00:03:09.560Goop as in the lifestyle brand brought to us by Gwyneth Paltrow.1.00
00:03:14.020But instead of telling women to drink $55 smoothies or whatever, or insert some crystals into their vagina, it's for men.0.93
00:03:24.420So the reason why we're talking about Andrew Huberman is because he is in the zeitgeist right now after this very long, very well-written, very well-researched New York Mag article just dropped, doing this deep dive into his personal life and his relationships with women.0.98
00:03:40.560Now, I'm not even going to pretend to not be biased here.
00:03:43.320I live for a long read in New York mag or the cut specifically like we are fans of New York mag in
00:03:53.120this house if there's ever a long read in New York mag you know that's going to be the kind of piece
00:03:59.020that everyone is talking about for a week and the Huberman article is no exception yeah uh it's such
00:04:05.880a well-written article it reads like literature like there were so many sentences that I read I
00:04:11.420like, that's an amazing sentence. Such a nice read. And so for folks who are listening who
00:04:16.760have not read it, I do want to give the caveat that it's very long. I listened to the article
00:04:22.020and that took about an hour. New York Mag has the option to have someone read it. That took
00:04:28.040about an hour. Reading it took a while. So it is a long read, but I thought it was worth it.
00:04:33.580And the piece has kind of invited scrutiny, not just into Andrew Huberman's personal life,
00:04:38.220but it's professional work as a scientist and a podcaster too. Mike, you are a scientist.
00:05:08.220And yeah, or at least it's something that I spend a lot of time thinking about and reading about.
00:05:15.260And, you know, who ultimately gets to say what is right and ethical is kind of an existential question.
00:05:22.040But yeah, those are things that I think about and feel like I have a good basis to evaluate things.
00:05:30.040So initially, I actually wasn't even going to get into this on the show because, you know, at first I was sort of seeing a lot of people's reactions to the piece.
00:05:37.320And I thought people were saying like, oh, this is just frivolous.
00:05:39.540This is about his dating life, whatever, whatever.
00:05:41.560And I was like, oh, I'm interested in this, but we shouldn't talk about it on the podcast.
00:05:45.420But it kind of was a little bit of a bug in my brain.
00:05:48.300And after reading the article, I noticed that I was thinking about it quite a lot.
00:05:52.880And I was sort of trying to put it in context with this current political and social and
00:05:58.080media moment that we're in, where we have the rise of people like RFK.0.51
00:06:02.360I do think we're in this sort of, I don't know, pseudoscience moment with men. A lot of times when we're talking about medical misinformation, we're talking about women. But I think we talk a lot less about how we see it moving with men. And I thought this article just really kind of got me thinking about that.
00:06:21.160And it also spoke to something I've been noticing as this trend in podcasting for a while, like white guy tech or science podcaster who sort of talks to other white guy science or tech podcasters and thus enjoy this kind of like self-sustaining vibe as we are trustworthy white men of science and technology and knowledge and you should listen to us.
00:06:46.240were very learned men. And I really do see Huberman as fitting within that, even though I
00:06:53.540do think that he kind of enjoyed maybe a more elevated position within that circle. I know
00:07:00.800that he's the kind of podcaster who is friendly with folks like Joe Rogan. He goes on Rogan's
00:07:04.960show all the time. Tim Ferriss, who if you don't know who that is, he's another very popular
00:07:09.320kind of lifestyle entrepreneur guru podcaster. And Lex Friedman, who is the number one tech
00:07:17.280podcaster in the world, who in researching for this episode, I realized sometime between last
00:07:25.460night and maybe four months ago when I did a podcast episode about him, he blocked me on
00:07:31.580Twitter. Oh, man. How does that make you feel, Bridget? Honestly, confused because I went and
00:07:38.060checked we have I have never tweeted at him I barely tweet and I did a search and I was like
00:07:43.400yeah I've never mentioned him on Twitter I have mentioned him on the podcast quite a few times
00:07:47.620and so I have a difficult time imagining that Lex Friedman is listening to this podcast but
00:07:53.460you know maybe he heard what I had to say about his show and didn't like it and was like let me
00:08:00.100just block her just yeah preemptively yeah an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure so
00:08:05.820maybe he just like did not want to hear it. Lex, if you're listening, I'm sorry I made fun of your
00:08:10.420podcast. Anyway, I think we're kind of seeing Huberman's status as like a learned public man
00:08:17.680and the way that we think about that status that is typically occupied by a certain type of white
00:08:23.640man. I think we're sort of seeing that unravel a little bit now with this piece. We're seeing
00:08:27.780people kind of peek behind the curtain at that. Yeah, that New York mag piece certainly made it
00:08:32.580seem so right they uh and they made the point specifically sort of like the point that you just
00:08:38.680made that it's uh it's not just like look at the messy details of this person's life but really
00:08:44.960connects with his public persona and uh i guess brand that that he is serving up to people yeah
00:08:53.660and i guess i would posit that that is why any of this matters like anybody should care people
00:08:58.760might be thinking, well, why should I care how this podcaster treats the women in his personal
00:09:02.320life? I am not particularly interested in Andrew Huberman's personal or romantic life. I will in
00:09:08.300this episode get into some of what the article says about his relationships with women. So folks
00:09:12.360have that context to understand like why we're talking about this at all. But the reason that
00:09:16.500I'm interested in talking about him is because there is a ton of overlap in Huberman's podcasting
00:09:21.940and sort of public sciencing work, for lack of a better phrase, and technology and like popular
00:09:27.140attitudes that tech leaders hold. A lot of people in tech are listening to his show,
00:09:32.380Huberman Lab, and using that to guide their own thinking. This absolutely makes sense in a culture
00:09:37.520where you have this mix of productivity hacks that bleed over into lifestyle or health hacks,
00:09:43.440like keto and intermittent fasting and pills and potions and powders and quick fixes that
00:09:48.660promise quick success. Now, this is just my opinion as a casual observer of all of this.
00:09:53.800I do think there is like a thread of fat phobia or like ableism in this. This idea that being physically fit is akin to also being professionally successful and thus being the happiest and best version of yourself, the version of yourself that has the healthiest and most full relationships.
00:10:12.300It sounds like this is a mindset that says all of that starts with being physically fit, physiologically fit, healthy.
00:10:18.900Yeah, I think you're right. And I think that is an idea that's been repackaged and resold many times over the past several hundred years, even before then, probably, right?
00:10:32.460The idea that physical health is tightly linked with spiritual health and virtue, that's an idea that grifters have been lucratively promoting for a long time.
00:10:53.660So Huberman himself is really jacked, and I can't help but think that that plays into all of this.
00:11:00.640As writer Maria Alex Beach put it on Twitter, he's the prototype of the American beefy male, which we don't associate with scientists.
00:11:08.520The dissonance between how he looks and what he knows is compelling.
00:11:11.840He gathers our communal preoccupation with health, body, self-care, anti-aging, longevity, with our respect for those with wisdom and knowledge.
00:11:24.960That description from Maria Alex Beach, it makes me think of Beast from the Marvel movies, like a big jacked beast of a man who's also a nerdy scientist.
00:11:39.880So Huberman is like the main guy of what's known as biohacking or trying to shift or improve your physiology and nervous system to function better.
00:11:48.960Now, on its face, this is not a bad thing, like inherently.1.00
00:11:53.080And in fact, I would actually argue that women are kind of the OG biohackers. Like, I remember back when a lot of the tech bros were skipping meals and instead drinking that drink Soylent, which a lot of women were like, oh, you mean SlimFast? It was basically a degendered SlimFast that your mom maybe drank in the 80s, you know? So I think biohacking is something that I associate with women that has kind of been rebranded as for masculine men.1.00
00:12:19.980Yeah, I think rebranded is a good way to put it because it's a term that I think is primarily used to market things. And yeah, the idea that it's, you know, I hadn't thought about this, but it originally was more associated with women.
00:12:38.680Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You know, even back in the early 20th century, women were talking about the timing of menstrual cycles to avoid unintended pregnancies and speculating about a pill that might someday allow women to avoid them altogether. Right. Like biohacking.
00:12:55.300Exactly. But the biohacking space has kind of been taken up by a real masculine energy, which again, I think makes sense in this social media climate where people are always talking about, you know, high value men and low value men. There is a ton of overlap between the biohacking space and just a real toxic brand of masculinity.
00:13:16.800But in general, I think that men have kind of been an untapped market when it comes to stuff like lifestyle and diet advice. As women, I can tell you we have been inundated by that kind of junk since we were children. So we have a good sense of it. There's a lot of it out there that is directed toward us. I think that men, it's just a different market and maybe a little bit of an untapped market when it comes to lifestyle and diet advice specifically for men.0.55
00:13:41.480So when someone like Huberman comes along and has this different vibe of lifestyle and diet advice for men, one that sort of gives the perception as being rooted in science, not just toxic masculinity, of course it takes off.
00:13:55.220Huberman emerges in 2021 as this kind of kinder, gentlier, less bro-y version of biohacking.
00:14:02.240However, as Jonathan Jerry, science communicator with the Office of Science and Society at McGill University puts it, Huberman presents the same kind of stuff, just in a less bro-y, less masculine package.
00:14:15.240Jerry writes, even though his podcast is firmly rooted in the masculine space of body optimization that has grabbed hold of large swaths of the tech sector, Huberman is a lot less bro-y than his fellow influencers.
00:14:26.720there's a real gentleness and care to his delivery. The packaging is less aggressive,
00:14:31.280but the content does not stray far from Silicon Valley's love affair with the tweaking of healthy
00:14:36.600human biology. And to add to that, I'll just say it. In my opinion, I think a lot of men in this
00:14:44.140space might just have issues with women. I think a lot of them maybe don't respect women that much.
00:14:50.240I think they maybe don't see women as equals. I think they maybe don't really value what women
00:14:55.300have to say, how women think. And so I think in that context, both professionally and maybe
00:15:01.120personally, it maybe does kind of matter how somebody like Andrew Huberman treats women.
00:15:06.560Like to me, as you said, this is so much more than a look how messy this guy's personal life is.
00:15:13.000Let's all gawk at it story. It's a story that maybe answers some of the very long held criticisms
00:15:18.500of Andrew Huberman's podcast, like that he barely features any women experts for one.
00:15:23.220And it poses questions about what happens when people who have expertise in one area of study
00:15:28.800kind of dine out on that and make it seem like they know what they're talking about when it
00:15:32.600comes to everything. And on top of that, the dangers of building your life around the advice
00:15:38.160of somebody who the article suggests we may not even really know. So if you don't listen to
00:15:44.640Huberman's podcast, you might not know this, but lots and lots and lots of people deeply subscribe
00:15:50.860to Huberman's life advice. There's a term for it on TikTok, a Huberman husband, a man who follows
00:15:56.720Huberman's life advice. And that advice has them getting up before sunrise, has them waiting 90
00:16:01.680minutes before having their first coffee of the day, has them getting a specific kind of low angle
00:16:07.540sunlight and doing a high intensity workout and an ice bath in the morning and all of this stuff.
00:16:12.000So if all of these people are building their identities around this guy's guidance, which
00:16:16.780they absolutely are i do think looking into how he thinks about women is worthwhile like i don't
00:16:22.080think that's a frivolous clickbait dive into someone's personal life that is really unfair
00:16:28.580necessarily yeah i think that's a fair point i think uh anybody who positions themselves uh to a
00:16:38.360wide public audience as a person who has the answer right like who has wisdom that should be
00:16:46.020followed, that other people should shape their lives around. I think it's absolutely appropriate
00:16:50.880to scrutinize their words, their message, and the extent to which their personal values live up to
00:16:58.640what they are publicly espousing. So there have been a lot of popular tech voices who disagree
00:17:03.440with you. Lex Friedman, for one, says that probing into Andrew Huberman's personal life
00:17:09.180is an invasion of privacy and essentially a hit job, which, you know, I don't know,
00:17:13.740Like I can sort of see what they're saying in some regards, but I would point to the
00:17:17.340fact that Huberman's podcast is in part about having healthy relationships and emotional
00:20:13.280And I guess I would say that beyond his dating life, this piece is really looking at the values of this person who has risen to be one of the country's biggest pop scientists,
00:20:22.900who specifically has become a guru to others.
00:20:26.500So, like, if this person is a guru to millions of people,0.89
00:20:29.740it matters if this person is also a liar.0.97
00:20:32.360It matters if this person is also a grifter.0.97
00:20:34.920Here's how the New York Mag piece puts it.
00:20:36.920Huberman sells a dream of control down to the cellular level,
00:21:22.300They're all very health conscious. They're all described as the kind of people who are really particular about what they put in their body. So because they were all told that they were exclusive with Huberman, they all had unprotected sex with him, not being told that he was also having unprotected sex with a lot of other women at the same time.
00:21:40.160You know, these women were living this kind of intentional lifestyle that he preaches on the show. And here is Andrew, in my opinion, kind of sabotaging that by depriving them of the ability to make health choices for their own bodies through deception. Like, I don't think that is a frivolous thing for anybody to be doing, let alone a scientist whose whole thing is you should be really mindful about what you put in your body, unless that thing you're putting in your body is me.
00:22:07.840Yeah. Earlier on, you asked about ethics and, you know, it's a complicated thing for anyone to know what is ethical or not. But it's also like not that complicated in some ways. And if you want a big, bright red warning flag that an ethical boundary is being crossed, just keep an eye out for deception.
00:22:31.420right? Like if there's deception happening, you should really question whether what's going on
00:22:38.680is ethical. Yeah. So that's, that's like, that feels like a pretty strong line here
00:22:45.940that has been crossed. Well, according to these women in this article, there was a lot of1.00
00:22:51.920deception going on. Let's get into it. Basically, he was not treating these women with respect,1.00
00:22:58.600to say the least. So here's a couple of bits from the article that really drive that point home.
00:23:03.820It is suggested that he may have given at least one of these women an STD, HPV specifically.
00:23:09.920In 2021, one woman tested positive for a high-risk form of HPV, one of the variants linked to cervical
00:23:16.020cancer. I had never tested positive, she says, and had been tested regularly for 10 years.
00:23:21.260A spokesperson for Huberman says he has never tested positive for HPV. According to the CDC,
00:23:26.220there is currently no approved test for HPV in men. When the woman brought this up,
00:23:31.700she says that Andrew told her that you could contract HPV from many things.
00:23:36.120I'm sure he did say that. Maybe you got it from a toilet seat, baby. I don't know.
00:23:45.800So there's one woman who has kids from a previous relationship, and she says that
00:23:50.220Huberman fixated on this and that it's something they thought about a lot. At one point, she says
00:23:55.080that he told her that being in a relationship with her was like bobbing for apples in feces.
00:24:01.860Apparently, things only got worse when they moved in together. Sarah was, in fact, changing. She
00:24:08.440felt herself getting smaller, constantly appeasing. She apologized again and again and again.
00:24:13.140I have been selfish, childish, and confused, she said. As a result, I need your protection.
00:24:18.240A spokesperson for Huberman denies Sarah's accounts of their fights, denies that his rage
00:24:22.420intensified with cohabitation, denies that he fixated on Sarah's decision to have children
00:24:26.480with another man, and denies that he said that being with her was like bobbing for apples and
00:24:30.320feces. Which, side note, if somebody that I am in a romantic relationship with ever tells me that
00:24:35.440being with me is like bobbing for apples and feces, I have every bit of information I need
00:24:39.780about how this person feels about me. There is no other piece of clarifying information or context
00:24:44.140that is needed for me to understand how they feel and what's going on.
00:24:47.700It's also such a strange phrase. I have to imagine that it was said in anger. He was probably pretty mad when he said that. It's not the sort of thing you say when you're feeling great.
00:25:00.320You think he said it as like pillow talk, a sweet whisper?
00:25:02.920I don't. I think he probably said it when he was mad. But to be so mad to say something like that and then use the term feces, there are so many other words in the English language that align more with like emotions of anger and rage than feces.
00:25:17.620So it's like this weird artificial layer of like restraint or scientific jargon to like put a clean face on just really saying a terrible thing to a woman.
00:25:35.720Well, when asked about that comment, a spokesperson for Huberman said, quote, Dr. Huberman is very much in control of his emotions, which if there's ever a situation in my life where a spokesperson has to be telling the public that Bridget Todd is very in control of her emotions, I don't want to know what's going on.
00:25:56.200Yeah, let's hope it doesn't come to that.
00:25:58.460So apparently, Huber was actively undergoing IVF with this woman while also maintaining other relationships behind her back, a point that he doesn't even really disagree with.
00:26:11.280He disputes that they were trying to start a family together, but his spokesperson clarified that they did not want to try for a baby together, that he, quote, decided to create embryos by IVF.
00:26:23.480I don't know how that is different than intending to start a family with her.
00:26:27.820i guess like that specific point is important to him in some way i don't know how that it's like
00:26:34.280that claim is not really in dispute but like it's important to him to be like oh we didn't want a
00:26:38.700baby we were just doing ivf there seems to be some like weird feelings around children going
00:26:43.960on with that whole story around that woman like the idea that a major source of friction in their
00:26:49.940relationship was that he disapproved of her decision to have kids with a different man before
00:26:56.260they ever met uh that just feels kind of weird yeah so if you've ever been played by a player
00:27:06.120this next one is going to sound real familiar to you huberman relied on pretty sexist and
00:27:12.900misogynistic tropes about women being crazy to keep the women from finding out about each other
00:27:18.700so the piece reads whenever sarah had suspicions about andrew's interaction with another woman
00:27:24.520He had a particular way of talking about the woman in question.0.60
00:27:27.280She says he said the women were stalkers, alcoholics, and compulsive liars.0.96
00:27:31.240He told her that one woman tore out her hair with chunks of flesh attached to it.1.00
00:27:34.900A story like that's got to be true.1.00
00:27:36.940He told her a story about a woman who fabricated a story about a dead baby to, quote, entrap him.0.99
00:27:42.100A spokesperson for Huberman denies the account of the denigration of women and the dead baby story and says that the hair story was taken out of context.
00:27:50.560So curious to know the actual, like, what is that story in context?
00:27:54.180You know how women are always ripping their hair out with chunks of their own flesh?1.00
00:28:19.060So this is something that I have learned from, like, not to try to be, like, a relationship guru, but any man who tells you that, like, oh, there's just a bunch of crazy women in my orbit, all the women around me are crazy, that man is a liar. Like, that man is not telling the truth, that man is a liar. That is, like, one of my, like, deeply held red flags in life.0.99
00:28:38.160because even if that were true what's going on with you that you just are the kind of person who
00:28:43.680like all these crazy women just flock to you like that doesn't that doesn't even even if that was
00:28:48.260true which it almost which i think it's all it almost never is even that is not great it only
00:28:52.860holds up if one has a worldview that all women are crazy right it's not that i have created this0.98
00:28:59.240social dynamic where i'm surrounded by crazy women just all women are crazy and they can't0.95
00:29:05.720help but be attracted to me you know how i am so that's where we're at i'm just surrounded by all0.97
00:29:10.960these crazy women that's that's the way that that makes sense yes i am i am the healthy normal normal
00:29:18.700one and all these women you know how women are this reminds me so much of a story from my personal0.85
00:29:24.000life involving friends where there was a friend breakup and between a man and a woman and the
00:29:31.060woman, her account was like very specific. She had so many details. He did X, Y, Z to me. He did
00:29:36.580this offense, this offense, on that day, this offense. And then his account was like, she was
00:29:40.580crazy. Like that was the whole, like she had a dossier of his specific wrongdoings. And he was
00:29:48.920just like, she crazy. So this is another pretty common thing, I think. Huberman apparently had
00:29:57.080type. He went after these dynamic, assertive, confident women, and then he wanted these women0.99
00:30:03.140to be kind of submissive to him. The piece reads, multiple women recall him saying he preferred the
00:30:09.100kind of relationship in which the woman was monogamous, but the man was not. He told me,
00:30:14.400says Mary, that what he wanted was a woman who was submissive, who he could slap on the ass in1.00
00:30:19.100public and who would be crawling on the floor for him when he got home. A spokesperson for1.00
00:30:23.300huberman denies this also i feel for this poor spokesperson who was like dr huberman never said
00:30:30.180he wanted a woman who would be crawling on the floor for him when he got home i am curious about
00:30:35.920the spokesperson because they're quoted so many times in this article and i mean i don't have the
00:30:42.580sense i guess i don't really know how big his operation is but like i kind of get the sense
00:30:47.220that a lot of these guys don't have like huge pr teams so like who is this spokesperson what
00:30:52.300were they doing before they woke up to find themselves in this maelstrom of uh allegations
00:31:00.780to deny well not responding in real time i can tell you that because the person who wrote this
00:31:05.900article for new york mag says that they gave humerman's team two days to read the full thing
00:31:11.100and respond to any of the allegations and they basically like this is what they got so0.95
00:31:14.660you know curious to me too so one other thing to note about the way that he treats the women is
00:31:21.000that he juggled them in this way that is kind of weirdly almost impressive. Here's one passage.
00:31:27.760There was a day in Texas when, after Sarah left his hotel, Andrew slept with Mary and texted Eve.
00:31:32.880They found days in which he would text nearly identical pictures of himself to two of them at
00:31:37.020the same time. They realized that the day before he had moved in with Sarah in Berkeley, he had
00:31:41.420slept with Mary, and he also had been with her in December 2023, the weekend before Sarah caught him
00:31:46.260on the couch with a sixth woman. They realized on March 21st, 2021, a day of admittedly impressive
00:31:52.100logistical jujitsu. While Sarah was in Berkeley, Andrew had flown Mary from Texas to LA to stay
00:31:57.580with him in Topanga. While Mary was there, visiting from thousands of miles away, he left her with his
00:32:02.500dog Costello. He drove to a coffee shop where he met Eve. They had a serious talk about their
00:32:06.960relationship. They thought they were in a good place. He wanted to make it work. Phone died,
00:32:11.040he texted Mary, who was waiting back at the place in Topanga and later to Eve. Thank you for being
00:32:16.020so next level gorgeous and sexy my god this sounds stressful it does and it it truly is
00:32:23.820impressive to balance all of this and make it all work uh i think the most shocking thing in this is
00:32:31.580that he like he flew this woman from texas to la to be with him left her to watch his dog so he
00:32:38.320could go meet up with another woman did not have sex with that woman just had a very long serious
00:32:44.200talk about their relationship have you ever seen that episode of seinfeld where george wants to
00:32:52.720get he's dating two women and he's trying to like get them both to like break it off because it's
00:32:57.520too much work and neither of them will do it and so he's just trying to like balance these two
00:33:01.080relationships and he finds himself being like oh i thought like i'm seeing god's bell with one and
00:33:06.820going ice skating with the other and jerry's like which is which and he's like doesn't matter
00:33:10.720that's what I feel like is going on here
00:37:55.500So basically, one of these women noticed that another woman was like constantly watching her Instagram story, but never commenting and just like lurking.0.66
00:38:05.040She realized that this woman also was followed by Dr. Huberman.
00:38:08.660And so eventually she just DMed her and said, is there anything that you'd rather ask me directly?
00:38:14.440Which I think that is such a baller move.0.94
00:38:17.400And I just think it goes to show like he tried to put all this like sexist, misogynistic junk in these women's heads to keep them thinking that like all of the other women were just like jealous stalkers.0.97
00:38:40.220They have a very active group chat, which, again, it just goes to show, like, if you're going to pull this shit, don't pull it with a bunch of smart, confident women.1.00
00:38:47.620They'll just get to the bottom of it together and join forces.1.00
00:38:50.320And then, like, you will be a forever running joke in their group chat forever.1.00
00:38:55.460The women, they have this active group chat.
00:38:58.400To this day, they send pictures of each other's pets to each other.
00:39:01.840And they use the reply that they say that Andrew would use whenever they would send him racy pics, which is, hmm.
00:39:10.380Yeah, it's the article does end in a really surprising way.
00:39:15.040It's like this group of women became friends and they're all doing fine, which I think makes this story a little bit different than some others.
00:39:25.480where it's like powerful, influential man, you know, has problems with women, right?
00:39:33.220When those stories break, often there's some kind of like allegations of abuse of some kind,
00:39:40.040or there's like a lawsuit of some kind.
00:39:42.460It doesn't sound like these women are seeking any kind of like restitution or really anything.
00:39:48.940It just seems like they were more than happy to talk to this reporter.
00:39:52.800And that's something that I want to talk about, because if I were to say the thing that the so what of this article, I think these women are trying to say this person that millions of people have held up as a guru, the values that he preaches on the show are not the values that he lives by in his actual life.
00:40:08.900I would say that it's a bit subtle, but I think that's the so what of the inclusion of all of these details about his romantic life is that Huberman is somebody who preaches a really specific life routine and mindset built around personal discipline and being really mindful of all the different kinds of things that you let into your life that spike dopamine from coffee to booze.
00:40:31.040Like the piece points out that he seems to show disdain for anybody who drinks, even a small amount.
00:40:36.000But in his personal life, he's maybe not practicing a lot of the kind of personal discipline around things that spike his dopamine, in this case, relationships.
00:40:44.880Like one of the women says that he told her that he thought he was a love addict.
00:40:48.580So you have this guru preaching an ethos around being mindful about what you let into your physical orbit, while also like binging on women and relationships and not being forthcoming about it.
00:40:59.540that kind of makes his whole body of advice. I guess it kind of calls it into question.
00:41:05.420Yeah. And I mean, we can even zoom out another level from Huberman in particular to just like
00:41:11.240gurus in general. It's a pretty well-worn trope, almost a cliche that, you know, some guru who has
00:41:20.880the answer, who is preaching restraint and control is sleeping with a bunch of women who follow his
00:41:27.500advice. Tale as old as time. So this is how he's alleged to have treated women that he is romantically0.90
00:41:33.680and sexually involved with in the piece. But, and this is something I don't feel like has gotten
00:41:38.040enough attention, this kind of casual lack of respect for women seems to bleed over into his
00:41:43.980professional life as well. There is this anecdote where he reached out to a woman scientist about
00:41:49.640collaborating together. They set a time to meet. Huberman doesn't show. This is a real theme in
00:41:54.020the piece, Huberman making plans with men and women, and then just flaking and people saying
00:41:59.420he's totally unreliable. So the scientist emails him after he cancels on their time to meet and
00:42:05.800says, well, I guess you're not serious about collaborating together, which again, I respect
00:42:10.660that. If somebody last minute canceling on somebody who is pretty busy and has a pretty full schedule,
00:42:18.860I could understand why she was like, yeah, I guess you don't really feel seriously about
00:42:22.500working together. Andrew Huberman clearly felt some type of a way about this. Rather than just
00:42:28.340let it go, he and another male scientist, Stanford-trained psychiatrist Paul Conti,
00:42:33.560did an episode of Huberman's podcast about aggressive drive, in which Huberman makes this
00:42:38.980woman, whose time he wasted, the poster child for toxic aggression in the workplace. He tells the
00:42:46.300story of her emailing him and saying, I guess you aren't serious about working together,
00:42:50.380and says, so to me, Huberman said on the podcast, that seems like an example of somebody who has a,
00:42:56.800well, strong, aggressive drive, and when disappointed, lashes back or is passive.
00:43:02.340There's some way in which this person doesn't feel good enough, no matter what this person
00:43:05.500has achieved. So then there is a sense of the need and right to over control. Sure, said Huberman.
00:43:10.920So now we're going to work together, right? So I'm exerting significant control over you, right?
00:43:15.940And then maybe he's not aware of it. In this case, Andrew said, it was a she.1.00
00:43:20.380So this woman, explained Conti, based entirely on Andrew's description of two emails, had allowed her unhealthy, quote, excess aggression to be eclipsing the generative drive.1.00
00:43:31.520She required that Andrew bow down before her in service of the ego because she did not feel good about herself.
00:43:38.440This conversation extends for an extraordinary nine minutes, both men egging each other on, diagnoses after diagnoses, salient perhaps for reasons other than those the two identify.
00:43:50.380We learn that this woman lacks gratitude, generative drive, and happiness.
00:43:54.540She suffers from envy, low pleasure drive, and general unhappiness.0.95
00:43:59.060It would appear at a distance to be an elaborate fantasy of an insane woman built upon a single behavior.
00:44:05.200At some point in time, a woman decided she did not want to work with a man who didn't show up.
00:49:52.340We do ass. Nobody would accuse us of not doing ass.0.99
00:49:59.780So I'm not really in a position where I can fault people for taking money to keep the good folks who help make their show paid and like keep the show going.
00:50:09.400However, if you are a scientist and your entire show is about your expertise as a scientist, I do think there was a different thing where maybe there should be a little bit more scrutiny over exactly what you were saying.
00:50:20.780how you are using your position as a scientist to hawk things, especially something that is maybe
00:50:27.220a bunk product. AG1 is kind of maybe a not so good product in that it makes a lot of big claims that
00:50:34.420have dubious backing. Here's what the New York Mag article says about Huberman's relationship
00:50:39.520with AG1. On every episode of his Zero Cost podcast, Huberman gives a lengthy endorsement
00:50:45.340of a powder formerly known as Athletic Greens, now known as AG1. It's one thing to hear Athletic
00:50:50.460greens promoted by Joe Rogan. It is perhaps another to hear someone who sells himself as a
00:50:55.040Stanford University scientist, just back from the lab, proclaim that this $79 a month powder,
00:51:01.360quote, covers all your foundational nutritional needs. In an industry not known for its integrity,
00:51:07.080AG1 is, according to writer and professional debunker Derek Burrs, one of the most egregious
00:51:12.860players in the space. So I will say as a podcaster, one of my pet peeves is podcasters
00:51:20.600who are like, we make this podcast for free. No, if you have ads, you really don't. Like if you
00:51:26.260are a podcaster who supports your work via ads, listeners are not listening to that show for free.
00:51:32.440They are kind of paying for it via their attention with the ads. And so I really hate that claim that
00:54:34.560So I should say, I don't know a ton personally about AG1. I read a couple of really good articles that make a lot of good points about AG1. We'll put it in the show notes. One of them is by Jonathan Jerry, that science communicator from McGill University we quoted earlier. He did a really great deep dive. We'll put in the show notes about how dubious AG1 is and the entire supplements industry is.
00:54:56.020it's pretty much unregulated. And you might be thinking, well, supplements might not work or
00:55:02.300they might not do what they say they're going to do, but it couldn't hurt, right? Well, using your
00:55:06.080credentials as a scientist to point people who are looking for quick ways to optimize their health
00:55:11.040down the road to supplements is not without risk, as dietary supplements are not regulated as
00:55:16.760strictly as pharmaceutical drugs and can routinely contain ingredients not listed on the bottle or
00:55:21.860not contain the main ingredient listed at all, which has been replaced by a cheaper lookalike.
00:55:27.580Supplements derived by herbs can cause all sorts of harm, including toxicity to the liver.
00:55:31.900A recent paper highlights rising cases of liver injury caused by these products.
00:55:36.360And even outside of liver injury or the supplements being toxic in some way, which
00:55:44.080hopefully is pretty rare, I think much more commonly people get harmed by thinking that
00:55:51.000they are protecting themselves in some way, when in fact, they're not, right? Like, I think it's an
00:55:55.960idea that by having a healthy immune system, people will be protected against COVID, which
00:56:04.720is true. But then I think that can, in a lot of cases, show up where people will take supplements
00:56:11.560that they think are supercharging their immune system in some way, and then decline to get the
00:56:18.820COVID vaccine, which is actually demonstrated conclusively by evidence to reduce the chance
00:56:27.920of harm. So I think there's a lot of opportunity cost that comes from this widespread promotion
00:56:35.300of supplements that don't work. Yes. And if you have $80 a month to spend toward a health
00:56:42.300intervention, if you're putting that toward the thing that doesn't work over the thing that maybe
00:56:47.400does work and has been demonstrated by science to work, that is a problem. If he as a scientist
00:56:51.720is encouraging you to do that, I do think that's a problem. And I think especially in the podcast
00:56:57.000space, as a podcaster, you do have a different relationship to your audience. I think that
00:57:03.200it is an intimacy medium. It is a medium where people are hearing you in an intimate way in
00:57:08.740your earbuds. So listeners, they might really have a trust relationship with you. I think a lot of
00:57:14.060people really trust Huberman. Jerry, that science communicator from McGill, makes it really clear
00:57:19.660that a scientist using the medium of podcasting to build trust in people, the vast majority of
00:57:24.920whom are not scientists themselves, only to lead them to a path of supplements that personally
00:57:30.540enrich Andrew Huberman just really isn't cool. It's not like we're talking about Joe Rogan,
00:57:36.000who also hawks AG1. We're talking about a Stanford scientist. As Jerry writes,
00:57:41.440Inside the walls of academia, there are guardrails. On a podcast, however, anything goes, and the credibility of academia goes a long way to lend authority to supplement endorsements.
00:57:51.640yeah it's absolutely true uh it's unfortunate yeah i mean the piece by jerry really is like
00:57:59.840he basically is like i'm disappointed to see somebody who is such a gifted
00:58:05.080science communicator and like does have a very good body of work in his specific lane
00:58:11.120kind of selling that short for a check from the supplement industry that is so
00:58:15.800shady and so not transparent and using science to do that so like it's not like these people
00:58:20.820they're calling him a fraud, they're saying the opposite. Because you are somebody who knows what
00:58:25.700they're doing and is very gifted, it is that much more disappointing to see you lowering yourself to
00:58:30.760this. Yeah, absolutely. I have not reviewed his work in any sort of detail, but I looked through
00:58:37.720where he's publishing. He's publishing in like top tier journals like Nature and Neuroscience.
00:58:43.040Like this, that's, you don't get published there if you're doing bad work.