How the brain works, Andrew's fascinating backstory, improving scientific literacy, and more | Andrew Huberman, Ph.D.

**Peter Attia, MD** (0:11)
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Now, without further delay, here's today's episode.
My guest this week is Andrew Huberman. Of course, many of you recognize Andrew, not because he is a professor of neurobiology at Stanford University, but rather because he is the host of the very popular Huberman Lab podcast. In fact, I would say that the Huberman Lab podcast is probably the number one podcast in the space of health, medicine, et cetera. Andrew also happens to be a very close friend and someone who I spent a lot of time talking with. And so it was really just a matter of time before we sort of formalized a discussion and did it with a microphone in front of each of us. So I have to be honest with you, going into this discussion, I had actually put something up to social media that said, hey, I'm gonna be talking with Andrew, shoot me a bunch of topics that people are interested in. And the response to that was not surprisingly overwhelming.
I think I went into this conversation with about 10 to 12 pages of notes based on topics that people wanted to talk about in addition to topics that I wanted to talk about. Unfortunately, I didn't get to one of them. I'm not even sure I looked at my page. We just went off on our own.
And basically we talk broadly about three things. We really talk about neuroanatomy and a greater understanding of how the brain works and what the rule sets are with respect to thinking and how senses work, hearing, seeing, smelling, etc. We go through some real basics here, and I think this is an important podcast because I don't make the assumption that the listener is familiar with all of these processes around the brain. And this is obviously something that Andrew is very passionate about. He talks a lot about neuroscience. And then we kind of pivot from there and talk about Andrew and his personal journey. So I think so many people are very familiar with Andrew, the expert, but there were very few podcasts out there. In fact, I can only think of one where we get any insight into Andrew's background. And because I know so much of Andrew and his background, I thought this would be a very interesting thread to pull on. And so we talk about his journey from childhood to his education, his career, and who the most important mentors in his life were. We end the conversation talking about something, admittedly briefly, but importantly, which is the crisis of scientific literacy and the importance of science communication, which is something that Andrew has done an excellent job of. So I'll tell you before we start this podcast, of course, we're planning a part two because all of the content I went into this podcast with still needs to be covered. And a few questions came up in this podcast that I didn't even get to follow up on, which is the nature of how podcasts work. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation, which will be part one of N with Andrew Huberman.
Well, Andrew, awesome to have you here again, but this is the first time we're going to sit down and do something formal about it, as opposed to just play patty cakes in the garage.

**Andrew Huberman, Ph.D.** (3:38)
Great to be here. I always enjoy seeing you. I always learn from you. And when I train with you, I always enter a new pain state, like this morning with the blood flow restriction.

**Peter Attia, MD** (3:49)
How did you enjoy that? Just, I guess for listeners, what did we do?
You had done a pretty big workout. You went for a run.

**Andrew Huberman, Ph.D.** (3:53)
I hadn't yet gone for a run. I hopped on the assault bike and was just pedaling and warming up. Then I started doing some intervals of pedaling.

**Peter Attia, MD** (3:59)
Yeah, it looked like you were working hard.

**Andrew Huberman, Ph.D.** (4:01)