Andrew Huberman joins TBPN: retreutide, peptide legality, cannabis psychosis risk, and Olympic athlete biohacking

Amazing.

See some brains.

Thank you so much. We'll see you soon. Have a good rest of your day. Let me tell you about Graphite. It's code review for the age of AI. Graphite helps teams on GitHub ship higher quality software faster. And without further ado, Andrew Huberman is the founder of Huberman Lab. He's here in the TVP and Ultradom. Welcome to the show.

Here we are.

Cheers, guys.

Cast in a can.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you loud and clear. Uh g give us the latest on Matina Yerba Mate.

Yeah, zero sugar cold brew yerba mate. I'm half Argentine, so I've been drinking mate since I was a kid.

Okay.

It's got caffeine. Um, and it's a super smooth arc of caffeine. That's why I love it. Yeah.

But, uh, the zero sugar cold brew. Yeah. We made five different flavors. It's organic. BPA, BPS, be fast free cans because a lot of people worry about that stuff.

Yeah.

Nobody wants the credit cards worth of microplastics in their brains, testicle, and ovaries. And, um, it's free of all that. And it's awesome. I'm I have very high caffeine tolerance. So I drink, no joke, like four to six of them a day, but most people do just fine with one or two.

I'm right with you. It's crazy. So So we have like such a regimented schedule that my caffeine intake during the week is I wake up,

I don't follow your protocol around waiting, I get right into the Yerba mate. I actually have AB tested it. I notice I personally notice no difference whether I get started.

So you have one in the car before the gym?

I have one in the car on the way to the gym. Caffeine before the gym is such a hack and I I don't do it and I need to get back into it. I don't know.

Sometimes it's tough.

How how underrated is caffeine as a performance-enhancing drug in the gym? I feel like that's it's good.

Well, look, if you have anxiety issues, you should be careful with caffeine. But if you don't, um caffeine's great. It's definitely a performance-enhancer. So much so that you know um the people that regulate this stuff in sport set an upper limit on the milligrams of caffeine that you can ingest. But um what I cut off the caffeine intake at about 2 pm. But I listen I also drink caffeine first thing in the morning if I'm going to work out in the first two hours of the day.

Sure.

And that's about 3 4 days a week I do that. Other times I

you know I wait a little while. Um so it's really an option. But I love yerba. I also drink coffee. I'll have a couple double espresso and um I love it. I mean, but like you guys, I'm get up, hydrate, electrolytes, caffeine, family, work, work, work, work out, work, work, work. And then by 8:00 or 9:00, if you cut the caffeine out earlier, you're going to crash on a steep cliff. And it feels great because you fall asleep easily.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I always I always stop at uh I always stop basically when the show ends. That's when I'm having my last caffeine for the day. I sleep amazing and then get it started again. Yeah. the the challenge is on the weekend because in the week our our schedule is so regimented and then on the weekend it's a little more flexible and I'll start feeling if I haven't had my fourth yerba by

my fridge at home is filled with ma because if I don't I'm like not a good dad like sleeping.

I mean in South America you'll see people drinking yerba after meals because it helps with digestion. It's a mild appetite suppressant. So if you like I like to work out fasted. It's not going to kill your appetite which is good because you know we still need to eat. Everyone's like trying to eat less these days it seems. still need to get the the nutrients and then it's high in antioxidants. It's got a lot of positive benefits and um it's not necessarily an alternative to c to coffee. You could do both. Um but it's not an energy drink quote unquote in the sense it it doesn't have alpha GPC torine all those things that a lot of energy drinks have. Not not to knock on those things but you know I think yerba coffee it's

the challenge is is u making traditional energy drinks a habit. You're like supplementing a bunch of things that you don't necessarily like you're you you have to understand you're signing yourself up to be like constantly dosing supplements that a lot of people just aren't fully aware of because they they just look at it. They're looking how much caffeine does this have and not not really paying attention to the other stuff.

How is the business Oh, sorry.

No, go ahead.

I was just curious about uh the the the state of the business distribution. uh the the I mean you have a massive audience so the logical place to start is direct to consumer but the final boss of almost every consumer product is retail. How are you thinking about the roll out of the product?

Yeah, it's going great. I mean we partnered with Matina. So I'm a partial owner with SICOM. You guys know Rob and rest of guys at Sycom andrew Wilkinson from Tiny. Oh yeah. And um

we are available online um through Matina through Amazon. We launched in Whole Foods, in Costco, Canada, and in Sprouts Markets just recently, and um pretty soon it will likely be everywhere you look. So, um and people love it. You know, I'm very happy when people say they love it. It's delicious. You know, 90% of the world's adults drink caffeine every single day. It's the most popular drug in the world,

and most people need it to function pretty pretty well. recent study showed they looked at coffee but a couple of cups of caffeinated coffee per day seems like it can offset some of the dementia risk. Now there I mean with with a study like that there there are a bunch of you know issues that's not necessarily causal right people drinking caffeine probably working more focusing more more cognitively engaged etc etc but um as long as it doesn't send you into a um a spiral of anxiety you know caffeine is um is quite good for you that's very clear

uh sort of random but uh do you have any insight into what uh what uh different groups of Olympic athletes are are doing Uh there's when when I I've seen some I've heard some stories like there there's such a range with these athletes where you might have like a a an Olympic snowboarder who's like you know hard hardly sleeping and just like having some energy drinks and heading out there and then you have like the guy that's doing like curling is like the you know the most regimented or whatever. Obviously everybody's different but uh what do you think the what do you think the best athletes in the world are are doing this Olympics? like what's what's cutting edge that maybe normal people aren't thinking about.

Yeah. So, I mean this also showed up in the NFL a little while ago, but um people are taking vasoddilators um you know Viagra and Tadalapil commonly goes by Seialis. Yeah. You know, Toddalapil um is a vasod diilator. It lowers blood pressure and you know people know of it as seialis for erectile dysfunction right but it was originally developed as a drug to improve prostate health because um when you vasoddilate when you you know dilate the vasculature you get more profusion of of the prostate and you need profusion of the prostate avoid infections but other things as well. So it it the basic takeaway is that most every male 40 and older should probably be taking somewhere between 2.5 and 5 milligrams of tadalapil not necessarily for erectile function although it will augment that as well but to lower blood pressure and to improve vasoddilation for the brain for the prostate and I'm not saying this as a biohacker um or a podcaster we had our head of male sexual health from uh Stanford his name is Mike Eisenberg he's an MDP PhD. He is um best-in-class in terms of male sexual health, endocrinology, etc. And uh that's his recommendation and it's one that most every male maybe 35 but at least 40 40 and older should take just as a preventative um you know strokes.

So you don't think that'll people are taking it, athletes are taking it as effectively some type of performance

to lower to lower anxiety pregame to um because it lowers your blood pressure a little bit. um they think it might be a performance enhancer by delivering more blood to the muscles. You know, you have to look at what's on the band list and there's obviously lots of things on the band list. And then they're going to be the things that people are going to use because they're not on the band list and they'll be banned the next Olympics. That's often how it goes. So I pay a lot of attention to this over the years. If you looked in the '9s, you saw things like bromeocryptine, apomorphine, things that um people who know those names will augment acetylcholine, dopamine in order to improve fast transmission of neurons and and alertness and focus for getting quickest out the blocks in sprinting for instance. Those drugs are now banned. Okay? You'll see in sports where staying calm is an advantage. Um any shooting sport for instance,

most of the banned drugs are things that lower heart rate. Imagine skiing up to a target, picking up your gun and shooting. The the the less you're shaking, the better. So, there's a bunch of banned drugs and then there are all the things that people would take to lower their blood pressure. And some of those are not banned. And this is kind of how the cycle goes. We heard about the skiers injecting their penises in order to um expand their um bulge size, I guess it, in order to get a little more air resistance, in order to perhaps capture a little more air time. That was hit the press mostly because it's kind of it's kind of humorous when we think about it. Um,

that was real. If

you look at any sport, you're going to see this. You're going to see this. You're going to see peptides like BPC57, I believe, is banned.

Um, but that's a naturally occurring gut peptide. Very hard to test for because you have tons of it circulating. And the synthetic versions may or may not differ from that version as much so much that you can detect it.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Do you have a question about peptides broadly? Yeah, I would love I would love like an update. Since we last talked, probably tens of millions of Americans have jumped into the fray or

taken over San Francisco. Chinese peptides is like a whole meme in tech. And I think everyone's wondering Fouian bargain at what level should they be experimenting with these things? What type of research they should be doing? Um what is the what is the current thinking around peptides broadly? Okay, I'll hit the the key bullet points here for the noviceses and for the afficionados. So, a peptide is a short chain of amino acids. Um, you know, so insulin is a peptide. So, when people say peptides, they're generally referring to things that people take by injection or orally in order to augment some effect, healing, growth hormone release, uh, etc. Um, just as when we hear the word steroids, I mean estrogen is a steroid hormone, but when we hear about steroids, we're typically thinking about androgenic steroids, right? testosterone etc. Okay, so when it comes to peptides, some are FDA approved, right? Some are made by drug companies have passed through their patent. Um, many of the so-called growth hormone secrets, tessamellin, these are things that cause the pituitary to release more growth hormone. These have been tested FDA approved. Most people are not getting them from uh drug companies. They're getting them from either compounding pharmacies which are our lowerc cost alternative that there isn't as much um stringency in terms of purity. So that varies by compounding pharmacy or from what we call gray or black market sources. So when you say Chinese peptides, what you're talking about is you can go online and buy peptides that are listed or labeled as for research purposes only. And that's what a lot of people are injecting. And that is a concern. And I, you know, I'm not saying this because of my relationship to Stanford or anything like that, but I'll just say I do not think anyone should inject peptides that are labeled as for research purposes only because even if it says 99% purity, the 1% is likely to be something called LPS, lip polysaccharide, which um can cause inflammation. It's not a good thing to be injecting. Maybe one injection doesn't do anything, but when you're injecting every day for five, you know, 5 days a week and for a month that you can start running into some issues, autoimmune effects and so and so on. That said, let's just acknowledge what people are doing. And there's some peptides that have very impressive results for which there's essentially no human good human data, lots of animal data, and lots of anecd which is a synthetic version of a gut peptide can accelerate their wound healing. What's the problem? We don't have a control experiment. It acts systemically. So I can't inject it in one elbow, not the other. if I have two elbow injuries and say, "Okay, it worked better for this one, not the other." People claim it could be placebo, but people claim that it helps them.

Study where they break both of your arms,

but it but it but but the issue is going through your whole body.

Yeah. You know, and it increases vascular growth, it increases nerve growth, it increases cartilage regrowth. From the animal studies, we know that. So, the logical backbone is there. People are using it like crazy. The lethal dose is very, very high. I don't even know if anyone's achieved a lethal dose. The one study that was done in humans looked at, believe it or not, BPC enemas at very very high doses for a a gut like a colitis um issue. I believe it was. Listen, I I think you have to just decide what your margin for risk is. The other one that's very interesting that not a lot of people are talking about is pineal, which um I've tried it. I don't take it any longer. Um I tried it for a little while and it doubled my REM sleep. I was getting close to 3 hours of REM sleep per night. It's thought to increase regeneration or the health of pinealytes. and the pineal which make melatonin and so on and so forth. But the big one the the the peptides that's going to change everything.

So I I think I I tried that the the one you just mentioned last week. I was hanging out with uh with uh David Senra and a friend of ours had it and uh it was in a I think it was in a capsule form. I expected it not to work very well. Friend said it works fine. I tried it. No effect on my data. Is that is that uh how how do you think about uh different form factors?

Injectable only and on an empty stomach not having meaning not having eaten in the previous 2 hours 30 minutes before bed.

That's an issue. That's an issue because it's a gray market right now. People just be like, "Yeah, I'll sell you a peptide in this capsule." Technically, it's it's what I'm saying it is, but I'm giving it to a form factor that doesn't actually work. And so, it's all placebo. But I just looked at the data and I was like, I tried this two nights in a row. It had zero effect. And I don't think a lot of people

I doubt it was pineal and it might have and and sometimes they'll throw some melatonin in there so you feel quote unquote an effective for some people. Um you got to get it from a compounding pharmacy or a reliable source. I'm not suggesting people do it. I actually stopped taking it because and this is not a promotional but I take AGZ which is their sleep formula. I help design it. My sleep on AGZ is amazing. Amazing. I'm getting two and a half hours of REM sleep per night. I get tons of deep sleep. I feel great. So, I don't need pinealin.

But the peptide that's going to change everything and um this is more up your guys' alley because this gets right into the business sphere

is Lily has a patent. Eli Lily has a patent on a peptide called retatride.

Retatrutide is sometimes referred to as GLP3. It's a triple agonist of the GLP1, which we're all familiar with, glucagon, and something called GIP. I believe if I'm wrong, someone will correct me, of course. The the interesting thing here is that in a phase three CL clinical trial in humans, it caused up to um onethird loss of body weight. So a loss of one-third of body weight in about 6 months time. And it seems like there's some degree of muscle sparing. It works phenomenally well for weight loss. The bodybuilding community has been onto this for a long time, right? Bodybuilders always get there first. Then what happens is in Florida and the United States, doctors who know who work out in gyms with people who know how to gain muscle and lose fat quickly start experimenting. Then it goes into their highle clients. Then it shows up in Hollywood. Everyone lies or avoids answering the question of how they got so jacked. They talk about eating chicken breasts and they're actually taking growth hormone and cipionade and winstrol and ratitide reat, excuse me. And then and then everyone hears about it and they start you know whatever looks maxing it and then it's a big giant mess out there. Here's the deal. We are looking at a potential change in the laws around peptides such that buying peptides would become illegal. I actually think this is a terrible idea. But the the motivation behind this is largely because Lily owns the patent. People are already injecting reati. They can buy it out there. They're taking it at maybe a third of the dose that's recommended in the trial and they are seeing phenomenal results at fat loss. Not a week goes by where I don't get a hundred questions about reutide to my phone, my personal phone, let alone email and etc. Wow.

So the reason why peptides might soon become uh illegal to purchase uh through even compoundingies, let alone gray market is because Lily would like to protect the domain over that patent. This is going to be a trillion dollar drug. trillion dollar, but people are already taking it. I've never tried it, but people I know who have taken it said it works phenomenally well at a fraction of the dose. So, today what what are what are some benefits that outside of weight loss? Are there secondary

reduced alcohol appetite, appetite, reduce impulsivity perhaps? Remember that the the receptors for these things are all over the brain and body and you know the other GLP agonists have been looked at for alcohol use disorder, for binge eating disorder and for a lot of you know behavioral and impulse control disorders because a lot of the receptors are rooted in the hypothalammus which controls a lot of um impulsivity type behaviors and anxiety related behaviors. So you know my stance on things is you know um do as you wish but know what you're doing but with the important caveat that if you are an adult and your body is fully formed you are in a completely different landscape than if you're 14 18 20 you know I worry very much we're hearing more and more about young people especially women in the past but now also young guys who are thinking oh you know they've got to take TRT that's crazy you know I've talked about the fact that at 45 I'm 50 now 45 years old I started taking a micro dose of cipionate micro dose but micro so I maintain fertility I've checked that I take hCG etc never in a million years would I suggest anyone else do that in their 20s or 30s unless they have a serious issue with peptides there's the risk of where you're getting it from purity right but there's also the risk that if you're augmenting growth hormone in your teens your 20s you can really mess up your hypothalamic pituitary body axis all the organs of your body in major ways you shut down fertility um you get if you come off these things you you may revert to a state you know a depression etc. I I just think the whole looks maxing phenomenon is really really dangerous and foolish especially in people younger than 40,

right? Um it's just

well especially because there's a way to looks max without hitting your face with a hammer,

sleep diet, exercise, you know, taking uh

get you 99% of the way there.

Also see you need to evaluate kind of where you are at the very end of puberty. Puberty is a very protracted thing. You know, I hit puberty when I was 14. I didn't shave till I was 20. I swear my head and face change shape, you know, over time. You got to let people develop over a long period of time. If you introduce exogenous hormones or you start blunting estrogen or you start um you know, cuz guys will say, "Oh, they have too much estrogen or something or they they start taking peptides. I mean, you can really throw off the trajectory of your physiology and then you're the person in your 40s and 50s often who looks much older." This is the thing that people don't realize that there's always a dynamic tension between the things that give you vitality and the things that extend your life. For instance, if you take growth hormone, you'll feel more vital. You'll gain muscle more easily, recover from injury more easily. You'll lose visceral and body fat. Guess what? You'll also age more quickly. The reason bigger dogs die earlier than smaller dogs is they have higher dosing of of growth hormone and IGF-1. It's it's well established. So you get vitality but you lose time. With testosterone you have to ask yourself what are you gaining? What are you losing? If you can go from, you know, having no energy whatsoever to the ability to work and exercise, increase libido, etc. Well, then you're probably gaining years if you're doing those things. But I'm very concerned about people just, you know, trying to get a whatever an angle jawline, um, you know, abs, etc. I mean, it's it's because of phones, right? People taking photos of themselves. I mean, I'm old school, so I feel like if you're a guy taking pictures of your abs and posting it online, um, like like you need to invest some money in a in a in a psychologist, not in a in a peptide. But that's just, you know, that's a that's a generational thing, right? I think I'm more impressed by what people can do with their physicality trying to hit it some numbers, some lifts, some running, some hiking, some rocking and and then but this overemphasis on appearance on social media, I think is going to cause a lot of um destruction for people that try and chase that. Mhm.

Uh, do you get questions from parents who have teenagers that are and they're considering giving their their teenagers HGH

all the time? So, people who have kids that are much shorter than their peers um nowadays often, I'm not suggesting doing this, will delay puberty in their kids.

Um, they'll sometimes give them growth hormone. Um, we know that some of the drugs, the prescription drugs that help with ADHD can blunt growth

um at high dosages. Um, there's actually a very interesting drug uh that's went through phase three or is at the end of phase three now, which was designed, excuse me, designed for excessive daytime sleepiness called Senosi,

which um is kind of a dirtier hit of the dopamine and epinephrine and a little bit serotonin receptors that is promising for ADHD. that's a non-infetamine ADHD um drug um that's very interesting um that might be a good alternative to some of the aderall vivants etc. Of course you need a doctor's prescription for these things.

Um I'll just throw out a name. I have no uh formal affiliation to him but there's a YouTube channel a guy we had him on the podcast Dr. John Cruz, K R U S E, who has covered every aspect of adult and child ADHD from behavioral um tools to the different drugs, um the amphetamine based drugs, senosi and all of those modafanil very very uh high information content, short videos, 10 to 15 minutes, nothing like mine, you know, mine will cure insomnia, his will help people. So I I send parents there um and look, I can say, "What are you doing giving your kid growth hormone?" But like I don't know, I was never the tallest in my class. I was never the shortest. I'm, you know, 6'1 if I stand up straight, you know, 5'11 if I if I slouch. And so I I do understand why people feel like they need to do this for their kids based on what you hear out there. But when you start playing um atome endocrinologist and now that it's very easy to find a physician that will work with you on these things, you are you're you know, you're you're playing a dice game and you're playing it. So, you have to think real carefully about when when and if to do these things. But ultimately, you know, parents decide and kids decide.

Switching gears, I want to talk about cannabis.

I was about to ask.

Yeah. Are you guys fans? Be honest.

I'm not a fan.

Yeah, me either. It used to be.

I mean, I grew up in I grew up in Northern California, so it was uh always It's funny. Wine country is like cannabis country, you know? Oh, it's less visible than, you know, the vineyards and things like that, but

it used to be expensive, difficult to obtain, laced with oregano. Now it's like industrialized, available at the push of a button. And and I mean, the New York Times is writing, you see these charts like the number of hospitalizations that was never a thing in the 90s that I remember. Um, and it feels like we're on the cusp of really dis redising this as a society on are we in an epidemic? do we need to have a more national conversation? Um, but what are you seeing um in the research and and in your world about how big the problem is?

Yeah. Well, as a personal stance, I'm I'm largely for um legal but regulated. That's just as my personal stance. I want to just throw that out there, but that's just me personally. Um I've hosted two guests, one clinician, one scientist about this and I did a solo episode. I did the soul episode and in addition to making some small errors in there about receptor affinities and things like that, I made a um a statement which was based on the literature I was seeing which is that there is a population of people especially young males who have a predisposition to schizophrenia or bipolar meaning they have a first relative um with those conditions that are at very high risk for uh cannabis induced psychosis some of which doesn't reverse.

Yeah.

Um which is really scary. I got accused of misinformation

by traditional media. Not, you know, not like being a misinformation. And I'm going to keep my hands under the table because my response to that I think they can understand.

Yeah.

So misinformation. Those are the general American medical.

Yeah.

I I I've witnessed

and at this point everyone has the the anecdosis. Okay. Look, so there's more data. Now I get it right and the media game is a whole discussion into itself. So um the g I had one guest come on very thoughtful guest researcher from Canada who explained that the psychosis is often caused by an overingestion of too much THC

and in his words just to be fair to him because he's a serious researcher serious scientist said that when people smoke so if they inhale it by vape or smoking they tend to hit a plane of high that's not excessive and and the the risk for psychotic episode is is lowered. Mhm.

Then the clinician I brought on said that he's not observing that. He's a clinician, Keith Humphre. He's from Stanford. He's not observing that. He's an expert in addiction of all kinds. And so what we do know for sure is that THC concentrations are very high. It's very easy to overingest through an edible versus through an uh inhalation. Look, I think that the issue is how often and how much and on what genetic background uh is somebody doing this. Now the problem is you don't want to be part of the experiment. You don't want to be the person that discovers that you have a predisposition to psychosis by smoking high THC weed. We see the same thing withratom. So withratom you've gotratom products that people will say oh you know helped them get off opioids and I don't deny that right you've got activist groups that are proratom. You also have people who will say they took so-calrum products which are isolates of the molecule. This is what we tend to do in this country. We find an interesting plant that has some psychoactive properties and then I don't know maybe pull the nicotine out of tobacco, concentrate it. Next thing you know they're making money and you're putting in, you know, five pouches a day.

They'll take the plant which is chewed. The leaves are chewed. People say, "Oh, it's kind of a balance between alertness and calm." Great. They'll isolate them. Then they'll doratum isolates. And now you're getting people who are having opioid like addiction toratum isolates to synthetics. Likewise with THC, you had a balance between THC and CBD in the plant, different strains, etc., etc. It was a kind of a a community for a long time. This has, you know, uh it even has religious uses, etc., and and cultural, you know, uh relationships. And then all of a sudden, it's like, no, we've got really high THC concentrates that you can buy at the convenience store, and then people with a predisposition are having psychotic episodes. Here are a couple things. I'll say one thing facicious, and then a couple things serious. One, I love to compete with people who like cannabis because unless they're a martial artist or a creative like a musician,

you're going to blast past them. So, you know, it's kind of like recommending um great ne Netflix series to your competitors, right?

Remote or remote work. I recommend

you're going to win. Okay. Now, that's the facious side. The serious side is, you know, couple guys or friends, gals, two, getting together and and smoking some weed and one person is like, "Oh, this really calms my anxiety, makes makes them feel as if they can engage socially." And the next thing you know, they're losing motivation for a bunch of other things. Layered on top of

social media, the challenges of life as they always existed, but also nowadays. And the next thing you know, you've got somebody with some serious mental health issues and a full-blown addiction. I do know that my colleagues that work on addiction, Dr. Dr. Anna LMK, who's an MD, who wrote Dopamine Nation, Keith Humphre at Stanford, they'll tell you that many, many more people are coming to them of all ages saying they struggle with cannabis. I will also say that you're not going to get REM sleep if you are ingesting cannabis, certainly within a few hours of sleep. Anyone that quits cannabis will tell you that their REM sleep, their dreams are just comes back like crazy for many months, if not years. And you need REM sleep to offload the emotional load of prior day experiences. So, I get it. And then the last thing is that there's always the comparison to alcohol. I actually did a a post about this on X. It's but it's crazy, right? I mean, I've talked about alcohol before. Zero is better than any. Two per week are probably fine. If you're going to drink more, do more things for it to, you know, support your lifestyle. I'm not a tea totler. Do as you want, but know what you're doing. But people always say it's better than alcohol. As if you had to pick one. And maybe you do. Maybe in order to socialize, people feel like they have to pick one. I don't know. I've always been able to say whatever the heck is on my mind without any alcohol or drugs. So, you don't want to be around me if I were drunk. Um cuz I'll tell everyone everything, you know, but now I do it anyway. And I think it's just an issue of

I get it. In your teens and 20s, late teens and 20s, college, 30s, when you go to a bar, you don't want to sit around and and um necessarily sober. I get it. So, what are you going to do? You going to have a couple drinks or weed? Which one is better? It really depends on who you are. Um, and the comparison is just a kind of a fool's errand. You're you're never going to solve what's better. But it there are many many more people smoking or ingesting high THC cannabis. And you have examples of people who are extremely successful, extremely ambitious who use cannabis, but those people probably need it to not go over the the the peak of anxiety from their from their ambition. They're using it to stay in a healthy zone. Whereas people that are, you know, have more apathy, they're less motivated, um, they should stay away from cannabis in my opinion if they want to make something of their life.

I completely agree. That's great.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

Hard to fit into a post on

So, uh, there's been a lot of studies on the impact of social media on people's mental health,

right? Young people, teenagers. What about uh and then right now one of the most popular words in the world is BR or phrase is brain rot, right? Uh

are there any largecale studies being done on the impact of consuming an hour or two hours a day of short form video? Like what what are you tracking? Uh because if you just look at the data, YouTube has I forget the exact number, but the average person in the world is watching like a meaningful amount of shorts every day. So some people are watching

hundreds and hundreds, others are watching zero or or maybe a few.

Yeah.

But there's a range.

Yeah. Well, I'll just offer a tool that I think is very useful. I mean, I don't have problems with behavioral restraint, but I but I do have a lock box for my social media phone. So, I took

my an old phone. I put social media on that phone so that if people text me social media links, I can't open them.

It also means that when I take out that phone, I'm posting or commenting or or doing that. And I keep it in this lock box which is like a supermax prison. You can't even code out of it. Has a no code out setting. And I'll leave it in there about 20 plus hours a day. And it's just great.

It's just great. I mean, your productivity will go through the roof. I mean, it's getting very easy to blow past your peers now just by avoiding being on social media a little bit more. I mean, David Gogan said this. It's like it's easier than ever now to to be successful if you just don't do certain things. Whereas in the past, it was like, what do I have to do to be successful? like the shortest productivity self-help book will be, you know, lock your social media phone in a in a box for 23 hours a day. And then I do think that so I'm not aware of any studies looking at 1 to two hours per day. I do think that when you approach social media or you're getting online, I think it's important to realize that the brain has an absolutely insatiable appetite for short form video, but it's appetite for long form audio is also very high. This is why podcasts continue to grow in their reach. People don't want to hear audio turning over quickly unless there's video associated with it. So, I try to get on social media at least once a day, maybe half hour, 45 minutes at the most. Um, but I'm posting and commenting. I think at the moment where you forget time

and you're just like and it's sucking you in is the time where it needs to go back in the lock box. But listen, Joe, I listen to you guys. I I listen to news on social media. And I think that's the world we're in. I think that some people also can be on social media and experience some distance from it. other people are more kind of pulled in emotionally to what's going on. It depends if you're a creator and people are, you know, commenting about you or you're actively engaged in the conversations or if you're simply an observer. But I think an hour and a half a day should be the upper limit for anyone that actually wants to accomplish something in life and probably more like 45 minutes to an hour unless you're watching news. If you're learning, how do you know if you're learning? What we know from neuroplasticity studies is that if you reflect on something the next day, you're likely to not forget it. I It sounds sort of trivial, but most of learning is anti-forgetting. In fact, there was a beautiful study done where they have people read some a passage once, twice, three times, or four times versus reading it just once and then self- testing on it in their mind at some point later. And the self testing in your mind, what do I remember? What don't I remember? I forget that part. extended the memory of what was in that passage out 6 months to a year in some cases. So the reflection on what you saw is the key. So if you think, okay, what did you see yesterday that was of interest where you actually learned something of value, then you're actually learning from social media or a podcast, but if you're just getting inundated with sensory information, forget it. That's called entertainment. You're just you're just numbing out or they're rage baiting you. And you know, I mean, between what happened between like the Minnesota stuff, right,

then the Epstein thing,

and then you know, the next political whatever,

you know, you the amygdala is just getting hammered. And we know when the amydala is activated, you're getting many more sort of bits of memory stored. So, but you're just getting the peak of that information. You're kind of getting a summary. So,

look, your your brain real estate is your most valuable real estate. What are you going to put in there? what what are you learning? And so I would say take a walk and ask yourself what did I learn on social media today or yesterday? And there's actually some learning to be had. Like I've reflected on what I've seen in this Epstein thing. There were a lot of scientists there. There were a lot of people that were um that buried his offenses so that that he could come out as this kind of like science finance liaison buries. I mean it was wild how this could happen right after a conviction. And so there's some some consideration to be had, but you need to get away from the content in order to think about that

and then return to it in a way that's that's more I think nuanced and that can serve you as opposed to just getting you know rage baited into it all.

Yeah.

Never get rage baited. What excites you about AI?

Anything?

Yeah. I'll tell you where I'm using AI. I've wrapped my book. I'm doing edits on it right now. And I didn't use AI to write my book. Um, but what I think AI is great for is for designing little exams for yourself for exactly what I just described. So, I will have I like Claude, so I'll just ask Claude to say um to test me on um give me a a 20 question multiplechoice test on um the microbiome as it relates to the solo episode that I did plus, you know, some recent work from my colleague Justin Sonnenberg, for instance, at Stanford, perhaps the best researcher on the human microbiome in in the world. And and Claude will give me questions and I'll go, "Oh, that's cool. I remember that. Oh, wait, that's where my knowledge falls off. What percentage of the vagus nerve is is uh motor descending? Okay, those things like are important to me, maybe not you. And so I'm trying to cons I'm using it to consolidate information that I've learned prior that I might otherwise forget and update my knowledge and then I'll go to the papers, make sure the papers are actually what's linked there because, you know, as we know AI can hallucinate. I think that's fantastic. Um so it's a teacher. I'm using it to self- test which I know based on a lot of literature can help stamp down memories. So, that's one way that I'm using it. Um, I think I love the AI that's woven into eight sleep that is now I'm no longer adjusting the temperatures. It's doing it for me.

Love that. Awesome. Um, I'm giving it my blood tests.

Um, and it's helping me navigate that. I mean, I had a blood lipid issue that was very slight, but I wanted to keep it in range. And so, I started taking nattokinise. I have no relationship to any company that sells it. Boom, right back into range. and AI helped me understand what nattokynise what sort of shifts can occur. I mean I I love Claude and I don't you know I mean I'd love to work with them but I don't I don't have any relationship to them now. So love love love what they're doing and and um I just think it's super exciting. I'm not afraid of AI but I'm listen I'm born and raised in Palo Alto so

like uh heretical to say you don't you know aren't excited about the most recent tech.

Last question for me and we'll let you get out of here. Uh tell us about the fish behind you. Oh yeah. So those are my discus fish. They're freshwater discus. Um and next to me on either side it was octopus on this side and there'll be another octopus on that side. Very cool.

Octopus died after 2 years. They lay eggs. They die. That's just what they do. It was very dramatic. Really cannibalized her tentacles. Everything. They're big drama.

Yeah. Yeah. They remind me of some online influencers who are always trying to call attention to themselves. But in the end

it self-destruct.

It self-destructs. Is it relaxing to you? is there about why fish and yeah

so I've long been a fan of a aquaria since I was a kid um and it's just the goal of setting up an ecosystem that's really in balance and it's it's made me very tranquil I've always had them in my office in my lab um and then some years ago I discovered a guy named Tekashi Amano who unfortunately passed away some years ago but he developed this thing of aquacaping where it's really emphasizing the plants and the fish and the lighting so we built these blackbox rooms I'm living so I moved into an art gallery I converted a three-story art gallery into a living space. So, I have a gym with my fish tanks, octopuses,

a loft upstairs, and then in my basement is a no phone, no electronics zone where I draw, do illustrations, and I prepare for podcasts.

And I have it set up with these warm incandescent red lights. My girlfriend and I like to go down there and listen to music and just hang like get totally away from the world. Um, and I'm I just love that feeling of kind of being underwater a little bit, and they it relaxes me. And I've got a bulldog puppy that was born a week ago and he's going to be here soon. So

more flora, more fauna is always good.

Let's bring the gong for the bulldog.

Gong for the bulldog.

Bulldogs are the best

name. Got a name yet?

Yeah. Strummer after the great Joe Strummer from the Clash. I went to the the uh to New York last weekend. My girlfriend and I went to go see Meet the Breeds. 140 purebred dogs. everything from the little teacup ones to the bull mast tips that look like Bert Chryser and everything in between. And after we left, we just looked at each other and we're like

mudded bulldog, which is what I had before. Um, I love all the different breeds. Uh, they teach you a lot about nervous systems and temperaments. And, uh, Bullmastiff is the perfect dog for bird. I think he's got a couple of them, but for me, it's always going to be the mudded bulldogs. U, I don't think I'll ever deviate.

Very cool.

Amazing.

Thank you so much for taking time. Great to see you. Great to catch up.

Great to see you guys. Thanks. And congrats on the um on the Super Bowl.

I hope to see you in the Olympics.

We will be. We are.

We are.

We're going to be in the Olympics.

And so Matahena's logo will be in there,

right? Yeah.

Awesome.

Maybe we got to get Mate Matina into the Olympics. I got to talk to Rob.

I I have an idea a minute, but Rob,

the whole team The whole team has Look, the whole team has There we go.

Love it.

Yeah. Yeah. We open the show. You're watching TVPN with these every day. Thank you so much yesterday. We'll talk soon. Take care.

Goodbye.

And with that, we do have to jump on with Tokyo. So, is there are there any post

any other news, Tyler? Did we miss anything?

Andrew Reed said, "Literally, everyone's capitulated on the AI trade. There's definitely no bubble. Surely now is the perfect time to declare victory."

Cloud code is growing 100% month over month.

Wow. Wow.

2.5 billion run rate.

100 100 100% month over. Is that good?

Yeah.

There's also the uh the codec spark came out today. That's like uh the first

Oh, yeah.

Open AI model running on Cerebras. I tried it out. It's extremely fast.

You got it working. So, you're on the pro account. Is that the $200?

You need pro? Yeah. $200 a month. 5.3 Spark.

Okay.

Um I was on X high, which is like the highest, you know, they listening tiers.

Okay. I think I need to hit the update button. And

it's super fast. It's like so much better than um really like I I tried

Codex Spark. Here it is. Extra high.

I think I tried 5.3 in in Codex like maybe a week ago. That was the last time I used it. It's like unbelievably it's so much faster.

That's amazing. Okay,

so this is apparently what they had internally. I think Run posted about this a couple weeks ago.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, he he was really baiting it because he was like, "It's slow. It's slow." Like, you know, this could take us years to figure out. Then it ships a week later. Classic. I love it. Uh well, Tyler, build me an app. An amazing app. The best app ever.

One that will win awards and make me a legend in Silicon Valley. That's my prompt. And I'm waiting for Codeex 5.3 Spark Extra High to oneshot it for me. We'll we'll check in with that tomorrow. Anyway, thanks for watching. Leave us five stars on Apple Podcast and Spotify. Sign up for the TVPN newsletter at tvpn.com. And we'll be back tomorrow for a Friday show.

I got to press it twice. Bomb's still going.

Uh we love you guys. Thanks for hanging out with us.

Can't wait for tomorrow.

Great show.

It's been an honor.

It has.

Have the best evening of your entire life.

Yes. And we'll see you tomorrow, Friday.

Goodbye.

Nice work, brothers. I'll see you on the next one.