The Art of True Happiness | Dr. Arthur Brooks
Huberman Lab · 14 Sep 2026
Source: https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/the-art-of-true-happiness-arthur-brooks
Transcript: https://podcasts.opennash.com/shows/huberman-lab/the-art-of-true-happiness-dr-arthur-brooks-9b937e/ (via OpenNash Podcasts, machine-generated)

There are 3 macronutrients to the happiest life. The happiest people have enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. Those are the 3 macronutrients. Now, that's important because it means you need to enjoy your life, and and you need to know the difference between enjoyment and pleasure, which many people don't. I mean, the pursuit of pleasure is not the secret to happiness. It's the secret to rehab. Satisfaction, which is the joy of an accomplishment or an activity after struggle, and last but not least is meaning, the why of your existence.

The happiest people have a bead on those 3 things, and they pursue those 3 things really, really actively. Now, inside all 3 of those things, there's this funny thing called unhappiness. Inside each of the macronutrients of happiness, you find discontent and frustration and a lot of suffering. If you spend your life, which many people do today, trying to avoid unhappiness, trying to avoid and eliminate suffering, they will paradoxically miss their own happiness.

Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Arthur Brooks. Arthur Brooks is a professor at Vanderbilt University and a senior fellow at the Harvard Business School. Today, we discuss what makes people truly happy, and what this thing we call happiness is really all about. What I love about Arthur Brooks, and what you'll realize today, is that he looks to experimental data, philosophy, his and others' experiences, to arrive at specific questions that you can ask yourself to determine what matters most to you, and what stands in the way of you actually getting

those things. In fact, I must say, this episode with Arthur Brooks is one of my favorite ever on the Huberman Lab podcast. He is brutally honest. He's open. He's generous with knowledge that can help you, the listener, and he's incredibly humble. Thanks to Arthur, the conversation you're about to hear is one that I'm confident you'll want to think about, act on, and come back to periodically. I can say for myself with certainty that it's the conversation I wish I had heard long ago.

Arthur doesn't have all the answers, nor does he claim to, but I do think he has a sort of hardened compass and a set of maps that we can all apply to have a much better, and indeed, a great life. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost-to-consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public.

In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my conversation with Dr. Arthur Brooks. Dr. Arthur Brooks, welcome.

Thank you, Dr. Andrew Huberman.

We only get to call each other Dr. once at the beginning of this podcast. I'm so happy you're here.

Me too.

Yeah, I consider you a friend, And, um, before we became friends, uh, you were already my teacher. I I was learning a ton from you. You have a a ton of wisdom, and before you, like, step into your humble self and push aside, I just really wanna highlight that because, um, that there are a lot of people influencing, educating, uh, advising, coaching, et cetera, but, uh, y- you represent, like, really the the confluence of of ideas and practices and wisdom in ways that I and and people can really understand and benefit from, so, really looking forward to having

Thank you.

You here. Welcome.

Thank you, likewise. I mean, what you've done over the past, now 5 1/2 years with this podcast,

Just about, yeah.

You changed the whole way that educators can reach a lot of people. What we want is educators, science in the public interest. We wanna touch people's lives. We wanna lift them up and bring bring them together using science, using ideas, and how how? How do you do that? You show the way. Because what you did was you started this podcast within 6 months. It was a big deal, and what you showed was a whole generation of people, younger and older than you - I'm I'm older than you - that this is something that people can do, that we can reach people.

You made that possible. You made that possible for me, it was an incredible gift.

Oh, well, I'm honored, and, um, thank you. Um, I realized today that, perhaps, the toughest part about this conversation is going to be make sure that I keep you focused on you a little bit. You're so humble and, uh, but I appreciate the kind words, and I consider us Colleagues and friends. So, you're known as, uh, the happiness guy. You know a lot about it, what it is and what it Isn't. So let's start with, um, first principles there that people can really wrap their head around and apply.

Uh, what's the difference between unhappiness and happiness? Or is that even the right model?

Yeah. Most people start with the wrong model of what happiness actually is, so you can't define unhappiness until you can define happiness, and happiness is not what most people think. Most people conceive of happiness as a feeling, as as an emotion, and that's quite wrong. In the same way that the smell of your turkey is not the same thing as your Thanksgiving dinner. The smell of the turkey is evidence of your Thanksgiving dinner, and the feelings of happiness are evidence of happiness, and wh- when I first came into the field - I mean, I've been a behavioral scientist for 30 years, but I started specializing in the science of human happiness exclusively - I wrote the first book of mine

on this in 2008, but but I decided in 2019, after I took a hiatus from academia to go run a big think tank in Washington DC, that I was gonna specialize for the rest of my career in this thing that most people believe they wanted. I was gonna really make it make it work, and there was, of course, happiness. People wanna be happier, and the first thing that I realized is that there wasn't a very good definition of happiness.

Which is so crazy, the thing that everybody wants, they can't quite define it. Uh, I can't put words to it, but I know it when I feel it. This is what I would get when I would ask my classes. So what do you think you're studying? Or it's how I feel when I'm with the people that I love or or or doing the things that I enjoy, and I recognized that this would be completely inadequate in any other area of science.

And so I went back to try to find the right metaphor, the right parallel field to define happiness, and I felt that the field of nutrition did it really well by taking food and breaking it into macronutrients and micronutrients. So I asked myself, Okay, what are the macronutrients of happiness? What are the fundamental, elemental building blocks of happiness? And to figure that out, you go and you look at the people who have the highest life satisfaction, that's measured in robust and proper ways, good construct validity, good science behind it, and what you find is doing kind of a factor analysis, is that there are 3 macronutrients to the happiest life.

The happiest people have enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. Those are the 3 macronutrients. Now, that's important because it means you need to enjoy your life, and and you need to know the difference between enjoyment and pleasure, which many people don't. I mean, the pursuit of pleasure is not the secret to happiness. It's the secret Amen! To rehab. Right? And so so you have to understand, right? Uh, for sure. And, uh, um, eh, satisfaction, which is the joy of an accomplishment or an activity after struggle, and last but not least is meaning, the why of your existence.

The happiest people have a bead on those 3 things, and they pursue those 3 things really, really actively. Now, inside all 3 of those things, there's this funny thing called unhappiness. Inside each of the macronutrients of happiness, you find discontent and frustration and a lot of suffering. And so the first or I should say the second, uh, uh, misunderstanding about happiness is that it's incompatible with unhappiness. It's not. If you spend your life, which many people do today, trying to avoid unhappiness, trying to avoid and eliminate suffering, they will paradoxically miss their own happiness.

So that's the first thing to understand.

Could you drill a little bit deeper into enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning, And maybe just put some contour on each of those? To go back to unhappiness and suffering and How it relates to all 3?

For sure. So so enjoyment, um, is very much related to pleasure, but pleasure is fundamentally a limbic phenomenon. I mean, it's if you if you touch in experiments, you've done these, you've seen these experiments forever, the the ventral striatum or the ventral tegmental area, you can get this inc- you can get the stimulation of these parts of the brain that will give you the sense of euphoria, this sense of, you know, immediate joy from anything from your girlfriend saying, Andrew, I love you, or a big bump of cocaine.

Not that you would, because the brain is so unbelievably thrifty, right? That's not part of happiness. That's a phenomenon from sort of the Pleistocene brain, from something the middle Pleistocene, what, 250,000 years ago, saying, That's rewards you. Go get more of that. Is kinda what it comes down to. You don't wanna have that as your goal in life. I mean, like the hippies used to say, If it feels good, do it. My dad said, That's the end of America.

He was kinda right.

I think your dad and my dad either were friends. I don't think we have the same dad, but, Separated Um, my Yeah, my dad

At birth.

And I No disrespect to the hippies, uh, but my dad had very clear thoughts about how The children of people with that mindset were, um, at a disadvantage because of that message Right. What will happen, Specifically.

Of course, very quickly, is that your pleasures, which are fundamentally animal, I mean, your your dog, your beautiful new dog, friendly new dog that I just met. He has a limbic system not that different than yours, and he feels emotions that are not that different than yours, right? I mean, um, did this uh, he has amygdala amygdala, you know, he has a dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, he has a ventral striatum. I mean, he's got all these different parts and just kind of like we do, but he's not human because he's managed largely by these emotions, and we have this choice.

We have this incredible prefrontal cortex, this this human cortex that's enormous. Your dog's is way for thin. Ours is, like, 30% of the weight of our brain, and what that supercomputer allows us to do is to choose between animal impulses and moral aspirations. We get to make that choice. That's a conscious executive choice. When we convert pleasure into enjoyment, it's because it takes on moral aspiration to it. We take our pleasures, and we add people in memory, thereby kind of delivering them to an an executive experience that we're managing, that we're we understand, that we're conscious of, that we can remember, and is fundamentally social.

It's quintessentially human, as a matter of fact. That's what it's all about. So, I, you know, I talk to my students and who are graduate students, they're 28 years old on average, and my and my kids who are 28, 26, and 23, you know, w- w- what does this mean? And and for most people, what it means is if there's something that makes you feel good, 'cause we all have our thing, whether it's highly glycemic carbohydrates or any kind of addictive behavior, and in point of fact, it can be dependence-provoking, which many things can, they when they when they're when they when they wire into the dopamine system.

You've talked about this ad nauseam. So many times I've heard you talk about this. If you're doing it alone, you're probably doing it wrong. Probably it's, uh, it's probably more about pleasure and less about enjoyment. It's not a perfect rule. I like to walk in the woods by myself and say my prayers, but those things aren't addictive. And so, that that's how to how to how to think about it. You need to enjoy your life, and that means there there are things that give you pleasure at a at a at a metaphysical or physical level, but they also have people in memory, and you're managing them and they're not managing you.

So that's kind of a in a nutshell how I think about enjoyment. Now, many people are bad at that, especially strivers. Who who listens to your podcast? People who are serious about their lives. There's nobody who's like, Eh, whatever. Who's gonna listen to your podcast?

We're not a whatever podcast.

You're a striver podcast.

We should do a title card sometime. How to Whatever. Yeah. I know where Um, that one I'm going Won't go very

With this.

Well. That'll be our April I know. I Fool's episode. Know. This is an Right? All-ones podcast. Yeah, Yes. Isn't that?

Guy's like me on, right? And and what strivers one of the things they often struggle with if they're very, very, very uh uh, um, competitive, if they're ambitious, if they're successful, is that they wanna be special more than they wanna be happy, and so they wanna put points on the board. And if it's not putting points on the board, they're not gonna do it, and these are the people that I have to work with to be to in to work on the macronutrient of enjoyment.

Is there fear that, were they to enjoy life more, be happier? I'm probably using these terms incorrectly. No, no, no, why That somehow they

Not? Yeah, yeah.

Would lose their drive because As you were describing enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning, and I and, by the way, I love this, uh, description of enjoyment as you know, we we have animal impulses, and then but then there's this other end of the spectrum, which are moral aspirations. Wouldn't at least some component of a great life be to marry those 2 Things? So that your pursuit of of these animal impulses actually raised you up morally. I mean, That's the ultimate I mean, we have so many examples now in the media of of, uh, prominent politicians in particular, with all the elections Going on, where their careers are tanked.

I do believe they might have been trying to be good people, o- on average, but they may they temptation r- ruined Th- that career anyway. And so it's And, you know, Clear it exists in them and and in Many, in everyone, right? But the fact that that can happen to it's almost feels like a a misuse of the animal impulse. Is there a a way to marry our, uh, animal impulse to moral aspiration in a way that's seamless, or is it always work?

No, no, you you you have just defined enjoyment. Proper enjoyment is one where you are you're doing what you what you think is prudent and natural and good to do. It's something that you want to see yourself doing and at the same time is pleasurable. You know, that's why the y- y- the best moments over the course of my 35-year marriage are highly pleasurable and extremely enjoyable. And it's the kind of thing where I could get, you know, found out by the press that I'm having another beautiful night with Esther, you know?

That's good is what it comes down to, and and the truth is we all struggle with these things because we are biological creatures. You know, I'm fundamentally a b- a behavioral scientist, but psychology is biology. And one of the things I've had to retrain in so many of these areas, especially over the past 10 years, is because the biology has become so salient in our field. And one of the things that you find is that the the trouble that people actually have is when, eh, animal impulse and moral aspiration go in different directions.

And one of the great strategies for life is how to m m point them in the same direction. How to and and sometimes you have to choose. Sometimes you have to choose, and and people feel like, uh, it's I should, you know, if it feels good, it must be good for me. But that's have the s and so I'm gonna do it. That's having the same life goals as protozoa or something, you know? Or you're

Or if it feels bad, it must be bad Yeah, for For me. And there's

Example, right?

Probably a lot of things that people should could benefit from doing that are gonna feel, quote, unquote, painful in the How are In the process.

The gym? How are the Gym? I'm a I'm a gym rat, so are you.

Do you do you like training? I like training.

I I really do like Training, but it's a funny thing because when leg day I still wanna throw up. I've been in the gym almost every day for 30 years. And and

Yeah, you're in great shape, I I feel By the way. I mean,

I feel good. It's obvious to anyone You know what? I feel Watching, but you're Good. Yeah.

You're, sh- you're is okay to share, you're 62, is that Years old. Yeah, Right? I'm

62 years old.

Great shape.

Yeah. And and it's, uh, and, you know, I've got genetics that keep me really lean, so it's not like it's any any flex that I can stay at, you know, 10% body fat or something like that. That's not that's just n- that's just nature. But the truth is, I I I real I recognize that that I I need to keep the machine in good shape because the brain is part of the machine, and, a as we both know, hard exercise, picking up heavy things, and and and running around is fundamental to affect management and also to the maintenance of the overall functioning and how the machine works.

I don't wanna fall prey to, you know, the type 3 diabetes, which is what we're calling Alzheimer's these days. I don't want metabolic disorders that are that are avoidable, so I actually I do that. Now, leg day sucks, man. I mean, I've been doing leg day every 4th day for 40 for 30 years, and I still don't like it. I would still skip leg day. Every day would be chest day, 'cause everybody likes chest day, right?

'Cause it feels better. But the truth is that I do it because I actually know how the muscle protein synthesis works. I know that for hormone balance, leg day is the most important day for these really large muscle groups, and and and what am I doing? I'm making the decision to do something that foregoes my my comfort, my pleasure, even a moment of my happiness for the moral aspiration that I actually have, and and that leads to this important conclusion from the research in this area, which is that mother nature doesn't care if you're happy.

This is w- i it's, you know, we we all think it's like, if I'm not happy, then something's not right. No, no. It might very well be not right. You know, there there are all kinds of suffering that you actually need to grow, a a as a person. You need negative emotions because negative emotions are an alarm system that show that your reptilian brain has has has registered signals sending these signals to your limbic system and and setting off alarms in, you know, from sadness and anger and disgust and fear.

That's unpleasant, but that doesn't mean anything's wrong. It means everything's right. How you react to it can be how you want to, and so doing have a better having a better life notwithstanding the fact that it doesn't feel good. And that's a life of discipline. That's a life of of the kind of behavior that you actually want. That's worth moral aspiration.

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I really like that because I think for many people, um they want to see themselves doing things that others would approve of. And From a young age, we're told what we should do and why. Right? You need to, like, get dressed up for this event or you you need to, you know, sit up a certain way, eat a certain way, be polite, and these things, which are all important parts of our training As humans. But There's something really special that happens when we s e- as you point out, when we see ourselves doing something And it feels good, and we it's a positive self-reflection, o- of the non-egotistical kind, right?

And I don't think we talk enough about this because there's so much out there now about how social media is all about comparisons, so people are showing other people, Here's what I'm doing. But there's a Different version of that where somebody does something that they're proud of, and puts it to the internet, and they're seeing themselves do something that they're proud of doing, and They get the feedback and, you know, provided that their ego is in check, and they don't let the positive comments go to their head or set them up for disappointment when they don't get as many of them the next time, All the things that are wired into those reinforcement Circuits.

I think that's great. They're seeing themselves Exercising. Al- cause, by the way, it could be painting. It could be time with family. It could be being in volunteer and service, and we tend to look at that stuff and say, Oh, you know, they're they're just doing the display. So, my Question is to really get the ideal match between this, uh, animal impulse and and moral aspirations piece, that we see ourselves and experience ourselves doing what we want to see ourselves doing, and that we not share it because I'm open to the idea that the sharing diminishes it somehow.

It can. It Um, yeah.

Can. But fundamentally, I think it's actually quite important that you declare what your moral aspirations are. And part of the reason is because this gives you a commitment bias. And so there's a lot of behavioral science about that, a lot of psychology that actually talks about commitment bias. When you say, Here's the thing that I'm actually gonna do. I'm gonna finish my PhD, right?

This is a big part of weddings. I I've attended a lot of weddings, and it's kind of an amazing thing, This wedding ceremony.

Yeah. Makes you path dependent toward your own aspirations.

People stand up and give a bunch of really amazing promises in Front of all their friends, and then They get a bunch of gifts, and the the I'm not cynical about this at all. Like, from a reward pathway perspective, It's like you're rewarding the promises that they're making, In addition to the union that they're in right There. And a lot of the reward is, like, you're giving them things for their life Going forward. Sadly, I have a number of friends who've been divorced, and they depending on how long ago the wedding was, they often feel quite sh- sheepish about

I know.

All the gifts. Like, what they got all these gifts

I know.

For the promises they made. Now they've changed their mind Some cases broken those promises, but they've changed Their mind. Right? It's not till death do Us part. It's now until it got inconvenient enough that we're gonna part ways, and it's an incredible, m still occurring, kind of ancient display of promising publicly, I'm not going to quit.

Yeah. No, totally. This is My person, through thick and thin, through sickness and in health, and all the things that you actually talk about. You're actually talking in the in the wedding promises. You're saying, It's gonna suck sometimes. That's what you're saying. I mean, it's, like, richer and poorer, and we're gonna stick this thing out, despite the fact that we're we're stating right up front that there's gonna be times of poverty, there's gonna be times of sickness, there's gonna be there's gonna be trouble ahead.

And that's basically saying that happiness has unhappiness in it. I'm defining happiness. How am I defining happiness? That I'm gonna get 80, 90 years, and as I take my dying breath, I'm gonna be looking I'm like Don Quixote, and this is my Dulcinea. And I'm gonna be I'm gonna be, uh, looking into her eyes as I as I recite the holy scriptures and take my dying breath. That's basically what you're saying. And you're defining that as your bliss.

I mean, if it weren't your bliss, you'd be like, W- Why are you doing it? I want it, because that's a good life. That's what you're stating. And you're and and you're laying out what actually happiness looks for, and you're saying it's gonna be full of unhappiness. That's what you're saying. And that's the thing for people to understand, that that's what it comes down to. When you are laying out publicly your moral commitments, when you're actually saying this, what you're saying is you're recognizing that happiness and unhappiness are intertwined, and you want the full.

You're li- you're basically saying, Bring it on. It's like courage. It's a declaration of of your independence from the world and your dependence on each other, which is a beautiful thing. It's what you do when you're publicly baptized as an adult, anytime that you're taken into a new religion, there's always these commitments about these moral aspirations that you're making, recognizing, Yeah, sometimes this is gonna go contrary to my animal impulses, absolutely. And, you know, this is one of the things that I love about sort of the modern internet culture.

There's a lot to regret. There's a lot that you and I look at going, Oh, man, you know. But the the other thing I really, really like is this facilitated this wholesale movement of aspiration for excellence. A lot of people, they wanna be excellent. You know, it's like, w- w- w- I mean, so this isn't just the huberman podcast. It's not just entertainment, high-class entertainment. People want an edge. They wanna know, you know, why why why are they so attracted to the protocols?

Protocols toward what? Toward being better. They wanna be more successful. They wanna be better-liked. They want things to go better for them. That's a that's a human drive for excellence. And when people can finally make peace with the fact that your animal impulses will not gen- uh, j- will not always and frequently not lead you to excellence, then you can finally be free.

Do you think that a lot of the friction out there, um, politically, uh, socially is basically about drawing the line between what is animal impulse and what is moral aspiration? I mean, I don't wanna take us No. Tell Too far down

Me more. But What do you mean?

I mean, some of the animal impulses are obvious, Right? Um, and they're all for the neurobiologists, we would say they're very, like, limbic, hypothalamic, Right? But, you know, some people would say, Okay, like, here's the quote, unquote traditional model of marriage, and, um, and morality. And some people would say, Actually, we wanna kinda bend that a certain way where, um, people could have quote unquote unconventional relationships or unconventional families. Or I mean, I think everyone would agree that lie lying, cheating, and stealing Is bad.

Right? But there's a an attempt, I think, to draw a kinda jagged line between moral and immoral that, you know, c- certain things that are not, uh, of biblical, traditional morality are okay because as long as they're done consensually and in the and in the name of love, Right? And we're not talking about breaking laws here. Although some people really push this to the I know. I Extreme, and that's Know. But that's What I'm talking That's that's moral About.

And I and

Relativ- Right?

I'm pre- and I'm staying off pr- uh, specific issues, not not to be, like, politically careful here, but just because I feel like a lot of it is like, where are we gonna draw The line between limbic and higher order? In fact, it gets it actually gets inverted where people will say, No. Th- the more evolved way of thinking is past all that, where y- you can really get beyond this this this very, uh, you know, black-and-white morality and really say, No, there's all sorts of versions of of what, uh, Love, family, marriage, commitment, um, child rearing could Look like.

Punches pilot. What is truth? Right. It's very postmodern.

Yeah, it is very postmodern, uh, but I think that it I mean, I feel like this is The like, people are pulling back and forth on this line, just like in Science, people are trying to say, the scientists and doctors that are all, you know, uh, traditional scientists and and physicians, they have the knowledge, and then the general component of the general public are saying, Actually, during the pandemic, you lied, you know, like a teenager Telling their and, like, You need to admit you lied.

And then they're like, I didn't lie, you Know, they're like, No. And so there's this trying to pull back, We have the torture Of truth. No, we have the torture of truth. And, of course, There are elements So so this Of truth on both sides, right? But with this, in this case, it's sort of I think at the extremes, we all understand Murder is bad, right? Lying, cheating, stealing bad, right? But then what constitutes a a moral aspiration To one camp is actually A moral insult, And vice versa.

So John Haidt, you've had him on the show, Right? Yeah, John Haidt's great, and John I Haidt and I go way back. We go back to the early part of the 21st century. So, and John Haidt and I are just the same age, and and we've had these sort of parallel careers writing about, uh, about science of human happiness. The guy's a v- visionary. He's probably the greatest social scientist of our generation. He's that great. I mean, it's he's unbelievable.

He wrote book a book about moral foundations, and he talked about the fact that there are 2 moral foundations that everybody has in common, and that's care and fairness. Care for others and fairness. Now, we define those things differently. I mean, what does care mean? Does care mean giving everybody, you know, taking care of them at the base level, or does it mean everybody gets an apartment and free groceries? I mean, you figure out what that means, and that, uh, that's a legitimate argument about, you know, what it means.

Fairness is really, really different, especially between political poles, where one side is about redistributive fairness and the other side is about meritocratic fairness. You know what fairness actually means, but everybody wants a fair and caring society, and you believe that you should be fair as a parent, you should care for your kids. Then what he shows empirically with his work, which no doubt has a huge neurobiological basis, and I'm sure has a huge genetic basis as well, because these personality characteristics generally do, are usually between in the in the identical twin studies, it's usually 40 to 80% genetic, all the aspects of personality, which is super interesting in of it's in of itself, is that there's 3 elements of morality

that are very different between the political poles. They are loyalty, purity, and authority. And so loyalty is like flag burning is bad. Right? You know, I come from a very progre- mostly progressive family, politically progressive family. And and if I ask somebody if, you know, from my family of origin, What do you think about flag burning? They'd be like, Inadvisable, right? As opposed to morally Right. Soft Evil. Right? Yeah,

Answer. Yeah.

When it comes to right, And s the second is is loyalty, you know, loyalty to tribe. And what you find is that people who are more on the politically conservative side, they have a different sense of loyalty, loyalty towards sports teams. So, you find that when you in these interesting studies that you go into a a political conservative's office, and you'll find, like, a a sports poster, where in for a political liberal's office, you're very, very much less likely to find this, is what you find.

And then, of course, this what what it where it really has teeth is toward, you know, national identity. You know, where you're loyal toward national. M it's like, My country, right or wrong, which is one of the reasons you find such a strong political preponderance of one side in the military forces and the American military as opposed to the other. Not to say that one side's right or wrong, but that's just, you know, how it comes down.

M John Haidt would say that's that's a difference in moral foundations, and the last that you were really touching on here is purity. It's moral purity. And the moral purity is about in for example, in sexual matters, is very, very profound, you know? And so, you know, there's a there's a you know, I've seen a bumper sticker in San Francisco that says, Your body may be a temple, but mine is an amusement park. Right? It's funny in its way, right?

But what that is basically It's ver- it's Saying is

Very what I would call, eh, because I'm from the Bay Area, sort of, uh, old older San Francisco, like, circa 70's to now. Now, there's a there's a kind of a growing Conservative movement, somewhat tucked into the tech Community, although you find a mix of You find a Both e-

Mix of both, too. Intact within It's kind of a libertine Thing, where libertarianism and libertinism diverge, which is a really interesting boundary, too, is what you find. But that actually describes those differences, are you know so so, you know, each side will say the other side is immoral. No, they're differently moral, and you decide, you know, which you think is right. And if you tell me in a structured survey what you think is right on those particular issues, I have a very high degree of certitude in in guessing how you vote.

Actually. Now, some people are in these weird things. You can be in kind of a you can be a a political conservative, but a cultural liberal, right? Those aren't very many people, but you do find them. They tend to be the political libertarians, as a matter of fact.

It's fascinating, um, because ultimately here, we're talking about, um, drawing boundaries between different brain areas, At least that's what the neurobiologist in me thinks, but, um, I mean, obviously, politics, laws, and behavior matters a lot. It really matters because ultimately, people can say all sorts of things about what they believe, what they want to be, but we are ultimately judged on what we do. Um, And I think we probably judge ourselves on the basis of what we do, or ideally, we we would look at that.

Let's talk a little bit about

We've gone through 1 macronutrient.

Right, 1 macronutrient. What exercises do you suggest to, um, students to start to explore their own relationship between animal impulse And moral aspiration? Yeah, so one Yeah.

Of the things that I talk about is is how they understand leisure. So, leisure is what you do, and they're not compensating you for in the time that's actually free, how you understand leisure. So, and and and the the greatest The best Writer about this is Joseph Pieper, the the mid-20th century German philosopher. His most important book was Leisure: The Basis of Culture. That's his mo- his most inflecting. It's actually a long essay. It's very, very beautifully.

He says, I can tell you everything you need to know about a culture by how they actually use leisure. He doesn't wanna know what you do for money. He wants to know how you use your time when nobody's paying you. That's because he says that's Brilliant. What reflects who you actually Brilliant. That's Are, right?

Why I never liked the Oh, you can tell by the books on somebody's shelf. Cause books on somebody's shelf doesn't mean they actually read Doesn't mean Those books.

They own those books.

Firstly. And, uh, right, exactly. Right. Many people own Yeah.

My books who haven't read them.

Okay. Well, I've spent some time with it. I still need to go pour through it, uh, again, but, uh,

Can't wait right to wait

It's awesome. To read protocols, It's, uh

By the way.

Oh, thanks. If nothing else, protocols will cure insomnia. The thing is almost 600 pages long. Thank you. Um, uh, your book's awesome, and I I I spent some time with it. I wanna spend more time with it, um, in part because it marries theory with practical It does. Yeah, Steps, and and and

Yeah, it does.

Prompts, not AI prompts, but the kind of prompts To really give oneself. So, this thing about leisure is fascinating.

Yeah, leisure is really interesting. It's like that that tells you what you need To know about a culture, but also about a person, in a way. And so if you find somebody who's using the leisure time to meet animal appetites, that's one thing. If they're actually using it to for for personal betterment, for personal betterment, not career betterment, not for the compensation that actually comes from the worldly rewards. There's 4 worldly rewards: money, power, pleasure, and honor.

And if you're doing something such that it doesn't reward you in one of those areas, that actually comes from Aristotle and Aquinas, et cetera, then you're actually doing what he would call proper leisure. You're doing proper leisure toward, you know, moral aspiration, which is ultimately the most rewarding thing. That's ultimately what will take you from the world of pleasure into the world of enjoyment and give you greater happiness. That's the theory, and it's and it's it's actually b- been v- verified a lot in a lot of these ideas.

The best questions, they come from the philosophers, and then and then the structural mechanisms come from neuroscience, and then the testing of these ideas comes from the behavioral sciences, right? The the experiments, et cetera, and then, of course, applying them to your life is a different kettle of fish. And so, what he says is that there's kind of 3 areas that make proper leisure and ultimate enjoyment. Want me Please. To tell you the 3? Okay. Number 1 is deepening relationships, on purpose, man.

I mean, on purpose. And so leisure is this weekend, I'm envisioning myself not touching my phone while I'm with my wife, right? Deepening my relationship, being fully present for my wife. And and I'm gonna go someplace not because I wanna chill on the beach, but because I wanna be on the beach with the love of my life. So, deepening relationships on purpose with, you know, re a real focus on that. The 2nd is learning something you don't need to learn.

And the 3rd is actually developing yourself metaphysically. Is your spiritual, your religious life or your philosophical life is is to transcend what's going on here for for no other reason than the fact that you seek transcendence. Those are the 3 areas of proper leisure, and that's how he would say, I know that you're going from pleasure to enjoyment. That's how I know by based on what you're doing even though you don't have to.

I love this. I I'll tell you s several of the reasons why I love it. 1 is, um, people from time to time will say, What do you do for fun?

Yeah, I know.

It's a very difficult question

I know.

For me to answer because People M might Because your work Be

Is fun, by the way.

My work is so much fun. Like,

I know.

I'm reading this book about sunlight and how the dermatology world is revising their understanding about sun and skin cancer and, um, uh, and I'm loving that. I love my d I mean, I could I could list it off, but I just say those things to just get people to think about what what They enjoy doing. But the word that, you know, keeps coming up in my mind, because I have a hard time with the fun thing, because, yeah, I do other things that are purely recreational.

Is this word enrichment. And it sounds kind of, you know, uh, you know, like, somebody's trying to be, uh, an academic when they say, like like, w- what do you do for enrichment? It does it's not it's not as natural a question these days as, like, What do you do for fun? It's like, What do you do for your own enrichment? It it it reshapes the question a little Bit, 'cause the the implication is it's not just about immediate Pleasure, which fun kind of kind Of falls into the category It's about personal Of pleasure.

Yeah, like,

Excellence. Yeah.

You come out of you come out of it better, Not just for having exper- experienced the the whatever it was the activity was, but, like, there's something carried forward into other things that You do, and in a good way. And so the word enrichment, you know, feels good. So, the reason why I even though I was in the sciences as as an undergraduate, I, you know, decided to Take a course in Greek mythology, and I loved That was It, loved, loved, loved Leisure, you're correct It.

And and it

To be so.

Turns out it was neuroscience Too, right, you know? Years Later, like, we talk about, the, you know, the myth of the Cyclops is all about anger, and it has everything to do with the lack of depth perception That when you have 1 eye versus 2 eyes. And turns out, like, the Greeks, like, really understood stereopsis and depth perception. There, I couldn't help myself. In any case

That's interesting.

So, like, this notion of enrichment, and I and I love that in the example you gave of going to the beach, uh, with a friend or with a spouse or someone else you care about, it's not about your own experience of it, you said, because not just 'cause you wanna be there, but because you're actually there, and that that's a that's a physical ground for creating something else. So, it's not really about the beach. It's about what you leave the beach

That's right.

With. And it's not just memories of the beach. You actually both change as a consequence of being there. Maybe in small Ways, maybe in big ways, but you you've enriched the relationship, and so the beach becomes incidental.

When people talk about, Why don't you go out drinking? What I wanna know is, is it about the drinking, or is it the people you're drinking with? That's what it comes down to. Now, I I strongly recommend that people reconsider that decision. I mean, I've heard you, 2 drinks a week is the safe level. I've got it, Andrew, I've got Yeah. More It. Yep.

Than that's probably not a good idea Well, I mean, For most people, At I'm at 0, You know? You know, I'm Yeah, yeah, A I'm I'm a Same, yeah.

Non-drinker, um, because it's the right it's the right cadence for my life, but, you know, people who do use alcohol responsibly, I'm not like I I wish I were a person who could use alcohol responsibly. I'm not, right? So so I don't, and I don't use it at all. But, you know, when people say, I'm gonna go out drinking, I mean, I I I don't know if that's pleasure or enjoyment. I don't know if that's m animal impulse or moral aspiration.

I need more information. I need to know the reason for that. When people are talking about getting a beach house, I'm gonna get a beach house. I I I don't know whether or not that's animal impulse, to towards social comparison, toward actually, uh uh uh, a scoreboard effect, so I can actually feel like I mean something. That's all animal impulse. All it is. That's just like your troglodyte brain actually saying you're not you're not good enough unless you have a beach house like old Bill over there at the office, right?

But on the other hand, if you tell me it's like, I I gotta create bait so that my kids and grandkids are here a lot. Okay, now I'm listening. Now I'm actually paying attention. And so a lot of things that people will say, I I need a little bit more information such that I can categorize it in the right way, whether or not we're on the right side, we're on the animal impulse side of the moral au- aspiration side, whether we're on the pleasure side or the enjoyment side, whether it's actually gonna bring happiness.

I'm pausing, um, because I I have so many questions about this, but I wanna make sure we touch on the other macronutrients 'cause otherwise I I'm gonna, um I'm gonna encourage you to give a a tutorial on how to really, uh, maximize every single choice in not Just my life, the The science of enjoyment Listener's life, but Protocols. We should Yeah.

Have leisure protocols. Absolutely. Abs- Uh-huh.

You know, the we all know that, like, one of the major pillars is social connection And relationships, But the idea that leisure is is part of that N- uh, as a substrate for enriching those is obvious once we hear it, But it reframes everything. If, um, exercising with somebody, you know, it turns out to be A way you deepen the relationship, which actually has been my experience with a lot of male Friends, frankly. Like, one of the best ways to get to know somebody in my experience is to have an intellectual conversation with Them, like, really deep dive with Lifelong.

Them, or to go do something difficult. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Rob, our produ- eh my producer and close close friend, he's sitting to my left right now. I mean, one of the first things we ever did was, like, go for a run where he kicked my butt, And, by And I

The way, a Vanderbilt graduate, very Yeah. And Pleased to see A very v- Vanderbilt That. Very, very pleased to

Graduate. Yeah.

See that. Yeah.

Yeah, and, um, I don't recommend people box, but years ago, I boxed, and I'd spar on Wednesday nights. Don't recommend it. Yes, I wore headgear. Yes, I probably took some damage. I don't recommend It. Um, but you feel so close to people that you've actually Tried to hurt, and they tried to hurt you, But with rules In a it's a it's an Amazing it's very primitive, and yet you There's a bond there that it's obviously nonverbal.

It's a Lifelong bond. You see that Person the next time, and it's it, Like especially if they played fair and they hurt you, you're Like yeah. Like, We know one another. I've Seen you, you know, uh, there's a respect level. I'm Not suggesting people do this, but

You added people and memory to a strong experience, thus rendering it enjoyable And being part of happiness. In in point of fact, it wasn't strictly pleasurable, but that wasn't exactly the point. No. No, the point Yeah.

Was to s to suffer together in some Way. There's a great book by a guy named Sam Sheridan, uh, called A Fighter's Heart. He's actually A Harvard grad. I Think he was an art major there. His dad was a Navy SEAL. He's a very interesting guy, and he has this joke that, you know, uh, you know, that sparring is like a it's like a one-night stand or something, you you've, like, done something very intimate with someone you barely Know.

And so, it has both a feeling of connection, but it's also the illusion of connection. Um, so he hits it Better than I did. Don't run Yeah, and this Out and start Why the Sparring with your friends.

Well, the military, why it has it creates such, you know, bonds for life. I mean, my son's my son is a sniper, scout sniper in the U.S. Marine Corps, and these are friends for life. I mean, they're these are guys who would literally give their lives for each other, who looked out for each other in very, very dangerous situations, and they were suffering together. Now, the word compassion in Latin means to suffer together. That's what it means.

To be compassionate with somebody is to s to suffer alongside that person. That's what it comes from, and it's, you know, it has this the passion of Christ in the Christian religion is all about the suffering of Christ. That's what it comes and and for to have compassion towards somebody is to suffer with that person through that. And when you even induce that suffering, as dumb as it is, beating each other up, you know, doing getting into the octagon, and, you know, th- th- that is what you're doing is that this is this is the experience of compassion, which gets us to our a primordial need to move beyond the animal impulse into the moral space that actually makes us

quintessentially human, that makes us fundamentally different than all the other beings. It makes us the dominant species, but by the way, it also renders us the most miserable of all these species as well, which is so interesting.

There's some, uh, dark and, uh, terrible examples of this, and sometimes people will call it trauma bonding, like the sort of Sydney Nancy story, like to they like kill them kill each other at the Chelsea Hotel in, like, a drug-induced rage or but then, like, if you watch, um, that great movie with Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, right? Like Walk the Line. Like, their relationship between Johnny Cash and and, uh, June Carter, Right? Was, um, June Carter Cash, I think, was eventually her her married name.

Was it was a contentious one. It was like that it was the it was the feistiness, it was the fighting, like, that they were forged in this challenge. She was divorced at a time when divorce wasn't, um, was really frowned upon, and and she was religious, and so there was there was just a lot of contention, and then then there's this peace that they achieve in being together. But You always sense that it's like that there, that that there's this recognition that that that there's fight in them, And they've been through it.

And That's part of like, we tend to we used to kind of hold up relationships like that. Now, we like to see everything Look perfectly smooth, Right? Um, but this gets back to, like, the marriage vows, and this gets back to relationships

It's the suffering.

Of all kinds. It's the suffering. The suffering. You Right?

Suffer with. I'm gonna suffer with my wife until I take my dying breath. And it's a cause and and we have a a a And she's gonna Relationship. My Suffer with you. Yeah, God, yes.

The is there the both of you Yeah Yeah, And no, for Exactly. Sure. I To be clear. Mean, it's no Yeah.

Walk in the park being married to me, that's for sure. I mean, it's a pain, for sure, but she will. I mean, this is, like, the bond that we've actually taken for life, and the and and it's central to the the and we have great enjoyment. It's fantastic. But that enjoyment is everything to do with the fact that it's pleasurable, it's interesting, it's it's fascinating, it's funny, and it's also hard. And it's also there's a lot of suffering, and there's a lot of it's dagger drawn.

I mean, my wife is Spanish, so you have to understand that there's a high level of complexity and suffering, you know, there

And words per word density per moment. Yeah.

Right, and we have a fifty-fifty Spanish and English m marriage, which means that we can, you know, we can suffer in, you know, 2 languages. It's what it comes down to, but the truth is, you know, that's what that's what people need to expect. You know, that's what people need to expect, that it's like, Okay, let's suffer together, baby. Come on, honey, let's just let's just bring it on. And that's a beautiful thing. That's really what it means.

And people talk so much about peace and ease as the goal. I'm Not I'm hearing some of that, but I'm hearing a bunch of other things too here.

I get it. And and it's particularly true that that men they want peace at home. They do want peace at home. And and and I see that, by the way, women want peace at home too, but you're not gonna get peace all the time. You don't want peace all the time. You want a full life, fully lived. You wanna be it's like the to be fully alive. What does that mean? That means the whole range of your emotions.

You're using all the parts of your limbic system. We're wonderfully made, Andrew, and it's just like, I I want the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex to give me this sense of suffering and grief when I'm feeling social exclusion or the sense of loss. You know, I want the insula to be highly active when I have this sense of disgust of whatever it happens to be or the amygdala to be active with fear and anger, et cetera. I want that.

I want my brain to work the way it's actually supposed to. I mean, I wanna suffer, and I'm gonna if I'm actually being fully alive, and and if I'm taking the chances and I'm doing the things that I actually need to do, because that is ingrained in the full experience of what human happiness is properly understood.

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Do, man.

1. Oh, thanks. I appreciate it. 1 will be 1 chapter will be on Leisure. You've told us that how one Spends their leisure time is a is a critical window into Self, and, um and the other, uh, would be to how to suffer more In in pursuit of moral aspiration, But also how to experience pleasure in pursuit Of moral aspiration.

For sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. So we've gotten through enjoyment.

Yeah, let's uh let's talk about, uh, satisfaction. Uh, because cause it sounds similar, but it sounds, like, deeper, more pervasive, More like an I don't w- d define a satisfaction.

Yeah. So, I mean, again, and d the the definition everything is in the definitions, and and one of the problems with happiness is that everybody can they define it in different ways and et cetera. So I I try to stay out of m the linguistic wars, and It's like consciousness. No Yeah. Oh my Neuroscientist really Gosh.

Wants to talk about consciousness anymore

I know.

Because it's, like it's so circular.

Eh for sure, absolutely. It's being awareness and being aware of the fact that you're aware because you're aware or something. I what? You know?

Many billions of dollars and euros in particular. That's a joke aimed at one Swiss scientist in particular.

You've read Michael Pollan's new book,

N- I haven't read the new A World of One, but I but

Aates?

I I think the world of him. He's fantastic, Yeah.

And the new book is actually the book to read for people who are not, e- either f- you know, philosophers or neuroscientists or or even psychologists for that matter on it a World of Aates, is what it's called. I really I I've I never met him, but I love the book. I think it's absolutely fantastic. And at the end of the book, you know a lot more, and you still don't understand what consciousness is. You don't understand what it is.

It's it's a lot of things, it's many things. It's sentience, and it's feelings, and it's awareness of others, and it's awareness of yourself. And we don't know where it is in the brain, and, oh my goodness. But the truth is that that's one of the problems in in the field that I have too, which is that the the definition of terms and satisfaction is one of these things. Satisfaction is I def- define it as many people define it is the joy that you get from an accomplishment after struggle.

That's satisfaction. So the satisfaction that you got from your PhD was proportionate to the suffering that actually went into getting your PhD, in mine too, right? And they're like, Oh, man, I'm not doing that again. But it was so awesome. And, you know, I think about, you But it Know

Was so awesome. Those are those are the key words.

I know. And it's like, I talk to, you know, my kids, my kids in the military, you know, they're I mean, being a Marine is no you're not screwing around. And, you know, I saw what my kids went through. And for you know, the infantry training battalion and the scout sniper indoctrination, and my daughter is, you know an uh, she's an officer. She actually had got her 1st salute from her brother. He's 6'5, and she's 4'11, and it was awesome, you know?

Actually, it's your older brother has to salute you. It's great. Yeah, it's great.

So cool.

But, you know, it's it's y- the people talk when I say, you know, tell me the story of your success. I mean, the people make jokes about it. You remember David Koch, uh, one of the Koch brothers, you know, of of Koch Industries in Wichita, Kansas, and he was a very, very funny guy, and he used to say, People say, How did you get so rich? And I say, Well, it started when I was 12 years old, and I found an apple, and I was shining it up, and I had paid a nickel for it, and somebody offered me a dime, and I said, Well, it's a 100% profit margin.

So I went back and bought 2 apples, and I doubled my money, and I started doing this every day and every week, doubling my money and doubling my money, and you can do the math, week after week and year after year, and finally, my father died and left me $100 million.

That's good.

And the reason that that's funny is because that flips the parahippocampal gyrus and it makes you feels like that surprise, like in every joke, right? But the reason it's funny is because real satisfaction from your accomplishments comes from the struggle, not from the accolades. That's what it really comes to because you earned it, and human beings are made to earn their success. This is the reason that they'll convince themselves that when somebody is giving them absolute utter largesse that they actually earned it in some way.

If you wanna get f- to have your career destroyed as a politician, go to a bunch of senior citizens and tell them, You're getting a lot back more back from Social Security than you ever paid in. Eh, your career's over, because you basically just, you know, flicked their parahippocampal gyrus in a very unpleasant way. You kicked it, right?

So cool, yeah.

And they don't like it. And and and so so, the truth of the matter is that that he was saying that because the the answer that people are expecting is, I suffered. And I had 3 bankruptcies, and, you know, I almost lost my marriage, and I had to raid my kids' college fund, and I was afraid. You know, like, Bernie Marcus talks about The Home Depot, and they were down to their last dollar, and it was and it was a it was grim, is how he talked about it.

And and so, that's really, really important. And that's one of the reasons that satisfaction, which is so important, you know, we gotta make progress. Why? Arrival leads to frustration, but but progress toward goals is what is how we're wired. Purpose in life comes from goals and direction, and progress call toward purpose and goals. That's what purpose, for our purpose in life, actually comes from. And and so, the result of it is that we need to to have this sense that we're we're sacrificing for something, that we're doing something that, uh, that's bigger than who we are, and we're willing to give something up.

That's really one of the great secrets. It's one of the reasons also that when people hit their goals, they get so depressed. It's because there's no more progress. You know, that's why Olympic athletes are so likely to fall into a clinical depression after they win their their, you know, their gold medal. And why people are so when they win $1 billion, they're like, I guess I need another billion. I guess I need, you know, because I don't I'm not feeling it, man, because we're we're actually made for this progress, but the progress entails the struggle, and we we judge.

Your students, my students, there's no satisfaction that comes if they cheat on an exam. But if they work hard and get an A, that's very, very satisfying. And you teach your kids this, Don't eat before dinner. It's not because of nutrition. It's because you want their synaptically plastic little brains to register the fact that that if they come to dinner hungry, dinner's better. Definitely. And you're, you s you tell Junior, you know, Don't eat before dinner because it's unhealthy, but if you were being honest, you'd say, I want you to suffer.

That's why you can't have a snack.

A few years ago, I was out a lot on the Internet saying, you know, dopamine that comes without effort before it is is very pernicious. And, um, I I stand behind that, but some people, like, took the interpretation too far. It in part to an attempt to malign me, which is fine, like, You know, I'm out there.

So true.

You know? Yeah, sure. That that comes with the territory. But, the it did it sort of implied I didn't have the language for it, but now I do, thanks to you. It sort of implied that I don't believe in leisure. I don't wanna return us to the 1st macronutrient, um, in a way that distracts us, but I think this is appropriate now. So, of course, leisure is great, but I would say leisure is way better when you've been working hard.

And and so, if you've been working hard towards something that has its own intrinsic reward, you the work itself can be co- intrinsically rewarding or not. You know, There are a lot of things I did in graduate school that I absolutely loved. The process. And there were some of 'em that, like the only word for it is it sucked. It just it sucked. All-nighters, like, 2 days recording experiments, and, like, just, like, breathing all that ice-floring in the room, And the it was just it was, like, it sucked.

But it and it was awesome. But there are forms of leisure, like, on those Fridays when we had finished those experiments, I would drive out to this, um, this f- this orchard outside of Davis where I did graduate school to winter, and I would just there'd be no phones, I would just listen To music in my car, and I just felt like I felt like I'd been transported in time. And I felt connected

That's right.

To all the people who had worked a hard week and then were just listening to music In their car. And then eventually, My girlfriend and I, would drive out there. Now, I could share that experience with her, and she was a scientist and worked really, really hard too. Um, arguably, even harder than I was, uh, 'cause the experiment she was doing took took a l- yet another level of of, um, persistence that really remarkable. So, it's not that, um, saying that effort has to be there before dopamine is, like, means you're a one track, like, self-optimization junkie.

It's just an important pie slice in in being a Like, a good human being in my Opinion. So, I I, like, I so, I kinda bristle at the idea that a concept like that could be construed as as, um, anti pleasure, but in a sense, it's really like, there's something about the human mind where we want we hear sh- 1 piece of this. We hear about one pie slice, and We're gonna say, Oh, so, that means, like leisure doesn't exist for this person.

But the but what I love about your work and what you're telling us today is that it's really about the Complete pie chart. It's Not about any And it's working One moment.

With with our with our brains, working with our biology. We are built to earn our rewards. We are built to earn our success. We have no concept of what anything is worth if we don't earn our success. And and, you know, the the the reason that we wanna do things. We think that, you know, that a a a Snickers bar gives you pleasure. No No, it's actually the neurochemicals that are giving you pleasure, that are actually making you feel this pleasure.

It just happens to the circuitously through the way that the brain works. Getting your PhD didn't give you pleasure per se. There was nothing about the piece of paper. It was actually the knowledge that you had done this thing. And so, o- one of the greatest secrets to excellence and success in people's lives is the sense of earning it. And that means making peace with suffering, making peace with with pain, making peace with struggle is what it comes down to.

Now, that doesn't mean and and one of the biggest mistakes that strivers often make is that it's all struggle. You mean, you remember the the the not discredited, but complicated, uh, Walter Michel marshmallow experiments at your fine institution. And and and what they you know, the follow-up, you know, the kids who ate the marshmallow within 5 minutes, they were they had no impulse control, and they went on to actually get worse grades and worse jobs, et cetera.

And the 20% of the kids in the marshmallow experiment who were able to not eat the marshmallow, and they got the 2nd marshmallow, they did much better in life. And so, the whole point was the deferral of gratification is a big signal of how well you're actually gonna do. One of the biggest problems the strivers have, and I'm speaking to all the strivers watching us right now, is that they don't know what their marshmallow even is.

And so, they're just gonna wait their whole lives. And that's not what you've been saying. That's not what you're talking about. To never never drive out into the uh, out to winners, to never actually listen to the music, to never actually wait for the 2nd marshmallow and enjoy that 2nd marshmallow. That's a mistake, too. That's actually a huge mistake. But the whole point is we're trying to find the golden mean between earning it and not earning it.

That doing enough and struggling enough and then actually taking the reward and then starting again. This actually feeds into a lot of experiences that people have. A big part of my work is how to age well, about how to get happier as you age. And it's yeah, I mean, it's super important, and part of the reason is 'cause, man, I'm no spring chicken. And And this is me search, right? For all of us. Where I was doing me search instead of research, and so, I wanna know, how can I be happier at 60 than 50?

And now, I wanna know how I can be happy years down the road at 70 instead of 60? I wanna know how to retire. And so, when I'm giving people advice, I'm doing public education about these things because I've been trying to answer these questions for myself. Retirement is a classic case of screwing up the satisfaction part of happiness. It's like, I'm gonna work and work and work and work, I'm gonna be a miserable SOB, and then at 65, I'm gonna stop completely and just goof around.

That's a recipe for misery all the way through because it was no fun, it was all suffering without reward, and then it's all reward without suffering. That's neurophysiologically unsound, but it's also philosophically unsound. It doesn't actually make sense. So, I help people retire constantly, but I also try to help them have the best life as they do, to move through the course of their careers, do what they're actually naturally good at, that is both hard and rewarding, which changes over the course of your career.

There's a lot there's a lot of research on that, but it all gets into, How can I maintain satisfaction? The mystery comes when we actually do get the thing that we actually want, and then we find that it leaves us cold. That seems like a real tyranny. Like, Mother Nature had a trick up her sleeve, which kinda she did. I mean, you actually people, off if I can get that watch, that car, that marriage, then I'll be happy forever.

I mean, guys will say to women, you know, If you marry me, you'll make me happy forever. That's not right. You know? It doesn't matter what she says when you propose. It doesn't matter what she says on her wedding day. It's what you say to each other over the course of your entire marriage that actually will give you net net the best possible life. That's why Mick Jagger's saying, I can't get no satisfaction. He should have saying, I can't keep no satisfaction.

And that that's a whole different, as we say in Seattle, a whole 'nother problem of mystery.

Is that a Seattleism?

I guess so, I don't

Is it? Know. It's like, uh There's so many articles out there and websites and blogs that are like, The 6 things that people say on their deathbed. Nobody says, I wish I'd worked more. But I I don't know. My dad, he's in his early 80s, and he's still rocking, and he loves his work, and he loves his wife, and He loves his kids, and he Loves his coffee, and He loves his meditation, and He loves life.

He's a happy guy.

And he would say, like, Work has been a Like, he he's given he's still working, consuming ideas, giving lectures. He I think he would say, he was really glad he worked as much as he did, not more Than that. But these lists to me are not useful, whether it's about work or whether it's about anything, because the lists, to me, are really about the question. When I look back on my life, I wanna be able to say Blank.

Okay. I feel like that analysis peeled back to, like, when I finish my college degree, I wanna be able to say, Alright, That can inform some choices going forward, make good friends, got enriched myself intellectually, et cetera, et cetera. Didn't, you know, got healthier as opposed to less healthy. You could do that, but i it's not I feel like it's the wrong question. Like, it's The wrong thing. When I look back on my life, I won't like, How about now?

And the Decisions you can make today, this Week, this month, this year, 'cause that's how you end up in a place where and let's face it, most likely, those last moments, they could be very peaceful and beautiful, but you don't Know. So, we we imagine this kind of, like, before the curtains closed moment that some people get, but I don't think most people get that. I've Watched people die. It's not it's usually not like that. It's I feel like we tend to integrate our levels of satisfaction, pleasure, lack, uh, pain, etcetera on a much shorter timescale.

So, is there a better set of questions and answers that we can come up with for living in the now so that we are steering right through the more of the time that we have between now And whenever it is that that curtain

Yeah, for sure.

Falls?

There's a lot actually on this, and there's a guy it touches on a couple of different things. Now, to begin with, this really gets into the 3rd macronutrient, which is meaning, and and what what are we doing to understand the meaning of our lives? Ultimately, that knowledge is the most important macronutrient, the most philosophical, the most, eh I mean, it gets closest to the, you know, the the problem, the hard problem of consciousness, to to use Chalmers' his his his formulation on this, et cetera, et cetera.

But there's a lot that goes into it. To begin with, it's, you know, it's like, uh these are David Brooks talks about no re no relation friend, but no relation. He talks about resume versus eulogy virtues, and, you know, y- y- you it's true, you know, it's probably better if you don't imagine people at your funeral saying, He had 5,000, 000 miles on Delta. I mean, that's probably not

I have some friends who are, like, really into I I Their points on their

Know. I know.

Cars. It's a video game. It's an adult-ish.

Yeah. They're trying to count their scoreboard. And And part of the reason is because that's that's a sense of satisfaction, you know? It's it's they're trying to get that. They they wanna make progress, progress toward a goal, goals and direction, making progress. We're progress-oriented animals, which is why the scoreboard is so important. The trouble is that when once you run up the scoreboard after a certain point, I mean, you die and stay dead, and you realize that nobody actually cares.

And so, if all anybody talks about is this is this, eh, score this this trivial scoreboard, which is frequent flyer miles or m money in a bank account, right? Or or any of these other worldly things, that's a problem, and that really leads to the 1st criterion for what actually is going to lead to regret and what isn't. And that that's a deep philosophical thing that has has a lot of roots in in in classical philosophy, but but also a lot of behavioral science behind it as well.

So Aristotle, vis- vis-a-vis St. Thomas Aquinas in in the 13th century, he he asserted that we wanna be happy. Okay, like, good, fair. This is pretty good. Now, hi his definition of happiness was beatitudo, which is, uh, to the the luminescence of presence of God, right? To the relationship with God. Other people define it in different ways who are not traditionally religious, but I think everybody would agree, yeah, we wanna be happy. He said that to do that, I mean, y- you you have a tendency to to to follow your animal impulses.

So far, so good, gets back to an early part of the conversation, and he said, Your animal impulses tell you one fundamental lie. And that fundamental lie is that, eh, the the following 4 things, when they beguile you and you get them, that you'll be actually happy, and you'll be finally satisfied. You'll finally be there. Those 4 things are money, resources, power, which is influence over other people, pleasure, which also is comfort or security, right? Or honor, which means, you know, for you and me as academics, it's like, Hey, that's Andrew Huberman.

He wrote that paper in the journal of, you know, 7 dimensional, you know, disappearing manifolds, or, you know, some academic journal nobody's ever heard of, but still, academic prestige, admiration, whatever it happens to be. Those are beguiling idols that if you pursue those things as an end per se, there's nothing evil about them. They can be used for great good. But if you use them as an end per se, that's when you'll wind up in trouble.

That's the problem that we actually get. So they say, Nobody says, I wish I'd worked more. What they should say is, Nobody says, I wish I'd gotten a little bit more famous. I wish I had had, you know, a million more dollars in my 401k that I have no idea what's gonna actually happen to it. That's really what they're saying. And so, back up from that, and to for us to be happier, we need to assess whether or not we are serving these worldly idols.

And that's incredibly good behavioral science because that is an almost perfect, uh, taxonomy of the things that we that we actually chase. I have a game I play with my students at HBS. They don't know what their idol is. They don't know what it is. And and, again, I got nothing against money. I think money can be does wonderful things, jobs, opportunity, growth, taxes, philanthropy. There's nothing wrong with power, influence other people wielded in a virtuous way, pleasure.

I mean, pleasure leads to babies. So great. Uh, fame, you can refract your fame. I mean, there are lots and lots of people, I promise you, Andrew, there are lots of people pursuing their PhDs right now because of your fame, which is a beautiful and a good thing for humanity. The problem is it'll hurt you if one of these things is your primary objective, is your primary goal, and you endow it with with mythical power. So I play a game with them.

What's my idol? They don't know. They don't know what their idol is. You wanna play? I wanna play. What's my Yeah, I'm I'm a Idol?

Little scared, but let's do it.

Let's do it.

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The way to know what your idol is, and again, what Aquinas suggests and what modern social science absolutely verifies is that, again, nothing wrong with these things, but if you pursue this, this winds up being the source of your later bitterness and regret. The reason is because when you pursue these things, you're doing it at cost, and the cost is almost always love. Love is the secret to happiness. To love and be loved is what we want.

And when you pursue something that's not real, that's not alive, then you're you're sacrificing opportunities to love and be loved if you pursue it as a goal per se. But when you know what your idol is, you'll still make mistakes. You're still gonna mess up. You're still gonna be miserable a lot, but y- you'll sometimes avoid the error, and which is incredibly powerful. So, the way to Play this game is to eliminate because you always do elimination when you're trying to do these things.

It's much more robust, it's actually better. Eliminate the idol that you don't have, one by one by one. It's gonna get harder as we go along. It's gonna start off really, really easy. I can even make predictions about you about what what you would eliminate. But eliminate them until you until you've got the last one, and that's the one that's most likely to beguile you and lead you down the wrong road. So, money, resources, power, pleasure, fame, or adoration of other people.

You you're gonna get rid of one, and it's doesn't mean you don't have it. It just means you're the population average.

Get get rid of one of those.

Yeah, if you got rid of money, for example, you say, I don't care about it, that just means you're the most average American economically, which by world standards is unbelievable, and historical standards is fabulously wealthy.

So you said it was money.

Uh-huh. Power.

The power. Pleasure. And pleasure Yeah.

Can also be comfort or security, right? So yep, Right? Or and and Honor, which is prestige or fame or adoration or whatever it happens to be, or respect.

And power can be, uh, benevolent, too, Totally. These Right? Yeah. Yeah.

All are these all can be great because

Correct. Yeah.

The most virtuous happy people have these things. And they have a lot of these things.

Yeah. I don't I don't care about, uh I don't care much about, um, the notion of, like, honor and accolades. In fact, eh, just as a very Brief anecdote, it was right, ab- I've been tenured for maybe 3, 4 Years, and, uh, I was struggling financially as a professor, despite what people might think about Stanford, and I was happy to I was Eh, you know On the And so I

Loose, too.

Had a conversation with, uh, my then chair, or was it vice chair? And he said, Well, you know, at some point, you know, you'll be chair and then of the department, 'cause it's rotating chair. I'm still in this department, by the way, we'll see if I still am at the end of this conversation, what what the heck. And he said, You know, it comes with a pay increase. And I was like, Really? And I I thought about I'd seen what happened to chairs of of Departments can focus too much on the It's a totally Science.

It's totally

Meager, right?

Dif- it's a, um, punishment disguised as an honor. It's a punishment to any real scientist, but they may but they cloak it, and they say, No, this is service to the department. And that's true. Right. And And some A good chair is People and, uh, some people Valuable. Are exceptional at it. I have A close friend of mine from childhood, he's a chair, and but the chair needs certain Attributes that that, um, are important, and I and so my the response out of my mouth was, How do I make sure I never become chair?

You know? Well, so I think now it's very unlikely I'll be chair of the department. I'm not around enough. But, um, like, how do I make absolutely sure that I'm, like, not, like, like, I'll do anything, anything to not be chair. I've virtue of the fact that my dad's a scientist, and I grew up seeing a lot of scientists and hearing about a lot of luminaries of science. I heard I heard this story about Richard Feynman, the great Richard Feynman, where I apparently I don't know if this is true or not, but he was elected into the National Academy of Sciences, and I think at the inaugural dinner, he said, like to someone like, Well, what happens now?

And they go, Oh, you elect other people in. And he goes, Wait, so this is like a club where, like, we pin medals on each other? And he goes, And he goes, I quit. If it's not true, it's awesome. If It's true,

It's funny.

It's awesome. And and I knew that, true or not, what the what the story illustrates is that, like, those honors mean nothing. In fact, the most important thing about a Nobel Prize, I believe, is that it allows the winner, in addition to the value of the discovery, but it allows the winner to be a great fundraiser for other people at the university. That's it. And so, and the discovery, Obviously. But, um, anyway, so honor doesn't really, like like, I'm not interested in medals or things.

I got a PhD 'cause I needed Yeah. But One to get You've gotten To do the next Super famous as One.

A public intellectual. Is that important? Does that motivate you? Because that's, Well, You know, that's a different kettle of fish, isn't it?

I will go on record saying that, uh, fame increases your opportunities exponentially and limits your freedoms Exponentially. Um, No, it's not important to me. It's It's a it's a, um, it's a by-product of the pursuit of other things.

Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Strongly introverted, Okay.

Despite how much I talk. No, I No, I get I need a Lot of time. I

No, I get it.

Need a lot. You should see me when I'm alone.

I know. I talk to more You're probably Than I'm kidding. Um Exhausted after a podcast.

Yeah, I love my team and, but I interact with very few People on purpose. No, I, um, very I need time, um, to think, and I love people, but I I'm very, very introverted.

I got it. I got it. Okay, go so I I believe you. And so, the you'd go to the normal, the most normal. You'd be as famous as your mailman. Oh, that'd be Right? Okay. Awesome. I have Yeah.

The best like, the people that clean up my neighborhood, I live in a pretty grungy Neighborhood, and my place, I do my best to keep really nice. These people are like my heroes. I'm always bringing them a Tina, and, like, and they they're out there, like, they're literally scraping up shit from animals, people, like I love these people, and they're so like, the ones I know, they seem so

Yeah, awesome.

Hap- they're so happy, and I'm like, Man, one of maybe someday I just, like, throw on one of those orange vests and just, like, disappear Into, like, you know, I won't name a town, but, yeah. Yeah.

Don't name the town. They're pretty soon they'll find You. So, okay, Good. Good, good. That was A really easy one, in a Way. Money, power, pleasure. What's next? That means it's gonna be So A little harder because all these things are, you know, have their rewards. So, which one do you get rid of next? Pleasure. Pleasure. And then because You're pretty austere. I mean, you're Pretty you're, I mean, look, your book's called Protocols. Yeah. I Right?

Inherited my my mom's, um people I was I this kind of, like, um, observer comes on where, like, people are gonna think I'm like scripting this. Like, my mom has a save the world piece of her that's very real and very alive in me. But the thing we also share, like, a desire to to save, change, positive change. But the thing that comes alive in me that I definitely got from her is, like, if an emotion, like, gets to me, if it comes up, it's big.

Like, I lo- like, the people I love, I love so big that sometimes I think the top of my head's gonna explode, like, or that I think, like, My heart's gonna explode, and and it's and it's not comfortable. It's, uh, um, it's, uh, I've gotten better at tolerating that. Yeah, It makes me

That's right.

Emotional 'cause I I do think that, like, grief is proportional To love, and but so I don't walk out of my podcast studio where I work with my best friends, not all of them, but all of them Are my best friends. It's not but I have best friends elsewhere, too. But I walk out, I don't think, Oh, god, like, one of them might die on the road tonight. I just think I'm the luckiest Human being on the planet to work with these people, doing so, but it fills me so much Sometimes, it's a Lot it's a lot to to to tolerate.

No, I get it. So pleasure is And

Not something that I, like, I don't need more intense experiences. I'm having intense Experiences from the moment I wake Up until, uh, the moment I go to sleep.

Yeah, yeah. And you and you're And you're not a drinker. You're not a I'm not a Substance user.

Drinker. I've never been a drug Guy.

So, let me say something nice about your mom. Okay? So, the fact that you kicked out, uh, honor right from the very beginning, you know what honor, ethics, all have in common? They think that love is earned. That's what they all have in common. They usually have this common childhood where they're really, really good at something. I know you were a good student, and you were a good skateboarder, I mean, And you were good The way I At stuff.

Was wait, wait, to be fair, before the the Internet comes for me, I was not a very good skateboarder, which drove me toward academics 'Cause I kept getting hurt. I loved The sport, and I was a I was a good student, but I was not I I I've always had to work hard.

Yeah. It's very easy for for for a lot of young people, particularly the young people of of those who are of intellectuals and and excellent people to learn from their parents that they get attention and affection when they do something unusual. And the result is that their little brains register the idea that love is earned. And love isn't earned. Love is a free gift, freely given, love is a grace. And if you go through life, particularly in the most plastic part of your of your, you know, your psychological formation, thinking that love is earned, you'll surround yourself with people who will make you make you earn their love.

You'll marry somebody who who will make you earn her love, and friends who kiss up to you and say, You gotta earn my love. And the result is you'll go from person to person to person. You'll be a real honor addict. And and what what people have in common is if they have a big public life, which happened to you, that you'll crave the adoration of strangers. You'll actually crave it because That's the addiction is trying to earn the love even of strangers.

And that's a big problem. So, who actually made you whole? Probably your mom. Probably your parents, because they loved you unconditionally, and they probably still do. That's good parenting. That's That really

They they definitely did, and they and they, uh, love love us unconditionally, and they definitely do. And, um, yeah, I I get a 0 0 dopamine hit from people saying, Oh, you're so and so, can I get get a picture? It doesn't bother me. What does Fill me is when I get an email that somebody's like, I'm gonna go study neuroscience, or I did this thing, and it really, you know, I learned from so and so on your podcast, and and it's and it's enriched my life.

That feels really good. 'Cause then I feel like, okay, great, like, I'm I at least I know I'm not wasting My time, you know?

Money and money and power. And money just means resources, it's the ability to do stuff. It doesn't mean that it makes you more whole as a person, but it and and often this can the answer can come from a sense of identity. So often, a money idol will come from people who grew up rich because that's what it means to be a a normal person, they or they grew up poor because they know how bad it is when you don't have it.

So, there's all kinds of circumstances that can provoke this. And and and power is just like, I I wanna be in charge. I really, really wanna be in charge, which is not it's not it's not a vice, it's not a, you know, but but it's really what drives you. So, which one do you get rid of next? Money. Money, which is you you become the most you become economically just like your postman.

Yeah, I I'd be fine. Who probably has I mean, I'm Saying that now from a position

No, I get it.

Of financial security, so it, Like, it's I mean, look, Yeah.

There in the comments, somebody's gonna say, you know,

Easy to say.

Uh, Huberman and Brooks are, yeah, like, completely full of it Because they're, you know, right, I got it. But I believe you. Yeah, but to those Because you look you have People Been in both situations.

Definitely so, my chairman in San Diego before I moved my lab to Stanford, he had the I went to him for a salary increase. So, in that department, you could set your own salary as long as it wasn't higher than his. And I had a lot of grants.

Get him a raise.

What what what do you wanna earn? What do you wanna earn? And I told him. And he said, No, there was no parity in that department. In our in my department at Stanford, there is. You you, uh, you can't make more than someone more senior Than you, right? So, parity's important in certain departments, not in others. And, uh, I had a lot of grants. I'd like a raise of $20,000 this year, which on the f- That was That was a

A tiny bit of a Significant fraction Raise.

Of what I was making. And, um, and he said, Just remember, he, like, did the whole, like, pivot and look thing, like that, like, you're not allowed to do anymore, like like, male chairman pivots towards you, like like, sitting with his knees open And he, like, he you did the like, you Can never get away with This anymore. And he said, Just remember, you're gonna make a lot less money than you deserve. He was talking about then.

And he's like and then in the later part of your career, he's talking about himself, you're gonna make And then A lot more You deserve it Money than Because you're gonna You deserve. Have tenure, you're Yeah. He's actually Gonna become A really good guy, and Unproductive. He was absolutely right. There's Bill Mobley, he's still alive, and and, um, he's actually a meditator, he's friends with the Dalai Lama. So, hi, Bill. It's he was absolutely right. I didn't know how that was gonna happen or anything.

I didn't know it was gonna happen, but it turned out that that's true. So, if I were to average my income back across 2 1/2 decades of yeah, I I was perfectly happy To live in a lab, sp- and save up a little bit of money to be able To go snowboarding once a month in graduate school. Like, why pay rent? They have showers In the building. They're called monkey cage washers, you know, you know, like the, you know, like the you can't turn the heat on, you know, it's like they have a bathroom with a sink, like, if people thought I was crazy, right?

But then then I didn't have to commute, You know, now granted, I wasn't married with kids or anything, So I've lived both ways. I wouldn't say I've Ever been poor. I wanna I wanna be honest. Yeah. It was Yeah, mon- money's Austere. Not, like, it's great.

It's not that fun. I mean, it It's not that much you can can you Imagine, like, having a boat?

No, that would be a pain Save me from In the ass.

The boat?

No, no, I had to go on a long boat thing with my grandfather. It was it was, like, it was torturous. I wanna go out on the boat for a day. I like seeing boats on the ocean, I like scuba diving. I'm not No, I it would be nice, we're talking extremes here, but no, money is not a a big Motivator for It's nice to have, but I'll tell you, I'm sort of answering what I think will be the next question.

The best thing about having money is that I can use it to do things For other people. And that falls to me under this thing that you're calling power, but benevolent power.

But also gives you freedom, and freedom is nice.

Freedom is nice, and being able to make I'm not just making this up, to make life easier by way of money or by way of connections, Like we were talking earlier about I know a lot of people who either have Or know people with serious medical issues, and I can connect them to the Like, to the 1 of 3 people that might actually be able to help them when no one else can. Fantastic. Like, I've got story After story about I don't take credit.

I just happen to know the best people in these little Subdomains, and it doesn't always work out that way, but a Lot of times they're like, Wow. And, uh, so I'm not the the physician. I'm just the concierge. But the fact that I have this job allows me to do that, and the Degree allows me to do that. Money doesn't allow me to do That. It's just my

Gets you connections.

My network is insane. Yeah. Yeah, no, for And the ability To use it for to help other people, like and part of that is having people like you on this podcast, right? Like, so I just Rob and I sometimes talk, like, I was like, I can't believe it, like, we have, like, Fei-Fei Li on here. It's a colleague of mine at Stanford. You can't get an hour with her at Stanford, but she came here and talked For 3 hours about AI.

Like, and I can share that with the world. That, b- or share what you're teaching

That's resources.

To the world. That we're not

That's resources.

Just having this conversation on a walk, And we can share it with the World. That to me is, like, Power.

Now, power, which is the ability to to be in charge, to to be the maestro, to which is to say, I I'm I'm going to be in char- I'm not going to be subject to the authority of another person. That is, which

It's tricky.

Is which it is tricky, to be sure. Now, you you're not a vice-filled person. I mean, you're a person who's actually you're you you don't have big problems in these in this regard. But what Aquinas suggested is that when you've eliminated the others, that what you've found is something that might make you stumble, and that might distract you from the things that really matter, the the the ways that you can actually have love in your life.

And what the funny thing about it is that if I said, Okay, just t tell me your idol from the very beginning, you might not have eliminated it to that particular point.

Yeah, because I think that, uh, it's it's really an interesting exercise. Obviously, I'm doing this with you now, but I I hope people are doing this In parallel, 'cause that's what it's all about. It's not about me and The examples. No. It's it's we You know?

We we want people to know their Definitely. Idol.

Definitely. Is that the words carry, they're loaded words, money, Power, uh, honor, sounds actually cool until you really dissect It, and then you realize it's just as, uh, you know, nuanced as the But that's the Others. You know?

That's the ancient, the that That's how Aquinas would have understood, uh, Honores, right? Which is not virtuous, inherently.

Right. Right, so the words are are can be a little misleading. I will say where I've tended to stumble on the backdrop of all this before people, you know, it's not about avoiding the comments, um, in fact, please Comment and and

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You know, but a big part of it also is, you know, that, of course, I'm susceptible to, like, the lure of pleasure, the lure of I mean, like, I'm human, right? I we're All wired for it, right? The place where I've stumbled consistently is when over-resourced in a particular place, I I don't always think about what the full arc of requirement is when trying to, I believe, in a benevolent way, share resources. So it's much easier to s to, like, connect somebody to somebody, and then if it's not going well to be like, Well, that's their problem now, as opposed to really continuing to to, like, make make sure that happens, right?

So sometimes the the big learning for me has been whenever over-resourced in any area, whether it's money, energy, eh, generosity, whatever, that I need to be careful because th- the misperception is that because there's more than enough of it for me, I can just share whatever's Left. But there's a hidden cost. And it's the cost of making sure that all of that goes smoothly. That's And that's a cost that's hard to quantify. And the most Painful thing in my life nowadays is actually pulling back the places where I I live.

My team knows this. It's like, if I meet someone on the street and they are like, they tell me something and then they wanna tell me about, like, they have a question, 'cause they have an uncle who has a stroke, and, like, I know a really great person for certain kinds of stroke. I'll take their I'll give them my phone number. I've given, uh, you know, like, I'll do this whole thing, but then later, it's very hard to find the time to make sure That if they're not getting feedback that I can do the the call Or I connect the two.

And so, there's this I can't The hardest part

Fault. Yeah.

For me is I I can't do it, and I got this from my mom. She sees a homeless person on the street and when we were kids, we discovered she was putting homeless people up in hotels. Like, and we'd have people living in our garage, and, like, she can't help Herself. Now she's better about it. Um, but it it comes from a good place, She wants But

To fix stuff. She wants to fix stuff. People's She wants to yeah. Yeah. Suffering is very, Which and and

Very, very high.

And by the way, our Vices are our virtues. When I'm weak, then I'm strong, said St. Paul the Apostle. But also, when I'm strong, then I'm weak. Our strengths and weaknesses are opposite sides of the same coin. The weakness that you have, the idol that you have, is also the opposite side of the greatest virtue that you possess. So that's one of the reasons that we shouldn't beat ourselves up about this. But we need to know what it actually is because that's what will actually lead you astray a lotta the time.

Now, it's it's completely different for me. I would kick out power first, control first. The second thing I'd get rid of is pleasure. I'm a protocols guy, too. I'm very austere, right? I'm every day in the gym, and, you know, I don't I eat a s very strict diet, and okay, the third thing I would get rid of is money, resources. It's not I mean, and and again, like, let's watch the comments light up. I got it.

But what does that leave? That leaves honor. And the truth is, I want people to love me. I want people to love me. I want this. It's so look, dude, I'm 62 years old and I still want that.

It feels good. What do you It it's not You get that? Even feeling good. It's Hm?

Like, I'm not a human being, I'm a human doing. I'm trying to earn everybody's love. It's so dumb, and I recognize it now. That's power, right there, is power, because I know what I'm doing it, and and and I'm held accountable for it, because my wife does not have this, absolutely have this. She'll say, You're doing that stupid thing again. You know, why why would you marginalize the people that you actually love for the adoration of strangers, for Pete's sake?

Why would you go do that thing that that, you know, people really want you to do? You want it because you want people to appreciate you, is what it comes down to, and you know, I say you're right, is the whole point. And the whole point is also that this is what I do for a living. This is what I study, and I'm weak, and and I'm frail in this particular way. And when I resist that idol, when I fight against that idol, then I choose the better path, and I choose the space of moral aspiration.

And that space of moral aspiration is to love and be loved. That's what the space of moral aspiration. That's where it actually takes me. To love and be loved, not by the strangers, not the prestige of the crowd, not the the honor that comes from rising in the hierarchy. We're a tropical kin-based species hierarchically arranged. This the animal impulse comes from rising in our band of 30 to 500 gatherers at, you know, 250,000 years ago.

I mean, this is all biologically wired. But when I understand that, then I can actually do what the what the the, you know, that Dante in in the Inferno, um, he he talks this it's arranged around the seven deadly sins. But he also talks about the seven, um, the heavenly virtues, you know? And so so pride, humility, right? Envy, admiration. It's what it comes you know, this the the heavenly virtue of this is i is the of of the 4 are what you really want, what you truly deeply want in your soul.

To love and be loved means that you're spending your time on your faith, the love of the divine, your family, the people that are m biologically or by adoption related to you, your friends, the people that you actually choose, and serving the whole world through the way that you earn your daily bread, which is to earn your success through your work, faith, family, friends, and work. And then only when you know that, uh, that idol or or you can pivot to the thing that that your soul actually wants, the thing that you actually hunger for, and that's where real satisfaction comes in.

That's where you gain the satisfaction that you always wanted.

Can I ask you a question about the adoration piece and the applause And that kind of thing?

So embarrassed. No. Well, I'm Uh

Embarrassed. You know, I I mean, it's like, the it is it it it's a vulnerable place, like, reveal, 'cause the word is is is are tough, like, power, like, you know, Like, you know, like, Huberman admits that he is driven by, no, It's like, I wanna power I wanna help people. No. You I want like Wants to you have Yeah. Yeah. To have control over Yeah. Yeah.

What you can control. I got It. Yeah.

And, um, but so when let's say you you give a lecture to to a a group that, um, you respect them as an audience, Whoever happens to be there, like, you respect your audience, which is So important, you know? Like, you, um, and You love the And and they

Audience, actually. Yeah. And and Uh-huh. Yeah.

And you you get the feedback that you really like, you knocked it out of He's The park.

Kill it.

Yeah. You knocked it out of the park. When you go back to your room at night, are you the sort of person that thinks about, um, that and how great it feels? Or are you thinking about this one thing that you said that you wish you had done differently? Are you the, like, the one the one thing that I wish I hadn't said, kind of person, or are you the or are you, like, basking in it?

No, I'm not basking in it. I mean, I'm actually self-critical. I'm thinking about what it could be differently because it wears off and it's evanescent. It's like a summer Rain. You know, the ad the adoration of strangers feels good in the moment. I mean, in in neurochemically, it it wears off very Quickly, of course, because what you're getting is, you know, when when you look at people who are deeply addicted to success, it looks very much in in when in under brain scans to people who are actually getting mm, highly glycemic carbohydrate treats or even a hit of cocaine, you know, you win in some little Game and and, you know, and we're obviously we were talking about dopamine here,

you actually see it's the same thing, but that doesn't last. That's not supposed to last. That's supposed to wear away, and the first thing that somebody wants who's an addict is another hit, whether it's a line of cocaine or another Round of applause. So by the time I'm back in the hotel, I'm like, Yeah, I kinda, you know, did that different than last

This is true.

Time. Yeah, yeah, for sure, Actually, what it comes down to. But by the way, we gotta know what the solution is to this. And the solution to this is not to say, Okay, I'm a horrible human being, but it's actually to pivot to choosing the path of the man that I want to be, you know? I I don't give in to the animal impulse to stay under the covers past 04: 30. The man that I want to be is down in the gym by 04: 45.

Yeah, AM. Yeah, yeah. That's right. Yeah. I mean, the Awesome. The man that I want to be, um, when I'm either thinking about something I did wrong and I'm beating myself up, or, you know, wishing there was another round of applause is somebody who's deep in prayer. That's the man that I wanna be Because I do know that that, eh, my metaphysical fitness depends on this, and that's a choice that I can actually make.

I have a question about, um, who we I don't wanna say idolize, but among humans, can you name people, alive or dead, that, um, sort of embody, or collectively sort of embody who you aspire to be like, or do you not put humans in that category? Because one thing that I realize in this discussion around power, and I'm not trying to, uh, soften anything around that, is I've always had this list of people whose, like, careers and art And music and stuff I really admire, and in looking over that list, yeah, I try, and, like, sometimes see, like, the through lines.

And I can tell you that almost all of them brought together unique things based on their past, their circumstances, et cetera, to to, like, change the game. Like, to Me, that's kinda the ultimate.

Yeah, yeah. I know. It's like it's In our business,

Like yeah.

People think differently. The paradigm Yeah. It's Change, right? Yeah.

It's like to change the game. Like, Um, and it for me, this is a very important, like, time-space dilation where I can look back on the history of science and a couple of neurobiologists who were there at the beginning, Like, Ramoni Cajal, you say he changed the game 'cause he kinda, like, def made the game. He created the game, basically, slicing up brains and understanding function. But, like, but a few people came along, even in my career, in the time of, uh, my active lab career and I was like, They really changed the game.

And then I ask m so why did how and why did they change the game? And you realize that every technique is fleeting 'cause it gets replaced almost Always, right? And so you start to realize that, oh, like, it was always this unique kind of, like, artist, scientist, poet, intersection. And I realized, like, Oh, that that's like, that's the thing. There's People that are, like, outside the box because they found a unique confluence Of things. Striving for That is way more important to me Than quote unquote power.

It's like to be able to say, like, I did it, not my way, not their way, but I did it my way, period. Like, a unique expression That could only have been me Coming out of me, and I don't and so I'm not in competition with with some with some structure Or with other people. That to me is above the 4 idols that you described.

No. I get it. I completely And because Get it. Yeah.

It's like like, that's, like, winning That's what To me. You admire. And that's That's what I

The that's kind of like

Really admire.

A an ideal type. That's What it actually means to be successful. That's what it means to be a success, and that's what excellence means to you. That's the that's the Personification of excellence is actually that kind of intellectual entrepreneurship.

Yeah, it's almost like it it moves from the 'cause you said, uh, like, to Lead. I actually am not concerned With leading. I also didn't wanna Be a chairman, right? Like, I don't wanna

I get it.

Run businesses, my podcast, I Let someone else do that. He's way better at it Than I could ever be. It's what I'm interested in is being out outside of that, but still ethically, completely free. Like, yeah, I can't lead, 'cause I can't show anyone how to be me, 'cause they're them. I can show them How to I can get some ideas about how they can be them, but that's like an internal Process for them. So that to me is, like, the ultimate.

When I think about Ramoni Cajal, who's a good example, who, by the way, Is the greatest neurobiologist of all time, ever, by by huge, huge margin, also was, like, really into weightlifting. He was an artist. Like, he was an incredible like, he drew images of the brain and inferred from

Mm. Amazing. That function, from dead Yeah.

Tissue. Amazing, amazing human being. Like, he's an N of 1. But it was the confluence of his interest in physical exercise and neuroanatomy and art that made him Ramoni Cajal. No one Else can do that. Right? Like, so I don't wanna be like him

No. I get it.

Because he did it the best. Like, why Would you wanna be like him Boring? You wanna be Like

Excellent like him, but as Andrew Huberman. No, I totally To me, the unique Get it. Yeah.

Expression, and, like, you know, we're we'll I think we'll eventually get to notions of, like, not notions. We'll talk a little bit about God and faith, 'cause that's actually where you and I connected in person for The first time, was talking At Stanford about

Very openly.

Science and faith, very openly. But that to me feels I could be misinterpreting the message, but I feel like that's what God wants for all of us, whether It's and in the different domains of of life. And, of course, Adhering to ethics, like, there are rules, there are structures we have to obey within that, but our unique expression, I feel like that's why we're Here. That's I that I tell myself this anyway.

I I no, like, I I completely agree with you. And, you know, so people often ask, so, who who's your hero? I I don't know. I don't know. Um, my dad, you know? You're Um, uh

Like, Jesus, you say Jesus,

Jesus, yeah. I know. It's yeah, I It's like,

Do too. Like, a Yeah. Yeah.

What, yeah, it's I mean, it's like, who's your hero? But it's like, no. I mean, Jesus is the master, but, you know, the hero, it's like the hero. No, it's not like some sort of hero's journey, some Jungian, you know, archetype that we're talking about here. I I I struggle with that as well, but I do see people that I I deeply admire precisely for this for this reason. So, somebody I really admire, the guy in my field, the social science scientist par excellence is James Q.

Wilson. You know, James

James Q.

Q- James James Q. Wilson. Wilson, who run who won the Congressional Medal of Honor, you know, which is pretty hard to do as a social scientist for, you He's still Know, for anything. Alive. No. He died in 2012. And and he was the greatest political scientist of the 20th century. And and somebody I knew. He said sat in on my dissertation defense, which went very poorly. I mean, it was rough, man. I had 2 Nobel Prize winners in economics, and James Q.

Wilson. I was super nervous, and it was it was it was it was not a great dissertation. It got signatures. That's the scoreboard effect on that. That's all I

You passed.

Can say. But he said to me after that, you know, he had written m monumental books. He had done work. He had written a great book called The Moral Sense. That was the first time that a social scientist had actually used the tools of of empirical social science, survey-based data, to understand the the moral sensibilities, the complex moral sensibilities that they actually possess, and just quantifying it. And I read that. I said, I just wanna do that.

I wanna do that. I don't wanna be James Q. Wilson, though. I wanna be Arthur Brooks, you know, and doing it my own in my own way. And he said, you know, at my dissertation defense, he said, you know, nice try. You're gonna be fine. When you need something, give me a call. And so some years later, I was an assistant professor at Syracuse at the time. And I was I wrote my first commercial book, my first trade book.

And it was about charitable giving. And it was it was it actually changed my life because the president read it for some odd reason and talked about it. And then suddenly, I was my career was changed forever as a result of that, for for better and for worse. But when I was working on it, I wrote to James Q. Wilson, and I said, Would you read this manuscript? And he said, Sure. I sent it to him.

And he said, you know, I was gonna write a book on this, but you've written I don't have to. Um, I'll write the foreword. Awesome. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Later, he recruited me to be the president of the American Enterprise Institute, uh, because he was on the board of that. And he was on the board until he passed away, and then I spoke at his funeral. I had the honor of speaking at his funeral at the at the Memorial Chapel at Harvard where his funeral was held.

And it was just this guy, he was a a a tr- one of a kind. And I wanna be a social scientist too, but not just like him, not even studying the same things that he does, but to have this this intense curiosity, and and using the tools of science completely in the public interest. That's what I wanna do. And so that's what inspires me. So, he my hero, I I guess, but it's the admiration that I have because he was fully alive.

He was fully alive in the way that I think that it was his destiny to be in all of us. And everybody watching us, like, everybody watching us and listening to us is got their thing. That's what our destiny is to actually find that thing and be truly excellent and use it to serve. Become as excellent as you can possibly be in in being a, you know, drywall hanger, and to, you know, and and being a cook at a restaurant, and being a college professor, God forbid, being a politician in the public interest, in the private interest, and and and showing people that this is an expression of your love.

You see, i in this way, it's godly in this way. You know, in the book of Genesis, it's, you know, God created the heaven and earth. That was his gig. That was his job, and it was an expression of his love. This is what you and I can do. This is what you do. This is, by the way, y- you're popular because you're good at your job for sure, but because you want the best for everybody because this podcast is an expression of Andrew Huberman's love.

That's why it's successful. And everybody can be suc- successful in their way, can be, you know, have their own Huberman podcast. N- not in podcasting necessarily by actually having it be an expression of your love, love for humanity through the way that you're earning your daily bread. That's the quintessential expression of excellence in my view. Does that accord with yours?

Very much so. And I I, you know, it it occurs to me, like, you know, um, and maybe I'm a little bit bothered by this word power, Yeah, I You know? And Know. It's I'm striving and Almost like it's it's I'm striving for it It's the language To not be misconstrued,

Is the problem. Yeah.

But if if no no, I'm I just I mean, but but I'm I'm embracing it Today. Um, but what to me the ultimate win I realized, um, a few moments ago is, like, what I'm really trying to do in this podcast thing is I love learning, and when I find something that I think can be of use to people, Uh, I teach it because what's most satisfying to me is if people change their behavior, and it leads them to a better place, mentally, physically, or Both, right?

And then they also understand why it did that, and Then they pass it along. Like, and and there's no need for attribution in that, right? There's no need for attribution. And I hope that, like, I have a few friends who are actors, a few friends who are musicians, and I have to imagine that they love acting and playing music. And those sorts of people provide incredible enrichment to my life. I love music. I love film and as a consumer.

But, I've heard them say things like, Yeah, you know, like, you can transport somebody. You can inspire Them. And I think ultimately that's what it's about. Is like, I think that we do a at our best, I think we all wanna find the thing that we love to do, put it out there. And I think we have this sense that it w- that it could possibly ripple through Time without attribution. To me, that's like the ultimate Power, right?

Um, Totally. I wanna create And

Happiness teachers. I I want people to go be teachers because that's leverage. I Want a better world. I wanna lift people up with these ideas. I can't do it by myself.

Well, the only reason we have, like, the microphones and the cameras are here, right, is to ripple it out further. These are liter- you know, they literally Completely. Amplify things, right? So but, yeah, the the best way to amplify s amplify through space is the Internet. The Best way to amplify through time might be the Internet, but the way to really reinforce that whole thing is to teach people things, I believe, in a way that they understand the process underneath so that a little bit of It, so that they can and they pass both things along.

This is why I Think, like 'cause nowadays, like, I could go on any website and just go, What are the 10 top things that people on their deathbeds say are keys to happiness? And I can get a list. But people Choose to listen to the the mechanics of it because there's something About the human brain, I'm certain, that When we understand a bit about the mechanics that gives rise to that thing, that's our buy-in. That's the per- that's Yeah, that's The cost of admission.

And then it That's right. That's Becomes worth something. That's the effort that comes before the the Yeah. Well, The work.

You know what they say in medical school, they say the standard for medical school to become a surgeon, you need to watch one, do one, teach one. Watch one, do one, teach one. And and, you know, the truth is that the that the l- the process of learning, and, you know, there's a ton of research on how people learn. And the way that people learn best is that they have to learn how something works, then they have to actually practice it, then they actually have to teach it.

So my dad was a math professor. He was a brilliant biostatistician. I one time watched him as a math professor giving an advanced calculus lecture on 90 minutes. No notes. It was like watching Yasha Hayfetz. And I was old enough that I had admiration for him. I was in my 20s. It was before he di- He died young, but I was still in my 20s, and he was still going. And and I said, Dad, I was like, That was a virtuoso performance.

How'd you do it? He said, I've done it hundreds of times. And and he said, The process is simple. You learn actually what's happening. You look at the proof. You admire the science. And then you actually do a ton of problems, and then finally you explain it over and over and over and over again. And the same thing is true for golf, and the same thing is true for speaking Spanish, and the same thing is true for for understanding how to live a better life.

You need to know the science. The reason that I'm so fascinated with the science, and I wanna talk about it in my podcast every week, is like, it's so cool when you understand the science, then you're more likely to change your habits, and then you're more likely to spread it and share it with other people, in which case, you will be a virtuoso in it, and you'll actually keep the cycle unbroken. That's magic. That's like, it's a it's a complete miracle that that's actually how we do it.

And and we have this moment, this miraculous moment where you and I can actually talk about serious science. We're not I mean, uh, this is not a doctoral seminar at Stanford or Harvard, to be sure, but we're, we we're talking about the real thing, and people will watch this. They're like, Yeah, that's like, uh, you know, they're they're learning some things, and they're gonna go to somewhere, gonna go to PubMed, and we're gonna have show notes and and the whole thing.

And and then we talk about, Here's how you use it. Okay, so, don when you go to the beach, make sure that you're going to a beach with friends, and here's your, and your book is called Protocols for a Reason, with several hundred pages of footnotes, right? Now go share it. You know how many times people have told me, Hey, you know what? About coffee? You should wait for 90 minutes, because, you know, the ca- the caffeine molecule the caff- caffeine molecule blocks the A2A adenosine, If you drink uh uh, receptors, And and you won't get the crash at two in the afternoon.

I'm like Yeah, I know where you got that. I know where you got that. You got that from Andrew. And and without attribution, because they don't know they got it from you. But the whole point is, the world's better. The world is better. That's how we can bless the world with what we actually do, and that's so great.

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through enjoyment, satisfaction, not meaning.

Well, we have not gotten all the way Yeah, we have through meaning,

gone through meaning.

but but we, um, so, tell us more about meaning. So we got the idols. Yeah, yeah, we got So those

the idols.

Are the things to be aware of and That will block Kind of

your satisfaction, that they promise satisfaction, and they don't deliver. They won't deliver the satisfaction that you seek, but but your brain tells you that they will. That will put you on what we in in my community call the hedonic treadmill. Hedonic, j- simply means feelings, or or in your vernacular, you know, is activity of the limbic system. And and the the treadmill means that it it the he the limbic system resets, because emotions are not there to give you a nice day.

They're give you, as you know, set of signals about threats and opportunities so you can react, and they reset immediately. You always think they're gonna last forever, so you have an incentive to either avoid or approach things.

This is the, uh, you don't see it much anymore, but there used to be a a bumper sticker out there that said that, The the person who dies with the most toys wins. It's that one, Uh, which reminds me about quantification. And Can I share this with you? It's not, it's

Please do.

not, it's not my original idea, but Anilamki, Dr. Anilamki at She's been on I've Stanford.

had her on my podcast, and Yeah. She and, yeah, she's fantastic.

Yeah, she's amazing. She she told me that there's something, um, interesting, uh, one partic- particularly interesting lens on any behavior is whether the person tends to quantify that behavior very carefully and kind of covet the thing. She said, Addicts will, like, constantly check back and see how many, like, pills they have, how many bags they have, how many, um, uh, people who are obsessed, perhaps even addicted to making money, will constantly Right. Check your Check how much they portfolio every Have.

And it's

Single day.

And it's cloaked as feeling as the need to feel safe, but it has nothing to do with that. It's the limbic system is very, very good at charting profits and losses in whatever context. And that, like, making lists, quantification. He said, So we have to be very this is not a a a call to not track your sleep or something or Your HRV. But by the way, Hm. It can It can be a happen. It can, problem.

ha- it can be a Yeah. Fitness Habit. I check it once a trackers fitness Week. I check my sleep trackers, once a week against a subjective quick line Or your In my notebook. steps, or your HRV, Yeah.

Or Yeah.

Yeah. So anyway, I th- I it's something that I we don't hear often enough, even in the neurobiology, uh, crowd, that the limbic system loves to quantify. And if if we get to the extreme of quantification in a given area, we, um, of life, of behavior, of obsession it very likely, not always, but very likely, reflects that that healthy behavior has become either an obsession or a or A full-blown addiction, which I find

That's so interesting. Really interesting. Very So what are we what are We actually what is the limbic system actually trying to do with that kind of control that that's expressed through quantification?

Never experienced the drop. It's like Never A way of

experienced the drop.

It's not getting more of, like, it's it's It's the illusion It's a way of That you're getting less of More of. It's it's it's it's right. You're you're working against losses by telling yourself you have this.

It's based on loss aversion. It's loss aversion. Thank Yeah. Yeah, You. Yes. It's yeah.

Based on loss aversion. And I said, It's it's funny, she said, I said, What do you mean? She said, Oh yeah, like, people who are are, like, addicted to, like, uh, certain kinds of, uh, barbiturates or painkillers or whatever, will, like, line them up and, like, look at them and count them. There's a very pathologic, uh, instance of this, which is very tragic, too, uh, 'cause they often die, sadly. But, uh, one of the hallmark traits of, like, true anorexia is that the these reward circuits become such that the aversion of food becomes rewarding, Which is, you Know, deadly in its ultimate Form.

And people with true anorexia can look at a an an article of food, and they have a calculator that can tell you within a very small margin how many calories, how much fat, how much protein. They they note. They can they're, like, visual computers when it comes to food. And food aversion, avoiding that stuff becomes their It's like a the addiction, the the pleasure pathways get all inverted, and they off it's the most deadly of the psychiatric disorders.

That's an extreme pathological Case, but, she said, heroin addicts, who, you would think can't get their life together, Can tell you exactly How much heroin they have, and how much they they think they're gonna get, how much things are. They're often very good at math. You know, they understand, You know, and and so quantification is kind of a hallmark feature of the of these rewards these reinforcement circuitries. I thought perhaps That's that's That's an interesting point

Very interesting.

That I don't think we discuss enough. So when I think about whether something is a an addiction, a compulsion, unhealthy or healthy pursuit, like, how tightly am I quantifying every Little bit of it, and How much Thinking about

I can, yeah.

What I've done, like, you know, Yeah. How many articles Yeah.

Are on my vita? You know, whatever, You know, cause we quantify our success, and the way that we look at the you know, we're you're not trying to pat yourself on the back, you're trying to make sure that you're not falling behind. Right. Or I remember this.

Or p- followers on, you know, I do think The social media platforms have have intentionally brought this in. It's not like the number of likes can be reinforcing somewhat,

Number of followers.

But the number of followers, people are monitoring their increases and decreases, and they they kind of covet them.

Yes, absolutely. And and the rate of change of your followers, for And the media Example,

Will say like, So and so lost X number of followers or whatever. Like, it's a like a thing. So I think there's something there W- w- Around quantification.

Wait till your book comes out, wait till you experience the New York Times bestseller list for the first time. Oh, it's incredible, it's incredible. You know Ryan Holiday, right? You ever Had him on your I have not had Show? He's

Him on the show, but I'm Fantastic. He's A I'm a follower

Great. He's great.

Of his books.

And and, you know, he he one time he said to me, it's like, I was sure that I was finally gonna feel, like, completely alive. And I if I someday, he said, I'm gonna I'm gonna visualize that, I'm gonna have a number 1 New York Times bestseller. And he said, And finally, it happened. And 1 week later, I got knocked off the list by Trump's kid.

Barron? No, I I don't I don't Know. You don't wanna Know. I don't know.

Suck, but, you know, it's Like, I don't know. And And his whole point is that it's so absurd because it's completely arbitrary. The metric is arbitrary. But what you're trying to do is you're trying to quantify your sense of self. Am I enough yet? Am I good enough yet? Am I enough yet? And so, o- on the one hand, you're actually talking about the addiction, but one of the things that I see again, and again, and again, and again is that people are trying to prove to themselves that they actually are enough, and and they don't feel like they are, and the way that they earn it is actually by looking at the scoreboard.

This is what a lot of wealthy people do. This is what a lot of academics do. It's like, how many what's this? What's his h-index? You know? Like, Yeah, how high is h-index? And, oh, yeah, so-and-so is such a big shot, h-index is like 36. Joke. And nobody even knows what that means. My 1% of the people watching us, but, well, you and I know what that means.

Yeah. 'Cause it's about impact, right? Ultimately, People or they tell themselves it's that. But putting a a numerical Score on something. I mean, the brain has circuits that are pretty much hardwired for Counting. I mean, my dog isn't as smart as my assistant's dog. He has a a a herding dog. They can count. They know how Border Many people are in there. Collie. He has he has a he has a little limiter, uh, uh, They look at you Aussie shepherd.

Like they it's like you look at it, it's like, Stop judging Hi, his Me.

Dog is tracking how many in the group are here and how Many are missing. That's what makes him Really good at his job, and that's Where they get reward by making Sure they're all in the Yeah. And M, it it.

Here's the interesting part about this, Andrew. That function, that quantification function, that that the the essentializing function of how much, that's what we're really good at using the left hemisphere of our brains. That's that whole theory of hemispheric lateralization that McGilchrist brought back. When I was a kid, there was right brain, left brain. People, right brain people are artsy, and left brain people are analytical. That's not right. But the how to and what side requires hardcore quantification, and that's a fundamentally a left brain function.

The right side, that's complicated. Those are complicated problems, solvable, but complicated problems if you've got the data. The right side of the brain deals fundamentally more with complex questions, which don't have quantifiable answers. All they have is understanding. All they have is intuition. That's the why side of your brain, not the how to and what side. And that's where meaning resides, which is the last macronutrient of this. The right side of our brain, the the love side, the meaning side, the God side, the the complex side, all the problems that are most important to you, but you'll never solve.

I mean, my car is left hemisphere. My marriage is right hemisphere. I will never solve my marriage. Never. I mean, before we stepped in here, my wife texted me, Good luck. I love you. She does. Imma call her later. She might be pissed off at me. I d I don't know. I don't know. I've been married 35 years, Andrew, I don't know. I mean, she's Spanish. So, it's really complex. But you get my point,

I do.

Right? And and and but but this is the thing. And this is the this is the problem that we face. You need an integrated brain. You get 2 hemispheres for a reason, and a corpus callosum to to connect between the 2 hemispheres. You get that because you've got the the I'm gonna go to work. I'm gonna earn money. How to, and what? Why? Because I love my family. Because I wanna create value. Because I wanna do something important in the world.

Right hemisphere, left hemisphere, right hemisphere. And when that's cut off, and when you're stuck in the left hemisphere, w- for example, looking at your phone 205 times a day and taking, you know, an endless algorithm of useless information that's fed to you, then meaning will be absent, because you can only assess it on the complex side. And that's the biggest problem we face. You wanna know the biggest crisis we face in happiness? It's meaning. And that's why.

So how can somebody take steps to enrich the, um, the amount and the type of the array of meaning in, th- in their life?

You and I have done both a lot of work, um, in the world of addiction, personally and professionally, and addiction is unbelievably interesting. It's endlessly fascinating how the human brain is is is captured. And and one of the things that you find is when people finally are not in the grip of addiction, there's 3 things that have to happen. Number 1 is they get pissed. That's what all addicts do. They they they get pissed, and they rebel.

And they're like, No, no more. You ever seen, you know, in in you, you've seen people in 12-step programs, and they're like they might laugh about the crazy things that happened to them, but they finally, they're just like, No, no more. I'm not gonna put up with this anymore. You gotta get pissed, and rebel. The 2nd thing that they do is that actually they understand something about the mechanism of becoming de-addicted. And that's different in different ways.

You're addicted to gambling, you're addicted to pornography, if you're addicted to alcohol, you're addicted to drugs. There's different mechanisms for becoming de-addicted. And, of course, that's that's very complicated, and very, very hard, and it requires science, and, you know, and and clinical practice, et cetera, et cetera. But the last part is actually the most difficult, which is living in a new way. Living with you, you know? It's like, it's one of the things that alcoholics always do.

They always do this, is they move. They always move. And it's like, Dude, if I move, I'm it's like, All these losers that are around me, and I'm not gonna see any of those people, and I'm not gonna be living up upstairs from a a liquor store, and for God's sake, moving's gonna do the trick. I'm gonna change my circumstances. And of course, it never works, because the first thing that jumps out of your suitcase is you, with your alcoholic brain.

That's the problem. And so, you have to learn to live with you, is the hard thing that actually comes from this. We are deeply, deeply, deeply addicted. We're deeply technologically addicted. We're hooked into this thing. We all know this. You've talked about it, um, ad infinitum, so have I, John Hight, who's been on your show, has talked about the the affliction that we actually have. That's what we have to do. My work is fundamentally about how to rage against the machine to get pissed off enough.

And, even more than that, it's fundamentally about how to live with you, how to live differently. Cause when you live with you, then you're in the right hemisphere of your brain. And you have to have right hemispheric experiences, which, by the way, my great-grandfather, Leroy Brooks, he was in the right hemisphere all day long. He spent all day looking at a mule's butt. And he never came home and said to my great-grandmother, Honey, I had a panic attack behind a mule today.

No. And he also never said, You know, my life is so boring. And and part of the reason was because his brain wasn't broken. His brain was working the way it was actually supposed to. But that's not ordinary today. And so, what we need to do number 1 is we need to break the cycle, and then we need to live in an old-fashioned way. That's what it comes down to. That's how we find meaning in our lives.

And and breaking the cycle, by the way, I mean, we all know the research. You've had it on your show. I've taken huge amounts of knowledge from you on this. You can break the cycle of of technological addiction in your life simply by doing first hour of the day, last hour of the day, and meal times. Simply doing that. And there's tons of research that shows that the neurocognitive programming that happens in your first hour awake, the relationship programming and the sleep architecture that you wire in the last hour of your day, and then and then and then the the the neuropeptides that you'll actually elicit by eating with other people without devices, your brain your your relationship to technology

will change. But you gotta break the cycle. And there's tons of resources out there. How do you live in a different way? Well, how do people illuminate the right hemisphere of their brains? They they they ask ungooglable questions. Right? Like, Why am I alive? For what would I give my life? You know, the deep philosophical questions. And that's what philosophy and spirituality and religion bring to you is the deep questions that are fundamentally ungooglable. And that's one of the reasons that the hemispheric lateralization literature shows that when you're when you're in these spaces, that your right hemisphere is fundamentally illuminated.

You can train a gorilla to answer all kinds of questions, but not ask interesting fundamental questions. That's humanity. That's godlike, is to ask questions. It's to fall in love, is a right hemispheric experience. It's deep, deep mystery. It's like, I that's the reason it's so scary. I don't know. I can't solve this problem. Somebody answer this question for me. No, man. You gotta live it. You gotta live it for the end of your days. That's why finding your calling.

Why you and I were we have so much meaning for our work, because we're living our calling. This is what we're meant to do. That's why a calling is what you're meant to do. Has the word meaning in it. That's why worshiping God, living in the the luminescent divine, that's why trying to become a sannyasi, as the Indians would say, is so critically important. That's why beauty, moral beauty, artistic beauty, natural beauty, these are right hemispheric experiences.

And that's why suffering is so important. Because suffering helps you understand the meaning of your life per se. Suffering is where everybody's like, like, when did you know who you really, really were? How did you know what you were made of? They'll tell you something back. Oh, that week at the beach in Ibiza. No. When my mom died, I loved her. When somebody left me at the altar, when I got fired, when I lost my business, God forbid, when I lost a child, people look back on those and that was the moment.

That's when I knew. Why? Because that's when we were truly integrated. That's when we became integrated human beings. That's what it means to be fully alive, to find meaning, and ultimately, that is the path to happiness.

And let that sink in for people. That's the real wisdom. And I I I'm gonna stop you, 'cause I know you're super humble, and you're gonna pass it off onto someone else or something else, but, um, uh, you really have a gift, uh, and it c- it comes through Thank you. I Uh, cause

Mean, it means a lot coming From you.

You really do, because it, like a lot of different ways people can say important things, but sometimes things just land, and they just need to sit for a sec. So, um, I have some questions for that were prompted in your book, But I wanna make sure that we return to this notion of faith. It's not something we talk a lot about on this podcast. I've talked about it as a guest on other Yeah. You and Podcasts, but but I had a Um

Conversation about that, and I think probably by the time that this episode airs, that conversation at Stanford will also be public. And I recommend people watch it, because that was really moving for me to have that conversation with

Yeah, same.

You, to talk about your journey, and, you know, the the the I mean, it's really easy to get into the the physical fitness of life, but the metaphysical fitness of life is a different different Experience.

The real, like, eye-opener, the 1st one for me was, oh, like striving for per for perfection, it it might be perfection in quotes, might be the goal, but, like, no one attains that. No human attains that, so be careful to not ask humans for answers that are not Possible to come from human Beings, and that's where that eventually moved to a a a real a real faith, a belief in God, a, uh, a prayer practice that is, at least for me, it it's it's the most consistent feature of my life for the last, you know, almost 3 years, and it's been interesting to be in a relationship where we, like, go to church together and and to pray together or

to just pray with somebody, right? And When we parted ways at Stanford after the Veritas meeting, um, it it was so interesting 'cause we said goodbye, we did the e- usual, like, hug, like, See you soon, brother, look me up if you're ever in, and you said, I'll pray for you, and you said, And if you don't mind, pray for me too. And I've been doing that, and it's it's a t now, some people might hear this and be like, Oh, boy, here we go,

Here we are. Like, a couple of Yeah.

Scientists talking about but if one just, like, entertains the possibility that maybe humans don't have all the answers That's, like, a great vista to, like, skeptically look out. That's Kind of how I think they felt a lot, like, A couple of years ago. It's kinda like, yeah, and then, you know, over time, I've migrated very far forward. But I think that the whole thing of being, um like, faith, I realized, isn't this thing that one necessarily, especially, like, me, if you didn't grow up with A lot of it in your family, you know, Just, like, Ron and Hermione, like

I know.

And, like like, new best friend, you know, it takes some it it doesn't have

I know.

To happen that way, but I think people And if it See that

Does, it can be very brittle, by the way.

And people see baptisms and They assume, okay, like, into the water, and you just, Yeah. Born Like, embrace, right? Again. Born Right. Right, it's Again. This, like like like thick black line that You step over type thing. And and one thing that I've learned from observing you and from Conversations with you is that, like it's allowed to be gradual. You i it's okay to be Skeptical, to move forward, to Move back, to, um, to explore, to to wonder, like, because That's all the stuff of be of having a human brain, And God probably wants that for us.

And so I've I've been very, very moved by your teachings on what at Veritas that day, because for those that haven't seen it yet and and weren't there, it was very clear that there was, like, a seasoned pro in there. Arthur grew up with a lot of structured religion and prayer practice in his in his home, and I did not, and coming to this rather late, so I was, like, the newbie, and it was so much it was so liberating for me to be on a stage where in a room full of people where I was certain I was in the bottom 1% of knowledgeable about the topic, and that was what I could talk about, not knowing, right?

It was so beautiful, the humility that you actually brought to that, to say, I don't know. I don't know, man. I'm just fumbling around here. I'm just doing my best. I what what I have written on my heart is that there is something here, and I want more. And this is somebody who's you That's You've By the way, this is according to the, you know, the great sages, this is not proof of God, but it's evidence of something.

Evidence of the existence of water is thirst. Evidence of the existence of sex is sexual desire. We want and there are no anthropologically any evidence, uh, of societies that are systematically secular. On the contrary, all human societies that we've been able to ascertain have a sense of the divine, have a sense of the things that we actually cannot see, and we have an innate desire for it. Not every single person watching us, and not everybody In the exact same way.

This is something that's characteristic of humanity. Otherwise, it would be absolutely evolved out of us. And by the way, that's evidence that the divine exists, is that we want the divine. Hm. It's like It's our desire.

The desire for it's like the thirst.

Is evidence of of, uh, an appetite is evidence of the existence of its object. Eh, that's a classic philosophical argument. It's, uh, and and and again, that's not eviden- that's not evidence that God exists. That's not proof that God exists, 'cause you can't prove it. Eh, faith is is is belief in a non in something that has is fundamentally based on a non-testable hypothesis, which is super hard for you and me. Because testable hypotheses, that's where the action is.

That's how we got hired at these fancy universities, is testing testable hypotheses. And yet, the essence of living on the edge of the adventure of life as a scientist is to be in the realm of non-testable hypotheses of things that you deeply know in your heart exist. That's hardcore. That's what I want. That's the that's the bite at a life that I wanna take.

But in keeping with this analogy earlier about anorexia, uh and I'm not trying to insult anyone here, I'm also speaking about, uh, you know, many, many people who I deeply respect who will say, I don't have that craving. I don't they don't have that that wish. They don't have that thirst. And I Can imagine there are probably 2 responses to that. 1 is that, um, something has been, um, deftly slid in front of them to give them the illusion that they're getting that thing, but it's not that thing, right?

That they've Made other aspects of life their, I don't wanna say their God, but it sort of filled in that that hunger Maybe the terror Or thirst.

The terror of death, all that Ernest Becker stuff, and yeah. Yeah. Or at Right.

The other extreme, it could be a sort of, um, spiritual anorexia, right? Like, the circuits have, like, l- let's give them some Credit. Maybe the circuits have actually Modified to the point where the reward is in not wanting to satisfy the crave the craving, 'cause the brain will do this too. This is what's so weird about these r- uh, uh, reinforce I I prefer the word reinforcement to reward because It it involves A a it it's it's more, uh, accurate because it's about cl- closing a loop with desire and behavior, reset Desire, behavior.

That's the wanting, learning, Whereas Liking cycle is based Right.

On reinforcement. Right, so the Yeah.

Reinfor- like, dopamine and reinforcement always works. Dopamine and reward, it's

I got it.

Complicated. Like, you can stimulate dopamine through pain, and no and part of it is the offset of pain. That's rewarding.

This is one of the reasons that heroin addicts like the feel of the pinch of the needle going into the vein. Right? That that that part that is the pain is part of the reward per se, because it's actually reinforcing the the behavioral pattern. Exactly, your point.

If there was such a thing as a a mild spiritual anorexia, where people are actually Getting pleasure from the fact that they are not interested in any of that, and They got enough, and they feel good not knowing. You hear this, and I Wanna give, um, in fairness, I wanna acknowledge those people Exist, and they're, like, good with the fact that they don't have a relationship like a higher power relationship, a belief in God. They don't have faith.

They don't seem to have this thirst. And the lack of it almost sounds in some cases like it's rewarding to them.

There's a pride that actually comes from being none, not an N-U-N, N-O-N-E. That's a designation. It's an identity. Actually, It's who I am as a person. I don't actually need that. And and by the way, there are all v- very compelling explanations that are not consistent, or necessarily consistent with the idea that there's an all-knowing, all-loving God. I mean, Stephen Cave at Cambridge has written a re has a really beautiful book called Immortality. Have you actually seen it?

Have you read it? And and he's a philosopher. And he talks about the fact that the human brain is able to is able to cap to capture the concept of physical death. You know, you're gonna die. And you're you you're completely comfortable in that knowledge. You don't might not like it. You might not want it now, but you know you're gonna die. But your brain is incapable of of understanding nonexistence. So, you know, you're gonna die, but you can't understand nonexistence because that's goes beyond our cognitive capacities.

And so, you gotta resolve it. One way to deal with it is to not deal with it, to never think about it, stay drunk and high, or stay busy, and be a complete workaholic. Stay busy. Another way to deal with it is to create a resolution that says, I'm gonna die, but I'm I'm I'm gonna continue to exist. And so, I can understand that, and that would be a social explanation for the concept of religion. Some neurobiologists, you know, back in the day, in the 1990s and early 2000s were doing work on the God module in the brain.

And they were using these these mag- you remember those magnetic helmets that they were doing on this thing, and and what they would do is they would just stimulate the same part of the brain that's o- that's touched with people who have, you know, grand mal seizures. And, so, a lot of people who have m epileptic seizures, events, that they'll have, it'll be a mystical experience. And, you know, if you're, for example, a Catholic nun, and you have an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the protocol from the bishop is to check you for epilepsy first.

Because it might just be that you had undiagnosed epilepsy, and you had a seizure, and it made you have a mystical experience, right? Okay, I get it. You know? And then these are ways to actually say that, you know, Andrew and Arthur are going off the reservation here. They're not being good scientists. There are plenty good philosophical and neuroscientific explanations for the experience of God, per se. For me, that is uncompelling. And part of the reason that that's uncompelling for me is that I've been walking through across the earth for the last 62 years, and I can't get it out of my mind.

I'm not worried about not the problem of nonexistence. It's not that it's been resolved, but this is not a preoccupation of mine. And and quite frankly, there are lots, and lots, and lots of times that I don't feel a single, you know, a single molecule of b- emotional faith. On the contrary, but I have a strong sense of the existence of the creator, strong strong sense of the divine. Do I understand him? No. I have a very imperfect physics.

Full disclosure, I'm a Catholic, and I go to mass every day. Why do I do that? I do that beca- not because I feel it. Not even because I believe, but because I'm serving this intuition through practice. A and by the way, for everybody who's watching us, who's like, I don't know, maybe, but I don't feel it. So what? So what? You know, i if I if anybody who's married, they know that if you went according to your feelings, you will not stay married a month.

You absolutely won't. You don't even go according to your belief in the in the institution of marriage. You go you stay married because you practice marriage. And the same thing is true with your relationship with anybody, including with God. Start with practice. Occasionally, you'll believe, and very occasionally, you'll feel it. That's the way the whole relationship actually works. Andrew, that's the protocol.

I was happy to hear that the bishop has protocols.

They do. But the protocol for individual faith is not feeling, belief, practice. It's practice, belief, feeling.

Without any attempt to take away from the the depth and and, um, i and impact of what you just described, uh, I sat across this very table from, uh, Pavel Sultsulu, and he's one of, like, the most revered strength trainers in the world, right? And and he said, like and he, he said, my as you, occasionally, he'd say my name, Andrew, and then he'd, like, tell me something, and I and, you know, and he and he said, You don't weight lift, you don't work out.

He's like, You practice strength training. And it and I was like, I don't know. I sorta get it. I okay. Yeah. We can call it one thing or another. He's like, No, no, you every time you do it, you're practicing to get better at It. And that changes the whole motivational Structure is, is what he essentially was saying. And that changes your expectation of what you're gonna get out of it. It's yes, you expect to get stronger, but it's this this notion that you're always the student of yourself.

You're always the student of this process, and you never really expect to, like, conquer it, because There's always more weight you could add. Now, this is a very mechanical, physical analogy to what you're describing, But there's an important, I think, um, elegance, um, in what he said and what you said, and the similarity there, I think, is synergistic. Which is when something is a practice, we are not focused on the outcome as much as we are the process.

That's, you know, fairly straightforward. But then there's this almost, like, higher order thing that comes from that, because it predicts with near certainty that you'll continue doing It. Whereas if you're trying to obtain the like, grab the ring, get the prize, get the ribbon, lift the weight, that has a ceiling to it. And so, what you're really talking about in the the real form of the word is ascension. Like, through practice, there's, like, ascension. Alt- like, otherwise, like, there's only there's the top podium.

There's in science, there's a Nobel Prize. You know, like, there are these awards. Like, you know, but the like, those are things again that are human, like, we Set those levels. But the laws of physics have enough upper limit. But what you're talking about doesn't have an Right. That's Upper limit. Like Like, we can't say this person experienced God more than anybody Else, and that's the goal. Like, there's a there, there there is no ceiling to This this relationship.

The way that the that that in Vedic wisdom, the way that this is understood, they have a very, very elegant way of of understanding this. And and by the way, the idea of practice, no joke. You you practice your marriage. You practice in in your job. You practice friendship. And you practice your religion for precisely the same reason that you practice lifting weights, as opposed to just lifting weights. You practice it because practice, you get better.

You're the progress principle, we've already talked about that. But the way the Indians talk about that over the course of a life is this, and it's based on this empirical regularity. This is a weird thing. People tend to get more religious as they get older. And, you know, James Fowler, the sociologist, wrote about this. He says, People, you know, they wander away, and they're in their 20s, and I'm like, Yeah, come on, man. I mean, uh, uh, an all-knowing, all-loving God.

Well, explain kids getting sick and dying. And and so they're like, No. Explain suffering, right? Explain suffering. And you and I have talked about this before. You know, where we're at Stanford, we talked about the problem of pain and the problem of suffering. But when they're in their 40s, what what Fowler, uh, notices is people get more religious for the following reason. When you're in 40s, that's when you're like, Yeah, you know what? Nothing makes sense.

Actually, nothing You've done Makes sense.

Enough that you can say that.

Yeah. You can actually, uh, I I'm not going to resolve everything. You you want a closed-form solution to life all the way through your 20s and 30s. You think that there's a a kind of a calculus to it. And you realize that these are these are computational methods to everything that you're doing, which means you no. There's no closed-form solution. You gotta get a simulation going here to to just to use I'm an old, uh, operations research analyst.

So, yeah, there's no closed-form solution to anything you really care about, which is, you know, the result of it is everything's messy, and and you're much more comfortable with a cognitive dissonance or the problem of pain. And the result of it is that you actually look for something that has these transcendent properties, notwithstanding the contradictions that you actually see around you. The way that the Indians talk about that interest is as follows. Life is in 4 quarters.

This is called the theory of the ashramas, which is a Sanskrit word, you know, for for quarters of life. And the idea, life is 100 years long, and each one of these is 25 years, but y- your results may vary, right? The 1st quarter is brahmacharya, which means the student phase. Learn Learn. The 2nd is grihasta, which is the householder phase. Earn, build, earn, build, family, business.

That's up to 50.

That's up to 50. But At 50, you have a second adolescence that leads you into vanaprastha, which is a a word in Sanskrit that means it is from 2 words, vana and prastha, meaning retiring into the forest, retirement in forest, and it's a metaphor. You back into the forest, right? And and what you're doing is you're actually gradually moving away from not from doing your job, you know, not from your relationships, but from the scoreboard, from the honors of the world.

And what are you doing? You're getting into an elite training for the last quarter, which is sannyasa, which that is the to sit in the luminescence of the divine, of the godhead, of Brahman, in Hinduism is the whole idea. But that requires super elite training. You're not gonna get to 75 and and and experience time because time for people who are very religious or very spiritual, time is completely different than the success addict. Who's like, Time's running out!

Gotta do more more. Like hedonic treadmill. For people who are very, very spiritual, time becomes less forward moving and and more sort of lateral. It kinda spreads out like the delta of a river where it slows down, and you can't tell where the ocean begins and the river finishes. That's your life. That that's what it means to sit in the luminescence of God. And when death comes, it's simply it's a it's a process. It's gradual.

It's not binary at all, notwithstanding the fact that we can actually say where the electricity of the brain stops. It it is a deeply, deeply spiritual and comfortable thing, but that requires the elite training of vanaprastha. Not after 50 necessarily, because most people listening to us, if they're enlightened, it might be they're 29, or they're 36. But the the elite training of and the elite training is actually not, you know, memorizing the whole Bible. It's asking the deep questions.

Who am I? Who is God? Who created this? What is love? Am I loved? Can I love? These are the deep metaphysical questions that actually lead us to the ultimate source of that love, and the imperfect physics that is organized religion.

How are you as a 62 year old, um, exploring this 3rd phase? You described your you you go to mass every day? Is that sometimes Online or always in person?

Always in person. So, and The great thing is, you know, the Catholic Church is like Starbucks. It's like it's a it's a very uniform, available product with high quality. And, uh, and so, you know, I go with my wife at 6: 30 in the morning every when I'm home, and I'm home usually 4 days a week. I'm on the road 48 weeks a year, but usually about 3 days a week that I'm out, sometimes 4 days a week.

And, you know, I've got an app, click next mass. It's great because it's literally the same product every place in the world, 450,000 times a day. It's I'm very lucky in this way. It's So you're Like finding Up at A gym.

So you're up at 4: 30 in the Morning, and you're in the gym working out

For an hour.

6, 7 days a week.

7 days a week.

7 days a week.

7 days a week, but it's a 4 day cycle. I'm not I'm, obviously, not doing the same thing, or I'd have unbelievable Stress injuries. Push, pull, legs, yoga. Push, pull, legs, zone 2, and yoga. Yeah, super Generally.

Impressive diligence. Um, and then you're in mass, And then you move about your day. Do you have a prayer practice at the end of

I do.

Your day? I I pray the Hm.

Rosary over the course of the day. Generally speaking, I pray the Divine Office with my wife, which is an ancient monastic set of prayers that that monks have been saying since St. Benedict in the 6th century. And that's it. That's that that that punctuates the day. My wife and I, we do it on FaceTime or on the phone, um, no matter where I am, almost any place in the world, as a matter of fact, before the end of the day.

Sometimes if I'm in India, which I try to go every year, um, while I'm going to sleep, she's saying the Divine Office for for nighttime prayers at lunchtime. But we do that, and we do that together, because that's a deep, deep, right brain melding. One flesh for a married couple should be the union of the right hemispheres, where you have a deep, intuitive understanding of life itself that you can't quite explain, but you both understand. That's the satisfaction of a marriage.

So this right brain connection, you know, uh, Dr. Alan Shore, right, Who's been a guest on this Podcast, and and it I loved his book. And, um, I mean, he really emphasized the importance of this right brain connection between, especially mother and child, But also father and child. Right. Husband Uh, cause

And wife, close friends.

Yeah, that, you know, the the joining, you know, synchronizing the the rise in, like, ovulation, and then and also the troughs, right? And and And then the calm, uh, piece of no need for excitement, like, that as really the the core he was mostly talking about the psychology and neurobiology of of what real connection Is about. And it's so beautiful to hear you talk about it that in the context of of a romantic relationship.

For sure. And that's, you know, the nice thing about that, and we talk about faith, family, friends, and work, for example, the apex of family and friendship is the spousal relationship. That's the apex, because that's somebody that you've adopted as your kin. And it's the neurobiology of falling in love is so interesting, right? Starting with attraction and sex hormones, but then but then when the catecholamines get involved for for, you know, intense desire and and and anticipation of reward and the eubolience that comes from the, you know, the norepinephrine release that actually comes and wondering, is that text from her?

It's one word. Who cares? Right? And then the serotonin drop, the deep serotonin drop that actually happens when you start to ruminate on the other person, the sweet misery that comes from the rumination on the other person, which is, you know, pretty much indistinguishable neurobiologically from clinical depression, right? It's like, there's there's no serotonin in the synapse. And then last but not least is the is the these neuropeptides, like oxytocin, vasopressin, but especially, you know, that that bond you together in companionate love, which is what you actually want.

You've adopted that person. That's your person. That's your kin. That's your best friend. That's your lover. That's the person who actually shares the right hemisphere of the deep meaning of your life. And, you know, one of the beautiful things about romantic love is it helps me understand how the philosophy, and the theology, and the neuroscience, and the psychology, it's all one thing, man. It's all one thing. It all comes together in this beautiful way. That's why it's such a a powerful thing that that you and I want in our lives.

You and I need in our lives.

Anyone can really start to clearly understand how while there are wonderful technologies and things available in the world that, um, so much of what we're offered and fed and paying for with our time, especially our time, are ways to, um, short circuit the The building of these things.

For sure.

Whether it's with a romantic partner or a vocation, or with our friends, Workaholism, Or like, yeah. Alcoholism, pornography, Yeah, I All these things Mean, I'm sure

That short circuit.

You've pornography is sort of, like, it like it it literally short circuits the circuit that is supposed to be this magnificent immensely complicated, like, cocktail of things that you would call, like, a really truly amazing relationship. And it's just it tapping into one thing. I am sort of living in the land of analogies today, but not unlike when I had a guy on my uh, on this podcast, uh, Chris McCurdy, who studies plant-based, uh, medicines, but not psychedelics, and he was talking about how, you know, the problem in this country is that we learn to isolate and synthesize the most potent of the plant molecules, and they become very Addictive.

So whether they're painkillers or their cocaine or their kratom, But that in the whole plant form, these things actually had balance. And so there's a really, I think, A an appropriate, perhaps, um, uh, analogy there that, like, when we try and get one slice of this in high potency and Not have to risk anything to get it, you lose the whole thing.

When you shear something off from the whole experience, that's when it actually becomes addictive. That's when it becomes pathological. Naturally speaking, a lot of these processes, a lot of the things that we actually experience are supposed to be there. Look, I mean, we're so good at at taking at at solving a little problem and creating a major crisis. You know? Like, Oh, man. It's like, I got a headache. I need something stronger. I need something stronger.

I need something stronger. 100,000 people died of, m you know, opiate overdoses or something last year. This is what actually happens. And then there are other things that we do as well. And by the way, you know, lest we look like we're, you know, holier than thou, uh, workaholism is a classic case of this as well. It's just that that particular addiction sheared off from the natural, you know, humane and and even divine process of creating value on this earth.

When we become workaholics, the result is that people congratulate us for it. You know? Can you imagine if somebody said, Andrew, you are unbelievably good at drinking vodka. You put away two 750 milliliter bottles of that last night, and and and you were completely blacked out, but I was amazed at how adroit you are. You're talented. You're a great drinker.

This was the college I went to. Uh, you know, and I'm I wasn't a big drinker there, but people would try and impress each other with How much they could Yeah. By the time Drink.

You're our age, however, if you're doing that, people are you think that you're, you know, a pathetic drunk. But if you're our age, my age, and if I'm 62 years old, completely neglecting my family, and doing only stuff to run up the scoreboard on money and power and fame or whatever, people are gonna be like, Dude, you're good at your job. You're awesome. You know? It's like, I yeah, you know how many speeches I gave last year?

You know how many frequent flyer miles I got? People are gonna be like, That's really, really impressive. But the whole point is that sheared off from the natural human experience. It's an addictive behavior. It's dangerous. It's pathological. It's bad for us, and it leads to misery.

Yeah, I think what saved me was hearing the phrase, I don't know where I heard it was, Everyone loves a young drunk. And I was like, Oh, yeah, like, this this rolled forward does not look good.

How old were you when you stopped?

In in college. I mean and You stopped I

Really early?

No, I drank, but I I noticed early on, mostly because I was doing a lot of catch up with my academics And then got into physical fitness. And I drank in t in t basically until my early 40s, but less and less and less and

Oh, you did. Less. Yeah. And Okay.

Then finally, was just like, You just gotta No more. I'm done. Stop. I'm done. And, um

I drank more and more and more and more of Yeah. But This stuff until I probably I learned.

It was very socially, um, unacceptable and isolating to not drink. People would like Academics would be like, You're boring, but I'd kick their butt the next day at the meeting when they're all kind of Like, worked, and then I'd see them. And I I I'm not one of these people, like, things like, Oh, aesthetics and muscle and leanness are are all it, but I'd see people get tenure, and I was like, You look like

I know.

Shit. You look like you aged 25 years, and your kids are miserable. And all I hear are complaints about this and that. I'm like, You're not taking care of yourself, So I don't wanna be like That. So I figured I'm not the smartest, but I can work hard. Uh, and if I get more years, then eventually I can catch up or get ahead. But it wasn't really competitive For me. I also just didn't like how it felt.

I lucked Out. But in any case, with the work workaholism, as you're describing It, that is a very dangerous Yeah. That's One. You know?

Usually a secondary affliction based on success addiction, the addiction to success, which comes down to that reward, that reinforcement, that re you get the little reward, the the reinforcement of your goodness, the understanding of yourself. And so success addiction leads to workaholism. Success addiction, once again, is down is really downstream from, you know, earning love from the belief that I can I can be enough if I do enough. The human doing phenomenon is that actually what we see.

The beautiful thing about this is that, you know, I I you know, I talk about the behavioral science principles. We've touched on the philosophy. We've talked about the theology. You've talked so much about the mechanisms on this show, and in your writing, and in your scholarship about the neurobiology behind it, and it we're all wonderfully made. This all ties up in the same area. There's no it's not like one thing leads in one direction, everything and something else leads in another.

On the contrary, you can get there are many paths to these truths. The real pity is when we're not looking for the truth. The real pity is when we're distracting ourselves from what it actually means to be the people that we want to be, which leads us, you know, the very beginning of this conversation. What if you were the person that you wanted to be? You know, that's and the fact that we can actually do so by looking at this space of moral aspiration.

I think that's a miracle. I think that's an incredible miracle.

Before we wrap, I have 2 things. Um, first, a a question And then and then a a consideration. So I suppose both are questions 'Cause the consideration is for you. The 1st question is, for somebody listening to this conversation today, I mean, earlier we were talking about, um, exploring one's, uh, choices about and, um, relationship to leisure, and and you you touched on a number of other important points that, um, you know, people can return to 'cause we've we time stamped these, of course.

But if there's a question or a small set of questions that anyone at any age can ask themselves that can help them redirect or or just better orient in space and time and choice making, what are those? I mean, eh, or do those do those sorts of questions Is there Even exist?

A self-assessment that actually does That?

Well, just you know, like, if we were gonna if we were, you know, shared this time on an airplane, I'm like, Hey, thanks. I mean, we didn't have cell phones. I'm like, A anything else I should think about before we part ways? Like, You got any suggestions? You know, or a or a book recommend, whatever. So much of what you've said today is fodder for more questions,

Yeah. Of course.

Um, and which is which is means you've done Our work It, which is means

Is so awesome.

It means it means, yeah. It's like it's like So

Our work is like a self-licking Yeah. Nah, nah, well, Ice cream cone.

Oh, man, I haven't heard that analogy in a long time. Uh, that's how we used to describe some grants that we were about to, uh, deny. So let's not do that. So asking about how one spends leisure, understanding This relationship between, um, pleasure and moral aspiration, and and and seeking To to fuse those, because that clearly Is a powerfully great thing to do. Uh, who wouldn't want to do more of that? Are there any other sort of probe questions that we might ask ourselves, like, once a day or once a week, Um, eh, you know, while we're leaving the gym or mass Or whatever, Yeah, what is You know?

The yeah, no. And and there are certain things that, you know inventories that I actually try to take, you know, to make sure that my my hygiene is appropriate. Right? Holding yourself to high account is unbelievably important. High holding yourself to a much higher account than anybody else would hold you. That's one of the reasons that pe- the happiest people are the people who have a se a strong sense of propriety that they practice when no one sees them.

You know, that's the essence of being honest with yourself. You know? It's one thing to y- you and I know so many famous people, and and and typically they have a public persona and a private persona just because you have to separate those particular things, but the happiest of famous people, which is hard because fame is the only one of the worldly rewards you can only ever be happy in spite of, never because of, right? And That's the Yet people want Better answer to It.

What I sh- I was asked earlier, but, like, yeah, yes, opens opportunities, limits freedoms, But you nailed it. Yeah, Those people, Li-

The people who are happy in spite of being famous are the same people when you're alone at dinner with them as they are in front of 10,000 people in an arena. They are. And I know people like that. I know people like Oprah Winfrey is like that. Oprah Winfrey is the same person at the dinner table as she is in a screaming arena full of people, and she's a well integrated person and she's happy in spite of the fact that she's one of the probably 5 most famous people in the world.

You know, it's extraordinary. I mean, I just co-authored a book with her, which was an incredible learning experience about my own field by observing her life, right? But there aren't very many people like that. So the way to do that is to subject yourself to, you know, the the the queries that you would use on somebody else. You know, what are the what are the probing questions? And, you know, and protocols that we have, it's usually based on, you know, asking people a a set of questions.

You know, I could walk through What's my idol? Am I serving my idols? There are a bunch of things like that. But fundamentally, for example, we all can fall into suffering about, you know, sort of the sense of emptiness, the ennui that comes from, you know, the modern world. We all feel depressed from time to time. There is a a set of questions, why questions, that interrogates whether or not we actually are in touch with the most important macronutrient of our own happiness, which is the meaning of our lives.

Here are the 3 questions. The 3 big whys that I ask myself continuously, that I I probe, and I have to answer honestly, because being honest with myself is the essence of getting into the moral space. Number 1, Why do I think things actually happen the way that they do? And am I acting according accordance with that? And and for for for a religious person like me, if I say I think things happen the way they do because of the will of God, but I'm not acting that way, that's gonna be a source of misery.

Am I acting like I believe that the will of God exists and is true? Or am I acting like everything has to do with me, which means I'm freaking out about everything? I'm I'm I'm super stressed out about, you know, what's gonna happen tomorrow that's completely out of my control. I'm anxious all the time. I'm worrying continuously. Worry is evidence of a lack of faith. And so therefore, if I say I'm committing to my faith, it immediately extinguishes worry, right?

You shouldn't feel guilty about it. You should act according to the person that you are. Number 1, that's the coherence question for philosophers. Why do things happen the way they do? Am I acting that way? 2, Why am I doing what I'm doing? That's the purpose question. You know? That's the purpose in life. That's purpose and meaning are not the same thing. Purpose is a subcategory of meaning. Why am I doing the things that I am actually doing?

And then the next question beyond that is Is that in accord with my beliefs? Am I doing the things that I'm doing in accord with my beliefs? But why am I doing them? And and and by the way, for you and me, it might be because I'm chasing my idol. Because I want more control. Because I want more adoration of strangers. Because I want more money. Because I wanna feel good. Is that in accord with my beliefs?

And then the last part is Why does my life matter? And that's really to whom? Am I acting according to the people to whom my life actually matters? Am I acting that way? Am I am I marginalizing and, uh, by the way, Andrew, I've screwed this up so many times. When I was a CEO running this big nonprofit organization, which was so important, right? I was at one point at the very end of it, I was interviewing, um, a bunch of very famous and rich financial professionals for a book that I was starting to write that came out after I left, and and when I was already back in academia, called From Strength to Strength.

It was a book about getting happier as you get older. And this woman is like a billionaire. I mean, unbelievable, named firm, famous. And she's telling me about her achievements. I'm like, Congratulations. That's great. She says, I'm so unhappy. I said, Well, talk to me, sister. What gives? She said, My husband and I were married, but we're roommates, you know? I have adult kids with a cordial relationship. I think my employees are they do what I say, but I think they're afraid of me.

I don't think my decision making is crisp anymore. I don't love it, but I don't know what else to do. She said, I I go to the doctor, and the doctor says, You need to stop drinking and get into the gym, but I keep drinking. I don't go to the gym. She said, I when I grew up, I I went to church when I was a little girl, and I loved that. I always wanted that. And I I don't go to church, and I don't know why.

And she says, Professor, what am I supposed to do? I said, You don't need a Harvard professor. You just wrote your own prescription. G- take a souvenir in your company and step back. Go away with your husband and get to know him. Go move closer to your kids. Get into AA. Go to the gym. Go back to church. Look, it's right there. She says, I know. I know. I know. I said, So why not? Why didn't you do that?

Why don't you? And she and she was silent for a long time, and finally she said, Because I've always chosen to be special rather than happy, and that was like a knife to my heart because at that point in my life, me too. You know how many little league games I didn't go to? Look, little league games are boring. Let's be honest, but it's my kids. You know how many birthdays that I missed because I was trying to be special and successful and adored by people who don't care about me?

And and and it and and that specialness is that's that's an animal impulse that is hardwired into us. The moral aspiration is to choose happiness over that particular specialness, and that's the that's the significance question. Why does my life matter? And to whom? And am I acting in accord and responsibly with my answer to that question? That's the interrogation.

You do not disappoint Professor Arthur Brooks. That's awesome.

Thank you.

Those are great, great questions that I will be asking over and over, and, um, that, uh, everyone should consider, uh, a asking and, uh, trying to answer over and over for themselves. So, um, I'm really moved. I, uh

Thank you. You know, I've Me too. Been doing this Me too.

Podcasting thing a while now, and every once in a while, someone someone sits down here and and takes us someplace else. I I I knew you were that guy 'cause we Had shared a conversation before, But, um, you you've given me so much to think about, I'm gonna be listening to this and taking notes for for my own

No, thank you. Reasons. Um Thank you. What what an honor it is. Um, you've blessed me again and again and again and again with the scientific knowledge that you bring to it, but the soul you actually bring to the science. That's the magic formula that you actually bring to all your work.

Well, thank you. Um, I have a couple of people in my life who are about I've always had a couple of people in my life who are about 10 years older. I really Look up to I look up to you. I really do. I I admire you, and, um, it's

Thank you.

A short list, um, but it's A potent one, and I won't tell you who else is, uh, on camera, who else is on there, but, like, it's an it's it's an all-star team I aspire to to to be, um, more like you, and I

Thank you.

Say that with with, like with all the respect that you're a human and you have your struggles, but I think it's important for, uh, anyone a at a given developmental stage to a look at people who've, you know, migrated the path more or less that they're on and but are ahead of them and get some uh, some useful information. So, I appreciate that. Uh, so whether you like it or not, you're a mentor to Thank you, Me.

Um

I'm honored. Thank you. That means Really, That means a world to me, and Really. And we're we're all on the path We're on the path. We're all we all have our life is, you know, every religious tradition has pilgrimages, almost every religious tradition. Um, if you go across India, you see mendicants that are actually walking toward a holy city. In the Christian faith, we have we have 3 big pilgrimages to Jerusalem, to Rome, and to Santiago de Compostela, which is the Camino de Santiago.

And and these pilgrimages are are metaphorical for what we're actually trying to do with our lives, which is why they're they're such deeply mystical and spiritual experiences. I recommend that everybody go on a 500 mile walk across northern Spain from the from the French border to Santiago de Compostela.

You didn't do it on your knees, did I did not You?

Do it on my knees, but Alright. I've done it just the last 8 days 2 times 'cause my wife won't do more than 8 days, and I love my wife. But but the point is you have that what you realize is that that's a metaphor for your life. We're walking through this life. We're all learning. Andrew's on a pilgrimage. Arthur is on a pilgrimage. Every single person watching us is on a pilgrimage, and that means progress, but that actually means the excellence that actually comes from making progress in little ways every single day and being open to to to metaphysical truths.

So, it moves me a lot that that I could be, you know, some little stone church on the on the side of the road on your pilgrimage.

Well, you absolutely are, and in sharing this with, uh, other people, you are to them too. So, I did say I had one More question consideration. Good. So, I'm so inspired and and struck by what what you shared that I I think it would be, um worth considering, perhaps, and don't feel obligated to answer here. Maybe we just leave it a cliffhanger and then and not answer on here, or if you want, you can. People would really benefit from hearing from you more in the context of structured sets of questions.

I know you do this on your podcast, and we touched on some of that today. You have, uh, your books and so forth, but it'd be fun to explore the possibility of doing a, like, a self exploration series or, uh, w- with you at some point. And and we can figure out the venue if it's on here or it's elsewhere, but i if you'd be willing to consider, like, ways we could explore things, um, more fully, also selfishly so I can learn, uh, more from you, Likewise, But

My answer is yes. Awesome. Let's do it, man. Alright. Let's do Let's do it. Let's, like, let's get a band together. Fantastic. I Yeah.

Love it. God bless you.

God bless you too, Andrew. Thank you for all the things that you bring to me and for all the people who are watching. I'm honored to be part of this.

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