Huberman Episode (Early Release)

This just came in my feed: Huberman/Attia, on how to read scientific papers, etc. https://youtu.be/boyTPdYJArs?si=q4mjjsvP_V0Ut6Aa

Maytree

Good episode. Talking of grounding have you guys ever listened to Dave Asprey. I think he would be a good candidate for a decoding.

STEPHEN CARLTON

If anyone ever accuses you two of always agreeing with each other, you can now point them to your sushi vs the natural world debate 😂 great stuff as always 🙏

Chris Wishy

I think Chris was kind of losing it on the artificial environments, time for a sushi break. 😂

Jennydiver

Ok Jack is a delight. He's like Matt but drier and kiwi flavoured. Crossover episode please.

Artemis Green

Jack if you're in here I volunteer to be the Scottish co-host 🫡

Fraser McMillan

1:28:34 // Chris // “[Jordan Peterson] starts crying when he talks about being at a dive bar and hearing some band play a bad cover.” 🤣🤣☠️

Kevin Nyberg

Big parks vs Big sushi.

Marcin Junczys-Dowmunt

Not there yet but it’s probably oh no Ross and Carrie, here’s the first ep in their series https://ohnopodcast.com/investigations/2021/5/23/ross-and-carrie-are-down-to-earth-part-1-grounding-edition

Ryan Nesselrodt

Perhaps I am a simpleton, but isn't one reason that humans like to be near running water is because millions of years of evolution has made it such that we and other animals associate running water with a good place to get a drink? Is it the sound that lets us know hydration is close by? The sight of it? The smell? The feel? It seems that focusing just on ions misses the whole experience. I understand they want to isolate a variable, like the ions, and test it to make the scientific process rigorous, but maybe it is better to just admit that not one aspect of running water is beneficial to our moods? (Big caveat here, I am on the humanities sides of thing, so I'm out of my depth). My biggest beef with Huberman is the focus on "performance," which translates as optimization lingo and the need for supplements and other bio-hacks to perform up to some standard that usually means getting a competitive edge by being highly productive (sort of like having your baby listen to Mozart to help it get into a better college). If I am only going into nature to make me more productive/competitive, I don't think I would feel so relaxed about it. I also agree that our view of nature would be negative if we were digging irrigation canals while being surrounded by thousands of biting insects and potential encounters with snakes. Still, I find natural environments to be beneficial for my mental health. Artificial environments that use nature as a guide are more pleasing to me than ones that do not. A noisy bar for me is overstimulating and causes anxiety.

Linda Sears

Ah tah! Apologies for the misinterpretation and misattribution!

Artemis Green

And the only reason it matters if people claim immense health benefits from standing with bare feet on soil is if they're trying to sell you something, either tangibly (i.e. a workshop or supplements) or mentally (i.e. I really know my stuff and can help you with your health problems through my methods/philosophy/knowledge/pure wise-ness, etc.) Unfortunately the whole "grounding" thing has permeated all the way through to the anti-vax movement and related new age health/wellness supplement hawking grift. They might make claims that if you're practicing grounding you don't need medicine or treatment for your cancer, for example. Or that it can prevent you from serious illness. Yesterday I stood on an urban "beach" in soft light sand with bits of shells in it - and it felt soooo nice. No evidence needed to say that it had a positive effect on my mood. But if I tell my friends that now I won't get the cold or flu that's going around, then there should be ample and indisputable evidence that that is what is helping.

Suzan Lemont

That was Matt! And I think Matt was more saying if you are claiming there is a reliable and demonstrable effect then you should indeed be interested in understanding what causes it after you've proven it exists. Assuming you want to do science.

Christopher Kavanagh

I am here for all the extra waffle I can get.

JustTheWorstEver

Finished and to add on to the discussion at the end: one of the main problems of the studies Huberman cites is the lack of controls for variable isolation. With it being shown that your average person does not get enough exercise or sunlight, really these studies need to have populations that get into nature as well as those that do exercise indoors, or just walk around an urban environment for proper experimental design in order to see if any increased health benefits are due to exercise and/or UV light exposure. Similarly, you can add groups that focus only on increasing relaxation/social time to consider those factors as well. That can be prohibitively expensive, but that is not a knock on the scientific process so much as the current control of academia.

Adam Session

Chris is clearly right about sushi restaurants being better than nature. Sushi shops have air conditioning.

Anonymous ethicist, not a serial killer at all, just asking questions.

The 10% 🧇 is 90% why I subscribe

Kevin Nyberg

Only part way through so far, but the effect of UV light on circadian rhythm of most metazoans (animals) is well established, decent review in the corresponding Nobel Prize page for outlining the full human genetic pathway here: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2017/advanced-information/ . Huberman doesn't mention this though. Doesn't fit the nature narrative per se, just a chemical reaction due to sunlight. It is just fine to get that sunlight in an urban environment. UV light also is necessary in mammals for processing Vitamin D. We can't actually ingest the final form, we store a precursor in our skin and the UV light converts it to usable Vitamin D. So again UV light is necessary for healthy mammals. It is a relatively small amount, half an hour or so a day for fairer-skinned people, 45mins to an hour for darker-skinned. Again nothing to do with nature per se, but instead just a chemical reaction. Not how Huberman frames it.

Adam Session

Does anyone have a link for the Grounding podcast mentioned in this episode? I couldn't make a note at the time, after about 90 mins they mentioned another podcast which had done an exposé series on grounding

Jonathan Southern

Thanks for this decoding Matt and Chris. Despite my despair in the way Andrew Huberman does not call out his buddies for their complete bullshit, I have and still remain an avid Huberman Lab listener. Being an Alcohol and Other Drug educator in schools, I find his episodes on substances and addiction really useful. I also like that he will have guests on who will be quite blunt to Huberman when he he is not on point. The 6 part series with Andy Galpin comes to mind. Additionally, I was also impressed with the way he did not indulge Chris Williamson's sexist narrative when he was on his podcast. However, I appeciate the way you guys put a spotlight on the way Huberman will gloss over or ignore important scientific process so as not to offend any of his audience or friends. Great job boys.

LaserRange

It seems to me with gravity that it's an example where cause and effect is reasonably obvious and it's easier to exclude other variables (i.e. whether I drop something in my apartment or off a cliff it's gonna fall, whether I drop a paperweight or an anvil it's gonna fall, whether it's windy or calm it's gonna fall etc). With nature - I think Chris's point (correct me if I'm wrong Chris) is that there are too many alternative explanations and variables to identify a cause/effect relationship. Possibly, nature might be a proxy for these alternatives. If I take my laptop into a forest and work my regular job for 8 hrs, will I still experience that positive effect? If it's night, will I experience that positive effect? If it's extremely cold or extremely hot, will I experience that positive effect? Does it matter if I'm walking, sitting or doing star jumps? A forest, a beach, a desert or the top of an inactive volcano? Etc etc. He seems to be suggesting that there are enough sufficiently plausible alternatives - such as time away from mundane activities, time with others, novelty, reflective time, doing a pleasurable activitiy - that it's difficult to conclude that it's actually nature that makes us feel better, even if it often feels that way.

Artemis Green

That wouldn't be that much of an issue if you were randomly allocating people to conditions based on the same population. Like imagine everyone in the study is reasonably wealthy... so the baseline is the same then you look for differences between conditions. But absolutely there are confounds and all of Huberman's content tends to cater towards wealthy tech bro types.

Christopher Kavanagh

Stanford = Thiel. All of these guys are propped up with their industry positions and fancy studios and their plain black crispy shirts to convey messages that over time will fit a narrative arc that serves their masters.

C. J

Ah man I typed a long reply then tried to minimise it to re-read some of the preceding.... Now it's gone. In short... 1) I agree - don't mix science stylings with vibes-based analyses - pick a lane. 2) if you sell supplements your word is trash. 3) I was more getting at Chris's assertion towards the end of the pod that (I have forgotten but something like) 'you have to nominate a mechanism to have a valid point about effects' which I completely reject, see gravity. We often develop pragmatic understandings of effects many generations before we have a clue about mechanisms.

Paul Sees

Thanks for the podcast recommendations. I’ll check out the Kiwi one.

Linda Sears

I wouldn't go so far as "universal rules," but yes, that's what I'm getting at. I don't know why you seem to disagree, except that maybe you're equivocating on the word "obvious." Really, the issue is that Huberman is trying to have it both ways. Yes, it's nice to be out in nature, but he's trying to shoehorn in some scientific reasons for that niceness. The literature doesn't quite stand up on those reasons, though, and as a science communicator he should be more clear about that.

Jenson

I think it's quite obvious that spending time in nature makes me feel better... Now what? Don't we need to have universal rules, not ones that only apply when we decide to deploy them based upon our subjective beliefs about what is and isn't obvious?

Paul Sees

Strong claims require strong evidence. It's quite obvious that stepping off a cliff will result in falling because of some force we call "gravity." There's no need to investigate further except to unearth the subtleties of that force. It's far less obvious that standing on soil with bare feet will have some unspecified benefit. Evidence for a plausible mechanism of how that benefit is achieved from that configuration would strengthen the case that "grounding" has any effect. Similar things can be said of Huberman's other talking points.

Jenson

No offence but that doesn't really cut the mustard. You can't just say 'some stuff is obvious so don't need a mechanism' because it's easy to say 'it's obvious that being in wild space is good for you'. Rules or no rules - not rules when I want them and not when I don't.

Paul Sees

Misrepresenting meta-analyses and studies in general is a massive problem in general, and it seems systemic.

ROU Sentient Lichen

I think one needs a mechanism of action that can be a testable hypothesis in a dearth of empirical evidence and where many different variables obtain. Eg. Gravity is an empirical fact we all are aware of and there is no need to question whether stuff is gonna fall when we drop them. But yeah, we still don't know what the mechanism of action is for gravity.

ROU Sentient Lichen

I was surprised it wasn't mentioned, but to what extent are all of these theories regarding the benefits of nature just measuring quality of life and income level? It seems it would be easy in a low quality study to mistake the positive benefits of negative ions from living near running water, with the much more likely explanation that living in these areas usually requires a higher level of wealth.

Ben Childs

No defence of huberman, but on an epistemic level, why do we necessarily need to determine or even nominate a mechanism to acknowledge an effect and then to integrate that knowledge into our actions? Eg I don't need to understand gravity or nominate a mechanism for stuff falling to benefit from being careful around cliffs?

Paul Sees

Wait a sec, how much closer to a “sushi shop in the forest” do you want than fishing with your wife and kids in the Japanese wilderness? Chris was already living the Huberman-Kavanagh synergy dream without even knowing it!

Empty_Cognizance

Agreed. I have to get out of the urban sprawl to feel more alive. Perhaps, if the urban design was visually interesting here, I would feel better, but it is mostly six lane highways, thousands of cars, and one parking lot and big box store/fast food restaurant after another. When it is 107 degrees Fahrenheit as well, it’s basically like hell.

Linda Sears

Hmmm. I want sushi! But I do think Matt is right about there being something special about nature. I live in an appartment complex which is all about embracing biophollic design. Which means the buildings are literally draped in climbing plants and we have roof gardens and podium gardens and every appartment has a good sized balcony or courtyard with inbuilt garden boxes. And people will pay quite a bit more to live somewhere like this, compared to a standard appartment. That seems like some sort of argument for people getting a kick out of having more nature around them. I feel happier when I am surrounded by 🪴 🌿 🪴

Emma

Re: Huberman - I've just finished listening to the episode and I think it's pretty inexcusable to have science communicators describe meta-analyses as reliable information if those meta-analyses actually identify that the research studied is low quality / has a high risk of bias. Yes Matt our own ABC does this too, and I've noticed this issue pop up in the Guardian from time to time - but I reckon this means they should *all* hang their heads in shame rather than Huberman getting off the hook. Idk if journos are too busy to fact check or what's going on but it's disappointing as it's an obvious way for misinformation and half-truths to gain popular currency.

Artemis Green

So this Jack fellow sounds good and all but is he going to do a highly specific Norn Irish accent for 50-70% of the time?? And Matt are you going to go on and make him say six hundred and sixty six? Otherwise I don't know if we can trust him...

Artemis Green

Here's the ideal protocol for listening to a podcast: i) Download the podcast. MP3 mode is preferable as studies show more devices are MP3 compatible by around 40-50%. ii) Take four, maybe six deep breaths. iii) Press play. This is a vital step. Unless you press play it's likely the device won't play the MP3 at all. iv) As you listen remember to take regular breaks by pressing pause or taking the ear buds out of your ears to navigate traffic or reply to casual conversation. v) Rate the episode 5 stars. Unless you rate it 5 stars studies show that podcasters are likely to quit just before your next episode. vi) Repeat any views or opinions that made you feel good with the phrase 'science has shown' and mix the word 'protocol' in randomly.

Ymirsdreams

Come on guy’s anecdotal evidence. That’s his argument. Can’t control for the olfactory context of the woods you walked . Why science it anyway? Touch grass and don’t sell me a pill 🙂🤣

Lincoln Morris

Lwelyn

Okay, finally got a chance to get some work duhh...D'OOOOH! DAMN YOU Decoding the Gurus!!! :-D

Robert Andrews

Nope!

Christopher Kavanagh

Will you do episode on Alex Marinos?

Bertrand Sperling