEX FRIDMAN: The great Tim Kennedy, who--

also him and many others revealed to me

one of the many reasons I'm proud to be

an American is how trained and skilled and effective

American soldiers are.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I guess for listeners of this podcast maybe

we should familiarize them with who

Tim Kennedy is because I realized that a number of them

will know, but--

LEX FRIDMAN: How do you do that?

How do you try to summarize a man?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Right.

We can be accurate but not exhaustive,

as any good data are accurate but not exhaustive.

Very skilled and accomplished MMA fighter, very skilled

and accomplished former Special Operations member,

American Patriot, and podcaster too, right?

Does he have his own podcast?

LEX FRIDMAN: Maybe.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: OK. LEX FRIDMAN: Maybe.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: We know Andy Stumpf has his own podcast.

LEX FRIDMAN: Yes. ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah.

LEX FRIDMAN: Which is an amazing podcast.

Yeah, Andy's great.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah.

Clearing Hot podcast with Andy Stumpf.

LEX FRIDMAN: But also Tim Kennedy

is like the embodiment of America to the most beautiful

and the most ridiculous degree.

So he's like what you imagine--

what is it, Team America?

I just imagine him shirtless on a tank rolling

into enemy territory just screaming

at the top of his lungs.

That's just his personality.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: But not posturing.

He actually does the work, as they say.

LEX FRIDMAN: So this is the thing.

He really embodies that.

Now, some of that is just his personality and humor.

I'd like to sort of comment on the humor of things,

not just with him.

There's very one other interesting thing I've learned.

But also when he's actually helping people

he's extremely good at what he does,

which is building teams that rescue, that

go into the most dangerous areas of Ukraine, dangerous areas

anywhere else, and they get the job done.

And one of the things I heard time and time again,

which what's really interesting to me,

that Ukrainian soldiers said that comparing Ukrainian,

Russian, and American soldiers, American soldiers

are the bravest, which was very interesting for me

to hear given how high the morale is

for the Ukrainian soldiers.

But that just reveals that training

enables you to be brave.

So it's not just about how well trained they are and so on,

it's how intense and ferocious they are in the fighting.

And it makes you realize, this is American army,

not just through the technology, especially the special force

guys.

They're still one of the most effective

and terrifying armies in the world.

And listen, just for context, I'm

somebody who is, for the most part, anti-war, a pacifist.

But you get to see some of the realities of war kind of wake

you up to what needs to get done to protect sovereignty,

to protect some of the values, to protect civilians and homes

and all that kind of stuff.

Sometimes war has to happen.

And I should also mention the Russian side

because while I haven't gotten to experience the Russian side

yet I do fully plan to travel to Russia, as I've told everybody.

I was very upfront with everybody about this.

I would like to hear the story of Russians.

But I do know from the Ukrainian side, like the grandmas--

I love grandmas.

They told me stories that the Russians really--

the ones that entered their villages, they really, really

believed they're saving Ukraine from Nazis,

from Nazi occupation.

So they feel that Ukraine is under control

of Nazi organizations and they believe

they're saving the country that's

their brothers and sisters.

I think propaganda and I think truth is a very difficult thing

to arrive with in that war zone.

I think in the 21st century one of the things

you realize that so much of war, even more so than in the past,

is an information war.

And people that just use Twitter for their source of information

might be surprised to know how much misinformation there

is on Twitter, like real narratives being sold,

and so it's really hard to know who to believe.

And through all of that you have to try to keep an open mind

and ultimately ignore the powerful

and listen to actual citizens, actual people.

That's the other maybe obvious lesson

is that war is waged by powerful, rich people,

and it's the poor people that suffer.

And that's just visible time and time again.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: You mentioned the fact that people still

enjoy food or the pleasure of cooking,

or there's occasional humor or maybe frequent humor.

I know Jocko Willink has talked about this in warfare

in that all the elements of the human spirit and condition

still emerge at various times.

I find this amazing, and you and I

have had conversations about this before,

but the aperture of the mind.

The classic story that comes to mind

is the one of Viktor Frankl or Nelson Mandela.

You put somebody into a small box of confinement

and some people break under those conditions

and other people find entire stories

within a centimeter of concrete that

can occupy them, real stories and richness or humor or love

or fascination and surprise.

And I find this so interesting that the mind is so adaptable.

We talked about creature comforts and then lack

of creature comforts and the way that we can adapt,

and yet, humans are always striving,

it seems, or one would hope, for these better conditions

to better their conditions.

So as you've come back--

and you've been here now back in the States

for how long after your trip?

LEX FRIDMAN: Depends on this podcast

release but it felt like I've never

left, so practically speaking, a couple months.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: OK.

Yeah.

And we won't be shy.

We're recording this mid-September.

LEX FRIDMAN: We actually recorded this several years ago

so we're anticipating in the future.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: This is where we're

going to start telling you this is a simulation, you and Joe.

I'm still trying to figure out what that actually means.

I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge

one of our sponsors, Athletic Greens.

Athletic Greens, now called AG1, is a vitamin mineral probiotic

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I've been taking Athletic Greens since 2012

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If you'd like to try Athletic Greens you can go

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of vitamin D3, K2.

I know I speak for many people when

I say that we are very happy that you're back.

We know that it's not going to be the first and last trip,

that there will be others, and that you'll

be going to Russia as well and presumably other places

as well in order to explore.

And I have to say, as a podcaster and as your friend,

I was really inspired at your sense of adventure

and your sense of not just adventure,

but thoughtful, respectful adventure.

You understood what you were doing.

You weren't just going there to get some wartime footage

or something.

This wasn't a kick or a thrill.

This is really serious and remains serious.

So thank you for doing it, and please, next time you go,

bring Tim Kennedy again.

LEX FRIDMAN: I feel like Tim Kennedy gets you into--

will take you because he really loves

going to the most dangerous places and helping people.

So I think he'd get me into more trouble than it's worth.

And I should mention that, I mean,

there's many reasons I went, but it's definitely

not something I take lightly or want to do again.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Right.

LEX FRIDMAN: So I'm doing things that I don't want to do,

I just feel like I have to.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: You're compelled.

LEX FRIDMAN: So I don't think there's--

now I'll definitely talk about it, as we all should.

There's different areas of the world that

are seeing a lot of suffering.

Yemen.

There's so many atrocities going on in the world today,

but this one is just personal to me so I want to--

I feel like I'm qualified just because of the language.

So most of the talking, by the way, I was doing,

it was in Russian.

And so because of the language, because of my history,

I felt like I had to do this particular thing.

I think it's, in many ways, stupid and dangerous, and that

was made clear to me.

But I do many things of this nature

because the heart pulls towards that.

But also there's a freedom to not--

I'm afraid of death, but I think there's a freedom to--

it's almost like, OK, if I die, I

want to take full advantage of not having a family currently.

I feel like when you have a family there's

a responsibility for others so you immediately become

more conservative and careful.

I feel like I want to take full advantage

of this particular moment in my life

when you can be a little bit more accepting of risk.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Well, you should definitely

reproduce at some point.

Maybe before next time you should just freeze some sperm.

LEX FRIDMAN: I--

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Really, that--

LEX FRIDMAN: Is that what you do with ice baths?

Is how that works?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: You know, it's interesting.

There's always an opportunity to do some science protocols.

You know that there are products on the internet,

and there are actually a few decent manuscripts looking

at how cold exposure can increase testosterone levels,

but it doesn't happen by the cold directly.

Good scientists, as the authors of those papers, were and are,

realized that it's the vasoconstriction and then

the vasodilation.

As people warm up again there's increased blood flow

to the testicles, and in women it

seems there's probably increased blood flow

to the reproductive organs as well after people warm back up.

So that seems to cause some sort of hyper nourishment

of the various cells, the Sertoli and Leydig cells

of the testes that lead to increased

output of testosterone and in women testosterone as well.

So the cold exposure in any case is obviously a--

do you do the ice bath?

Are you into that?

LEX FRIDMAN: I've not done that yet.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: As a Russian you probably consider

that a hot tub.

LEX FRIDMAN: Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

It's a nice thing to have fun with every once in a while

to warm up.

No, I haven't done that.

Been kind of waiting to maybe do it together

with you at some point.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Great.

LEX FRIDMAN: Because we have a guide.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: We have one here.

It'll be straightforward for you.

I always say that the adrenaline comes in waves,

and so if you just think about it walls,

like you're going through a number of walls of adrenaline

as opposed to going for time, it becomes rather trivial.

With your jujitsu background and what

you'll immediately recognize the physiological sensation.

Even though it's cold specifically,

it's the adrenaline that makes you

want to hop out of the thing.

LEX FRIDMAN: And you've seen Joe's.

So Joe set up a really nice man cave--

or it's not even a cave because it's so big.

It's like a network of man caves.

But it has a ice bath and a sauna next to each other.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: We have one of those here, ice bath and sauna.

So we'll have to get you in it one of these days.

LEX FRIDMAN: Sounds like trouble.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow.

No, although there is a--

I don't know the underlying physiological basis

but there does seem to be a trend toward truth

telling in the sauna.

Some people will refer to them as truth barrels.

Mine's a barrel sauna shaped like a barrel.

Who knows why?

Maybe under intense heat duress people just

feel compelled to share.

LEX FRIDMAN: Well, I have a complicated relationship

with saunas because of all the weight cutting.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Oh.

LEX FRIDMAN: Some of the deepest suffering--

sorry to interrupt--

I've done was in the sauna.

It's very-- I mean, I've gone to some dark places in a sauna

because, I mean, I wrestled my whole life, judo, jujitsu,

and those weights cuts can really test the mind.

So you're-- truth telling.

Yeah, it's a certain kind of truth

telling because you're sitting there

and the clock moves slower than it has ever moved in your life.

Yeah.

So I usually, for the most part, I

would try to have a bunch of sweats, garbage bags, and all

that kind of stuff, and run.

It's easier because you can distract the mind.

In the sauna you can't distract the mind.

It's just and all the excuses and all the weaknesses

in your mind just coming to the surface,

and you're just sitting there and sweating-- or not sweating.

That's the worst.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And talk about visual aperture.

You're in a small box so it also inspires some claustrophobia

even if you're not claustrophobic.

That's absolutely true.

And the desire to just get out of the thing

is where you get a pretty serious adrenaline surge

from in the sauna as well.

Now, the sauna actually will--

it won't deplete testosterone but it kills sperm.

So for people that--

sperm are on a 60 day sperm cycle

so if you're trying to donate sperm--

because that's what got us on to this--

or fertilize an egg or eggs in whatever format,

dish or in vivo, as we say in science, which means--

well, you can look it up, folks.

The 60 day sperm cycle.

So if you go into a really hot sauna

or a hot bath or a hot tub, in 60 days

those sperm are going to be--

a significantly greater portion of them

will be dead, will be non-viable.

So there's a simple solution.

People just put ice pack down there or a jar, not this jar,

but a jar of cold fluid between their legs and just sit there,

or they go back and forth between the ice

bath and the sauna.

But you probably-- if you're going to go back over there

you should freeze sperm.

We're going to do a couple episodes on fertility when

it's relatively inexpensive.

And you're young so you probably do it now

because there is a association with autism as males get older.

It's not a strong one.

It's significant but it's still a small contribution

to the autism phenotype.

LEX FRIDMAN: As you age don't sperm get wiser or no?

There's no science to back that?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: No, but men can conceive healthy children

at a considerable age.

But in any case--

but no, they don't get wiser.

What happens is interesting--

LEX FRIDMAN: Finely aged steak.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Well, it's a little bit like the maturation

of the brain in the sense that some of the sperm

get much better at swimming and then many of them

get less good.

Motility is a strong correlate of the DNA of the sperm.

LEX FRIDMAN: This is probably a good time

to announce that I'm selling my sperm as an NFTs.

I wanted to see how much that--

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Oh my goodness.

LEX FRIDMAN: Riding the crypto wave.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Well, your children, your future children

and my future children, are supposed to do jujitsu together

since I've only done the one jujitsu class

so I'm strongly vested in you having children.

LEX FRIDMAN: Yes.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: But only in the friendly kind of way.

LEX FRIDMAN: Well, yes.

Friendly competition kind of way.

Yeah.

Dominance of the clan.

Yep.

For sure.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So moving on to science, but still

with our minds in the Ukraine.

Did you encounter any scientists or see any universities?

As we know, in this country and in Europe and elsewhere,

science takes infrastructure.

You need buildings, you need laboratories, you need robots,

you need a lot of equipment, and you need minus 80 freezers

and you need incubators and you need money

and you need technicians.

And typically it's been the wealthier countries

that have been able to do more research for sake

of research and development and prioritization.

Certainly the Ukraine had some marvelous universities

and marvelous scientists.

What's going on with science and scientists over there?

And gosh, can we even calculate the loss of discovery

that is occurring as a consequence of this conflict?

LEX FRIDMAN: So science goes on.

Before the war Ukraine had a very vibrant tech sector,

which means engineering and all that kind of stuff,

and Kyiv has a lot of excellent universities

and they still go on.

The biggest hit, I would say, is not

the infrastructure of the science,

but the fact, because of the high morale,

everybody is joining the military.

So everybody is going to the front

to fight, including you, Andrew Huberman, would be fighting,

and not because you have to but because you want to.

And everybody you know would be really proud

that you're fighting, even though everyone tries

to convince, Andrew Huberman, you

have much better ways to contribute.

There's deep honor in fighting for your country, yes,

but there are better ways to contribute to your country

than just picking up a gun that you're not that trained with

and going to the front.

Still, they do it.

Scientists, engineers, CEOs, professors, students--

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Men and women?

LEX FRIDMAN: Actors-- men and women.

Obviously, primarily men, but men and women.

Much more than you would see in other militaries,

women are-- everybody.

Everybody wants to fight.

Everybody's proud of fighting.

There's no discussion of pacifism.

Should we be fighting?

Is this right?

Is this-- everybody's really proud of fighting.

So there's this kind of black hole

that pulls everything, all the resources,

into the war effort that's not just financial but also

psychological.

So it's like if you're a scientist it feels like what--

it feels almost like you're dishonoring humanity

by continuing to do things you were doing before.

There's a lot of people that converted to being soldiers.

They literally watch a YouTube video

of how to shoot a particular gun,

how to arm a drone with a grenade.

If you're a tech person you know how

to work with drones so you're going to use that,

use whatever skills you got, figure out whatever skills

you got and how to use them to help the effort on the front.

And so that's a big hit.

But that said, I've talked to a lot of folks in Kyiv--

faculty primarily in the tech economics space,

so I didn't get a chance to interact with folks who

are on the biology, chemistry, neuroscience side of things,

but that still goes on.

So one of the really impressive things about Ukraine

is that they're able to maintain infrastructure like road, food

supply, all that kind of stuff, education, while the war is

going on, especially in Kyiv.

The war started where nobody knew

whether Kyiv was going to be taken by the Russian forces.

It was surrounded.

And a lot of experts from outside were convinced that

Russia would take Kyiv, and they didn't.

And one of the really impressive things as a leader--

one of the things I really experienced

is that a lot of people criticized Zelenskyy

before the war.

He only had about 30% approval rate.

A lot of people didn't like Zelenskyy.

But one of the great things he did

as a leader, which I'm not sure many leaders would

be able to do, is when Kyiv was clearly being invaded he

chose to stay.

He stayed in the capital.

Everybody, all the American military, the intelligence

agencies, NATO, his own staff, advisors all told him to flee,

and he stayed.

And so I think that was a beacon, a symbol for the rest,

for the universities, for science,

for the infrastructure that we're staying too,

and that kept the whole thing going.

There's an interesting social experiment that happened,

I think for folks who are interested in gun

control in this country in particular,

is one of the decisions they made early on

is to give guns to everybody.

Semi-automatics.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Early on in the war?

LEX FRIDMAN: Early on in the war, yeah.

So everybody got a gun.

They also released a bunch of prisoners

from prison because there was no staff

to keep the prisons running.

And so there's a very interesting

psychological experiment of, like, how is this going to go?

Everybody has a gun.

Are they going to start robbing places?

Are they going to start taking advantage

of a chaotic situation?

And what happened is that crime went to zero.

So it turned out that this, as an experiment,

worked wonderfully.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: That's a case where love generalized.

LEX FRIDMAN: Yes.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Or at least hate did not.

We don't know if it's love or it's sort of lack

of initiative for common culture directed hate.

LEX FRIDMAN: Yeah.

I don't-- right.

I think that's very correct to say that it wasn't

hate that was unifying people.

It was love of country, love of community.

It's probably the same thing that will happen to humans when

aliens invade as well.

It's the common effort.

Everybody puts everything else to the side.

Plus just the sheer amount of guns is similar to Texas.

You realize, well, there's going to be

a self-correcting mechanism very quickly because the rule of law

was also put aside, right?

Basically the police force lost a lot of power

because everybody else has guns and they're

kind of taking the law into their own hands.

That system, at least in this particular case

in this particular moment in human history, worked.

It's an interesting lesson, you know?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: It is.

I had an interesting contrast that I'll share with you

because you mentioned Texas.

So not so long ago I was in Austin.

I often visit you or others in Austin, as you know.

And many doors that I walked past, including a school,

said no firearms past this point.

It was a sticker on the door.

You see this on hospitals sometimes.

I saw this at Baylor College of Medicine, et cetera.

Relatively common to see in Texas,

not so common in California.

And then I flew to the San Francisco Bay Area,

was walking by an elementary school in my old neighborhood,

and saw a similar sticker and looked at it

and it said, no peanuts or other allergy

containing foods past this point on the door

of this elementary school.

So quite a different contrast, guns and peanuts.

Now, peanut allergies, obviously, are very serious

for some people, although there's great research out

of Stanford showing that early exposure to peanuts

can prevent the allergies.

But don't start rubbing yourself in peanut butter, folks,

if you have a peanut allergy.

That's not the best way to deal with it.

In any case, the contrast of what's

dangerous, the contrast of the familiarity with guns

versus no familiarity.

In Israel and elsewhere you see machine guns in the airport.

In Germany, Frankfurt, you see machine guns in the airport.

Not so common in the United States.

So again, I feel like there's this aperture of vision.

There's this aperture of pleasures versus creature

comforts and lack of creature comforts,

and then there's this aperture of danger, right?

People who are familiar with guns

are familiar with people coming in and setting

their firearm on the table and eating dinner, you know?

But if you're not accustomed to that it's jarring, right?

LEX FRIDMAN: I should mention--

people know this throughout human history--

but the human ability to get assimilated now,

get used to violence is incredible.

So you could be living in a peaceful time,

like we're here now, and there would be one explosion,

like a 9/11 type of situation.

That would be a huge shock.

It's terrifying.

Everybody freaks out.

The second one is a huge drop off in how freaked out you get.

And in a matter of days, sometimes hours,

it becomes the normal.

I've talked to so many people in Kharkiv,

which is one of the towns that's seen a lot of heated battle.

You ask them, is it safe there?

In fact, when I went to the--

closer and closer to the war zone you ask people,

is it safe?

And their answer's usually, yeah, it's pretty safe.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: It's all signal to noise.

LEX FRIDMAN: Nobody has told me except Western reporters

sitting in the West Side of Ukraine,

it's really dangerous here.

Everyone's like, yeah, it's good.

My uncle just died yesterday.

He was shot.

But it's pretty good.

The farm is still running.

How do I put it?

They focus on the positive, that's one.

But there's a deeper truth there,

which is just get used to difficult situations

and the stuff that make you happy

and the stuff that make you upset

is relative to that new normal that you establish.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Well, I grew up in California

and there were a lot of earthquakes.

I remember the '89 quake, I remember

the Embarcadero Freeway pancaking

on top of people and cars.

I remember I moved to Southern California,

there was a Northridge quake.

Wherever I move there seem to be earthquakes.

I never worry about earthquakes, ever.

I just don't.

In fact, I don't like the destruction

they cause, but every once in a while an earthquake will

roll through and it's kind of exciting.

It sounds like a train coming through.

It's like, wow, like the Earth is moving.

You know?

Again, I don't want anyone to get harmed,

but I enjoy a good rumble coming through nonetheless.

It's signal to noise.

But if I saw a tornado I'd freak out,

and people from the Midwest are probably comfortable with--

Dan Gable, the great wrestler from the Midwest

that you know and I've never met but I have

great respect for, he's probably-- sees a tornado

and is like, ah, yeah.

Maybe.

Yeah.

You know?

So I think signal to noise is real.

Before I neglect, although I won't

forget, speaking of signal to noise and environment,

you are returning to or have gone back

to one of your original natural habitats,

which is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which

is--

LEX FRIDMAN: Natural habitat, yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: It's actually difficult to pronounce in full.

MIT, right?

So you've been spending some time there teaching and doing

other things.

Tell us what you're up to with MIT recently.

LEX FRIDMAN: Well, I'm really glad that you,

being on the West Coast, know the difference between Boston,

New York.

I feel like a lot of people think it's like the East Coast.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: It's very different, especially

the Bostonians and New Yorkers.

LEX FRIDMAN: They get very aggressive.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Oh my goodness.

LEX FRIDMAN: Yeah, I love it.

I gave lectures there in front of a in person crowd.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: What were you talking about?

LEX FRIDMAN: For the AI, so different aspects

of AI and robotics, machine learning-- machine learning.

So for people who know the artificial intelligence field

they usually don't use the term AI,

and people from outside AIs.

The biggest breakthroughs in the machine

learning field with some discussion of robotics

and so on.

Yeah.

It was in person.

It was wonderful.

I'm a sucker for that.

I really avoided teaching or any kind of interaction

during COVID because people put a lot of emphasis

on but also got comfortable with remote teaching,

and I think nobody enjoyed it.

Except there's a notion that it's much easier to

do because you don't have to travel.

You can do it in your pajamas kind of thing.

But when you actually get to do it,

you don't get the same kind of joy

that you do when you're teaching.

As a student you don't get the same kind of joy of learning.

It's not as effective and all that kind of stuff.

So to be in person together with people, to see their eyes,

to get their excitement, to get the questions and all

the interactions, that was awesome.

And I'm still a sucker and a believer in the ideal of MIT,

of the University.

I think it's an incredible place.

There's something in the air still.

But it really hit--

the pandemic hit universities hard because--

and I can say this.

This is not you saying it.

This is me saying it.

That administrations-- as in all cases

when people criticize institutions,

the pandemic has given more power to the administration

and taken away power from the faculty and the students,

and that's from everybody involved,

including the administration.

That's a concern because a university

is about the teachers and the students.

That should be primary.

And whenever you have a pandemic there's

an opportunity to increase the amount of rules.

One of the things that really bothered me,

and I'll scream from the top of the MIT dome,

about this is they've instituted a new temp ticket system.

Which is if you're a visitor to the campus at MIT,

you have to register.

You have to, first of all, show that you're vaccinated,

but more importantly, there's a process to visiting.

You need to get permission to visit.

One of the reasons I loved MIT, unlike some other institutions,

MIT just leaves the door open to anyone.

In classrooms you can roll in the ridiculous characters.

The students that are usually doing

business stuff or economics can roll into a physics class

and just-- you're kind of not allowed

but it's a gray area so you let that happen,

and that creates a flourishing of a community that

was beautiful.

And I think adding extra rules puts a squeeze on and limits

some of the flourishing, and I hope

some of that dissipates over time

as we kind of let go of the risk aversion that

was created by the pandemic.

As we kind of enter the normal return back

some of that flourishing can happen.

But when you're actually in there with the students,

it was magic.

I love it.

I love it.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Well, some of your earliest videos

on your YouTube channel were of you in the classroom, right?

That's how this all started.

LEX FRIDMAN: Yeah.

Yeah.

That's how YouTube-- putting stuff on YouTube

is terrifying, right?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Well, especially

at the time when you did it.

Again, you're a pioneer in that sense.

You did that, Jordan Peterson did that.

Putting up lectures is--

yeah.

I teach still.

Every winter I teach--

direct a course, and I'll be doing even more teaching

going forward.

But the idea of those videos being on the web is--

yeah, that spikes my cortisol a little bit.

LEX FRIDMAN: Yeah.

It's terrifying because you get--

and everybody has a different experience.

For me being a junior research scientist

the kind of natural concern is like, who am I?

And when I was giving this lecture it's like,

I don't deserve any of this.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: That's your humility coming through,

and I actually think that humility

on the part of an instructor is good

because those that think that they are entitled, and who else

could give this lecture?

Then I worry more.

I once heard-- I don't know if it's still

true-- that at Caltech, the great California

Institute of Technology not far from here,

that many of the faculty are actually

afraid of the students.

Not physically afraid, but they're

intellectually afraid because the students are so smart.

And teaching there can be downright frightening,

I've heard.

But that's great.

Keeps everybody on their toes.

And you know, I've been corrected in lecture

before at Stanford and elsewhere.

When my lab was at UC San Diego where someone will say,

hey, wait, last lecture you said this and now you said that--

or on the podcast.

You know?

And I think it's that moment where you sometimes

feel that urge to defend and you go, oh, you're right,

and I think it depends on how one was trained.

My graduate advisor was wonderful at saying,

I don't know, all the time.

And she went to Harvard, Radcliffe, UCSF, and Caltech.

Brilliant woman.

And had no problem saying, I don't know.

LEX FRIDMAN: I don't have that problem either.

So I usually have two guys that somebody speaks up,

grab them, drag them out of the room, never see them again.

So everybody is really supportive.

You don't understand that the amount of love and support

I get is--

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Especially when the last few students are there

and everybody seems to be nodding as you're going.

No, I think that I'd love to sit-in on one of your lectures.

I know very little about AI, machine learning, or robotics.

But--

LEX FRIDMAN: Have you ever talked at MIT?

Have you ever given lectures?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Oh, yeah.

When I went on the job market as a faculty member my final two

choices were between MIT Picower--

I had an on-paper offer.

Wonderful place.

Wonderful place to do neuroscience.

And UC San Diego, which is a wonderful neuroscience program.

In the end it made sense for me be

on the West Coast for personal reasons,

but there's some amazing neuroscience going on there.

Goodness.

And that's always been true and is going to continue.

It's been a long time since I've been invited back there.

Oddly enough when I started doing more podcasting--

and I still run a lab but I shrunk my lab considerably

as I've done more podcasting--

I've received fewer academic lecture

invites, which makes sense.

But now they're sort of coming back.

And so when people invite now I always

say, do you want me to talk about the ventral thalamus

and its role in anxiety and aggression

or do you want me to talk about the podcast?

And my big fear is I'm going to go back

to give a lecture about the retina or something

and I'll start off with an Athletic Greens read

or something like that just reflexively.

Just kidding.

That wouldn't happen.

But listen, I think it's great to continue

to keep a foot in both places.

I was so happy to hear that you're

teaching at MIT because podcasting is one thing,

teaching is another, and there's overlap there

in the Venn diagram.

But listen, the students that get to sit-in

on one of your lectures-- and you

may see me sitting there in the audience

soon when I creep into your class.

LEX FRIDMAN: In sunglasses.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: That's right.

Wearing a red shirt.

You won't recognize me.

Are certainly receiving a great gift.

I've watched your lectures on YouTube, even the early ones,

and listen, I know you to be a phenomenal teacher.

LEX FRIDMAN: Yeah, there's something about--

so I'm also doing--

I stayed up pretty late last night

working for a deadline on a paper.

One of the things that I hope to do

for hopefully the rest of my life is to continue publishing,

and I think it's really important to do that

even if you continue the podcast because you want to be just

on your own intellectual and scientific journey

as you do podcasting.

At least for me, and especially on the engineering side

because I want to build stuff, and I

think that keeps your ego in check,

keeps you humble because I think if you

talk too much on a microphone you start getting--

you might lose track of the grounding that

comes from engineering and from science

and the scientific process and the criticisms that you get,

all that kind of stuff.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And how slow and iterative it is.

We have two papers right now that are in the revision stage,

and it's been a very long road.

And I was asked this recently because I met with my chairman.

He said, do you want to continue to run a lab or are

you just going to go full time on the podcast?

And Stanford has been very supportive, I must say,

as I know MIT has been of you.

And I said, oh, I absolutely want

to continue to be involved in research and do research.

And when you start talking about these papers

and we're looking over my-- this was my yearly review

and looking back I'm like, goodness,

these papers have been in play for a very long time.

So it's a long road but you learn more and more,

and the more time you spend myopically looking

at a bunch of data the more you learn and the more you think.

I totally agree.

Talking to these devices for podcasts

is wonderful because it's fun.

It relieves a certain itch that we both have and hopefully it

lands some important information out there for people,

but doing research is the--

I guess if you know, you know.

There's the unpeeling of the onion,

knowing that there could be something there.

There's just nothing like it.

LEX FRIDMAN: I mean, you do--

especially with the pandemic.

And for me, both Twitter and the podcast

have made me much more impatient about the slowness

of the review process because--

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Twitter will do that.

LEX FRIDMAN: Twitter will.

But even with podcast you have a cool--

you'll find something cool and then you have ideas

and you'll just say them and they'll be out pretty quickly.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Then we do a post right now about something

that we both found interesting and it's out in the world.

Yep.

LEX FRIDMAN: And you can write up

something, like there is a culture in computer

science of posting stuff on arXiv and preprints

that don't get annual review, and sometimes they don't even

go through the review process ever because people just

start using them if it's code.

And it's like, what's the point of this?

It works.

It's self evident that it works because people are using it,

and that I think applies more to engineering fields

because it's an actual tool that works.

It doesn't matter if-- you don't have to scientifically prove

that it works.

It works because it's using for a lot of people.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Well, sorry to interrupt, but I just--

for point of reference, the famous paper

describing the double helix which

earned Watson and Crick the Nobel Prize

and should have earned Rosalind Franklin Nobel Prize too,

of course, but they got it for the structure of DNA of course.

That paper was never reviewed at Nature.

They published it because its importance was self evident,

or whatever.

They decided--

LEX FRIDMAN: So the editors.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: It was that purely editorial decision,

I believe.

I mean, that's what I was told by someone who's

currently an editor at Nature.

If that turns out to not be correct

someone will tell us in the comments for sure.

LEX FRIDMAN: Well, I think--

ANDREW HUBERMAN: That's pretty interesting, right?

LEX FRIDMAN: That's really interested.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Perhaps the most significant discovery

in biology and bioengineering which

was leading to bioengineering as well,

of course, of the last century was not peer reviewed.

LEX FRIDMAN: Yeah, but--

so Eric Weinstein, but many others

have talked about this, which is, I mean,

I don't think people understand how poor the peer review

process is.

Just the amount of-- because you think peer

review it means all the best peers get together

and they review your stuff, but it's unpaid work

and it's usually a small number of people.

And they have a very select perspective

so they might not be the best person, especially

if it's super novel work.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And it's who has time to do it.

I'm on a bunch of editorial boards still.

Why, I don't know, but I enjoy the peer review process

and sending papers out.

Oftentimes the best scientists are very busy

and don't have time to review.

And oftentimes the more premiere journals

will select from a kind of a unique kit of very

good scientists who are very close to the work,

sometimes the people are very far from the work.

It really depends.

LEX FRIDMAN: And both have negatives, right?

If you're very close to the work there's

jealousy, and all those basic human things.

Very far from the work you might not

appreciate the nuanced contribution,

all that kind of stuff.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And there's psychology.

Sorry to interrupt again, but a good friend of mine who's

extremely successful neuroscientist,

Howard Hughes investigator, et cetera,

always told me that they--

I won't even say whether or not who they are.

They select their reviewers on the basis

of who has been publishing very well recently because they

assume that that person is going to be

more benevolent because they have been doing

well so that the love expands.

LEX FRIDMAN: That's a good point to that, actually.

But the idea is that editors might actually

be the best reviewers, so that was the traditional-- that's

the thing I wanted to mention that Eric Weinstein talks

about, that back several decades ago editors had

much more power.

And there is something to be made for that because editors

are the ones who are responsible for crafting the journal.

They really are invested in this,

and they're also often experts, right?

It makes sense for an editor to have

a bit of power in this case.

Usually if an idea is truly novel you could see it,

And so it makes sense for an editor

to have more power in that regard.

Of course for me, I think peer review

should be done the way tweets are done,

which is crowdsourced or Amazon reviews.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Let the crowd decide.

LEX FRIDMAN: Let the crowd decide,

and let the crowd add depth and breadth and context

for the contribution.

So if the paper overstates the degree of contribution,

the crowd will check you on that.

If there's not enough support or the conclusions are not

supported by the evidence, the crowd will check you on that.

There could be, of course, political bickering

that enters the picture, especially

on very controversial topics, but I

think I trust the intelligence of human beings

to figure that out.

And I think most of us are trying to figure

this whole process out.

I just wish it was happening much faster

because on the important topics, the review

cycle could be faster.

And we learned that through COVID

that Twitter was actually pretty effective

at doing science communication.

It was really interesting.

Some of the best scientists took to Twitter

to communicate their own work and other people's work,

and always putting into the caveats

that it's not peer reviewed and so on, but it's all out there

and the data just moves so fast.

And if you want stuff to move fast,

Twitter is the best medium of communication for that.

It's cool to see.

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I'm now on Twitter more regularly,

and initially it was just Instagram.

And I remember you and I used to have these over dinner or drink

conversations where I'd say, I don't understand Twitter.

And you'd say, I don't understand Instagram.

And of course, we understand how it worked

and how to work each respective platform,

but I think we were both trying to figure out

what is driving the psychology of these different venues

because they are quite distinct psychologies for whatever

reason.

I think I'm finally starting to understand Twitter and enjoy

it a little bit.

Initially I wasn't prepared for the level

of reflexive scrutiny.

It sounds a little bit oxymoronic,

but that people pick up on one small thing

and then drive it down that trajectory.

It didn't seem to be happening quite as much on Instagram,

but I love your tweets.

I do have a question about your Twitter account

and how you-- do you have sort of internal filters of what

you'll put up and won't put up?

Because sometimes you'll put up things that

are about life and reflections.

Other times you'll put up things like what you're

excited about in AI, or of course,

point to various podcasts including your own,

but others as well.

How do you approach social media?

Not in how do you regulate your behavior

on there in terms of how much time, et cetera.

I know you've talked about that before.

But you know, what's your mindset around social media

when you go on there to either post or forage or respond

to information?

LEX FRIDMAN: I think I try to add some--

not the sound cliche, but some love out there into the world

into, as OJ Simpson calls it, Twitter world.

I think there is this viral negativity that can take hold,

and I try to find the right language to add good vibes out

there.

And it's actually really, really tricky

because there's something about positivity that sounds fake.

I can't quite put my finger on it,

but whenever I talk about love and positive and almost

childlike in my curiosity and positivity, people

start to think, surely he has skeletons in the closet.

There's dead bodies in his basement.

This must be a fake--

ANDREW HUBERMAN: No, it's the attic.

LEX FRIDMAN: It's the attic?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: The attic.

LEX FRIDMAN: I keep mine in the basement.

That's the details.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I was referring to your attic.

I don't have an attic or a basement, nor dead bodies.

I just want to be very clear.

LEX FRIDMAN: Yeah.

I do have an attic and actually I haven't been up there.

Maybe there is bodies up there.

But yes, I prefer the basement.

It's colder down there.

I like it.

No, but there's an assumption that this is not genuine

or it's disingenuous in some kind of way.

And so I try to find the right language for that kind

of stuff, how to be positive.

Some of it I was really inspired by Elon's approach to Twitter.

Not all of it, but when he just is silly.

I found that silliness--

I think it's Hermann Hesse said something to paraphrase--

one of my favorite writers--

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah, same.

LEX FRIDMAN: I think in Steppenwolf

said, learn what is to be taken seriously

and laugh at the rest.

I think I try to be silly, laugh at myself,

laugh at the absurdity of life, and then in part

when I'm serious, try to just be positive, just

to see a positive perspective.

And also, as you said, people pick out certain words

and so on and they attack each other,

attack me over certain usage of words in a particular tweet.

I think the thing I try to do is think positively towards them,

like do not escalate.

So whenever somebody's criticizing me and so on,

I just smile.

If there's a lesson to be learned, I learn it

and then I just send good vibes their way.

Don't respond, and just hopefully,

through karma and through the ripple effect of positivity,

have an impact on them and the rest of the Twitter.

And what you find is that builds--

your actions create the community.

So how I behave gets me surrounded by certain people.

But lately, especially Ukraine is one topic like this,

I also thought about talking to--

somebody who reached out to me is Andrew Tate,

who's extremely controversial.

From the perspective of a lot of people is a misogynist.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I've heard his name

and I know that there's a lot of controversy around him.

Maybe you could familiarize me.

I've been pretty nose down in podcast prep

and I tried to do this vacation thing for about three,

four weeks.

LEX FRIDMAN: I've heard about that.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah.

And it sort of worked.

I did get some time in the Colorado wilderness

by myself, which was great.

I did get some downtime.

But in any event, it mainly consisted of reading and--

LEX FRIDMAN: And nature?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Reading and nature, sauna, ice bath,

working out, good food, a little extra sleep,

these kinds of things I really felt I needed it.

But I am pretty naive when it comes

to the kind of current controversies

but I've heard his name, and I think

he's been deplatformed on a couple of platforms.

Do I have that right?

LEX FRIDMAN: Yeah, he's been-- so I should also

admit that while I might know more than you,

it's not by much.

So it's like a five-year-old talking

to a four-year-old right now.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Is he an athlete, a podcaster?

LEX FRIDMAN: So basic summary, he used to be a fighter,

a kickboxer, I believe.

Was pretty successful.

And then during that and after that

I think he was on a reality show,

and he had all these programs that are basically pickup

artist advice.

He has this community of people where he gives advice

on how to pick up women, how to be successful in relationships,

how to make a lot of money, and it costs money

to enter those programs.

So a lot of the criticism that he gets is kind of--

it's like a pyramid scheme where you convince people

to join so that they can make more money

and then they convince others to join, and that kind of stuff.

But that's not why I'm interested in talking to him.

I'm interested because one of the guests--

maybe I should mention who, but one of the female guests I had,

really a big scientist, said that her two kids that are 13

and 12 really look up to Andrew to entertain--

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Is it male children, female children?

LEX FRIDMAN: Male.

And I hear this time and time again.

So he is somebody that a lot of teens, young teens, look up to.

So I haven't done serious research.

I usually try to avoid doing research until I agree to talk

and then I go deep.

But there is an aspect to the way

he talks about women that, while I understand and I understand

certain dynamics in relationships work for people

and he's one such person, but I think

him being really disrespectful towards women is not what I--

it's not how I see what it means to be a good man.

So the conversation I want to have with him

is about masculinity.

What does masculinity mean in the 21st century?

And so when I think about that kind of stuff,

and because we're talking about Twitter,

it's like going into a war zone.

I'm a happy go lucky person, but--

ANDREW HUBERMAN: You're like, send me to Ukraine,

but I don't want to have this conversation on Twitter.

LEX FRIDMAN: Because it's a really, really,

really tricky one because also, as you know,

when you do a podcast, everybody wants you to win.

It's everything you do is positive.

Maybe you'll say the wrong thing as inaccurate thing

and you can correct yourself.

With Andrew Tate, with Donald Trump, with folks like this,

you have to--

I mean, it's a professional boxing.

I think you have to push the person.

You have to be really eloquent.

You have to be also empathetic because you can't just

do what journalists do, which is talk down

to the person the entire time.

That's easy.

The hard thing is to empathize with the person,

to understand them, to steel man their case,

but also to make your own case.

So in that case about what it means to be a man, to me

a strong man is somebody who is respectful to women.

Not out of weakness, not out of social justice warrior

signaling, and all that kind of stuff, but out of that's

what a strong man does.

They don't need to be disrespectful to prove

their position in life.

He is often-- now, a lot of people say it's a character.

He's being misogynistic.

He's being a misogynist as a kind of-- for entertainment

purposes.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So like an avatar.

LEX FRIDMAN: Yeah.

But to me, that avatar has a lot of influence on young folks

so the character has impact.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Oh, I don't think

you can separate the avatar and the person

in terms of the impact, as you said.

In fact, there are a number of accounts

on Twitter and Instagram and elsewhere which people have

only revealed their first names or they give themself

another name or they're using a cartoon image.

And part of that, I believe, in at least

from some of these individuals who actually know who they are,

I understand as an attempt to maintain their privacy, which

is important to many people.

And in some cases so that they can be more inflammatory

and then just pop up elsewhere as something

else without anyone knowing that it's the same person.

LEX FRIDMAN: Some of-- this is the dark stuff.

I've been reading a lot about Ukraine and Nazi Germany,

so the '30s and the '40s and so on,

and you get to see how much the absurdity turns

to evil quickly.

One of the things I worry--

one of the things I really don't like

to see on Twitter and the internet

is how many statements end with LOL.

It's like you think just because something is kind of funny

or is funny or is legitimately funny,

it also doesn't have a deep effect on society.

So that's such a difficult gray area

because some of the best comedy is dark and mean,

but it reveals some important truth that we need to consider.

But sometimes comedy is just covering up

for destructive ideology, and you

have to know the line between those two.

Hitler was seen as a joke in the late '20s and the '30s

in Nazi Germany until the joke became very serious.

You have to be careful to know the difference

between the joke and the reality and do all that.

I mean, in a conversation--

I'm just such a big believer in conversation

to be able to reveal something through conversation,

but I don't know.

One of the big--

you and I challenge ourselves all the time.

I don't know if I have what it takes

to have a good, empathetic, but adversarial conversation.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I need to learn more about this Tate person,

or not learn about them.

Yeah.

It sounds like maybe it's something to skip.

I don't know because, again, I'm not familiar with the content.

But I was going to ask you whether or not

you've seeked out or whether or not

you would ever consider having Donald Trump as a guest

on your podcast.

LEX FRIDMAN: Yeah, I've talked to Joe a lot about this

and I really believe I can have a good conversation with Donald

Trump, but I haven't seen many good conversations with him.

So part of me thinks--

part of me believes it's possible,

but he often effectively runs over the interviewer.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: You could sit him down, give him

an element in Athletic Greens.

LEX FRIDMAN: Just relax.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: That nice, cool, air

conditioned black curtain studio you've got

and a different side might come out.

Context is powerful.

LEX FRIDMAN: Well, Joe's really good at this,

which is relaxing the person.

Like here, have a drink.

Smoke a joint, or whatever it is.

But this energy of just, let's relax,

and there's laughter and so on.

I don't think-- as people know, I'm just

not good at that kind of stuff.

So I think the way I could have a good conversation with him

is to really understand his worldview,

be able to steel man his worldview

and those that support him.

Which is, I'm sorry to say for people

who seem to hate Donald Trump, is a very large percentage

of the country.

And so you have to really empathize with those people.

You have to empathize with Donald Trump, the human being,

and from that perspective, ask him hard questions.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So who do you think

is the counterpoint if you're going

to seek balance in your guests.

If you're going to have Trump on,

then you have to have who on?

LEX FRIDMAN: Well, that's interesting.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Anthony Fauci seems

to be strongly associated with counter values, at least

in the eye of the public.

I think he's retiring soon, but.

LEX FRIDMAN: Yeah, he's retiring.

So that's really interesting, Anthony Fauci.

Yeah, definitely, but I don't think he's a counterbalance.

He's a complicated, fascinating figure

who seems to have attracted a lot of hate and distrust,

but also--

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And love from some people.

LEX FRIDMAN: And love.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And love from some people.

I mean, I know people, not even necessarily scientists,

who have pro-Fauci shirts.

I've seen people with anti-Fauci shirts, excuse me, certainly,

but who adore him.

There are people who adore him in the same way there

are people that adore Trump.

It's so interesting that one species of animal

you get such divergent neural circuitry.

LEX FRIDMAN: It almost feels like it's

by design and every single topic we find tension and division is

fascinating to watch.

I mean, I got to really witness it from zero to a hundred

in Ukraine, where there is not huge significant division.

There was in certain parts of Ukraine, but across Europe,

across the world there was not that much division

between Russia and Ukraine, and it was just born

overnight, this intense hatred.

You see the same kind of stuff with Fauci over the pandemic.

At first we were all huddled in uncertainty.

There is a togetherness with the pandemic.

Of course, there is more difficult

because you're isolated.

But then you start to figure out--

probably the politicians and the media try to figure out,

how can I take a side here and how can I

now start reporting on this side or that side

and say how the other side is wrong?

And so I think Anthony Fauci is a part of just being used

as a scapegoat for certain things

as part of that kind of narrative of division.

But I think-- so Trump is a singular figure that,

to me, represents something important in American history.

I'm not sure what that is, but I think

you have to think-- you put on your historian hat,

go forward in time, and think back.

How will he be remembered 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now?

Who is the opposite of that?

You have to--

I would really have to think about that

because Trump was so singular.

I think AOC is an interesting one,

but she's so young it's unclear to know how--

if she represents a legitimately large scale movement or not.

Bernie Sanders is an interesting option,

but I wish he would be 30, 40 years younger.

The young Bernie would be a good--

ANDREW HUBERMAN: There are scientists working on that.

LEX FRIDMAN: Yeah, I think so.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Not him specifically, but--

LEX FRIDMAN: Well, yeah.

Maybe him.

We never know.

There is a big conspiracy theory that Putin is--

that that's a body double.

It's no longer him.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Bernie is Putin?

LEX FRIDMAN: No, no, no, no.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I'm having a hard time merging that image.

LEX FRIDMAN: The conspiracy theory is-- no, no, no.

That the Putin we see on camera today is a body double.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Well, one thing that in science,

and in particular, in anatomy, there's

a classification scheme for different types of anatomists,

which they either say you're a lumper or a splitter.

Some people like to call a whole structure something,

not necessarily just for simplicity

but for a lot of reasons.

And then other people like to microdivide the nucleus

into multiple names.

And of course, people used to be able to name different brain

structures after themselves.

So that would be the nucleus of Lex and the Huberman vesiculus

or whatever.

Less of that nowadays.

And by the way, those structures don't actually exist just yet.

We haven't defined those yet.

I was making those names up.

But what's interesting is it seems like in the last five

years, there's been a lot of trend--

there's been a trend, excuse me, toward a requirement

for lumping.

You can't say-- it seems that it's not allowed, if you will,

to say, hey, yeah, you know--

and here I'm not stating my--

I will never reveal my preferences

about pandemic related things for hopefully obvious reasons.

Some people will say vaccines, yes, but masks, no.

Or vaccines and masks, yes, but let people work.

And other people will say, no, everyone stay home.

And then other people will say, no, no vaccines, no masks.

Let everybody work.

No one was saying no vaccines, no masks, and stay home,

I don't think.

So there's this sort of lumping, right?

The boundaries around ideology really

did start to defy science.

I mean, it wasn't scientific.

It was one part science-ish at times and sometimes

really hardcore science.

Other times it was politics, economics.

I mean, we really saw the confluence

of all these different domains of society

that use very different criteria to evaluate the world.

I mean, as a scientist, I remember

when the vaccines first came out and I

asked somebody, one of the early concerns

I had that was actually satisfied for me was,

how does this thing turn off?

If you start generating mRNA, how does it actually

get turned off?

So I asked a friend, they know a lot about RNA biology.

And I said, you know, how does it turn off?

They explained it to me and I was like, OK, makes sense.

I asked some other questions.

But most people aren't going to think about it

at that level of detail necessarily,

but it did seem that there was just

kind of amorphous blobs of ideology

that they grabbed on to things and then

there was this need for a chasm between them.

It was almost felt like it became illegal, in some ways,

to want two of the things from that menu and one of the things

from that menu.

I really felt like I was being constrained

by a kind of like Bento box model

where I didn't get to define what was in the Bento box.

I could either have Bento box A or Bento box Z,

but nothing in between.

LEX FRIDMAN: And I think on that topic

and I think a lot of topics, most people

are in the middle with humility, uncertainty,

and they're just kind of trying to figure it out.

And I think there is just the extremes defining

the nature of this division.

So I think it's the role of a lot of us

in our individual lives, and also

if you have a platform of any kind,

I think you have to try to walk in the middle with the empathy

and humility.

And that's actually what science is about is the humility.

I'm still thinking about who's the opposite of Trump.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Well, maybe there is none.

I mean, maybe Fauci is orthogonal to Trump.

I mean, not everything has an opposite.

I mean, maybe he's an n of 1 maybe

he's in the minority of one because he

was an outsider from Washington who then made it there.

LEX FRIDMAN: But also I wonder--

you have to pick your battles because every battle you fight

you should take very seriously.

And just the amount of hate I get,

I got, and I still get for having sat down

with the Pfizer CEO, that was a very valuable lesson for me.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Oh, that one got you a lot of heat?

LEX FRIDMAN: Yeah, it still does because--

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Because you had some pretty controversial

guests on from time to time.

LEX FRIDMAN: Yeah, that one--

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Is he still the Pfizer CEO?

LEX FRIDMAN: I believe so.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: CEOs turn over like crazy.

This is the thing I didn't realize.

In science if somebody moves institutions it's a big deal.

Most people don't have more than two moves in their career,

maybe.

But they often move to the next building is a big deal.

But it in biotech--

it's like have a former colleague of mine

from San Diego and he's been a CEO here,

then he's a CEO there.

He went back to a company he was a CEO before.

He's probably back at the university

we worked at for all I know.

It's amazing how much moving around there.

It is a very itinerant profession.

LEX FRIDMAN: Yeah, I think they're--

in certain companies, I guess in biotech would be the case,

the CEO is more of like a manager type so you can--

jumping around benefits your experience

so you become better and better being a manager.

There's some leader revolutionary CEOs

that stick around for longer because they're

so critical to pivoting a company,

like the Microsoft CEO currently.

Sundar Pichai is somebody like that.

Obviously, Elon Musk is somebody like that that

is part of pivoting a company into new domains constantly,

but yeah.

In biotech there's a machine.

In the eyes of a lot of people, big pharma is like big tobacco.

It's the epitome of everything that is wrong with capitalism.

It's evil, right?

And so I showed up in the conversation

where I thought with a pretty open mind

and really asked what I thought were difficult

questions of him.

I don't think he's ever sat down to a grilling of that kind.

In fact, I'm pretty sure they cut the interview short

because of that, and I thought literally it

was hot in the room and we're sweating

and I was asking tough questions.

For somebody that half the country or a large percent

of the country believes he's alleviated a lot of-- he

helped, through the financial resources that Pfizer has,

helped alleviate a lot of suffering in the world.

And so I thought for somebody like that,

I was asking pretty hard questions.

Boy, did I get to hear from the side--

usually one of the sides is more intense in their anger.

So there are certain political topics--

like with Andrew Tate, for example,

I would hear from a very--

it would probably be the left, far left,

that would write very angrily.

And so that's a group you'll hear from.

The Pfizer CEO, I didn't get almost any messages

from people saying, why did you go so hard on him?

He's an incredible human, incredible leader and CEO

of a company that helped us with the vaccine

that nobody thought would be possible to develop so quickly.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: You did not get letters of that sort?

LEX FRIDMAN: I did not.

I mean, here and there, but the sea of people

that said everything from me being

weak that I wasn't able to call out this person,

how do you sit down, how do you platform this evil person,

how do you make him look human, all that kind of stuff.

And you have to deal with that.

You have to-- of course, it's great.

It's great because I have to do some soul searching, which

is like, did I?

You have to ask some hard questions.

I love criticism like that.

You get to--

I had some low points.

There's definitely some despair and you start to wonder,

was I too weak?

Should I have talked to him?

What is true?

And you sit there alone and just marinate in that.

Hopefully over time that makes you better,

but I still don't know what the right answer with that one is.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Well, I feel that money plays a role here.

When people think big pharma, they

think billions of dollars--

maybe even trillions of dollars, really.

And certainly people who make a lot of money get scrutiny that

others don't.

Part of it is that they are often not always visible,

but I think that there is a natural and reflexive--

and I'm not justifying it.

I certainly don't feel this because I

know some people who are very wealthy,

some people who are very poor.

I can't say it scales with happiness at all.

People are always shocked to hear that,

but that's what I've observed in very wealthy people.

But that people who have a lot of money

are often held to a different standard

because people resent that, some people resent

that, and maybe there are other reasons as well.

I mean, among people who are very wealthy,

oftentimes the wish is for status, right?

Not money.

You get a bunch of billionaires in a room,

and unless one of them is Elon, who

also has immense status for his accomplishments,

typically if you put a Nobel Prize winner in a room

with a bunch of billionaires they're

all talking to that person.

Right?

And there are many very interesting billionaires.

But status is something that is often but not always associated

with money, but is a much rarer form of uniqueness

out there, a positive uniqueness--

if one considers status positive because there's a downside to.

So I wonder whether or not the Pfizer CEO caught extra heat

because people assume, and I probably

assume also, that his salary is quite immense.

LEX FRIDMAN: Yeah.

So because I have a lot of data on this.

I can answer it.

It's a very good hypothesis.

Let's test that scientifically.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: He's about to tell me it's a great hypothesis

but it's wrong.

I know the smirk.

I know the smirk.

LEX FRIDMAN: I honestly think it's wrong.

That effect is there for a lot of people,

but I think the distrust is not towards the CEO.

The distrust is towards the company.

One of the really difficult soul searching I

had to do, which is just having to interact with Pfizer folks

at every level, from junior to the CEO,

they're all really nice people.

They have a mission.

They talk about trying to really help people

because that's the best way to make

money is to come up with medicine

that helps a lot of people.

The mission is clear.

They're all good people, a lot of really brilliant people,

PhDs.

So you can have a system where all the people are good,

including the CEO.

And by good, I mean people that really

are trying to do everything.

They dedicate their whole life to do good.

And yet, you have to think that that system can deviate

from a path that does good because you start to deceive

yourself of what is good, you turn it into a game

where money does come into play from a company perspective

where you convince yourself the more money you make,

the more good you'll be able to do.

And then you start to focus more and more and more

on making more money, and then you can really deviate and lose

track of what is actually good.

I'm not saying necessarily Pfizer does that,

but I think companies could do that.

You can apply that criticism to social media companies,

to big pharma companies.

One of the big lessons for me--

I don't know what the answer is, but that all the people

inside the company can be good, people

you would want to hang out with, people

you would want to work with, but as a company is doing evil.

That's a possibility.

So the distrust I don't think is towards the billionaire

individual, which I do see a lot of in this case.

I think it's Wall Street distrust,

that the machinery of this particular organization

has gone off track.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: It's the generalization of hate again.

LEX FRIDMAN: Yeah.

And then good luck figuring out what is true.

This is the tough stuff.

But I should say the individuals--

individual scientists at the NIH and Pfizer

are just incredible people.

They're really brilliant people.

I never trust the administration or the business people--

no offense, business people.

But the scientists are always good.

They have the right motivator in life.

But again, they can have blinders on.

Too focused on the science.

Nazi Germany has a history of people

just too focused on the science and then

the politicians use the scientists to achieve

whatever end they want.

But if you just look narrowly at the journey of a scientist,

it's a beautiful one because they're ultimately

in it for the curiosity, the moment

of discovery versus money.

I mean, prestige probably does come into play later in life,

but especially young scientists.

They're after the-- it's like they're

pulling at the threat of curiosity

to try to discover something big.

They get excited by that kind of stuff,

and it's beautiful to see.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: It is beautiful see.

I have a former graduate student,

now a postdoc at Caltech, and I don't even

know she had a cell phone.

She would come in the lab, put her cell phone into the desk,

and she was tremendously productive.

But that wasn't why I brought it up.

She was productive as a side effect of just being absolutely

committed and obsessed to discover

the answers to the questions she was

asking as best she could, and it was-- you could feel it.

You could just feel the intensity, and just incredibly

low activation energy.

If there was an experiment to do she would just go do it.

You're teaching at MIT.

You are obviously traveling the world,

you're right on the podcast a lot of coverage of chess

recently, which is interesting.

I don't play chess but--

LEX FRIDMAN: Oh, I have some scientific questions

to you about that.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Oh, OK.

Sure.

Let's get to those for sure.

And then--

LEX FRIDMAN: You're not going to like it.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Oh, no.

OK.

And then also some very--

do I have to spell Massachusetts again?

LEX FRIDMAN: Of course.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Also you still seem

to have a proclivity for finding guests that are controversial,

right?

You're thinking about Tate, we're talking about Trump,

we're talking about the Pfizer CEO, we're talking about Fauci.

These are intense people.

And so what we're getting folks is a--

we're not doing neuroimaging here

in the traditional sense of putting someone into a scanner.

What we're doing here is we're using,

as the great Karl Deisseroth, who was on your podcast--

LEX FRIDMAN: Thank you for that.

Thank you for connecting us.

He's an incredible person.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: He's an incredible psychiatrist,

bioengineer, and human being and writer,

and your conversation with him was phenomenal.

I listened to it twice.

I actually have taken notes.

We talk about it in this household.

We really do.

His description of love is not to be

missed, I'll just leave it at that,

because if I try and say it I won't capture it well.

But we're getting a language based

map of at least a portion of Lex Fridman's brain here.

So what else is going on these days in that brain

as it relates to robotics, AI?

Our last conversation was a lot about robots

and the potential for robot-human interaction.

Even what is a robot, et cetera.

Are you still working on robots or focused on robots, and where

is science showing up in your life besides the things we've

already talked about?

LEX FRIDMAN: So I think the last time

we talked was before Ukraine.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yes.

You were just about to leave.

LEX FRIDMAN: Yes.

I mean--

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So that's why I went on.

I was like, you know, this might be

the last-- you said you wanted to come out here

before or after.

I was like, come out there before.

I want to see you before you go.

But here you are in the flesh.

LEX FRIDMAN: So a lot of--

just a lot of my mind has been occupied, obviously,

with that part of the world.

But most of the difficult struggles

that I'm still going through is that I haven't launched

the company that I want to launch

and the company has to do with AI.

I mean, it's maybe a longer conversation,

but the ultimate dream is to put robots in every home.

But short term I see there a possibility

of launching a social media company,

and it's a nontrivial explanation why that

leads to robots in the home.

But it's basically the algorithms

that fuel effective social robotics, so

robots that you can form a deep connection with.

And so I've been really-- yeah, I've been building prototypes

but struggling that I don't have maybe,

if I were to be critical, the guts to launch a company.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Or the time.

LEX FRIDMAN: Well, it's combined.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I think you've got the guts.

I mean, it's clear if you'll do an interview with the Pfizer

CEO and you're considering putting this Tate

fellow on your podcast and you've gone to the Ukraine

that you have the guts.

It means not doing quite a lot of other things.

LEX FRIDMAN: That's what I mean.

It does take-- the thing is, as many people know,

when you fill your day and you're busy,

that busyness becomes an excuse that you use against doing

the things that scare you.

A lot of people use family in this way.

You know, my wife, my kids, I can't.

When in reality some of the most successful people have a wife

and have kids and have families and they still do it.

And so a lot of times we can fill the day with busy work,

with--

yeah, of course, I have podcasts and all this kind of stuff.

And they make me happy and they're all-- they're wonderful

and there's research, there's teaching, and so on.

But all of that can just serve as an excuse from the thing

that my heart says is the right thing to do,

and that's why I don't have the guts, the guts

to say no to basically everything

and then to focus all out.

Because part of it is I'm unlikely to fail

at anything in my life currently because I've already

found a comfortable place.

With a startup it's mostly going to be--

most likely going to be a failure, if not

an embarrassing failure.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Well, the machine learning data

that I'm aware of--

I don't know a lot about machine learning,

but within the realm of neuroscience,

say that a failure rate of about 15%

is optimal for neuroplasticity and growth.

Whether or not that translates to all kinds of practices

isn't clear, but getting trials right 85% of the time

seems to be optimal for language learning,

seems to be optimal for mathematics,

and it seems to be optimal for physical pursuits

on average, right?

I'm sure I'm going--

you have more machine learning geeks

that listen to your podcast than listen to this podcast,

but it doesn't mean you have to fail on 15% of your weight

sets, folks.

I mean, it could be 16%.

No, I'm just kidding.

It's not exact, but it's a pretty good rule of thumb.

LEX FRIDMAN: I think a lot of startup founders

would literally murder for 85% chance of success.

I think given all the opportunities I have,

the skill set, the funding, all that kind of stuff,

my chances are relatively high for success.

But what relatively high means in the startup world

is still far, far below 85.

You're talking about single digit percentages.

Most startups fail.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Well, I think it means--

the decision to focus on the company and not on other things

means the decision to close the hatch on dopamine retrieval

from all these other things that are very predictable sources

of dopamine.

Not that everything is dopamine, but dopamine

is, I think, the primary chemical driver of motivation.

If you know that you can get some degree of satisfaction

from scrolling social media or from that particular cup

of coffee, that's what you're going to do.

That's what you're going to consume unless you somehow

invert the algorithm and you say,

it's actually my denial of myself

drinking that coffee that's going to be the dopamine.

Right?

LEX FRIDMAN: Oh, interesting.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And that's the beauty

of having a forebrain is that you can make those decisions.

This is the essence, I do believe,

of what we see of David Goggins.

There's much more there.

There's a person that none of us know and only he knows,

of course.

But the idea that the pain is the source of dopamine.

The limbic friction, as I sometimes like to call it,

is the source of dopamine.

That runs counter to how most nervous systems work,

but it's decision based, right?

It's not because his musculature is a certain way

or he had CRISPR or something.

It's because he decides that.

And I think that's amazing, but what

it means in terms of starting a company

and changing priorities is a closing the hatch on all

or many of the current sources of dopamine

so that you can derive dopamine from the failures

within this narrow context, and there's

a very reductionist view and neurocentric view

of what we're talking about.

But I think about this a lot.

I mean, the decision to choose one relationship versus another

is a decision to close down other opportunities, right?

So I think that the decision to order one thing

off the menu versus others is the decision to close down

those other hatches.

So I think that you absolutely can do it.

It's just a question of, can you flip the algorithm?

LEX FRIDMAN: Yeah.

Remap the source of dopamine to something else.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Right.

And maybe go out there not to succeed but make

the-- the journey is the destination type thing,

but when you're financially vested in your time--

and as far as I know, we only get

one life, at least on this planet

and you want to spend that wisely, right?

LEX FRIDMAN: And a lot of the people that surround you--

people are really important, and I

don't have people around me that say you should do a start up.

It's very difficult to find such people because--

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Is Austin big startup culture right now?