00:00:49.880If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:00:55.280Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:01:03.960Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.
00:02:56.220So now CBS is taking down some of this content, even though CBS leader Bari Weiss doesn't want to fire him because of, quote, cancel culture.
00:03:06.620Adia was not the only health and wellness guru that CBS brought on board.
00:03:11.000Dr. Andrew Huberman is still there as a CBS contributor.
00:03:14.100And if you want to understand how we got to a place where mainstream institutions are platforming guys like this and why they keep getting caught off guard when it blows up in their faces, you need to understand the Andrew Huberman playbook.
00:03:27.820Two years ago, when a bombshell story about Huberman's personal life broke, producer Mike and I did a deep dive into Huberman's flashy public profile and how wellness culture, specifically wellness culture aimed toward men, is used to consolidate power.
00:03:43.580And I want to revisit that conversation today because Adia's firing is not a fluke.
00:03:49.060It's the inevitable result of a pipeline we've been following.
00:03:56.100Welcome to our podcast, There Are No Girls on the Internet, where we explore the intersection of technology, social media, the Internet, and identity.
00:04:03.620So this is me doing my best impression of one of my favorite podcasters, Michael Hobbs.
00:04:09.320Mike, what do you know about Andrew Kuberman?
00:04:13.580Well, I'll do my best, Peter, and as far as I know, I don't know a whole lot about him,
00:04:19.720but he's a podcaster, a scientist of some sort, and he seems to have a pretty big following
00:07:20.480So I thought that you actually might be a good person to talk to about this.
00:07:24.600Like, I said something up front that you have not deeply studied Huberman's science or his body of work, but you generally, like, have a sense of what is and is not okay or ethical in the eyes of science, correct?
00:07:39.760Yeah, or at least it's something that I spend a lot of time thinking about and reading about.
00:07:47.140And, you know, who ultimately gets to say what is right and ethical is kind of an existential question.
00:07:53.920But, yeah, those are things that I think about and feel like I have a good basis to evaluate things.
00:08:01.920So 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.
00:08:09.180And I thought people were saying like, oh, this is just frivolous.
00:08:11.400This is about his dating life, whatever, whatever.
00:08:13.440And I was like, oh, I'm interested in this, but we shouldn't talk about it on the podcast.
00:08:17.280But it kind of was a little bit of a bug in my brain.
00:08:20.160And after reading the article, I noticed that I was thinking about it quite a lot.
00:08:24.720And I was sort of trying to put it in context with this current political and social and
00:08:29.940media moment that we're in, where we have the rise of people like RFK.0.50
00:08:34.260Like, I do think we're in this sort of, I don't know, pseudoscience moment with men. You know, 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.
00:08:53.040And 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.
00:09:18.120We're very learned men. And I really do see Huberman as fitting within that, even though I do think that he kind of enjoyed maybe a more elevated position within that circle.
00:09:31.980I know that he's the kind of podcaster who is friendly with folks like Joe Rogan. He goes on Rogan's show all the time. Tim Ferriss, who if you don't know who that is, he's another very popular kind of lifestyle entrepreneur guru podcaster.
00:09:45.060And Lex Friedman, who is the number one tech podcaster in the world, who in researching for this episode, I realized sometime between last night and maybe four months ago when I did a podcast episode about him, he blocked me on Twitter.
00:10:12.720I barely tweet and I did a search and I was like, yeah, I've never mentioned him on Twitter.
00:10:17.240I have mentioned him on the podcast quite a few times.
00:10:19.600And so I have a difficult time imagining that Lex Friedman is listening to this podcast.
00:10:25.260But, you know, maybe he heard what I had to say about his show and didn't like it.
00:10:31.520It was like, let me just block her just preemptively.
00:10:35.280Yeah. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.0.82
00:10:37.580So maybe he just like did not want to hear it.
00:10:40.000Lex, if you're listening, I'm sorry I made fun of your podcast.
00:10:43.640Anyway, I think we're kind of seeing Huberman's status as like a learned public man.
00:10:49.580And the way that we think about that status that is typically occupied by a certain type of white man, I think we're sort of seeing that unravel a little bit now with this piece.
00:10:59.360We're seeing people kind of peek behind the curtain at that.0.61
00:11:01.800Yeah, that New York mag piece certainly made it seem so right.
00:11:05.060And they made the point specifically, sort of like the point that you just made, that it's not just like look at the messy details of this person's life, but really connects with his public persona and, I guess, brand that he is serving up to people.
00:11:25.380Yeah, and I guess I would posit that that is why any of this matters, why anybody should care.
00:11:30.180People might be thinking, well, why should I care how this podcaster treats the women in his personal life?
00:11:34.500I am not particularly interested in Andrew Huberman's personal or romantic life.
00:11:39.620I will, in this episode, get into some of what the article says about his relationships with
00:11:43.220women so folks have that context to understand why we're talking about this at all. But the
00:11:48.000reason that I'm interested in talking about him is because there is a ton of overlap in Huberman's
00:11:53.080podcasting and public sciencing work, for lack of a better phrase, and technology and popular
00:11:59.000attitudes that tech leaders hold. A lot of people in tech are listening to his show Huberman Lab
00:12:04.800and using that to guide their own thinking. This absolutely makes sense in a culture where you have
00:12:09.960this mix of productivity hacks that bleed over into like lifestyle or health hacks like keto
00:12:15.960and intermittent fasting and pills and potions and powders and quick fixes that promise quick
00:12:21.180success. Now, this is just my opinion as a casual observer of all of this. I do think there is like a
00:12:27.560thread of fat phobia or like ableism in this. This idea that being physically fit is akin to
00:12:35.040also being professionally successful and thus being the happiest and best version of yourself,
00:12:40.220the version of yourself that has the healthiest and most full relationships. It sounds like this
00:12:44.900is a mindset that says all of that starts with being physically fit, physiologically fit, healthy.
00:12:50.720Yeah, 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?
00:13:04.340The 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.
00:13:25.540So Huberman himself is really jacked, and I can't help but think that that plays into all of this.
00:13:32.520As writer Maria Alex Beach put it on Twitter, he's the prototype of the American beefy male, which we don't associate with scientists.
00:13:40.400The dissonance between how he looks and what he knows is compelling.
00:13:43.720He gathers our communal preoccupation with health, body, self-care, anti-aging, longevity, with our respect for those with wisdom and knowledge.
00:13:56.840That 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.
00:14:11.740So 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.
00:14:20.840Now, on its face, this is not a bad thing, like inherently.1.00
00:14:24.960And in fact, I would actually argue that women are kind of the OG biohackers.1.00
00:14:29.440Like, 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?1.00
00:14:37.880It was basically a degendered SlimFast that your mom maybe drank in the 80s, you know?0.87
00:14:42.440So I think biohacking is something that I associate with women that has kind of been rebranded as for masculine men.
00:14:51.860Yeah, that 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.
00:15:13.340You 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.
00:15:27.180Exactly. 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.
00:15:41.260There is a ton of overlap between the biohacking space and just a real toxic brand of masculinity.
00:15:49.280But in general, I think that men have kind of been an untapped market when it comes to stuff like lifestyle and diet advice.
00:15:55.280as women, I can tell you, we are, we have been inundated by that kind of junk since we were
00:16:01.040children. So we have a good sense of it. There's a lot of it out there that is directed toward us.0.98
00:16:04.880I think that men, it's just a different market and maybe a little bit of an untapped market
00:16:09.820when it comes to lifestyle and diet advice specifically for men. So when someone like
00:16:14.080Huberman comes along and has this different vibe of lifestyle and diet advice for men,
00:16:20.420one that sort of gives the perception as being rooted in science, not just toxic masculinity,
00:16:25.280Of course it takes off. Huberman emerges in 2021 as this kind of kinder, gentlier, less bro-y version of biohacking. However, 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.
00:16:47.120Jerry writes, even though his podcast is firmly rooted in the masculine space of body optimization
00:16:52.360that has grabbed hold of large swaths of the tech sector,
00:16:56.280Huberman is a lot less bro-y than his fellow influencers.
00:16:58.980There's a real gentleness and care to his delivery.
00:17:01.200The packaging is less aggressive, but the content does not stray far from Silicon Valley's love affair
00:17:06.840with the tweaking of healthy human biology.
00:17:12.680In my opinion, I think a lot of men in this space might just have issues with women. I think a lot of them maybe don't respect women that much. I think they maybe don't see women as equals. I think they maybe don't really value what women have to say, how women think.
00:17:28.580And so I think in that context, both professionally and maybe personally, it maybe does kind of matter how somebody like Andrew Huberman treats women. Like, to me, as you said, this is so much more than a look how messy this guy's personal life is. Let's all gawk at it story.
00:17:46.600It's a story that maybe answers some of the very long held criticisms of Andrew Huberman's podcast, like that he barely features any women experts for one.
00:17:55.100And it poses questions about what happens when people who have expertise in one area of study kind of dine out on that and make it seem like they know what they're talking about when it comes to everything.
00:18:05.800And on top of that, the dangers of building your life around the advice of somebody who the article suggests we may not even really know.
00:18:14.000So if you don't listen to Huberman's podcast, you might not know this, but lots and lots and lots of people deeply subscribe to Huberman's life advice. There's a term for it on TikTok, a Huberman husband, a man who follows Huberman's life advice and that advice like has them getting up before sunrise, has them waiting 90 minutes before having their first coffee of the day, you know, has them getting like a specific kind of low angle sunlight and doing a high intensity workout and an ice bath in the morning and all of this stuff.
00:18:43.480So if all of these people are building their identities around this guy's guidance, which they absolutely are, I do think looking into how he thinks about women is worthwhile, but I don't think that's a frivolous clickbait dive into someone's personal life that is really unfair necessarily.
00:19:01.020Yeah, I think that's a fair point. I think anybody who positions themselves to a wide public audience as a person who has the answer, right, like who has wisdom that should be followed, that other people should shape their lives around.
00:19:20.540I think it's absolutely appropriate to scrutinize their words, their message, and the extent to which their personal values live up to what they are publicly espousing.
00:19:32.000So there have been a lot of popular tech voices who disagree with you. Lex Friedman, for one, says that probing into Andrew Huberman's personal life is an invasion of privacy and essentially a hit job, which, you know, I don't know, like I can sort of see what they're saying in some regards.
00:19:47.960But I would point to the fact that Huberman's podcast is in part about having healthy relationships and emotional intelligence.
00:19:55.920So like if you build an entire big platform around how people should listen to you about how to have healthy relationships and a healthy emotionality, maybe looking into how you have built relationships and how you show up emotionally is fair game.
00:20:09.200Like on this podcast that I host, I intentionally almost never talk about my personal relationships on the podcast.
00:27:30.540so there's one woman who has kids from a previous relationship and she says that huberman
00:27:37.500fixated on this and that it's something they thought about a lot at one point she says that
00:27:42.140he told her that being in a relationship with her was like bobbing for apples in feces apparently
00:27:49.260things only got worse when they moved in together sarah was in fact changing she felt herself
00:27:55.860getting smaller, constantly appeasing. She apologized again and again and again. I have
00:28:00.340been selfish, childish, and confused, she said. As a result, I need your protection.
00:28:05.160A spokesperson for Huberman denies Sarah's accounts of their fights, denies that his rage
00:28:09.340intensified with cohabitation, denies that he fixated on Sarah's decision to have children
00:28:13.400with another man, and denies that he said that being with her was like bobbing for apples and
00:28:17.240feces. Which, side note, if somebody that I am in a romantic relationship with ever tells me that
00:28:22.360being with me is like bobbing for apples and feces. I have every bit of information I need
00:28:26.700about how this person feels about me. There is no other piece of clarifying information or context
00:28:31.060that is needed for me to understand how they feel and what's going on.
00:28:34.860It's also such a strange phrase. I have to imagine that it was said in anger. He was probably pretty
00:28:43.220mad when he said that. It's not the sort of thing you say when you're feeling great.
00:28:47.220You think he said it as like pillow talk, a sweet whisper?
00:28:49.840I 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.
00:29:04.560So 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.
00:29:22.640Well, 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.
00:29:43.160Yeah, let's hope it doesn't come to that.
00:29:45.380So apparently Huber was actively undergoing IVF with this woman while also maintaining other relationships behind her back.
00:29:54.580A point that he doesn't even really disagree with.
00:29:58.280He 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.
00:30:10.680I don't know how that is different than intending to start a family with her.
00:30:14.740I guess, like, that specific point is important to him in some way.
00:30:19.340I don't know how that – it's like that claim is not really in dispute, but, like, it's important to him to be like, oh, we didn't want a baby.
00:30:27.080There seems to be some, like, weird feelings around children going on with that whole story around that woman.
00:30:32.640Like, the idea that a major source of friction in their relationship was that he disapproved of her decision to have kids with a different man before they ever met.
00:30:43.960uh that just feels kind of weird yeah so if you've ever been played by a player this next
00:30:54.120one is going to sound real familiar to you huberman relied on pretty sexist and misogynistic
00:31:00.420tropes about women being crazy to keep the women from finding out about each other so
00:31:05.940the piece reads whenever sarah had suspicions about andrew's interaction with another woman
00:31:11.440He had a particular way of talking about the woman in question.
00:31:14.200She says he said the women were stalkers, alcoholics, and compulsive liars.0.96
00:31:18.140He told her that one woman tore out her hair with chunks of flesh attached to it.1.00
00:31:21.800A story like that's got to be true.1.00
00:31:23.880He told her a story about a woman who fabricated a story about a dead baby to, quote, entrap him.1.00
00:31:29.260A spokesperson for Huberman denies the account of the denigration of women and the dead baby story
00:31:34.220and says that the hair story was taken out of context.0.86
00:31:36.900so curious to know the actual like what is that story in context you know how women are always
00:31:42.380ripping their hair out with chunks of their own flesh you know how women are0.99
00:31:47.140bitches be crazy bitches be tearing out chunks of hair with flesh attached1.00
00:31:53.680literally just like raving lunatics all the time1.00
00:31:57.960most of the time sarah believed him the women were probably crazy he was a celebrity he had0.95
00:32:05.440to be careful so this is something that i have learned from like not to not to try to be like a0.98
00:32:10.380relationship guru but any man who tells you that like oh there's just a bunch of crazy women in my0.65
00:32:15.740orbit every all the women around me are crazy that man is a liar like that man is not telling1.00
00:32:19.880the truth that man is a liar that is like one of my like deeply held red flags in life0.99
00:32:25.100because even if that were true what's going on with you that you just are the kind of person who0.99
00:32:30.600like all these crazy women just flock to you like that doesn't that doesn't even even if that was
00:32:35.180true which it almost which i think it's all it almost never is even that is not great it only
00:32:39.780holds up if one has a worldview that all women are crazy right it's not that i have created this0.98
00:32:46.160social dynamic where i'm surrounded by crazy women just all women are crazy and they can't0.95
00:32:52.640help but be attracted to me you know how i am so that's where we're at i'm just surrounded by all0.97
00:32:57.880these crazy women that's that's the way that that makes sense yes i am i am the healthy normal normal
00:33:05.620one and all these women you know how women are this reminds me so much of a story from my personal0.85
00:33:10.920life involving friends where there was a friend breakup and between a man and a woman and the
00:33:17.980woman her account was like very specific she had so many details he did xyz to me he did this offense
00:33:24.000this offense on that day this offense and then his account was like she was crazy like that was
00:33:28.860like that was the whole like like she had a dossier of raw of his specific wrongdoings and he was just
00:33:35.960like she crazy so this is another pretty common thing i think huberman apparently had a type
00:33:44.500he went after these dynamic assertive confident women and then he wanted these women to be
00:34:30.240I guess I don't really know how big his operation is, but like I kind of get the sense that a lot of these guys don't have like huge PR teams.
00:34:39.140What were they doing before they woke up to find themselves in this maelstrom of allegations to deny?
00:34:48.440Well, not responding in real time. I can tell you that because the person who wrote this article for New York Mag says that they gave Huberman's team two days to read the full thing and respond to any of the allegations. And they basically like, this is what they got. So, you know, curious to me, too.
00:35:05.080So one other thing to note about the way that he treats the women is that he juggled them
00:35:10.480in this way that is kind of weirdly almost impressive.
00:41:42.440So basically, one of these women noticed that another woman was like constantly watching0.99
00:41:47.880her Instagram story, but never commenting and just like lurking.
00:41:52.160She realized that this woman also was followed by Dr. Huberman.
00:41:55.580And so eventually she just DMed her and said, is there anything that you'd rather ask me directly?
00:42:01.340Which I think that is such a baller move.0.94
00:42:04.300And 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
00:42:27.160They 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
00:42:34.540They'll just get to the bottom of it together and join forces.1.00
00:42:37.480And then like you will be a forever running joke in their group chat forever.1.00
00:42:41.960The women in they have they have this active group chat to this day.0.82
00:42:46.100they send pictures of each other's pets to each other and they use the reply that they say that
00:42:51.260andrew would use whenever they would send him racy pics which is yeah it's the article does
00:43:00.060end in a really surprising way it's like this group of women became friends and they're all
00:43:05.160doing fine uh which i think makes this story a little bit different than some others where it's
00:43:13.200powerful, influential man has problems with women when those stories break. Often there's some kind
00:43:22.020of allegations of abuse of some kind, or there's a lawsuit of some kind. It doesn't sound like
00:43:29.940these women are seeking any kind of restitution or really anything. It just seems like they were
00:43:37.980more than happy to talk to this reporter. And that's something that I want to talk about,
00:43:41.780Because 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, his the values that he preaches on the show are not the values that he lives by in his actual life.
00:43:55.820I 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.
00:44:17.240like the piece points out that he seems to show disdain for anybody who drinks even a small amount
00:44:22.700but in his personal life he's maybe not practicing a lot of the kind of personal discipline around
00:44:28.520things that spike his dopamine in this case relationships like one of the women says that
00:44:33.160he told her that he thought he was a love addict so you have this guru preaching an ethos around
00:44:38.400being mindful about what you let into your physical orbit while also like binging on women
00:44:43.780and relationships and not being forthcoming about it.
00:44:46.560That kind of makes his whole body of advice.
00:44:49.920I guess it kind of calls it into question.
00:48:40.640Yeah. And the just so story is that, can you believe a woman talked to me like that?
00:48:46.160Andrew Huberman? Like, I think this guy got that email from this woman scientist.0.74
00:48:52.480And I think it stung more because it came from a woman.
00:48:56.220And he's somebody who doesn't respect women.
00:48:57.680And so he had to, like, use his massive platform to speculate on her, like, low pleasure drive and stuff and how she, like, needed him to sacrifice his ego and crawl to her and blah, blah, blah, bow down.
00:49:09.900Like, it really is so misogynistic and sexist.
00:49:13.820And I think it really feeds back into the way that these women were saying that he treated them as well.
00:49:19.340I'm also not confident that this colleague exists or that any of that actually happened.
00:49:23.760I mean, we have no evidence that it did other than him saying so.
00:49:29.440It feels very much like a story that somebody might make up.
00:49:33.140To make, to like prop themselves up to talk about how everybody else is less than.0.61
00:49:38.920And all those less than happen to be women.0.99
00:54:54.360We do ass. Nobody would accuse us of not doing ass.0.99
00:55:01.800So 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.
00:55:11.440However, 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.
00:55:22.800like how you are using your position as a scientist to hawk things, especially something
00:55:28.520that is maybe a bunk product. AG1 is kind of maybe a not so good product in that it makes a lot of
00:55:35.640big claims that have dubious backing. Here's what the New York Mag article says about Huberman's
00:55:41.100relationship with AG1. On every episode of his Zero Cost podcast, Huberman gives a lengthy
00:55:46.780endorsement of a powder formerly known as Athletic Greens, now known as AG1. It's one thing to hear
00:55:51.840athletic greens promoted by Joe Rogan. It is perhaps another to hear someone who sells
00:55:56.340himself as a Stanford University scientist just back from the lab proclaim that this $79 a month
00:56:02.520powder, quote, covers all your foundational nutritional needs. In an industry not known
00:56:07.860for its integrity, AG1 is, according to writer and professional debunker Derek Burrs, one of the most
00:56:14.320egregious players in the space so i will say as a podcaster one of my pet peeves is podcasters who
00:56:22.800are like we make this podcast for free no if you have ads you really don't like if you have if you
00:56:28.700are a podcaster who supports your work via ads listeners are not listening to that show for free
00:56:34.200they are kind of paying for it via their attention with the ads and so i i really
00:56:40.100hate that claim that like it's a free podcast i'm making this content for you for free if you have
00:56:45.400ads you're really not that's really just not true yeah and it's a good system right the listeners
00:56:51.400don't have to pay money the ads support the show you know they pay us a small amount to make the
00:56:59.320show i feel like listeners probably i feel like there are listeners out there who maybe don't
00:57:02.760think it's a great system people are always like i hate your ads fair but you know they you know
00:57:09.480the ads themselves i don't know i also don't love listening to ads but uh it's kind of the system
00:57:17.180we got there's some others out there love to you know talk more about it but i guess the point i'm
00:57:22.980trying to make is that ads aren't inherently harmful uh but where it does get dubious is when
00:57:31.780it's these health supplements that are sold as having like health properties that just really
00:57:38.520are not backed up by evidence. And it really betrays a lack of concern for listeners, I think.
00:57:47.240And as a scientist, for a scientist to shill for nutritional supplements that do not have
00:57:55.040strong evidence backing, in fact, I have a dubious evidence behind them. And my understanding is that
00:58:01.940what's actually in AG1 is a proprietary blend, so people don't even know. But for a scientist
00:58:08.460to back that it casts a doubt over everything else they say or at least it should right like
00:58:15.280like apparently that is the standard of evidence that they need to support a claim right and so
00:58:22.900that same standard does that same low standard of evidence apply to all of the scientific claims
00:58:30.540that he's making on his show one would assume it probably does so yeah it's just really i personally
00:58:38.400think that for a scientist to promote dubious nutritional supplements just undercuts everything
00:58:46.500else they might have to say about any other topic. Well, one of my favorite science podcasters,
00:58:51.140Wendy Zuckerman of the Science Versus podcast, which I love, the piece quotes a time when she
00:58:56.680kind of like called Huberman out on this. She pointed out that her podcast would never endorse
00:59:01.440a product with such a dubious science behind it. And Huberman said, that's the good news about
00:59:05.940podcasts. People can choose which podcast they want to listen to. Yeah. And that makes it clear
00:59:10.820right there, makes it crystal clear how he sees this. His scientific integrity was being publicly
00:59:15.600called into question, which is like the worst thing that could happen to a scientist. And he
00:59:19.600responds by pointing to the popularity of his podcast, right? He doesn't even address it.
00:59:24.420He's just like, well, you know, people like my show. So I guess that makes it right.
00:59:28.620I mean, to me, it's like being like, you know what it is, Wendy, I'm trying to get paid.
00:59:36.680So I should say, I don't know a ton personally about AG1.
00:59:40.460I read a couple of really good articles that make a lot of good points about AG1.
01:02:59.160Yeah, I mean, the piece by Jerry really is like, he basically is like, I'm disappointed to see somebody who is such a gifted science communicator and like does have a very good body of work in his specific lane.
01:03:13.160kind of selling that short for a check from the supplement industry that is so shady and so not
01:03:19.220transparent and using science to do that so like it's not like these people are calling him a fraud
01:03:24.000they're saying the opposite because you are somebody who knows what they're doing and is
01:03:28.320very gifted it is that much more disappointing to see you lowering yourself to this yeah absolutely
01:03:34.020i have not reviewed his work in any sort of detail but i looked through where he's publishing
01:03:40.280he's publishing in like top tier journals like nature and neuroscience like this that's you don't
01:03:48.440get published there if you're doing bad work so clearly he's a talented scientist clearly he's
01:03:54.740very charismatic and persuasive and able to speak to lots of people and so it is disappointing to
01:04:01.740see somebody with those talents just use it for personal enrichment at the expense of the people
01:04:09.460who are trusting them. So there have been a lot of accusations that his podcast is full of
01:04:14.240pseudoscience. Like he uses all the right kind of science-y sounding jargon for claims that are
01:04:19.240maybe dubiously backed up by science. I am not a scientist, so I don't really feel able to say.
01:04:23.600And Mike, as you were saying, like you have not actually like studied his body of work, right?
01:04:28.540Yeah, that's right. I just kind of reviewed where he was publishing, but I didn't click
01:04:34.440into anything because that's not an area that I really have the expertise to even evaluate.
01:04:38.540so let's hear from somebody who does have the expertise to evaluate and that is Dr. Andrea
01:04:43.140Love an immunologist and a microbiologist who has been like she has been debunking Huberman's bad
01:04:49.820science for a long time on her substack she is not a Johnny come lately who is jumping on the
01:04:54.520bandwagon she has been here for a while I get this like folks should follow her substack and follow0.87
01:04:59.660her on Twitter I get the sense that she is somebody who has been like being like Huberman sucks0.53
01:05:05.540kuberman sucks for a long time and now everybody is like finally on her side and she's like
01:05:09.540now it is my time to shine there is no better feeling dr andrea love i hope you are like0.96
01:05:16.440basking in this because when somebody when people when the general public finally crosses over
01:05:21.920and sees what you see that's how i always felt about ellen by the way i was an ellen truther
01:05:26.360for a very long time when the public finally got there i was like yes let the hate flow through
01:05:31.740your veins man i remember that that was like i can't remember a time when i saw you so happy thank
01:05:39.440you so in a piece that dr love wrote for slate called so should you trust andrew huberman she
01:05:47.600really breaks it down she writes in reality his podcast is focused on pseudoscience he often makes
01:05:53.660claims that appear scientific but lack evidence plausibility and validity pseudoscience presents
01:05:58.600unsubstantiated conclusions, but it can be incredibly hard to distinguish from conclusive
01:06:02.780evidence. It contains grains of truth, but those grains of truth are exaggerated beyond the point
01:06:07.920of usefulness. Even so far as to lead away from the truth, Huberman fills his podcast with confident
01:06:13.560displays of pseudoscience, topped with the appeal to authority he garners by regularly repeating his
01:06:18.840academic credentials to gain your trust. Wow, that sounds so similar to the way we talk about
01:06:23.800conspiracy theories. I was thinking the same thing. So she basically accuses Huberman of not
01:06:30.000carefully or fully citing studies and data to make prescriptive recommendations for lifestyle
01:06:35.320changes. He cherry picks weak or irrelevant studies while discarding larger and more robust
01:06:40.740studies that demonstrate something different. If you're not conducting research or regularly
01:06:44.880dissecting scientific studies, this might not be obvious, but to scientists it is. And that's
01:06:50.340something else that I think is interesting here is that I bet that listening to his show or hearing
01:06:54.420somebody parrot what he says, if you are a scientist or a doctor, is probably frustrating
01:06:59.280as hell. You and I were talking about this off mic, Mike, weird thing to say, about what exactly
01:07:05.840you think is going on here, right? So after doing all my research for this episode, I have totally
01:07:11.100changed my mind. I go back to this episode that we did early in Tangodi's history with Afoma Uzoma,
01:07:18.460who was formerly of Pinterest, she developed the platform's first ever medical misinformation
01:07:22.940policy. And in our conversation, she told me that it's really not that deep. Like a lot of the people
01:07:28.100who push medical misinformation are just scammers, right? They're just using fear or whatever,
01:07:34.460or like junk science to get people to give them money for whatever scam supplement or scam course
01:07:40.700they're selling or whatever. And I think I'm kind of coming around to the fact that maybe Huberman
01:07:45.620is like a little bit of a scammer like like maybe it's not like like maybe it's not that deep he is
01:07:51.100just like a snake oil salesman who gets rich from selling snake oil so he is using his scientific
01:07:57.560credentials to boost that snake oil yeah i agree i think that's a big piece of it here right like
01:08:03.840it's not in dispute that he is aggressively promoting supplements that do not have evidence
01:08:11.600base to demonstrate their effectiveness and he's getting rich off that right that's like literally
01:08:16.980you know i guess it's not literally but it is uh a direct analogy to selling snake oil uh yeah
01:08:26.280good old-fashioned scammer i do think that he's a little bit more interesting or different than a
01:08:30.860lot of your garden variety scammers just because he's so much more educated and is like a bona
01:08:38.460scientist making scientific contributions and seems to be a very introspective person. So like,
01:08:47.340I'm just so fascinated the story he tells himself to justify selling that snake oil.
01:08:54.380Well, Andrew Huberman's whole thing is like a storytelling exercise about himself,
01:08:59.940like a myth-making exercise about himself. Like the sort of story that he tells about himself is
01:09:04.340that he was a troubled kid. His parents handled his divorce in a way that left him neglected and
01:09:11.540like unparented. His parents kind of dispute that, but whatever. And that he was sent to sort of a
01:09:17.980facility for troubled youth and that talk therapy is what saved him. And he wanted to dedicate his
01:09:25.380life to like helping others because of that. And he got into Stanford despite the fact that he was
01:09:30.480this like troubled youth who was like essentially unparented the piece says what does seem certain
01:09:35.400is that in adolescence andrew became a regular consumer of talk therapy in therapy one learns
01:09:40.440to tell stories about one's experience a story one could tell is i overcame immense odds to be
01:09:45.740where i am another is the son of a stanford professor born at stanford hospital grows up to
01:09:51.880be a stanford professor like i do think that he maybe is somebody who like we all do in certain
01:09:58.640in certain effects, but like gets down on the story that he tells himself and that story sort
01:10:04.900of becomes the truth. And so maybe the story that he tells himself, like the story that I tell
01:10:08.940myself when I have to do ad reads is like, if I didn't do these ad reads, the people who make my
01:10:15.320podcast would not be able to be paid. I would not be able to be paid. The show would not be able to
01:10:19.740go on. Right. And so that's the story I tell myself when I'm doing ad reads for our sponsors,
01:10:24.400all of whom I love and respect very much.
01:10:34.800I think it's different when you are a scientist
01:10:36.780telling yourself a story that makes it okay
01:10:39.620to use your credentials as a scientist
01:10:42.480to maybe lead people into things that are risky.
01:10:45.820Yeah, especially when you are publicly preaching
01:10:48.980introspection and discipline and accountability.
01:10:52.960Those all seem like virtues that maybe he should take a deeper look at.
01:10:57.760Yeah, this is kind of going off script here.
01:11:00.040But like you were saying, how the popular guru who doesn't take their own advice and is not living the values that they preach in public, that is such a well-worn thing that's almost a cliche at this point.
01:11:12.220I wonder what it is that about Huberman that makes it so hard to see this well-worn trope playing out before our eyes.
01:11:24.840Because I think that's in part kind of what's going on here with Huberman.
01:11:28.380But it's so interesting to me how people are like, but he's a scientist, but he's introspective, but he's very thoughtful.
01:11:34.060Maybe it's just the power of marketing, the power, how people really want to believe that what he's doing is so much different than the Dr. Oz's of the world because of the way he packages it so effectively as being different.
01:11:46.940Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I haven't listened to his podcast, but, you know, in the research for doing doing this, you know, I read a couple articles that were talking about it and all of them mentioned when he's interviewing guests or speaking in public.
01:12:05.920you know, it's characterized by humility and kindness and compassion. And I could imagine
01:12:12.300that all of those would be things that would disarm a audience and make them feel like the
01:12:20.280person could be trusted, right, and feel more connected to them. Like, humility is super
01:12:26.340powerful. But even that reminds me of the way these women say that he used that same kind of
01:12:34.840language to control them. You know, that's sort of like, like at one point when one of the women
01:12:40.400realizes that he cheated on her, he texts her like something along the lines of, I hear you
01:12:45.780and I'm willing to hear you for as long as you need, which again, it's almost like therapy speak
01:12:52.080to get away with bad behavior. And I wonder if that's part of it, like using a certain kind of
01:12:57.280disarming language and disarming presentation and disarming, you know, vibe to really affect
01:13:04.760effectively trick people into trusting you and to trick them into not seeing what is so obviously
01:13:11.320in front of their own eyes or happening in their own ears. Some of this stuff is not in dispute.
01:13:17.240It's not in dispute that he takes money from supplement companies. It's not in dispute that
01:13:21.380supplement companies are notoriously not transparent and rely on junk science, if any
01:13:27.560science at all. Those things are not in dispute. So the fact that people are like, no, he would
01:13:31.900never it's like he would not dispute that that is what's happening yeah it's a good question what
01:13:36.220is it about him that makes people like him and want to follow his advice but clearly he's done
01:13:42.820very well at it and i think it is an important question for us all to consider i think part of
01:13:49.780it's got to be that he's hot probably helps like he's like jacked he has glasses like i don't know
01:13:55.020like i think he's someone that maybe a lot of the male listeners in his audience want to see
01:14:01.380themselves in like who would not want to be like oh yeah I'm this like jacked ripped guy who has
01:14:07.120glasses but is also a scientist and like can maybe juggle women in an unethical way like I think that
01:14:12.520men are identifying with him in a certain way and that is maybe making it hard for them to see
01:14:18.920what is happening so plainly right out and open yeah that's a good point yeah there's a lot of
01:14:25.000ways in which the life he's leading feels aspirational. I completely agree. So Dr. Andrea
01:14:32.040Love, her piece just makes him sound like a good old fashioned scammer. Again, I will link to it in
01:14:37.660the show notes. She should definitely read it. So she points out that he is somebody who uses
01:14:41.580dubious science to put people off of accepted medical interventions like fluoride or vaccines,
01:14:47.900even when there is broad medical consensus about it in service of suggesting an alternative that
01:14:53.920he has a financial stake in. So Dr. Love says that Huberman uses false balance, the fallacy that
01:14:59.400equal and opposite sides always exist. Take his thoughts on fluoride. While fluoride has been
01:15:04.740used for decades to prevent dental disease, Huberman gives the impression that there is an
01:15:08.840ongoing debate among experts about its use and reasons for his listeners to be careful about how
01:15:13.520much fluoride-containing tap water they consume. During his Oral Health podcast episode, Huberman
01:15:18.920undermines consensus data on fluoride, endorses fluoride-free toothpastes, as well as a Yerba
01:15:23.920Mate tea company that uses fluoride-free water, and which he is a business partner of, and cites
01:15:29.060a dentist who spreads fear about fluoride as his expert reference. Huberman positions this for his
01:15:34.900listeners as information to make the best decision, as though we all need to be carefully thinking
01:15:39.660about our fluoride levels. Yeah, again, cherry-picking. Here, it sounds like he cherry-picked
01:15:43.920particular expert who hasn't axed the grind about fluoride while ignoring the vast majority of
01:15:51.080dentists who are in consensus that fluoride is a positive thing to promote oral health.
01:15:57.740And when we were talking about his cold and flu episode, where he was talking about how he doesn't
01:16:01.440always get the flu shot because it is not effective unless the shot protects from that exact strain of
01:16:07.400flu going around that year, which is not totally accurate. You were like, well, why would he do
01:16:11.740that? You know, what does he have to gain in discrediting vaccines? And again, if you believe
01:16:15.960Dr. Andrea Love, it comes down to those supplements that he sells. Having a paid sponsor is not a
01:16:21.380disqualifier in and of itself, she writes, but when your financial conflicts of interest seem
01:16:25.600to dictate your content, it should be. After dismissing legitimate data in the flu episode,
01:16:30.760his lengthy, quote, science-backed discussion to prevent colds and flu boiled down to an extended
01:16:36.520commercial for taking supplements. So all of me has me wondering, which I think is the point of
01:16:42.140the New York mag piece, why do we look to anybody for their life advice? Like why do we make people
01:16:47.500into gurus in the first place? It does not surprise me that Huberman really got famous, famous in the
01:16:53.7402021 era of COVID. You know, we were all sort of alone and disconnected and looking for some
01:17:00.500solution or some antidote to that. Well, you weren't sleeping well, you weren't eating well,
01:17:04.260maybe like the vibes were terrible so in a lot of way i think the public we were just like easy
01:17:10.100marks during that time yep just a bunch of dupes with money yeah looking for a quick fix
01:17:16.800yep rouge looking for a solution and you you and i kind of talked about this off mic but
01:17:22.600it's one of the reasons why like life advice content like i'm not somebody who really unless
01:17:28.680I'm really having a dark time of desperation. Like I'm not someone who listens to lifestyle or
01:17:36.420life advice podcasts. I don't like career advice podcasts. I just don't like this idea that one
01:17:43.680person has a one size fits all solution. This is my opinion. I don't think life works that way.
01:17:48.580I think people are really complex. People have very complex motivations and desires and needs
01:17:53.840and hang ups. I don't see how a stranger could speak to that in any way that is effective. I'm
01:17:58.860not saying I don't think anybody should like because you're a bad person. If you listen to
01:18:02.960that, I just feel like anybody who is like wearing a blazer and crossing their arms and being like,
01:18:07.920I have the answer. Something in me automatically is like suspect of that.
01:18:12.080I 100% agree. Yeah. Anybody who says that they have the answer, huge red flag. And I'm somebody
01:27:13.140let's get right back into it so a lot of huberman supporters are really digging in and defending him
01:27:26.160maybe those are just the loudest ones maybe people who were like casual listeners of his
01:27:30.520podcast are like i don't know like that article seemed fair who cares um it is so interesting
01:27:37.280really because you know i wonder if a lot of the people who listen to huberman really identified
01:27:42.500with him or maybe his lifestyle was like really aspirational to them and so when he is being
01:27:48.220called out in this way maybe they feel personally threatened and that is why they are coming to his
01:27:53.420defense so specifically like Lex Friedman was like he is a personal friend of mine and this
01:28:00.460is a hit job again I was not able to read Lex Friedman's entire statement because he has me
01:28:04.520blocked but this idea that because you are a listener of his podcast or even like Lex like
01:28:08.520you know him personally that you would know the intimacies of his like romantic life and how he
01:28:13.260shows up sexually and romantically like i have plenty of close friends and i don't know the
01:28:17.180ins and outs of how they get down sexually and romantically and i would never i would never
01:28:20.880pretend that i did right like i find it really interesting how many people are so loudly coming
01:28:27.320to his defense like i follow and enjoy plenty of podcasters that i don't personally know
01:28:33.620There is not one of them that I can think of that I would read like a long, critical, deep dive into their work and their history and their values that I wouldn't come away thinking like, oh, maybe they had a few points to see people summarily dismissing this as a hit job to defend Huberman like he is someone they know.
01:28:50.980And it's interesting how this has become this kind of culture wars thing where it's like, oh, they're just attacking him for no reason.
01:28:59.860And I'm not even going to like it's all bunk. Right.
01:29:02.260And so like they're not even engaging with the pieces of the article that are not about his romantic life.
01:29:08.180Right. Like the way that he talked about that colleague of his that was a woman, that's not about his romantic life.
01:29:13.660His relationship with AG1 and supplements, that's not about his romantic life.
01:29:17.760Like the questions about his own myth making and his background, that's not about his romantic life.
01:29:23.120Are those not questions that need answers and deserve scrutiny for somebody who is bolstering themselves as a public guru?
01:29:30.280Yeah, it's not surprising that it has sort of been framed and is being talked about as yet another culture war of us versus them.
01:29:38.800I think another lens that we can look at it is earlier we made an analogy to conspiracy theories where his scientific rationale behind this or that solution is often like cherry picked.
01:29:51.780It'll be like a germ of truth in there, but then build this elaborate just so story around it that it sounds like in a lot of cases leads to the conclusion that you should buy some product that he's selling.
01:30:02.100And similarly here, his followers, I suspect a lot of them are true believers, when confronted with a critical piece like this New York Mag article, just reject it, right?
01:30:13.340The same way that when you present somebody who believes in a conspiracy theory with evidence that refutes that conspiracy, they will, in most cases, just double down.
01:30:22.380And the conflicting evidence is somehow reinterpreted in a way that makes them believe in the conspiracy even more strongly.
01:30:27.820It feels like there's something similar going on here as well.
01:30:30.740Well, I can tell you who a lot of his defenders are saying is behind this hit piece.
01:30:39.780Big Pharma doesn't like that Andrew Huberman is preaching the powers of meditation and sunlight and ice baths and supplements.
01:30:47.740They want us all hooked on the Big Pharma machine.
01:30:52.660And that's why New York Mag is like writing this like well-researched, well-written takedown of his life.
01:30:58.100Yeah, they're just a front for big pharma. I'm no big fan of the pharmaceutical industry. They do lots of pretty shady, harmful stuff, no question. But in this case, yes, dismissing this piece as a hit piece by big pharma, I feel like George Soros is just one step away in that causal chain of dismissive logic.
01:31:23.500Oh, totally. And side note, like, I feel like whenever, like, this is a hit piece, an attack job by Big Pharma, whenever that is the go to line of defense, it really tells me a lot about the audience that the person has cultivated, because that was the same thing that they used to defend Joe Rogan when people like me were pointing out his use of misinformation in the podcast space.
01:31:45.500They were like, oh, like he isn't down with the COVID vaccine.
01:31:49.540He's interested in alternatives to curb COVID.
01:31:54.820I feel like that tells me so much about the audience that you have cultivated and what they are about and what they value, what they don't value.
01:32:01.780Yeah, because it's not just listen to me.
01:34:56.240And it feels like there's something going on where public figures get a pass on that, that people would not allow peers or acquaintances in their everyday life.
01:35:08.200Oh, my gosh. I mean, I would argue that we are kind of in a golden era of scammers where people are willing to close their eyes to the way that the people that they follow, the people that they have upheld as aspirational, they are very willing to close their eyes to the way that those people are moving right in front of their faces in a way that is deceptive.
01:35:30.700Like, this is a weird analogy, but there's this young black Mormon trad wife influencer who is really famous for making videos of her like baking in ball gowns to show off how much money she has, like shopping and blah, blah, blah.0.55
01:35:46.780And I got into an argument on threads with somebody, another black woman about this.0.94
01:35:50.980And she was like, people are hating on her because they hate to see a black woman live a life of luxury.0.74