Andrew Huberman | Club Random with Bill Maher

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I mean Clinton, I suppose at least that time. I mean, he's supposedly spent

time with him, right? Whatever, think of him, it's all. Would want to invest in

doing that kind of work. What are we gonna get out of it? Okay, well you're asking

me to justify something for which I'm. No, no, no, no. Thanks for coming by.

Yeah, thanks for having me. Beautiful place you have here. It is. Well, it's not

serious. Let's be real about it. To me, that's what's great about it. I mean, this

place was like a mess when I bought the house and I was like, everybody said, tear it

down. I was like, no, there's something about this place. Just a crooked door. Look

at it. Yeah, yeah. How did you tear that down? Right, and I don't know. Are we allowed

to say that there's a there's a body in the bathtub? That is not a body. Mr.

Obama, that is that is Whitney Cummings. That's right. That's her. I recognize her. That

is she's got quite a body. But yeah, that's a that's a that's a very expensive. She gifted

that to me. I'm very grateful. It's you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars to make

that a dog. You know, they can make they she did it for a special. A like audit electronic.

What's the word version of her? I remember going to the world's fair and they had the

prey, you know, back in the day, Lincoln. Hello, you know, it was it was kind of like that.

But this is much more realistic. Very realistic. I'm friends with Whitney and I've walked

in and there was Whitney in the this Whitney, the Whitney. Yeah, we put her in the bathtub.

We had her sitting over there. But every time I walked in the room, I was like, Oh, fuck

what? It's a person. It is all shocking. It's so accurate. It's mine. It's so accurate.

There's no hair on it. Well, I mean, we're close to having sex robots aren't we? I mean,

I'm not making that there's a movie. I just saw a pretty good called companion. Okay.

Have you seen it? No, I haven't seen it. It's interesting. It's a it's, you know, and

they making fox did one about sex robots. There's going to be a lot of sex. Trust me,

said these weenies can be playing a sex robot at some point. I just think that's inevitable.

But, you know, and in the movies, this is of course a little bit in the future at least.

You know, the robot is indistinguishable physically from a real human and it's just someone

who is programmed to adore the person who bought her.

I know she's at her. So, this assumes that no one will have a male sex robot.

I think it's different in the woman's brain. I think that's why men want, you know, the male

fragile ego and everything probably wants, you know, someone who adores them. Who doesn't

really want to be a door? I'm sure they're going to be guys out there that are going to be paid for

the robot that insults them in all sorts of things. But that seems like an entirely different

door. Yeah, those are the guys who now are having pay someone to dig their high heel into them.

Isn't that, isn't that bizarre how someone like when those places have been unearthed? I don't

know. Something about ultra powerful people. Maybe they have never been told no and they crave

that odd. Well, I don't know. We're speculating here. Well, on that score of the people who

men who like it, and shall we say the reverse, so many ones told me a story, probably was a

stripper in a club about this guy who had a really small dick. So, he's like his way to deal

with it was he wanted the women to humiliate him. And apparently that's like a thing sometimes.

Whoa. You know, well, it's like making a virtue out of it, like at least it's getting attention.

Yeah, the AI relationship thing maybe not is not as, you know, as edgy as what we're talking about

now, but it does seem like it's already happening. People are having relationships with AI.

Exactly. But it's not physical yet. As far as I know. I'm just hearing, so can't be. We don't

have it yet. Right. I'm guessing if it's physical, it's unilaterally physical. The, yeah,

it seems that you can ear in love with your phone. I mean, never doing this in Japan and the movie

her was like almost 15 years ago. That's like a crystal ball. Yeah, I mean, that's where it was

going. But there was no, remember in the movie, he like hires a surrogate, like an actual woman

while he's on the phone with the thing so we can like feel like he's really having sex with the

phone that he's in love with. It's like taking all the functions of the human brain and

compartmentalizing them into different actions and trying to interleave them. It's so bizarre.

I just asked this in my act. Doesn't anybody just fuck anymore? I mean, it's really, are we that

jaded that this, you know, it just seems like people do. Everybody has some crazy kink. I feel like

I'm the last member of the land that time forgot. I don't do anything. Never, I don't even fantasize

about kinky shit. I don't, you know, it's not like, oh, I'm not fucking able to be asked,

but I'm thinking about it. I'm not thinking about it. What used to be vanilla is now, you know,

is not even on the on the page for it. It seems, you know, one thing it seems like with these

different generations, you know, we hear like I'm Gen X, right? I'm 50. So we hear like Gen X, Gen Z,

Millennials and this sort of thing. But it does seem that there was an entire generation that was

raised so deeply in these short video, social media landscapes that they're almost like an

experimental group, right? I mean, inadvertently, they're the experimental group and nobody knows

how this is going to work out. I did hear that there are data that, you know, people won't hire

kids of certain generations because their inability to have, you know, generate eye contact,

have a conversation because they're just so used to staring in a little box all the time.

To wild. And yeah, and I mean, we know how much this affects their sex life.

They don't relate on a one-to-one basis. You know, you see video of people

or you could go to a bar and they're all looking at their phone in the bar, even though the person

is sitting right across from them. Even people out on dates. Yes. That's wild. That's common sense,

that that's we've now put it in the future turnout. I mean, anything's possible that that isn't

so deleterious. I don't think so, but what we do know is it's different. You can't deny that.

That this is a difference, not just in degree, but in kind of something that we never saw before,

where we're not relating directly, where we're putting some filter between everything. Look at a

concert. You know, I watched as much as I could of the Taylor Swift concert because Niki Glazer made

me. And she did. Well, she's a giant, Taylor Swift fan. And like everybody throughout the whole

concert, anytime they cut to the crowd, they're all watching through their phones. I mean, everybody is

like this. What is that about? Because I mean, that image can be, you know, they could get that

image after the show. Exactly. I guess it's to project oneself into the onstage experience,

somehow, but it's very. You're here as the expert. What are you asking me for?

Well, you know, you know, this is what I want to know. Well, there are some interesting studies.

I think the one that's probably most relevant to everyone is this study that looked at people's

ability to focus when their phone is off and turned over in front of them versus in their bag,

turned off underneath or behind their chair, right versus in another room, separate room,

right. And the interesting thing is that the ability to focus was the same essentially across

those groups, but it took a lot of extra cognitive resource to work and to focus when the phone is

on the table or even in a bag underneath or behind your chair. How did they measure that?

They can measure how much, essentially, how much energy people devote to focusing versus to

generating news or creative thoughts into, you know, a flexible use of the information. And so

it takes a lot more work to focus when your phone is in the room. That's just the simple takeaway.

So when the phone's out of the room, you see what looks like a boosting cognitive performance,

it's actually just getting people to baseline. And this is something that reminds me of, you know,

David Goggins, the guys, former Navy SEAL, he's always running around and shouting and this kind of

thing and a super high performer in the physical domain, who's actually studying to become a

paramedic. And he said it perfectly. He said, it's never been easier nowadays to outperform your

peers, but it's mostly a function now of what you don't do, right. Just putting your phone away

gives you what looks like a cognitive boost, but it just puts you on par with all the generations

before you. They didn't have phones in the room, right. So, you know, to succeed now as a young person,

it's much harder unless you're able to abstain from interactions with short-form video mostly

and the phone generally. So speaking of outperforming your peers, I'm always interested in like

why something wins. I mean, and that's like, take Mr. Jesus Christ. I mean, there was many

religions that were that were prevalent, both besides the old Greco-Roman religions,

which were kind of dying out at his time in the Mediterranean. It wasn't just Christianity.

Why did that one win? You know, why did my space go away? And, and, you know, Facebook, you know,

is my space, the Heavens Gate of Colorado now really dating myself. Heavens Gate, I think it was

a cult. I think they castrated themselves, shaved their heads in war. Oh, the Heavens Gate cult.

The Heavens Gate cult, right. Right. Right. That was sort of the my space of cults. I can't

it's self-disposed. In the cult world, that's when you win is when you kill yourself, I think. Yeah.

That's right. I was going to say in a, in a, in a, the field of like, you know, medical advice.

So crowded. Well, what is your own assessment of why you became primer into Paris in this field?

What, what, what is it? No, I, I think you're great. So I'm not going to prejudice the jury.

I mean, I listen to you and I feel like it's great information delivered in a way I can understand.

But what is your thing? Because this is a very, very crowded field. I mean, half this country is

like too poor to be able to even worry about their health and what they eat. And the other half

are like a fucking paranoid of maybe that's because I live in LA. No, I thought we're just like

doing every fucking cold plunges and they're, when they're 10 times, and they're tanning their ass

all. Remember that one, Tucker Carlson? Wasn't he tanning his ass? Well, yes. Oh my goodness. There

was, there was taint tanning like he was saying that I think it was, I'm pretty sure it was Tucker

Carlson who was like, yes, you got to, you got to get sunlight on your taint. You didn't remember,

you didn't remember that. I remember that fat. Um, I didn't realize Tucker was associated with that.

I think of him now as the, as the nicotine guy. He's like really bullish on nicotine, which we

can also talk about and hating Jews. It's, it's, it's tanning your taint or hating Jews. This guy

is a little all over the map. He's definitely taken a turn in. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. He's taken a turn

for sure. Um, so, but really why you? Yeah, so why you? Well, thanks for the kind of words. I'll

say, you know, some of it was a matter of circumstance. We launched the podcast during the pandemic.

And there was a lot of discussion about vaccines, right? And that's obviously where the major

debate was besides the lockdown issue. And I decided at the time in part because Stanford had a very

strict rule that we weren't supposed to talk about vaccines publicly because early in the pandemic,

if you recall, there were like documents, like word documents circulating on the internet,

people claiming to be affiliated with certain universities and having protocols for dealing with

COVID. And, you know, universities, including Stanford said, listen, you know, we need

virologists and public health experts to talk about this or no one else. So on the podcast, I chose

to talk about all the things that were universal, how to manage your sleep, how to keep your anxiety

down during during the lockdowns as best you could, how to maintain some level of physical fitness.

If you can, you know, leave your house, what? And then I just started teaching. And I think in

large part, it was because I wasn't selling a book. I didn't have a podcast. I was just giving

away information. I will say also if you look at a lot, not all, but a lot of the top

podcasters, including yourself, including Rogan, Lex Friedman and their others, Ajaka Willink,

for instance, most of them did something else very well first. They were credentialed some place

else, right? Lex's most people don't realize this. Lex is a PhD, right? He's very versed in computer

science and artificial intelligence and these kinds of things. Joe obviously had a prior career.

You had a prior career, very successful. In addition to the other things you're doing, I was running

a lab at Stanford up until a few years ago. Now I still teach at Stanford, but I shut my lab down

because of the podcast. So what you find is that often the most successful podcasts are from people

that, sure, entered the field at a certain time, and there were fewer people in the podcast game then,

but who also were very fluent in a particular subject, and we're ready to bring that to the world.

So it wasn't like, I want to be a podcaster. It was, I love science. I love learning and teaching.

I have an interest in health. I have a longstanding interest in health and fitness in addition to my

neuroscience background. So I'm going to talk about all of that. And I think the connections that

one has, like your colleagues, like the people that I bring on my podcasts are, I'm honored to

say. And so privileged to have the opportunity, these are the top, top neurosurgeon, chair of

neurosurgery at UCSF, Eddie Chang, Robert Malenka, the expert in dopamine, Analemki, at the

expert in addiction medicine, Sean Mackie, the expert in pain medicine, and on and on. And

we include other people creatives, David Cho, Rick Rubin, etc. But to be able to put those

people in front of the world, it was not really happening before. The only person who had really

done it before was Charlie Rose. And he had taken a pretty swift exit in the previous years.

I'd never met him, but that's where you saw the neuroscience. He was great at neuroscience,

bad at coming out of the bedroom with a bath robot. I don't know what the circumstances were.

Oh, that's what it was coming out of the bedroom with a bath robot.

Well, so I think that was it. And then I think I like to think it's also because,

you know, I do the things I talk about, right? I'm, I get morning sunlight. I've long been

interested in resistance training. And I believe, of course, in modern medicine, but I also believe

that lifestyle factors and the things we can control is fundamentally shape how healthy or unhealthy

we are and how many medications we need or don't need. Look, about 2003, I switched from Western

medicine, not that I abandoned it because, of course, Western medicine is wonderful in many ways.

But from, you know, but to a much more holistic approach, meaning preventative.

And I feel like I, you know, I got with a doctor, I respect very much, who I think knows a great deal.

We don't agree on everything. And of course, you also need an MD. But I feel like until that point

in my life, I did not really understand how the body worked. I read different books.

I, you know, I don't want to like go through the whole holistic

Bible, but, you know, they more are of the notion that there is really only one disease, which is

cellular destruction. And it has two main causes. One is deficiency of nutrients. And the other

is toxicity getting into the cell. And we label things in million ways as a million names for

many diseases, but it all comes down to not just all that, because I think genetics is really

important. Yeah, some people have Huntington's, for instance, you know, they could be doing

everything right and still be genetic. Right. Eventually get seriously ill, although doing

as many things as possible right in terms of lifestyle will greatly extend their lifespan

and health span. There's no question. Do you subscribe? Would you say that is your overarching

theory also that it's just, it's all about the cells, winning the battle on the molecular level,

and, and our cells. I mean, there's so much in society that is, you know, fatigue, like chronic

fatigue, these kind of things, an irritable bowel syndrome, and even allergies, maybe even asthma.

Just this stuff that like says it's because we're not treating ourselves right. They're getting

too much toxicity. And they are deprived of nutrients, because what they're being given is

processed food, you know, sugar, corn, fungus. Love to get into fungus with you.

A big fungus person. We talk about psilocybin. No, no, not that kind of, that's fungus too, a cry

that I used to do it. But no, just how harmful fungus is and how much we always go to germ theory.

It's always the bacteria. And sometimes it's the fungus. I mean, fungus is everywhere.

Sure. Yeah, I mean, so I absolutely subscribe to the idea that when cells get sick, organs get sick,

when organs get sick, you get systemic breakdown eventually. I think that when you talk about

toxicity, I think it's very clear that you can have, for instance, toxicity from too many calories.

But it's an affluent malnutrition. That's right. So too many calories, but not enough micronutrients,

perhaps, right? Or just too many calories, energy, load, toxicity. And when you don't get the

right nutrients, even though you're eating more food, your body is still asking for those nutrients.

That's right. Just why you get fat because you're eating more food, but you're not getting what

the body needs. So it wants more. I think the two thing, I mean, there are many things that are

making Americans and others, including lack of physical exercise and so on. But I think at least

two of the important ones that aren't discussed enough are being divorced from our natural circadian

schedule. So you want bright days, we've talked about this before, but I'll just briefly reiterate

bright days, meaning sunlight in the morning, bright days, as best you can, getting sunlight through

a window. There's a recent study showing that if you work near a window, it actually can help with

blood glucose management and dark nights. And for some people going to bed late and waking up later

is best for them. For other people, waking up early and going to bed earlier is best for them.

People have to figure out what's ideal for them. Oh, I'm so glad to hear you say that.

Oh, absolutely. Because there are some hardcore people who insist that the healing only happens

between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. No, that's nonsense. Thank you. That's nonsense. Thank you.

Because I, you know, 2 a.m. 2 a.m. is when I'm just getting just late.

Okay, so you're a night owl. And there are what we call chronotypes. And some people do best on a

late to bed, late waking up schedule. And nonetheless, getting bright light, ideally from sunlight in

your eyes in the first hour after waking. I listen to you on that. And the first thing I do is go

over to the window. And it's always like, oh, I feel like a vampire, you know, because it,

but I force myself to be able to optimize to that. And also I'm very, very aware that light

in the eye at night, you know, it's the worst thing for you. It wakes up the penal gland, right?

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not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Yeah, so your pineal gland makes

melatonin, which makes you sleepy and makes you fall asleep, light inhibits melatonin, light reaching

the eyes specifically. I should point out that it's clear that some people can tolerate screen light

and fall asleep with no problem. But what bright light does in the morning is it increases cortisol,

which we know is a stress hormone. But in the morning, you want your cortisol high. This is the

foundation of health to have your morning cortisol high. Yes, high. And then to have it taper off

into the afternoon and evening. This is, this is true for men, for women, perimenopausal, menopausal,

pregnant women, kids, everybody. This has been, it's called the healthy cortisol curve. And if that

curve flattens, meaning if it's not a big enough peak in your morning, whatever time that happens to

be. And if you have too much cortisol in the evening, you're going to have problems with sleep.

You're also going to have problems with blood sugar regulation because cortisol has been labeled

a stress hormone. But we need to think about cortisol as a glucose as an energy mobilizing hormone.

So it turns out that even if you can sleep just fine after being around a bunch of bright lights

at night, it will elevate your morning blood glucose. Now, is that going to make you pre-diabetic or

diabetic over time? It, it actually might. But kids nowadays, we've done a beautiful experiment

that where they had kids sleep in a room with a hundred locks. That's very dim, a hundred

locks light overhead eyes closed. And they saw significantly elevated morning blood glucose levels.

So dimming the lights at night is important. Now, there's a lot's been said about blue light.

And for some people wearing blue blockers can be helpful, etc. But just dim dimming the lights.

This environment that we're in here is actually quite dim. It's bright enough for us to see each

other. But this environment is not nearly bright enough for the morning. What we need in the morning

to spike cortisol, which is what we want. But it's, but it's plenty bright to spark cortisol at say

an hour before sleep. So just in the first hour, make the first hour of your day as bright as possible,

ideally from sunlight. Make the last hour of your day as dimmer as dark as safer.

Right. I just start to lower the lights. But you know, there's only so much you can do. Sure.

But when I go to bed, I cover up all these little things. Everything in

fucking America now has to have a little fucking stupid light that you don't need.

I cover them all, like with, with like wash clothes. I'll put things all over the

I really duct tape and all cover them. Exactly. Or get a, my, get a great,

a soft, I ask. Yeah, I don't like that because I feel it and it's

onerous. But I have blackout curtains. No, when I go to sleep at night, it is so,

it is as black as Stephen Miller's heart. It is black in there. I'm telling you. When I open

my eyes or close them, I see the same thing. Great. That's dark. Great. You know what's stupid?

And I don't need to knock this product. I'm wearing it right now. These rings that,

I'm sure you're buried. I wear a band where I measure my sleep with an eight-sleep,

the cooling mattress. Okay. Well, this is the same idea. And I'm, look, I've just started it

and it blinks. I had to, you know, when I did, and by the way, I was, that's why I don't wear

one of those. That's why I measure my sleep. I figured it out. I'm going to, I'm going to give you

here's a life hack. Well, you life fucking hackers. Okay. So, yes, it blinks at night. It's

supposed to be about your health. And it does the one thing you're not supposed to do,

which is have light on when you're sleeping. Bright green light or yellow light. Okay. So,

what I did was I took a black surgical glove, you know, like the thin rubber gloves that we gave

out a zillion of them during COVID and now they're polluting the entire country and world. So,

great on that one. But I just cut off a little piece of it and I put it on as a fucking

ura ring cozy at night and then it blacks it off. So, there's your life hack for all the people

who wrote wrote in like I did. And so, this is so silly. We're trying to do our health here.

I know. So, I think that the emergent theme in our conversation already today is technologies

that we use to improve convenience or improve our health inevitably have some sort of side effects

that we run up against. Everything does. It's true. So, this is wild. So, the long wavelength

light, red light infrared light, et cetera. That's the heat from the sun that you feel. It's part

of that. That long wavelength light is not the light that burns your skin. It's not the wavelength

of light. And it was present in incandescent bulbs. So, incandescence are, you know, even if you see a

white incandescent bulb, it's got short wavelengths, so it's got blue, it's got green, it's got yellows

all the way out to red. And in some cases, even infrared. That infrared and red, we'll just call it

long wavelengths. Believe it or not, beautiful data on this from Glenn Jeffery's lab, University

College wanted. It can go into and through your body. And it actually helps. This is a loose term

as I'm using it. Charge your mitochondria. The mitochondria, there's water in that area.

And the water absorbs the red light. If you've ever gone swimming, you've gone down, you know,

snorkeling or something below a certain depth, you lose the reds. Okay, because the reds get

absorbed. So, your mitochondria function better. You increase ATP production. Your metabolism

increases in the presence of red-lit long wavelength light to the skin. The study has been done.

Shine right long wavelength light on somebody, watch blood glucose levels and blood glucose tests,

and it's blunted. Now, the LED lights that are commonly used now are most everywhere. They are

truncated so that it's all short wavelength and medium wavelength light. And that short wavelength

light in the absence of long wavelength light has been shown to damage the mitochondria.

There's a kind of a niche group online different from the from the butthole centers.

So, that are very bullish about this idea that the switch from incandescence to LEDs and not just

screens, but general lighting is causing disruptions in mitochondrial function. This used to be

considered crazy. This was like chemtrail crazy, right? But now, we're starting to see from animal

studies and human studies from Lungefri and others that people's vision gets better when they get

in front of an incandescent bulb. Once a day, if they get sunlight, which also has long wavelength

light, your vision improves because of improvements in mitochondria. You can, again, better blood glucose

regulation. This study just came out eating near a window or working near a window. It improves blood

glucose regulation. So, you know, I'm not paranoid. I have LEDs in my home, right? But if you can get

outside and get some long wavelength light from the sun without getting a burn, that's the that's

the trick, right? You don't, you don't watch too much UV. Yeah. And you look extremely healthy.

I'm not just saying that. Well, close. So, I'd be in a position to gauge, right? I can't

finish your thought. Well, it's, it's, it's absolutely true that I owe it all to clean living.

Right. So, I don't want to say that short wavelength light is poison. That's not quite right. It's

short wavelength light in the absence of long wavelength light. And if you would ask me about this,

you know, eight, 10 years ago, I'd say, my colleagues in the sleep lab at Stanford, you know,

one of the preeminent sleep labs in the world, they're really big on morning sunlight,

afternoon sunlight. That's actually where I learned it from from the sleep biologist at Stanford.

First, but you start to look at our environment is becoming very short wavelength, rich,

long wavelength diminished. We're having darker mornings, people straight onto the phone in the

evening. It's too bright. And then you, you know, we can make it generational and say this younger

generation that seems to really be struggling. Let's set aside the content they're looking at,

right? Just what's actually on those screens, it may be that we've made them sick. And so,

while I am a fan of modern medicine, what's that? It's the light itself is what you're saying.

I'm saying it's the light itself in the tiny, important message that it's not just the fact

that it's a bunch of stupid TikToks that are poisoning your mind. It's the light itself,

even if it was transmitting the smartest wisest messages throughout history, the light itself.

The light itself? It's just not natural. That's right. And incandescent bulbs and fire light

and candlelight. All of these things were very healthy for us. And I actually think it's hard

now to get incandescence. There's some, there's some people think it's illegal. They're just very

hard to get. They are less energy efficient than LED. Yes. But when you talk about going to the

hotel and everything is like this bright, intense blue, right? When was the last time someone had

to change an LED board? You never have to do that, right? So it's like idiot proof and it's,

you know, power efficient, but there's always a cost on the back end. There's always. And you

mentioned TikTok, but you, you know, as much as I'm a fan of Instagram, my teacher on Instagram

and YouTube, they've really migrated towards shorter content. They promote three minute or shorter

reels on Instagram. They tell you if it's longer than that, it's not going to get shared as broadly.

I mean, all of the platforms have shifted towards shorter video. At the same time, longer audio

is still on the rise. That's, I've said this many times. I don't understand the American public.

Their attention span seems to be eight seconds or three hours. If I, if I do a podcast that's

less than 90 minutes, they feel very cheated. And yet, what you're talking about, that seems also

prevalent in our culture, that people have no attention span at all. And you've got to get it in

there in two minutes or less or just forget about it. It's wild. But how do you make of that?

Is that a generational thing? I think it's a fundamental difference between the auditory system and

the visual system where the visual system can tolerate a lot of fast updating. But if you had to

hear something different every 90 seconds or every three minutes, even, it would be chaotic.

It's just like, this is crazy. That's interesting. This is crazy. I mean, there's like shorter

than a remote song like it's how we're taking it in. Exactly. Exactly.

Exactly. Visually because we're so used to movies for, I don't know how many decades now,

quick cutting. And just, you know, we can, we can, they get subliminal advertising.

Remember when that was a thing? Oh, yeah. They would, they would, it would be, you wouldn't even

notice. The controversy was they put a skull and crossbones into subliminally, into cigarette

ads because the theory was people really want to die. That was it? Yeah. I am absolutely serious.

I do it. They, they subliminally put a skull and crossbones in there. Whoa. There was, I would have

thought they would have done the opposite. Right. No. You know, put it like a beating heart.

There's like a real massive beating heart. No. No. That's how evil they are.

You would woman or something like that. No, that's how fucked up we are. But, you know, wow.

When you said like a few years ago, it was like, chemtrail level conspiracy theory. That's why I get

a little nervous when people say, oh, the ultimate expert in. I'm sure they are. Sure.

But, you know what? Science? There's no final answer. I mean, there are, you know. Sure.

But it takes time like evolution. When it first came out, people didn't just sign on.

It had to go through the testing period. Okay. We're past that. And we're past that with global

warming too. I would say I'd Tucker would argue. Yes. Okay. We're past that. Right. You know,

we can argue about what to do about it. But we're past the, you know, humans aren't causing it.

Yes, they are. And, you know, maybe that's whatever, you know, but, you know, this, this idea.

Well, it's interesting. It seems like there's bipartisan support for the idea that we're contaminating

water sources and food sources. You know, I think I guess more closely to what you just raised.

It's beyond me why artificial lighting environments might be

damaging us in some way. And certain medications like antibiotics can be beneficial.

Like that we are living in the land with respect to health. We do seem to be living in the land

of whatever expert, certainly is not how I try and pitch things. But whatever expert is speaking

to us seems to think that the things they're talking about are the only things that are important.

Like I'm not saying it's only light. I'm saying light is foundational circadian biology is

foundational cortisol rhythms are foundational nutrients and food and not excess calories are

getting enough micronutrients. But when you look online, what you find is that the people

couch themselves as the it's all sunlight or it's all food. And I think this is what's really

damaged the maha movement, frankly, because I think most people across the board would say,

okay, getting food additives out and reducing processed foods, surely that's a great thing.

But then the vaccine debate, for instance, actually, I have an update on the vaccine piece that I

spoke to an IGE director today to get you an update because last time when I was on your show,

I talked about it and it's about these mRNA vaccines. You're here. Because I said and I still

think that to cancel the research for mRNA vaccines for cancer would be utterly foolish. I think

that's a that's a three neuron decision. Agreed. Okay. So I talked to Jay and he assured me.

Jay about a child director of NIH and out actually currently also. Oh, let's give you see.

Let's give people some background who during COVID, and you know, I was one of the people who took a

lot of shit during COVID. I feel very vindicated by the way. But I'm sure not nearly as much as the

people who are in charge of health now. And Jay about a charity was one of those people who was

thrown off Twitter or wherever because you know, like he's a nut because he had an alternative

view of how we were handling COVID. He was largely was largely opposed to lockdowns at certain

phases. I know this because he's my colleague at Stanford. And he was right. We didn't treat it

overarchingly. We just didn't treat it the right way, which was to protect the most vulnerable

population, but let society go on because it wasn't the bubonic plague. It killed mostly

very old people and obese people. I know that's politically incorrect to say it's just the truth.

We didn't need to to overreact the way we did. We didn't need to spend more money than we did

on World War II. Is that right? Yes, it's right. Wow. On, you know, well, of course we told

everybody to go to your room and hide under your bed, you know, and we'll we'll make up your

salary. Where do you think we got that money? Where we always get it out of thin air.

That's going to come home to roost and that's going to affect your health. Yeah, well, the mental health

has popped out in the lockdown before I before I have vaccines because I haven't up to make you do

this. I have an update for you on this as well. I don't know what this is, but is it? Oh yeah,

what is it? So, okay, so the mRNA vaccine update is Dr. J. Bottichar who now is also acting

director of the CDC, by the way, he's juggling both roles. And a smart guy. And a very smart guy

and a very, and and somebody who listens, you know, I'm not formally associated with

Mahad, despite what you might read out there. I'm not formally associated with any political group.

I'm either a double hater nor a double lover when it comes to politics. I am, I am an issue by

issue person. That's me in politics. Great. Okay. Appreciate you. Thank you. You'd thank you.

So he assured me that the, his words that the NIH funding for mRNA vaccine research for oncology

for cancer has not been cut. What was caught? He said his words. It was the 500 million dollars

put towards mRNA vaccines for upper respiratory illnesses that was set aside from project warp

speed, which people forget was a Trump initiative. I'm not, I'm not trying to, you know,

what do the kids say glaze or glow up or what? I'm not trying to, but we should remember that,

that was it, that was part of the Trump administration. Absolutely. And I think that the,

the mRNA vaccines, the label has caused a lot of people to say, I don't want anything to do with

those, but I just had an oncologist on my podcast, the potential to eradicate cancers using technologies

like those or others like CRISPR is so exciting. And the way this is going to work is not like

testing on humans. It's going to be by harvesting a T cell. Let's stop on CRISPR. Because I remember

first seeing it on 60 minutes. Gene splicing, right? It's gene editing. Gene editing. So you can

actually go in and add genes and, and modify genes. A Nobel Prize was given. Why is it called CRISPR?

The CRISPR cast system is an enzyme system that can get an insert and cut and repair DNA

specific locations. Okay. So, but yes, I've been hearing about CRISPR ever since that 60-minute

report, but that was like seven or eight years ago. I feel like, hey, I'm 70 now. Where's CRISPR

when I need it? So CRISPR is being used? I mean, I'm saying I need it, but I'm thinking like it.

CRISPR has been used to successfully treat certain childhood cancers. CRISPR, now I should say,

that's by taking cells modifying their genes and reinserting those cells, which works very well

in the immune system. But it's not a cure for cancer. Well, sometimes it is. It holds the potential

to cure many forms of cancer. So cancers are all. But it's done it sometimes, right? It has

sure. Yeah. I mean, what it's not in widespread use because there are a lot of ethical issues. I

will tell you there was, there was a guy. He actually trained as a postdoc at the same time as I did

in the United States. Then went to China. He did. He made CRISPR modified babies. Okay. This is a

well-known. Yes, he announced at a meeting that he had taken some kids that from IVF. The,

the report was that the father had was HIV positive. He modified the receptor for HIV in these

embryos. And two kids were born with modified genomes. Now, here's the twist. Here's what?

They were inserted into the guy's wife, I believe. So they took the eggs, her egg, his sperm,

modified the embryos once the embryos were in a dish using CRISPR. She carried. So targeting a

specific gene. And I should say, when people get really worried about genetic selection,

when people partner select their genetic select, right? When they go, that person's attractive or

successful or kind or whatever. But she, but they put, she carried it determined they had a baby

shower or two babies. Yeah, two babies. No, I'm not asking about that. Chinese baby shower.

I want to know about the shower. Yeah, Chinese baby shower. I don't know what that's like.

It's different when you imagine it is. And, and, and these babies were born. Now, here's why it's

controversial. First of all, he didn't get any approval from the International Ethics Committee.

There is no International Ethics Committee. There was no International Ethics Committee at that

on this at that time. And there is rumor that this HIV receptor may actually not just confer some

susceptibility or resistance to HIV, but that it also might be involved in brain circuits involved

in memories. So the story became that he used CRISPR to generate these, you know, super babies or

something like that. The Chinese government claims that he was punished. We don't know if he was

punished by being put in jail or given a laboratory. We don't know. It's all very mysterious and

cloaked. But when this happened, the international community paused. And it was very unclear. I was

watching this very closely. It was very unclear for a few moments, whether or not he would be given

a Nobel Prize or whether or not he would be thrown into a cell. The world didn't know how to deal

with this because he was way ahead of the curve. I guarantee that there are countries now where

people are using CRISPR on embryos. I'm certain it is, you know, has serious ethical concerns.

It is not allowed in the United States, but it's coming. In fact, you can deep sequence embryos

now from an IVF. And you can isolate the embryos that you think have the fewest disease genes,

or that you think have the most genes that would confer whatever traits that you...

Do you think we're always late on getting to some of these things? I know from a friend who

had cancer that he had to go to Mexico to do the thing where they take the stem cells out and put

it back in your body. And it worked, by the way. Yeah. Why do we have to go to Mexico to do that?

Our regulatory bodies here are much stricter on certain things than anywhere else.

I mean, if you're dying, what do you have to lose? Well, there's this weird inverse

stringency. So when it comes to like sunscreen, we'll talk about sunscreen, for instance,

you know, or food additives. Europe bans certain things that we allow for readily here.

For maldehyde. Also, yeah, and certain pesticides. Yeah.

In Europe, alcohol, no, no, this is classified as a... No, dude.

The world, world health organization classifies as a classroom carcinogen. Do as you like,

but know what you're doing. Here, we don't. Classified as a carcinogen, even though we know it

increases cancerous, you're fine, you're healthy in other ways. I wasn't freaking out.

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the exact same routine you've done for years and somehow two miles on the treadmill feels like

you're training for the Olympics. Well, nothing's wrong exactly. You're not sick. You're not

tired tired, but bending down to tie your shoe is somehow becoming an event. Nobody tells you

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After you purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell

them our show sent you. On the other side, when you think about which drugs we allow doctors to

provide or what's allowed over the counter, here there's a lot more stringency. For instance,

right now, there's a huge battle over peptides, which I'm happy to talk about, because the GLP's

are so popular, which are peptides. What are peptides? Peptides are small chains of amino acids

that have a biological function. Insulin's a peptide. GLP1 is a peptide. You make these things

naturally, but these can be synthesized and put into the body, and they can have an effect,

and typically when a drug, like a GLP1 drug, like ozempic, mongaro, or the big one that's coming,

this is going to be a trillion-dollar drug, and it has huge implications for the

sorts of things you and I think about the interaction between politics and health

is redditrutide. It's a GLP3, meaning it hits the GLP receptor, GIP, and glucagon. It can cause

up to a third of loss in body weight, and some degree of muscle sparing, some. People should still

exercise. Now, Eli Lilly holds the patent. It went through phase three, very successfully.

Eli Lilly does not want compounding pharmacies, selling redditrutide, why? Because it's far

cheaper. We had this recent thing where Trump argued for lower drug prices. Do you think the drug

companies were like, oh yeah, sure, let's just lower drug prices. No, it was a deal. I won't say

how I know this, but it was a deal whereby the administration kind of did a wink nod that drugs

were going to pass more quickly through R&D to market. They're going to make up the cost

differential on the research and development end. Less money invested in research and development,

less time to market, and happy to lower prices. This is my understanding. Someone will probably

tell me I'm wrong, but that's my understanding. Now, Eli Lilly wants to protect the patent for

redditrutide, but I'll tell you, in Los Angeles County right now, there are a lot of people,

mostly people that get in front of cameras taking redditrutide because it works so spectacularly

well at a fifth of the prescribed dose or the recommended dose from these trials and at a tenth

of the price if you get it from a compounding pharmacy. Now, compounding pharmacies aren't supposed

to make it, but this is another area where the FDA would like them to not do it, but it's pseudo-regulated.

The grain market, as I'm referring to it, is when people can buy this stuff online for research

purposes only, and then the black market, people refer to as Chinese peptides, which are peptides

that probably don't contain what you think they do, and there's very little stringency, and you

have to really worry about contamination. It's a little unfair to China, I want to be clear,

like these could be coming from Belarus for all I know. I mean, they could be coming from anywhere,

but people refer to them as Chinese peptides, which is not fair. We should just call them black

market peptides. So, the FDA would like to protect its relationship to Pharma. Pharma wants to

protect the patents for drugs where there's a lot of money. Red or true tide stands to be a trillion

dollar drug. So, here's the weird split. I want to make sure I close the hatch on the FDA piece.

Right now, the key is to prevent harm, right? We don't want people taking black market or grain

market peptides that could hurt them. At the same time, these compounding pharmacies have made many

drugs, not just GLPs, but many drugs, much more affordable to people. In a landscape that

I don't even have to justify, right? People are really struggling for health care or self-directed

health care are peptides to be all end all? Well, no, not necessarily lifestyle factors and drugs,

in some cases, or lifestyle factors and other things. But the key here is that if a drug

stands to make a company a lot of money, then there's an incentive to regulate this stuff. So,

we're in this weird landscape where I really think you have two populations of slightly

overlapping populations of people. You have people that their level of stringency is,

if it's not FDA approved from a traditional company, you know, from Pharma, multiple randomized

control trials, I don't want to take it. I'm not putting it anywhere near my family or anyone I know.

And then you have a separate category of people, which is quite large, who say the fact that

something is from Pharma, the fact that it's associated with the FDA is the same is the major reason

why they do want to take something. And this is where I think I'm so tired of looking at

a traditional media coverage of like peptides, where they throw it out like a dog's breakfast of

all these different things, lump it and just say, peptides don't do anything. Really, insulin

doesn't do anything for a diabetic? Really? The GLPs don't do anything? The root of all of this

is control of the patent and financial pipeline, which is not to say that I don't understand,

you can't relate. I mean, Lily, I have no stock in Lily, kind of wish I did. I mean, it's over

a thousand bucks right now. It was a couple hundred bucks a few years ago. Lily invested hundreds

of millions of dollars. They stand to make trillions of dollars. It makes every bit of sense why they

would try and shut down the red or true tide compound. It's so funny that it's so similar to politics,

which is you can't trust either half fully. When the argument is like their peptides are all bad.

Trump is all evil, or you know, the Democrats are all evil. And it's like you have to

read both sides because nobody tells you the full truth. They only want to forward their narrative.

And it sounds like it's the same thing in medicine as it is in politics. It is. I mean, as a research

scientist and friends with many, many position scientists and physicians, I do think at least

that Stanford, most all physicians and scientists, I do believe, want to solve problems correctly

and provide good for the world. Stanford seems like it's a super woke place. No. Stanford? We have

Hoover. We have the Hoover folks, right? I mean, that's like a libertarian think tank basically.

Oh, is that any rice runs that I believe? Is that it's Stanford? Yeah, it's the big tower.

The tower, you know? I'm not sure. I'm not that familiar with Stanford. No, I would say Stanford

on balance is very, is very balanced because I read somewhere like this is going back, you know,

because what a peak woke time five years ago or something that they had 10,000 administrators.

It's a big place. It's got its own zip code, you know? Okay, but it just seems like that's all,

we're not talking about professors and we're not talking about students. We're talking about bureaucrats,

kind of, you know, there is a hospital at children's hospital. I mean, it's one of the most modern and

look, maybe, you know, I have this podcast. I don't trust anything until I get both sides of

the story. I'm just saying I read that and that I concede right away. That is forwarding

somebody's narrative that elite colleges are out of control, which by the way, I do think there

is absolute truth in that. What's the other side of it? Well, there's another side of it too.

Yeah, so I'm anxious to hear you tell me. Yeah, maybe we need 10,000, maybe they do need 10,000

administrators at Stanford. Well, with the caveat that I can already hear the voice is saying,

oh, you know, he's just trying to protect his job. Look, I'm tenured. You know, Jacob is

job during the past celebrity now. You can't be. Yeah, I mean, I have this other gig. So I'm

called old. I can't be sure. You know, but I will tell you, I'll give you the positives. I'll

give you the negatives. I'll be real direct with you. I've been many places in my academic career

and I will tell you that while there are other many other excellent places, there are very,

very few of any places in the world where you find people who are just absolutely focused on

bringing their science, which often impacts health care to the next level with the

most degree of rigor. My colleagues are amazing. I'm telling you, I mean, I've got colleagues

like Carl Dicerat who developed ways to image, image modify, cellular activity across the board,

everything from humans, rat cat monkey bat for research purposes, people who were blind are seeing

again as a consequence of that. Right. I've got colleagues building artificial retinas. I've

got colleagues who are figuring out in the psychology department that are really parsing this notion

of like alley chrome mindsets, like which is a setting for the mind, how to navigate stress,

not just thinking that stress is going to dissolve you into a puddle of tears, but how to harness

stress into performance. And she's a D1 athlete clinical psychologist and runs a major research lab

and mom and happily married. I mean, these people are like on a whole other level. Okay,

it's also a place where people are very collegial. Now, are there a lot of administrators?

Yes. Are there a lot of beautiful lawns and palm trees? Also, yes. But I'll tell you the real strength

of Stanford. You know this woman, this freestyle skier who ended up skiing for China in the

ago. Yeah. Okay. She, she, she's Stanford. Okay. I will tell you, the real prize at Stanford

is the students, right? Everyone who works there knows that the intellect of the students and the

ingenuity of the students is what sets it apart. And again, there are other places. Now, the

downside, doing research is very expensive, very expensive. And in the current NIH climate,

one of the first things that happened when HHS got revised and I was very bullish about pushing

back on this is they wanted to cut the indirect cost, the support of the university, not just the

labs, to 15% across the country. That would devastate science across the country. Now, you can say,

oh, Stanford's got this massive endowment. It's as big as a country. You're saying,

with Harvey, why don't they pull from there? Okay. Let's just take that argument and say,

15% would take the University of Utah's, which is a fantastic place, a fantastic place for

biomedical research and many other things, the UT Austin's, the Wisconsin's, the Wash use,

and it would demolish them. Fortunately, that cut didn't happen. And I'm very happy to say,

and I take no credit for this, but I've been very vocal on the phone and elsewhere,

getting in Jay's ear and other people's ear, you cannot cut the federal budget for research

in this country. It fuels companies. It fuels basically the healthcare exploration and development

for the entire world. And they just put a 1% increase on the budget. Now, I think that's too small,

but the problem that I have with big institutions, rich institutions, like Stanford, Harvard,

MIT, Caltech. Now, here's the other piece of it, is that 30% of the indirect money,

meaning the additional funds that come from NIH, go to a very small subset of universities

across the country for big facilities, genomics facilities, proteomics facilities, which means

that the laboratories there have what many people view as a bit of an unfair advantage.

Okay. So, if we really wanted to equally distribute intellectual growth, and we want to

equally distribute scientific growth, we would distribute that money more equally across the

country. Now, my colleagues at Stanford are going to hate me for saying this, but it's kind of

weird, right? I mean, if you're at the University of Colorado Boulder and you're a graduate student,

shouldn't you have the opportunity to do the most cutting edge experiments there,

and just because you're not at Stanford, that shouldn't be hindered. So, I think a lot of the

country feels left out. Yeah, and I think the redistribution of some of these funds would be good.

It would be helpful. It would be helpful. A lot of the country feels like all the cool jobs,

or in a few different places, and they kind of look down on us, and we're not all Hicks out here.

I think some of these would go a long way. Yes. I mean, I don't know what the University of

Boulder is like, but I've been to Boulder. I played this city. It's not a bunch of fucking Hicks.

No, great place. Great place. Great place. Great science. Yeah, I mean, they had some unfortunate

incidents there. I think there was like a, like some sort of pseudo terrorist attack.

No, no, no, no, no. So, a Molotov cocktail or something at some protestor. I mean, it's got to cr...

No, no, no. I mean, Boulder seems like a nice little peaceful attack. I think it was the place

where the Batman, he dressed as the Joker or Batman or something. This is like 2013, I remember,

because I played this city like a couple of months after the, it was in the theater. It was a shooting.

Oh, it was a bad shooting. Yeah, that's right. I know what you're referring to.

And, yeah, yeah. I think that was, yeah, that, I'm thinking of a separate incident, more recent

incident, and that was related to a public protestor. I remember, because I donated the proceeds

from the weekend in Colorado to that fund. I know, I know. It was a, yeah, there was one

of University of Virginia as well. Would it look bad not to... Or Virginia Tech. Yeah, it was, yeah.

Redistribution of resources across the country would be great. And so I talked to Jay about this

today. And he said that one of the initiatives is to start creating national centers

that get a large percentage of funding so that scientists and people running clinical studies from

anywhere in the country can go there and use the state of the art tools to be able to do their

experiments anywhere. I think that's a wonderful idea. I think that that's going to ruffle some

feathers at some of the, let's say, wealthier institutions. But endowments are very, you know,

are sick at certain places, right? There's, there's a lot of money sitting in the endowments

at each place. No, and as you say, I think it's important for people to know that some of this stuff

that, and I agree with you that they shouldn't cut any of this money, it hasn't happened.

You know, people come up to me all the time and I'm out. Bill, what are we going to do? Like,

their world is coming to an end, which it's not. And I was just saying, the Supreme Court

stopped the president from his tariff thing. You know, I'm sure you saw that. That was a kind of

a big one that the Supreme Court, including two of his appointees, said, no, I'm sorry,

and you know, we'll give you a lot, but we're not going to give you this. Thousands of cases of

local courts have pushed back on detaining immigrants. And the budget that he asked for

never got, it's basically the same down the line as it was the year before he took office.

So for people who think the sky is falling, it's not quite falling. You know, there,

there still is a system that we have that's, it's definitely taking a stress test we've never

had before. But it's sort of holding in this way and this is part of it. Like that, that money

is still there. The money is still America and we're still, you know, are we, do you think we're

the leading edge in scientific research? Holding in there with some other top places like in

Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavia. And I will tell you, China is in terms of brain

machine interface and certain chips into the brain of non-human primates and humans to do,

you know, increasing memory, novel ways of using AI for cognition, they are miles ahead of us.

I mean, non-human primates type. McCack monkeys is the typical model. Very hard to do that

work in the United States because it's very expensive. And it's dangerous. McCack monkeys carry

something called, it's a form of herpes that kills humans. They get a cold sore. People have

guide from this. It was a woman in Atlanta had some monkeys. Did you get a cult or from a monkey?

Well, no, the monkey splash. You're in in her eye. And so it's, yeah, I mean, it's, it was deadly.

She was dead within within a couple of weeks. Is that right? Yeah. So years, you know,

I just want, yeah, not that it's going to really affect my personal life, but which monkey is this?

The McCack monkey. The McCack monkey. Oh, McCack monkey. And I'm totally surprised.

The big ones with big teeth. No, no. Yeah. I fucked them chimps, but this is, this is not, okay.

Oh my goodness. Wow. So, yeah, so China is making strides. You know, Switzerland shut down non-human

primate research as far as I know. It's very expensive to do in the US. The national primate

centers used to be a, a big piece of research in this country. For everything, the development

of a birth control was testing non-human primates. They're the closest model to us. Now, I have to say,

you know, I'm not saying this to protect myself. I'm saying this because I truly feel

I think the need for justification to do work on non-human primates has to be very high. They

are very much like us. I've interacted with these animals a lot. Does it hurt them when they do it?

Yes. It does. They do what they can to minimize pain, but it absolutely does. I mean, having a,

you know, a sterile tax implanted in the head, injections into the eye, there's no way to do that

completely painlessly. And, you know, that's tough. That's a, that's a, it wears on the soul.

I will tell you to do that work. I'm Peter. I'm Peter. So, so, so, so, so, I'm right. So, I am,

I personally couldn't do that work. You know, years ago, you know, I, I've worked on a bunch of

different species. And I'll tell you one of the reasons I'm so happy to be doing what I'm

now is I hated working on animal models. But in many cases, animal models are what we have.

But again, non-human primates, we need a very, very high justification and threshold before one

would want to invest in doing that kind of work. As long as what are we, what are we going to get

out of it? That's worth it. Yeah. So, I think, okay, well, you're asking me to justify something for

which I'm a little, no, no, I'm not asking you to justify it. I'm just saying, what in the best

possible scenario would we get out of it where someone down the road could make the case and say,

yes, I'm sorry, the monkey suffered. But now, you know, eight million, you know, children with

Tourette syndrome are free of this curse. Yeah, it, I guess it depends on the extent to which you

believe that going from mouse to human is a reasonable jump. It's been the intermediate species.

It's either been mouse to pig to human or mouse to non-human primate to human for, you know,

dose lethality infectious disease, you know, I mean, they are very similar to us. You know,

I'll tell you, I'm very happy to not work on non-human primates. They are sentient as our dogs

in my belief. And it's a really tough, tough problem. I think one of the, one of the challenges

is that now there's a lot of excitement about AI. And I think you can do a lot with AI that you,

you know, they couldn't do a few years ago. But cells, as you were pointing out earlier, are that,

you know, the foundational building block of all organs and health and oftentimes to understand

human health, you have to understand it in a model system that's similar. Let me give you an

example. This is as long as we're staying edgy. There's something new that's being done in Mexico

and in Europe called three party IVF. It's illegal here. It's actually being done in the UK.

I think I had one here. So we know that only one of them was Mexican. We know that as a

women age, there are the number of sort of eggs that can be successfully fertilized and create

healthy humans goes down with age. We know this, right? So one of the things that makes it harder

as women get older is the mitochondrial genes that control some of the splitting of the

egg and the formation of more cells, etc. Turns out that people figure this out first in mice

and then in nonhuman primates that you can take the DNA from the woman who wants to be the mom,

the sperm from the guy that wants to be the dad. And you can take those and put them into an egg

from a younger donor where the DNA has been taken out, but the spindle and the things that pull it

across with the mitochondrial genes are intact. And you can end up with a healthy kid. How do we

know this? Because there are women who have mitochondrial genetic diseases. This was done in the UK.

And all your mitochondrial genes come from your mom. And so these people want to have kids. So

someone said, hey, maybe you could do this. So they did it first in mice, then in nonhuman primates.

And now in Mexico and elsewhere around the world, people who are having trouble conceiving or by

standard IVF are starting to do this three-party IVF. It's not yet legal in the United States.

But this is a good example where it went from mouse to nonhuman primate to human. So you would say,

gosh, would you want to go from mouse to human? That's a pretty big jump. So at the same time,

we're not macaque monkeys. They're not identical to us, obviously. So it's the way the

fields have progressed. And in terms of cognition and things like that. But again, I don't want to be,

I'm not arguing that more work should be done in nonhuman primates. I'm not making that argument.

I think whenever possible, we should avoid the use of animal models. Always, right? Why

injure or take a life when you potentially don't have to? But you know, when you say whenever possible.

Yeah, I mean, there are cancer treatments that I doubt humans unless they're dying and they're

really at the end of life. No, it's just say, I mean, this is the, this is where the rubber meets the

road. Yeah. It's whenever possible. Of course, I think everyone would say whenever possible.

Right. Our most people. Yeah. And in this country, we don't tend to have cat and dog research

any more largely because of the advocacy groups because we like them because they were our pets.

Yeah. And the other one, the other one, the other one. Yeah. People tell me pigs are very

sweet. I don't know. But we, we don't, they're not our pets and we throw them under the bus.

They're bacon. And China's different. China treats, you know, I think they treat this whole

landscape of animal research very differently. They have a lot of researchers in Europe keep their

primates in China because of the lower costs and do the work there. I mean, we're sort of going

into the future of bring machine interface and kind of where that is. And yes, China is really a,

a kind of a hot seat. But why couldn't, why do we have to use animals? Why can't we just use humans

that nobody likes? Like, you know, clansmen or, you know, guys who are on Epstein Island.

Well, something like, well, something like that. I mean, there's that's how they should settle the

issue. Well, of course, because they're human, it's going to be better research anyway.

Oh my goodness. Those files. I couldn't help but go into those files. And I was able to find

examples of people saying, and you can find this there saying, we should too bad we can't

experiment on kids or we should experiment on kids. It's in those files. It's experiment one

on kid. We just are talking about wanting to do experiments on on children in the files.

But who, which, which people? Oh, okay. So Bill Gates really want to go down this.

Yeah, I do. I, well, yeah, I'm fucking curious. Right. It's all on the DOJ site. Okay. Yeah.

So what? So here's what I think is not Deepak.

Deepak? No, I don't think so. No. Oh, he's, I think that's the worst because he always was like,

oh, I'm the spiritual man. I'm the healer. I will tell you, but you are part of the universe.

Yeah, part of the universe that went to Epstein Island. And I mean, his shit just, I mean,

I like him. He's been. I'm proud to say. I'm proud to say I've never met him. He's a sweet

guy, but you know, it was always a Halloween costume. And I'm not that sorry that it got,

that the mask got torn off. I mean, it's just, look, I'm not a person who's big on, you know,

like people who say they're spiritual leaders anyway. So like, you know, his thing was always,

I was winking. And I always felt he was kind of winking back. Like, you and I both know I'm selling

a book. Okay. You know, like that kind of thing. And it's the same book, like 45 times.

Yeah, that's weird when people publish the same book over and over. That's just because of,

what is that? It's because people want to be reaffirmed of what the Sunk and Cost fallacy,

you know what that is. You know, like you, you, you, you say you believe the Gypsy who's been

telling you that, you know, to give all your money to this person. And you just, you've already

out a million bucks. You can't turn back on it now. Even though something in your mind is

telling you, this is not right. But it's Sunk and Cost fallacy. You just keep going with it.

I think that's what it is. You're talking about the customers or the people who write these things.

That I bought the customer. Yeah. I mean, for the people who write them, it's just a gravy train.

But for the customers, yes, it's like, you know, the latest version of, yes, it's the same book

over and over. But it's telling them it's comforting to hear what you already think you know and

believe and is helping you, even though there's probably a mountain of evidence that it's not.

Or maybe it does because the human mind is an amazing place that can convince itself of anything.

And a lot of success in life, somebody once said it a million years ago, if you think you're happy,

you're happy. Are you happy? I am happy. Right now. Yeah. I'm happy. I quit being peaceful and being

happy are very similar. Yeah. Well, I mean, why? If you're not happy, then you have been

fucking problems. I mean, you're doing well. You're well-liked. You're popular. You're a huge

success. You know, I mean, I have my internal life. Terminal storms like anyone else where,

you know, I see things out in the world that frustrate me. But then I remind myself, you know,

I'm striving and I'm, you know, yes, there's a lot of cognitive dissonance, I feel, between

the top half of the country that is doing well. You know, not the people are working three jobs and

paycheck to paycheck, but the people, the ones who come up to me and say, pill, what are we going to do?

Well, because it's just a dissonance between like their world, which is fucking awesome.

And I look, even if your world is awesome, you're, I'm not saying you're wrong to be worried about

the state of the country. Absolutely. I'm in the boat with you there. I am. But I also don't lose

side of the fact that my own world, no, I'm not on the edge of madness every day. And maybe we'll

get there, but we're not. So let's not pretend we are. Let's not pretend. What are we going to do?

Go finish your dinner. I think you're going to do. Yeah, well, I think that the numbing out and the

rage that the internet offers are incredibly intoxicating for people. I think, you know, to go

online is to either forget what you would otherwise be surrounded by. So every algorithm is built on

it. It is built on it. And I think built on hate and rage and conflict. Yeah, I mean, I think the

Epstein files to me are an interesting. I think people are going to be talking about this 100 years

from now. I think it's going to be really. I think it's, well, I'll say a couple things. First of all,

I never met him, never interacted with him, never corresponded with him, you know, and thrilled about

that. Thanks to him. Yeah, great. Yeah, nice. Thank you once again. Thank you.

He had he had deep pause in the scientific community. Yes. And in media. Every community.

And every community. I'm very happy to know that, you know, no one at Stanford was taking money

from him. That's great. Actually, I remember in 2017, when that case kind of first broke.

And I'm in touch with our development, our fundraising office all the time. And I said,

please tell me that he's not funding labs here. They said, no, he approached us. We gave him the

cold shoulder. You know, they, you know, they vet very carefully, which is what MIT didn't do.

It's what Harvard didn't do. It's what Columbia didn't do. I mean, my, I consider him a colleague

only because he's in the field of neuroscience, right? But Richard Axel won the Nobel Prize for

discovering the molecular basis of whole faction. He shared it with Linda Buck in 2004. And he

had to step down as the director of the Columbia Neuroscience Institute today. You got yourself

YouTube? No, I got this. Yeah. So, you know, um, and so I'll try not to, but he learned to sit here.

I mean, he was a killer of our field and to learn that he was, you know, buddy, buddy with Epstein

for so many years. And, right. And, you know, I think that it's, so here's one thing that's clear

to me at the, I'm not a psychologist, but I'm a human being with some degree of experience. And

what I know is that if you're in touch with your gut sense, if you're around a guy like Epstein,

you should want to get out of there. So the fact that people with, with, now I understand how

some people were manipulated by him because they were too young or whatever to, to be able to

navigate that. But why anyone, especially these supposed high IQ folks, would actively seek him out

and trying to, you know, embed themselves in his, or I can answer that question. I'm nipotence.

What's the four I do? Who are you going to tell me about Richard Axel? Is that who you were

told before? Yes. Yeah. No. That wasn't what I was going to tell you about. Well, tell me. Okay.

So I've looked at this thing very carefully now because you and I are in the business of media.

So here's, here's the question that I think has not been explored thoroughly enough.

Why is it that in 2008, Epstein was convicted, then comes back to New York. I mean, he's still

traveling all over the place and people continue to engage with this guy. Like people see him out.

People are taking funding from him. And yes, I got it. He wore the Harvard sweatshirt, which

doesn't mean shit at all, by the way. No one can buy that anywhere. I can tell you why. Why? He's a

pimp. I can't believe I've explained this to everybody. He's a pimp. Okay. There are people in this

world, a lot of them who are very achievement-oriented, shall we say, unsuccessful in their field,

which is either science or finance, who have zero clue how to get a female human into bed.

Oh, so you think these guys were just too teeny to get laid? Correct. He's a guy like any pimp

who can just get where I don't know what it is. I don't possess it. I don't want to possess it.

It's horrible if you do it, but he could get all these women and they're like, oh,

look at the emails. It's in the emails. I mean, some of them they were saying certifiably,

do we believe that? Well, they're saying things like Richard Branson. Hope I get to see you again,

but you know, only if you're going to bring your harem. So it's what he brought with them.

I accept your hypothesis, but the, but may I do a yes and? Yes, and or you can disagree?

And I've talked about this before publicly, actually, a couple of years ago before any of this

popped. I was on the Rogan and I, and we were talking about, you know, why scientists cozyed

up to Epstein and he, he provided either directly or by, you know, being the rabbi in certain

introductions, enormous amounts of funding to certain places. Like, you know, I mean,

they're in the files, right? I mean, I'm not trying to dodge a lawsuit here. I mean, the Columbia

Neuroscience Institute was not funded by Epstein, but there's a lot of record of sort of joint

meetings around that. And, you know, people in the leadership from Columbia meeting with,

with Epstein and the people who eventually gave the money. So here's the part that, I don't know,

maybe I'm just two West coasts to understand. But, but you're still thinking, what's that?

Well, it's just, you know, this is a very New York story when you really think about it. He had

the biggest real estate footprint. He had all you know, Ireland and all the shit like, honestly,

like I grew up in the South Bay. I'm impressed by people who have discovered things and done things

and, you know, creatives and things like that. Like, I get it. I understand Manhattan,

where your real estate is, how big the real estate is. But for people to, in otherwise,

intelligent people to blow past their understanding of his crimes, because that's what they were,

against miners. Wait, hold on. This means something. I know, let's just take the example of the

person who's not there for the women, who's there for the money. Because a lot of people

made a lot of money for their pet projects, their research projects, their technology projects.

I mean, the list of people that's in there, it doesn't look to me like they were all

with him so they could, you know, get access to women they wanted money. And I think what he offered

people was a sense of omnipotence. He has an island that's separate. It was like a level above

the level that he offered other people that turned out to be the level below everything else.

And we're somehow shocked now that this happened. But I do think from 2010, this was emphasizing

before, from 2010 or so, until he was eventually arrested again and was standing trial before he

was killed. It's so obvious he was killed and didn't kill himself. He was trying to be a member

of the scientific community. I mean, there are interviews in there. He had a staff. He hired

people. The guy who he hired, you want something interesting? The guy who he hired to redo his

web presence to kind of bury his sex offender status was a guy named Al Seckle. I know because he

came from the science community. He wasn't a neuroscientist, kind of a failed scientist.

He ended up marrying Galein Maxwell's sister. Guess what happened to Al Seckle in 2015?

Found at the bottom of a cliff in France, no one knows what happened. Wild, right? The woman

that eventually came out against Prince Andrew, right? Virginia Gufrey said at some point,

if I die, it's not suicide. And then, quote unquote, killed herself. There are a lot of people that

off, apparently, off themselves or allegedly off themselves around this. And one of them was the

guy who was in charge of his rebrand, okay? So I don't, I completely agree with you. There were

people that were doing this at different issues. It's a different issue. Wish I do not disagree

with you. No, no, I think these are, yes, and these are, yes, and very well could be that these

deaths are legitimately suspicious. Yeah. Because a lot of people have a lot to hide from.

But to the essential question, it's that no matter how big the big head is, there's some,

you're right, some of the smartest people in the world, no matter how big the big head is,

it's the little head that is going to live. This is the oldest, maximum about men in history.

You're thinking with the wrong hand, and they, they will always do that. But to the point of,

so, but to the point of, oh, the, the, the part that makes no sense to me is, is over,

overlooking whatever, but not to the point of overlooking the fact that he was a pedophile.

It wasn't that he was, he was caught with a prostitute. You think they fucking care about morals?

I guess, I guess I, first of all, they were able to, they were able to justify it because when

he came out of that, what they said, what they put out there was that she was like six months

below the legal age. That's what was online, but that's not true. Okay, but that's enough for them

to believe, which is exactly the enough for them to tell themselves, I'm not really engaging

with a true pedophile. But how could they tell themselves that I would argue it was his web

presence, which was very orchestrated, right, to make him seem like a rich guy who had gotten

into some trouble, came back to you. That's, they, he had people actively working to build that

persona. I've spent some time with files, and I'll tell you, if, you know, if his representation

online had been closer to the reality, maybe I'm naive, but I like to think it would have been

harder for him to pull so many people around him as layers of content. I would agree with that.

So we're in agreement. Yeah, we're in agreement, but, you know, so what about the, the other folks

around him like that people that visited his island that clearly do not fall into the category

that you're talking about? I can't wrap my head around that. Like cool. Why, you know, it's, I mean,

I mean, Clinton, I suppose at least spend time with him. I mean, he's supposedly spent time

with him, right? But he's not, but he's not, he's not a, he's not a dweeb, right? No, but, or,

let's say, okay, all right, as long as we're coming up with examples, I mean, I've got to be

really careful. I just think some of the folks that, that sat down to dinners with him, right?

Like you couldn't pay me enough money to have a dinner with a guy where I had knowledge of that.

Listen, I'm far from perfect. I'm not arguing them perfect. I'm not trying to draw a distinction.

And sure, I, I have, I'm sure you're perfect. Right. I certainly have, I'm replete with no one,

actually, for years, no one has been saying, but years I said I'm replete with flaws. The

I don't like you, but I'm not saying we're replete. No one's saying you're perfect. So I'm, I'm

sure, but I just don't see a world where people who are otherwise intelligent don't have this

issue with not being able to get laid as you refer to it, are sitting down with somebody who's

a convicted criminal for something like that. I mean, pedophiles get killed in prison. I mean,

Epstein killed himself. We know that. But, but it's, it's a, I mean, other criminals kill

pedophiles. Do it. I explain it to you. I mean, I mean, if you don't want to get it, you

don't know. I get it. I guess, I guess, I guess maybe I'm telling you that is exactly what it is.

All right. That is exact. I trust your judgment. I'm telling you. Okay. The, the, the urge in men

like that, these dirty guys who are like, I created eight big companies and, you know, I, I've made

$200 million dollars last week and no girl care. Somebody's got some pretty half stuff for the

mud. Beautiful women like some of the big tech giants are very happily. Yeah. So, you know,

Zux seems happily married. I mean, well, Bezos is now happily married. I mean, okay. I mean,

Bezos is newly married. And I agree. Elon does, it seems to have, you know, he's got a lot of

baby moments. Elon is on, on the emails. First, he totally denied it and he's caught being a huge

liar. That's who Elon is in the emails. He's caught being a huge liar who's said to the world,

oh, yeah, he tried to get me on his island. And I was not interested. And then the email says,

when can I get there? What night is the wildest party? You didn't see that one? I missed that one.

I guess I guess we read different emails. I guess we were different. Well, I mean, that's

not. I was spending time trying to understand the, the sort of trajectory of this as it related to

the academic and scientific community and his media presence. But, but, you know, people like that

who have access to do anything tend to do it. You know, my friend has this theory about shark soup.

You know, you're not supposed to have it. It's endangered the sharks, but they make soup and it's

not supposed to be really good. But, you know what? I can get it. And other people can't. Wait,

why not your petta? Your petta. I'm not supporting this. I'm just saying people. That's what people,

they just, the point is that it's forbidden fruit. So I'll, so I, and I'm a special person,

so I'll indulge in that. But that's, I'm saying the essence of this, they think of themselves

and they are so special in this many other ways and yet in this fundamental human need. I mean,

not to always be picking on Bill Gates, but obviously it was a sexless,

passionless marriage at some point. Maybe not in the beginning. Most marriages become that.

I know horrible thing to say, but it's true. And at that point, men are just living lives of quiet

desperation, you know. But men who cheat, and I'm not condoning cheating, or women who cheat,

certainly not condoning cheating in either direction, they don't have to cheat with minors.

No, I mean, that's the part that makes no fucking sense. I don't, I don't think these guys

were cheating with minors. I think Epstein had the minors. I think he introduced them

to women who were masseuses or you think he was blackmailing them and keeping files that too,

probably yes. There's this thing about the tiger with the camera eyes,

even if he didn't have it documented, they knew he knew. All right. Can I, can I, before we close,

can we have to close on this? We're going to close on this. No, I just want to say I know there's a lot

of everybody wants you because you bring a lot of writing. So it meant a lot to me that you would

come here and I really appreciate it. Oh, I'm delighted. I've always had some million things I was

wanting to ask you about my own health and health, but, you know, I always learn from you. And

seriously, I really enjoy our conversations. And I'll come back anytime. I would love to.

I'll tell you one thing about cannabis before we wrap. It's likely being rescheduled or has

been rescheduled to schedule three, which means it's told this today, which means that now it can

be explored more thoroughly for potential therapeutic use. I've been exploring it for 45 years,

and I'm telling you it's fantastic. It doesn't, I mean, it's, do you think, unless someone has a

predisposition to psychosis in which case it can be very dangerous? Oh, for fuck's sake, yes,

unless, unless, unless, I mean, do you think smoking like a joint every few days is going to

really hurt me? I mean, you? No. But the, the kid, the kid with a predisposition to schizophrenia?

Yes. Okay. Well, okay. I'll keep it away from him.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God. So well. All right. Well, thank you. Yes, you. Oh, man, I got an education there.

I'm going to, oh, boy, I'm going to loosen you up, Andrew. Over the years.

Club.

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