Huberman Lab

There's a tremendous book, Addiction by Design. And I'm afraid I'm going to mispronounce the name of the person who wrote it. I think it's Shull, but I'm not sure, but I know the title, Addiction by Design, about gambling.

There was a great guy, Robert Bly. He wrote Iron John. Great book.

There's a wonderful book, I think an important book that isn't so well known in the array of quote-unquote military and SEAL books, which is the book about Adam Brown, a Fearless book.

But what I like about the book is, actually has very little to do with the seal teams.

Is that Adam had a serious problem with addiction that he masked at times and it came back to pull him under various times while he was in the teams.

I heard they're going to make it into a movie.

That was crazy apparently that's what he writes about it wasn't like that it was more of this this home is such a relief.

I wasn't around when he was coming up but Colonel John Ripley as a guy won the Navy Cross in Vietnam.

The Brigid Dong Ha is about him.

He knew my, this is back to my uncle Jim who introduced, he and my uncle Jim were buddies.

I met him, he's since passed away.

I met Colonel Ripley when I was a plea at the Naval Academy.

Colonel Ripley, he's a legend.

Like this guy is a Navy cross winner.

Should have won the Congressional Medal of Honor by all accounts.

If you read the book, the Brigid Dong Ha, you are going to have no ability to understand why he's not dead.

There's a beautiful book by Harriet Lerner about apology that I often recommend in these situations because she really analyzes, if you ever do apology, this concept of sincerity of the apology that actually shows that I care about you and not just about restoring my dignity and my pride and all of that.

i quote servantess from donkey holly about magic you know someone wrote a book in the 1600s and he talks about the two what we like to call the two impossible theory not the two perfect theory the two impossible theory and he talks about that perfection in writing is is restraining exaggeration and it's a whole paragraph about that art needs to be believable there has to be truth in it to be enjoyed so and it's so much true for magic i can't just even when we do something that's impossible i still want the ground to be plausible maybe maybe this could happen therefore i need to restrain exaggeration i need to restrain the impossibility and that again this is a novel from the 1600s donkey over my favorite book of all time teaching us about magic

one of my favorite reads of all time and i to the state is vengos letters i remember you know i saw vengo before i saw it after and the story and that's that's why i think we can talk about a i for a second but the story of the letters with the paintings make them complete different images but when i see now the sunflowers or the chairs or the landscapes and i have some context to go by they become a part of a much bigger story

I'm smiling because when I was 22 I wrote this book called How to Become a Straight A Student.

The core idea of that book was active recall that was the core idea that replicating ideas ways to say is replicating the information from scratch as if teaching a class without looking at your notes that is the only way to learn.

I'll just tell you what it is. It's principles of neuroscience. So I thought that I don't know that one.

It makes a better door stop for most than a book but it's a wonderful resource if you want to learn about neuroscience and your book mastery.

And there's a book I recommend for everybody. It's Howard Gardner's five Frames of Mind. It's helped me immensely.

and not just power but also seduction which you've written extensively about and of course you've written about finding one's purpose

Well, I wrote the art of seduction with the idea that it was an art invented by women.

and he got the feeling back in a smaller sense but it was the feeling of your life is in danger I better get my act together or it's the end and suddenly adrenaline dopamine all the other things were occurring in him and he got any any found that energy so that's that's the ultimate kind of death ground right there the human will to live is truly incredible and so now I have to say as I said before I'm so grateful that your stroke didn't take you out because clearly

it's called bone Bone Games it's very interesting book a lot of science in it

Again, the processing of Trauma is a whole landscape into itself that actually was beautifully described in terms of how it arises within us and how to process Traumas in a really structured way in a just fabulous book that was written by Dr. Conti called The Invisible Epidemic, How Trauma Works and How We Can Heal From It.

He is the author of the book, "Trauma: The Invisible Epidemic."

I gave uh andra a book on the way in here with this my favorite new book it's like title of it is When Reason Goes on Holiday um and this is a great example of it is the the people who are who the people who simultaneously say their environmentalists and say they're anti nuclear power like the the positions simply don't reconcile but that doesn't bother them like at all

I finally found this book that I think has a has a good model for it a book is called men machines in modern times and it's written by this MIT professor like 60 years ago so it predates the internet um but it uses a lot of historical samples and what he says basically he says there's there's actually a three stage response there's a three stage societal response new technologies it's very predictable he said stage one is um basically just denial uh just ignore like we just like don't pay attention to this nobody takes it seriously we just like there's just a blackout on the whole topic um he says stage uh that stage one stage two is rational counter argument um so stage two is where you line up all the different reasons why this can't possibly work it can't possibly ever get you know cheaper you know this that uh you know not fast enough or whatever the thing is and then he says stage three he says is when the name calling begins um so he says stage three is like right right so when they failed ignore it and they failed to argue society out of it they move to the name calling right and what's the name calling the name calling is this is evil this is moral panic this is evil this is terrible this is awful this is going to destroy everything like don't you understand like you know all this you know just just like this is this horrifying and you you know the personal working honor of being reckless and evil and you know all the all this stuff and you must be stopped and and he said the reason for that is because basically fundamentally what these things are is there a war over status um it's a it's a it's a war over status and therefore a war over power and then of course ultimately ultimately money but the status status human status is the thing and so and because what he says is what what is the societal impact of a new technology the societal impact of a new technology is it reorder status in the society so the people who are specialists in that technology become high status and the people who are specialists in the previous way of doing things become low status and generally people don't adapt right generally if you're the kind of person who is high status because you're you're you're an evolved adaptation to an existing technology you're probably not the kind of person that's going to enthusiastically try to replant yourself onto a new technology and so this is like every politician who's just like in a complete state of panic about social media like why are they so freaked out about social media because they all know that the whole nature of modern politics has changed the entire battery of techniques that you used to get elected before social media are now obsolete obviously the best new politicians in the future are going to be 100% creations of social media and podcasts and by podcast and we're seeing this now as we head towards the next presidential election that podcasts uh clearly are going to be featured very heavily in that next election because long form content is a whole different landscape so this is exactly so this is the road so Rogan Erogan's had like what like he's had like Bernie he's had like Tulsi he said like a whole series of things are okay most recently and that's created a lot of contribution but also my understanding I'm sure he's invited everybody I'm sure he I'm sure he'd loved to have Biden on I'm sure he'd loved to have Trump on I'm sure you have to ask him I mean I think that um you know every podcaster has their own ethos around who they invite on and why and how so I certainly can't speak for him but um but I have to imagine that any opportunities have true long form discourse that would allow people to really understand people's positions on things I have to imagine that he would be in favor of that sort of thing yeah or somebody else right you know some some other top podcast from Donnelly would right and so there's such if my point my exactly totally agree with you but my point is if you're a politician if you're if you're a legacy politician right you have the option of embracing the new technology you can do it anytime you want right but you don't they're not they won't like they won't do it and why won't they do it well okay it's first of all they want to ignore it right they want to pretend that things aren't changing you know second is they want like they have rational counterarguments for like why the existing campaign system works the way that it does and this and that and the existing media networks and like here's how you'd like to do things and here's how you give speeches and here's the cozy wear in the tie and the thing in the pocket square and like you've got cool sister it's how you succeeded was coming up to that system so you've got all your arguments as to why that won't work anymore and then and then we've now proceeded to the the the name calling phase which is now it's evil right now it's evil for somebody to show up in you know on a on a on a stream god forbid for three hours and actually say what they think right it's going to destroy society right so it's exactly right it's like it's it's a it's a classic example of this pattern and anyway so Morrison says in the book basically this is the forever pattern like this will never change this this is one of those things where you can learn about it and still not the entire world could learn about this and still nothing changes because at the end of the day it's not it has it's not the tact that's the question it's the it's the reordering of status

Stewart Brand is the one that's been the most public and he has impeccable credentials in the space and he wrote the whole earth catalogs yeah and he's written a whole bunch of really interesting books since and he wrote a recent book that goes through in detail he's like yes obviously the correct environmental thing to do is nuclear power and we should be implementing project independence we should be building a thousand we should specifically we should he didn't say this but this is what I would say we should hire Charles Koch we should hire Koch industries right and they should build us a thousand nuclear power plants right and then we should give them the presidential metal freedom for saving the environment and that would play us independent of our reliance on oil yeah then we're done with oil like we're just think about what happens we're done with oil zero emissions we're done with the Middle East we're done we're done we we're not drilling we're not drilling on American land anymore we're not drilling on foreign land like we have no military entanglements in places where we're drilling we're not you know dispoiling Alaska we're not nothing no offshore rigs so nothing we're done and you basically just you build state-of-the-art plants engineered properly you have them just completely contained when there's nuclear waste you just entomb the waste right and concrete so it just sits there you know forever um it's this very small you know footprint you know kind of thing um and you're just done and so this is like the most to me it's like scientifically technologically this is just like the most obvious thing in the world um it's a massive tell on the part of the people who claim to be pro-environment that they're not in favor of this