We are back with a moderate-sized Decoding that focuses on Andrw Hubernman a baritone podcaster and neuroscientist at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Huberman is a broad-shouldered, big-bearded... science communicator. Extremely popular with the tech-bro optimiser set, he offers science-based 'protocols' on everything from supplement routines to whether you should avoid sunscreen(!).He's been lauded for his ability to communicate scientific topics clearly and in great depth. But has also faced criticism (including from us!) for his tendency to overhype findings from low-quality studies, promote supplements with dubious claims, avoid any positive mention of vaccines, and cheer on the efforts of his podcasting bros/heroes: Lex Fridman and Joe Rogan.In this episode, we take a look at a rather specific piece of content, just a 20-minute segment from a recent AMA on the scientific evidence for the benefits of 'grounding' and getting out into nature. We will learn all about the negative ions emanating from streams and waterfalls, the joy that can be sparked by seeing a squirrel wrestle with a nut, whether Huberman actually advocates staring into the sun, and try to solve the age-old question of what is best in life- a sushi restaurant or prancing in a forest. Also featuring: some good content recommendations (for a change!) and a review of the recent demented goings on in the gurusphere with one Jordan B. Peterson and his quest to destroy the College of Psychologists of Ontario.LinksSurfing the Discourse PodcastNullius in Verba PodcastCourt Decision on Peterson's case against the College of Psychologists of OntarioConspirituality 163: The Huberman Paradox (w/Jonathan Jarry)Oh No! With Ross & Carrie's first episode on GroundingMårtensson, B., Pettersson, A., Berglund, L., & Ekselius, L. (2015). Bright white light therapy in depression: a critical review of the evidence. Journal of Affective Disorders, 182, 1-7. Perez, V., Alexander, D. D., & Bailey, W. H. (2013). Air ions and mood outcomes: a review and meta-analysis. BMC Psychiatry, 13(1), 1-20. Wen, Y., Yan, Q., Pan, Y., Gu, X., & Liu, Y. (2019). Medical empirical research on forest bathing (Shinrin-yoku): A systematic review. Environmental health and preventive medicine, 24(1), 1-21. Critical article by Jonathan Jarry on Huberman's promotion of supplementsTime Profile of Huberman: How Podcaster Andrew Huberman Got America to Care About Science<a...
Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus, the podcast where an anthropologist and a psychologist listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer and we try to understand what they're talking about.
I'm Professor Matthew Brown.
With me is Associate Professor Chris Kavanagh.
Together we are the co-hosts of this podcast.
Hello Chris.
Yes.
Welcome to the Decoding the Gurus lab where we take a scientific approach to examining the psychological, the neurological, I was trying to hear for a scientific presentation,
you know, but I feel not.
Yes, but keep your eyes out for Guru's Pod branded supplements.
The best place to get your vitamin D. Get your unspecified green drinks.
That may give you too many doses of particular vitamins.
So this is all related to the topic of the episode today.
And today, Matt, it's a special episode in a way.
Sometimes we do these little mini bite-sized morsel decoding episodes about specific content.
Things like some short episode Sam Harris did about his meditation app.
That was nine minutes.
We've done Eric's monologues before.
We've done a whole bunch of like generally shorter content where we focus on a specific topic and that is kind of what we're doing today.
The content that we're looking at is just a 20 minute episode by Andrew Huberman.
So in that respect, it is a mini decoding, but I actually think it's going to take us a little bit of time to get through all of the clips and talk about the introduction
I think this is more...
A medium-sized episode.
And because of that, Matt, it probably justifies a little bit of an introductory segment, doesn't it, wouldn't you say?
Sure, sure.
That's right.
I don't want to make any strong claims about the length of our episodes at the outset here because it will be double or triple what we expect.
So yeah, we can do an intro.
And yeah, looking at a small amount of human content, it's a good jumping off point, isn't it?
Into, you know, a few little topics in health and wellness.
There's precedent.
We've done small pieces of content before and then went on to do longer pieces of content.
We likely will do that with Hooperman.
But we did Sam Harris, a small piece of content, and he has cropped up in Bill Maher's episode, for example.
But we're going to do a full episode on him very soon.
A recent appearance he had on Chris Williamson.
So you will get the full decoding.
It doesn't mean that's not coming.
It just means this is a more...
Yeah, yeah, that's it.
Now, Matt, well, let's say before we get to the guru sphere and what some of the characters there have been up to, I do want to give a positive shout-out to a couple of things that I consumed and enjoyed recently.
Would you be opposed to that?
I would be all for that.
I think we might have consumed and enjoyed the same content, Chris.
I don't think so.
There are some overlaps, but yes.
So the first thing is that there is a podcast called, I don't know how to pronounce this correctly, but it's Nilius Inverba.
Nilius Inverba.
It's by Daniel Lakins and Smriti Mehta.
Again, apologies to both for the pronunciation of their names, but...
If we are an academic podcast, they are a fucking academic podcast.
It's hardcore academia.
The episode titles are in Latin.
I think it's Latin.
And the topics covered are quite academic and scholarly in nature.
But don't let that put you off.
It's still entertaining.
And in particular, the recent episode was about the open science movement.
And the kind of replication crisis and the beginnings of that.
Daniel is talking about his involvement in the reproducibility project and some of the behind-the-scenes stuff there, but also his experience pre-replication crisis about things that were acceptable in the way that people approached handling data and whatnot.
And it's just a really good episode on the kind of history.
Of the replication crisis, the reactions to it, and the various quite impressive coordination efforts to examine the issue.
So I really want to recommend it.
And Daniel agreed to come on and talk about it.
And I'll try and lasso his co-host as well.
So we'll see.
But at least we will have Daniel on as a guest soon to talk about similar such issues.
Good.
Well, you're right.
I haven't listened to that content, but content that I have listened to and can recommend and that I know you have listened to and enjoyed as well is a podcast called Surfing the Discourse by...
Oh, that's a good name.
It is a good name.
I wonder where he came up with that from.
Never mind, never mind.
I mean, no, it's by Jack Treadwell.
He's a cognitive science slash philosophy PhD in New Zealand.
He cites his sources liberally.
Most of which are us, which we appreciate.
That's important.
It's very important.
He's already off to a great start.
But no, more importantly, I think I can basically endorse Jack because it would be a good option for people that want to get more Decoding the Gurus into their workday week.
That's right.
But we're just not producing enough content.
Jack...
Work will scratch your itch.
Let's see.
These first three episodes, he's looked at Andrew Tate's interview with Tucker Carlson.
He's looked at Gad Saad on Joe Rogan.
He's looked at Jordan Peterson with Russell Brand.
And I've heard the first two, and they're great.
He's got a charming New Zealand accent.
And he's got a light touch.
I like his style.
You know, he does many of the similar things we do.
He's got his own takes, though.
And, yeah, I think if you enjoy our podcast, you'd enjoy his.
Yeah, I will say that this is our first spinoff.
The first of many.
I fully endorse him.
He now needs to go and have death matches with Alexandros Marnors.
This is really the inevitable outcome.
But before he does that, I think it's fair to say that he does a lot of the...
Things that we do, but slightly more efficiently.
So, you know, his episodes are around about an hour long.
They get pretty quick into the content.
And he, you know, makes the point straightforwardly in a charitable way and moves on.
And he's playing clips and stuff as well.
So, yeah, I really like it.
The content is good.
He's got relative expertise in some of the areas, right?
Because he's familiar with cognitive science and whatnot.
Yeah, just it's good.
He's got a funny accent.
It can all be recommended.
Well, I said to him on Reddit, if he ever finds a co-host with a Scottish accent, then we could be in serious trouble, Chris.
We've got competition then.
But until then, mate, we're safe on our Guru's Pod throne.
And now we've endorsed you, I just have a bad feeling that the next episode will be the problem with Jewish people or something like that.
Yeah, that's something.
If that happens, I know where you work and study, and I will find you.
Do you?
Okay, okay.
Well, no, I don't, but I feel certain there aren't that many universities in New Zealand.
In New Zealand, there's not many people there, Chris.
No.
I just ask around.
I'll find you.
This is true.
And, like, New Zealand is very much the inferior cousin of Australia.
Scotland, the inferior cousin of Ireland.
So if you can find a Scottish host, then that would be perfect.
That'd be perfect.
So I agree.
Good work, Jack.
And yeah, great title.
Unbelievable.
That's the best way I like to broadcast.
Oh, and actually, I did want to mention this as well, Matt, because occasionally people, whenever we mention stuff about woke...
Our social justice things, they say, what's an example of work overreach?
What do you mean?
So I just want to also quickly mention, Josh Zeps has a podcast, Uncomfortable Conversations.
I sometimes disagree with the kind of perspective Josh takes on things.
You can hear us talk to him directly on the previous episode, and we covered interactions with Joe Rogan and his promotion of anti-vaccine stuff.
But Josh recently...
Released an episode where he had his colleague from the radio show on to talk, who accused him online of being a racist.
They accused him online and accused him on the podcast and various other things.
And it's a heated exchange at various times.
And yeah, I just would say that if you want an example of the kind of perspective that I would see as illustrating.
The kind of modern inverted air quotes, woke approach.
Go there.
Go listen to that podcast.
I find myself largely in agreement with Josh in that conversation.
But you might find yourself not.
But if you want to see an example, there you go.
That recent episode.
Okay.
So instructive of making the distinction.
Yeah, well, that's good.
Josh's podcast is living up to its name, Uncomfortable Conversation.
He's Aussie, right?
So that's why it popped into my mind, that whole...
Oh, very much so.
Yes.
So that's that.
Now, Matt, those are good things, or interesting things.
And the guru sphere, you know, we sometimes look at it, we gaze into its misty, incandescent glow, and try to fathom what the fuck is going on.
And there's always too much.
There's too many gurus doing too many demented things to cover.
We just have to pick out the choice morsels.
Throw our line into the depths and just see what nibbles we get.
Pull a couple of the strange fish and inspect them.
So, what have you got for us?
Well, a reliable nibble this week from one Jordan B. Peterson.
There's a couple of things that he's been up to.
Famously sane Canadian psychologist.
Yes.
So, one of the things is...
That he is currently reeling against the College of Psychologists of Ontario because they sought to rebuke him, or at least in response to complaints received about his conduct, they wanted him to attend training about how to conduct yourself online.
Now, that was never going to go down well, but it's fair to say Peterson took it particularly badly.
He went on various rants.
He's already released podcasts about it months ago.
And it is presented as Marxist education camps.
He's being sentenced to have his mind wiped and his opinion not allowed to state any opinion.
And there's various intricacies that can be discussed about the validity of some of the complaints because some of it is people taking objection to, you know, like tweets that he's made which are Highly political in nature.
And the question is, is that something that a professional board of psychologists should really be policing?
This is how Jordan has presented all of it.
But there are other stuff where it appears he's carelessly commenting on psychological issues, specifically around trans topics and that kind of thing.
So in any case, he presented it as a witch hunt to destroy him.
And he sued the college.
He actually took them to court to say that they don't have the right to do this because it's infringing on his free speech.
And the judge kicked out the case and said he needs to pay the costs of the college because they're perfectly within the right to suggest that a member, in response to a complaint, goes on a training course.
So inevitably...
Jordan will appeal and whatnot.
But that's the first thing that's happened.
So he got a judgment of $25,000 Canadian dollars against him.
And he was unhappy with that.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, you know, Jordan Peterson, of course, is somebody who has a great big cancel me sticker on his back.
He yearns for it.
He looks for it.
He loves it.
You know, I've got friends online who, you know, are more in the centristy, liberal, free speech.
And without endorsing Jordan Peterson, they would argue that it is an infringement on free speech.
I mean, I don't know about that, though.
I mean, I feel like it's a college, right, of psychologists, a registration board for a professional body.
They get to choose what criteria they want amongst them.
They're professionals who are going to be registered with them.
Presumably, if somebody is tweeting like a demented loon, which, you know, that's a charitable way to describe Jordan Peterson's tweets, then, you know, they're within their rights to request that he please stop or that it might cause issues with his registration.
I mean, I think it's analogous to, like, if you had a college of epidemiologists or surgeons or whatever, and they're out there on Twitter tweeting demented stuff about the New World Order Vaccines and so on.
Then, you know, if I was running that college, I wouldn't want that person in it, right?
Yeah, well, so the penalty.
Jordan Peterson isn't going to be a clinical psychologist.
He's never going to have a practice again.
He's a multi-millionaire.
He's a political pundit.
That's been his career for, I don't know, probably approaching the better part of a decade now.
Of course, yeah.
Being deregistered by the Ontario Board of Psychologists has...
No impact on Jordan Peterson whatsoever, except to boost his grievance narrative, right?
Yeah, and he often mentions that he has that credential.
So it's actually relevant because if you're citing the credential and using it to reinforce that your opinions are more valid because of your professional status, then again, it cuts both ways, right?
Then the professional board...
He has more concern about your opinions.
And I believe Jordan Peterson had, and he said, this includes expert editorial teams, a very wide network of expert thinkers from the world of theology, psychology, politics, and business.
All of them, they're working to make sure he doesn't say anything.
He chooses his words very carefully.
Now, if you go and look at Peterson's feed for today, you would just see an unrelenting stream of...
Outrage, clickbait, haikus, because he's taken to writing in just like a random poetry thing.
There was a period where almost all of his tweets were accompanied by images of the Joker, right?
So it's just so the two things are absolutely in contrast.
Peterson is not careful.
He clearly does not have people monitoring, or he does.
They are people with extremely low standards.
And just one example of this is that he recently got into a tiff with the journalist Mehdi Hassan and he explained to him that Mehdi Hassan is not, what did he say, he's Caucasian.
And so Mary Hassan being somebody of Asian descent, Indian descent, and self-identifying as Brown.
And Peterson said that, you know, his tan is the same as his Jordan's.
And then he went on to cite an article of 19th century racial classifications, which, you know, had Indians down as a subgroup of Caucasoid or whatever.
But just like that choice to get into debate with someone.
Over their ethnicity, and I'm presenting you, the most pale, gaunt, white Canadian professor, is essentially as damned as Marie Hassan.
It just beggars belief.
Yeah, it didn't make a lot of sense, that tweet.
I think I know what Jordan was trying to say, but even that was stupid.
Yeah, well, I think the Council of Elders that is overseeing his tweets need to lift their game.
Maybe they're just tired.
You know, this is too much work for them.
He had that tweet recently about the 1100 eminent scientists, right, saying there's no climate emergency.
Again, Matt, bottom of the barrel, clickbait, absolute rubbish, basically.
Yeah, one of the things, Chris, that people say is that, oh, you know, Jordan Peterson is very smart, but, you know, he's becoming mentally ill or he's got these problems or whatever.
But it's always prefaced by this acknowledgement that they're very smart.
And just going by what they say and write, it's not something that like if one of my mutuals on Twitter fell for like obvious propaganda clickbait, like that 1,100 eminent scientists say that climate change is a hoax, right?
You don't have to be very smart to spot that something smells fishy with that.
And it takes literally 10 seconds to check and see that it's complete bullshit.
Absolute bullshit.
So, yeah.
I just, I don't know.
And it's in line with what he's done before.
He's just become more blatant about it, but he used to always share occasional articles about this is the coldest winter yet and say, oh, I've read 200 books on climate change, so I know that nobody knows anything about climate and so on.
He just regurgitates.
Yeah, and not even good ones, like clickbait ones, like ones that are just bottom of the barrel.
So, yeah, whoever's overseeing his tweets need to lift their game.
Michaela and Jonathan Pajot, come on, try harder, guys.
He needs a bit more oversight.
Otherwise, he's going to lose his registration.
And the last thing that he's been up to, Matt, that I'll mention, it's not the last thing he's done, he does too much, but he went to the Republican debate, the candidates for the...
Presidential nominees for the Republican Party in America.
And at that event, he chose to wear an outfit that was fashioned from his profile picture on Twitter, which is a picture that he drew, a kind of abstract art thing that he drew as the cover of one of his books as well.
But so he had a jacket made out of a picture that he drew, and then it has his signature.
Emblazoned over various parts of it.
And just somebody who complains about people being self-indulgent and prideful and all this kind of stuff and wallowing in self-pity.
He's just such a walking contradiction, such an egocentric nightmare.
Well, not just egocentric, Chris, but he'd be the first person to retweet angrily some picture of some...
Young male model wearing something that isn't orthodox, proper male, down-to-earth clothing as work culture gone mad.
And he dresses like a peacock.
But it's a peacock that is like adorning itself.
There's no metaphor I could use with a peacock because a peacock wouldn't do it.
But it's the fact that he has his own picture.
It's not a picture he likes.
Well, it is a picture he likes.
It's his picture.
It's his signature all over him.
An absolute egomaniac.
It's hard to oversteer.
So yeah, that's it.
That's what Jordan's been up to.
Being an absolute egomaniac and tweeting like a demented teenager.
And in his response to the college, he basically said, you know, he's going to make their life hell.
He's going to target all of the individual members and set his followers on them.
And, you know, we'll see who cancels.
Who, blah, blah, blah.
All that.
Yeah.
He's loving it.
I mean, that's the thing.
Don't believe it that he's the victim of some kind of thing here.
He lives for this kind of thing.
This is his brand.
Oh, and he tried to raise funds for cancellation.
Oh, that's right.
A cancellation defense fund.
Yeah.
He really needs that.
He really needs that.
Yeah.
Can't afford that $20,000 or whatever it was the costs were for his totally speculative and dubious.
Suing of this council.
I know, I know.
So that's that, Matt.
Well, that's the guru's fear.
It continues to twinkle out there, a beautiful constellation in the night sky.
So let's turn to the guru of the hour, Mr. Andrew Huberman, a fellow whose star has been on the rise in recent years, but I think he's now...
Probably the most successful science-themed podcast in the world.
And on most podcast charts, I think he's up there, you know, approaching Rogan and Lex Friedman levels of success.
So, yeah, an influential figure.
And one that I think at least some portion of our audience would have a rather positive perspective on.
Judging from various feedback that we receive.
Like, you know, when we say we're going to cover people, you get responses which are re-inch.
And with Huberman, a lot of them are, oh God, don't say he's, you know, I still like him.
So that was, that's interesting.
Yeah, so an interesting character.
So he's a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford.
He is a researcher there working in the biological sciences.
I see, according to his Google Scholar page, that he's got quite a few papers there and a lot of citations.
Most of them are co-authored publications.
There's probably just a few papers there where he is a first author.
But yeah.
A common pattern that we sometimes see amongst people we cover.
But nonetheless, yeah, I think he's more credentialed than most of the people that we would look at.
Legitimate credentials and I believe still affiliated with Stanford and still working there.
I don't know if he is teaching courses or whatnot, but anyway.
Yep, he is a very established researcher.
And at the same time, he has this health podcast, which we're going to talk about.
It's also worth mentioning, he's a big manly...
Oh yeah, he's a big buff beauty dude.
He's like very much...
I mean, I think...
His whole vibe is the kind of optimizer, productivity guru kind of thing, but with a very strong scientific presentation that this is about the evidence.
This is not about marketing you some bullshit fad.
It's trying to distill the most current scientific evidence, give you free protocols that you can put into practice in your life or not, depending on your own choices.
He is just there to communicate science in an engaging way, but the point is a rigorous scientific way.
He's not going by, you know, just his vibes or this kind of thing.
Yeah, yeah.
Just a little more so, just like a 20-minute, I think just the beginning, actually, of one of his main podcasts, most of which is behind a paywall, but we listened to the first 20 minutes of it.
Yes, this is right.
So he recently released an episode that was the...
First 20 minutes of his AMA episodes, which he does periodically.
And this particular one was called AMA number 10, Benefits of Nature and Grounding.
So that's the part that is available for anybody to see, right?
And it's around 20 minutes long.
We'll get into it.
But one other thing, just to note, Matt, that I believe the origins of Huberman's podcast, at least in part, comes from Lex Friedman.
Recommending that he start a podcast.
He's credited Lex as being the person that pushed him.
And he often, online, speaks glowingly about Lex and the importance of Lex to his whole podcast approach.
So, you know, Lex deserves some credit for giving the world Huberman.
Okay, so here's how this segment opens.
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.
Today is an Ask Me Anything episode, or AMA.
This is part of our premium subscriber channel.
Our premium subscriber channel was started in order to provide support for this standard Huberman Lab podcast, which comes out every Monday and is available at zero cost to everybody on all standard feeds, YouTube, Apple, Spotify, and elsewhere.
We also started the premium channel as a way to generate support for exciting research being done at Stanford and elsewhere, research on human beings that leads to important discoveries that assist mental health, physical health, and performance.
I'm also pleased to inform you that for every dollar the Huberman Lab Premium Channel generates for research studies, the Tiny Foundation has agreed to match that amount.
So now we are able to double the total amount of funding given to studies of mental health, physical health, and human performance.
If you'd like to subscribe to the Huberman Lab Podcast Premium channel, please go to hubermanlab.com slash premium.
It is $10 a month to subscribe, or you can pay $100 all at once to get an entire 12-month subscription for a year.
We also have a lifetime subscription model that is a one-time payment.
And again, you can find that option at hubermanlab.com slash premium.
Yeah, so a few things there, Chris.
Hey, first of all, as he describes it, it's accurate.
This is a podcast which definitely presents itself as being science-based, basically using scientific knowledge in order to be healthier, be more well, be more physically fit, and like you said, optimize your life, I suppose.
He does take care to mention that he's a researcher at Stanford University.
Like, we don't do that, do we?
Like, we don't actually mention our affiliations much, probably because they're not as prestigious as Stanford.
Yeah, Oxford, that little-known university.
Yeah, you have brought that up from time to time.
This is not really much of a ding.
I'm just making the point, I guess, that Huberman does...
You know, does lean on his credentials, lean on his position at Stanford University as part of the framing for why, you know, this is a good, reliable source for science-based advice for your life.
Yeah, well, one issue that I have, and this was brought up as well on the recent Conspiratoriality podcast, which they did about Huberman and I would recommend to look at, but Huberman's podcast is called the Huberman Lab, and his lab at Stanford is called the Huberman But he also says in the introduction to his full podcast that this podcast is not,
you know, it's not directly affiliated to the research lab.
They're two separate things, right?
Because one is a podcast that takes advertising and so on, and the Huberman Lab is an academic.
But they've got the same name.
So when he is saying, you know, subscribe to the Huberman Lab, I feel like the solution there to keep the two...
Clearly distinguished would be just not to call them the exact same name.
And the reference to subscribing to the podcast helps support the science of doing research.
But again, I don't know, but it seems like...
So you're donating money to the...
Usually a podcast subscription is that you're supporting the podcast, right?
And it's going to the podcaster and they're using it in whatever ways that they see.
Is this money going to organizations set up by Huberman to do research?
Or is it a non-profit?
You know, I feel that that model is a little bit muddled because of the academic aspect which is attached to it.
Well, it wasn't totally clear from what he said, but I'm not sure to what degree or what proportion of your subscription fees to accessing the paywall content The podcast, what percentage of that goes to fund research at Stanford?
I think the answer has to be zero, doesn't it?
Well, he said some amount does.
He said it goes to supporting research efforts into this, but it's unspecified that that's going to his lab at Stanford.
It's not going to be signed in like a grant, right?
No, that's the thing.
I have no idea.
I've just visited the humanlab.stanford.edu FAQ page, but it doesn't make it clear where that funding goes.
But yeah, anyway, Stanford.
Science.
Science, to do more science.
Yes, which I suspect some percentage of it must be going to it.
Otherwise, you couldn't say that, right?
I just don't know.
It sort of implies that it's maybe most of it or all of it.
Well, the thing is you can make an online donation to the Stanford Huberman Lab at Stanford.
There's a tax ID and stuff associated with it.
Is that the same thing that you donate to if you donate to the Huberman Lab?
The podcast.
Like you said, the fact that they have exactly the same name makes it difficult, so it's hard to know.
Yeah, and in both cases, you're donating to support the science of that.
The whole point is that confusion could be avoided.
It's not a huge thing, but I think it is just something that if you're an academic, you would be aware of, and you want to make...
I don't know.
It depends on people, but I would think you would want to make a clear division between your for-profit podcast activities and your academic research career.
Yes, because a podcast like that receives money from advertisers.
We could talk about the natural supplements that I think...
Did you tell me, Chris?
Branded?
Like Huberman Labs?
Huberman has his own brand as well as he endorses various brands of supplements.
Right.
So it's clearly, at least some proportion of it is clearly for profit and is not done for research purposes.
So a clearer distinction between those two things might be helpful.
Because obviously, but you know, I guess it sells well, doesn't it?
If you're looking for subscriptions and so on, if you give the impression that you supporting...
The podcast is supporting research, then that is helpful, I suppose.
Yes, indeed.
So, in any case, that's a general issue, I think, about the framing and the branding of the podcast, which extends from outside of this episode.
This particular episode, Matt, this is the framing of this segment.
What this particular question that he's going to answer in this segment is about.
The first question is about nature.
In particular, about the scientifically supported benefits of getting outdoors into nature.
The person asks about the role of sunlight, the role of calming sounds, the role of observing wildlife, of observing green colors, and quote, other stuff.
And in fact, I'm glad that they asked about other stuff because I get the question about the scientifically supported benefits of nature.
I often also get the question about grounding.
For those of you that aren't familiar with what grounding is, grounding is a practice of putting your feet on the earth directly Bare feet, oftentimes into soil or on a lawn.
And it's a question that I seem to get more and more.
In fact, every week for quite a long while now on social media or elsewhere, somebody asks me about the scientific support for this practice of grounding.
So obviously there's a lot of interest in what the scientific research says about getting into nature and putting one's feet on the ground, AKA grounding and so on.
Yes.
So, Mark, can I just ask you what you would think that he will cover in his response from that frame that he has just provided?
Like, what topic is he being asked to comment on or, you know, does he say that he's going to address?
Grounding?
Well, yeah, so...
Oh, that's correct.
Well done.
He did also point out the benefits of being in nature, right?
Because as someone pointed out to me when we...
I mentioned online that I was going to cover this episode.
They said the person didn't actually mention grounding in their question.
They say other stuff.
Then Huberman goes on to say, well, this is a good opportunity for me to talk about grounding.
Because I'm asked a lot every week about grounding.
So he's going to talk about nature and grounding.
But it's very clear that a lot of interest around the topic of grounding.
The issue of Grounding is going to be covered.
And in fact, the title of the episode has Grounding in it, okay?
So Grounding is going to feature quite clearly, you would say.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Your Honor, may I move on to just having established that?
So first, before that, Matt, there's one other thing.
Now, you can tell me if you think I've been too...
Cynical here.
But do you think it says anything that the audience that you've cultivated is sending you a lot of questions about grounding?
Enough that you notice that you're hearing about it repeatedly every week on social media?
Does that say anything?
Or do you think that's me reading into things too much?
Yeah, I mean, this is something we've thought about a fair bit, which is that it could be that, I don't know, say a tweet by someone like Eric Weinstein is relatively ambiguous and, if not obfuscatory, but if all the replies to it are people talking about the government hiding secrets of Atlantis and ancient aliens or whatever,
then that should give you pause because it tells you something about the audience that you've cultivated.
So, you know, it's understandable, but...
If I was Dr. Huberman, I'd be concerned if I had cultivated an audience where I had a lot of people who were enthusiasts towards the wackier side of natural health and medicine.
Right.
And I would say that if that was the case, you know, understandable people in California interested in productivity hacks and stuff might be more inclined to some of the naturalistic...
Pseudoscience kind of stuff.
We should just rig up a thing anytime that followers from California goes above a certain threshold, like a little alarm goes off.
But I would say, Matt, that if you brand yourself as...
This podcast is about science.
This is a science podcast, right?
Just my opinion.
This is a personal preference.
The first thing to do would be to establish the relative lack of science.
Surrounding grinding.
If that's the key topic, the first thing you should do is ding that up.
Well, before we get into that, Chris, maybe we should give people just a quick introduction to what is grounding, what are the supposed benefits, and how does it supposedly work?
Grinding is the practice of sticking your feet.
On the ground, barefoot.
Oh, I did that all the time.
Yeah.
And harnessing the secret elemental...
Oh, sorry, I mean transferring ions and electron transfer.
So, yeah, it is essentially a naturalistic practice which claims that there are very distinctive health benefits from putting bare feet onto soil that extend beyond it just feeling nice.
Yeah.
I've seen various descriptions of the supposed mechanism by which grounding your feet to Mother Earth is going to help you.
One of them is based on this idea of free radicals and negative ions and so on.
So the Earth is negatively charged, which I think has got something to do with lightning and stuff.
And in our bodies, we might have a preponderance of free radicals, which are positively charged.
Particles, I think.
So, you know, grounding will kind of sort that shit out.
You know, you'll exchange your ions and electrons will do their thing.
But I've read other explanations too.
But needless to say, they are quite speculative.
And I think the evidence is pretty slim.
But we'll talk about that soon.
Correct.
So that's grounding.
We'll talk a little bit about some of the industry that surrounds grounding later.
But in any case, after that introduction, Huberman doesn't immediately get the grounding.
He first talks about the sun.
Okay, so if I'm going to answer this question, I first have to be very direct with you.
There is excellent, meaning dozens if not hundreds, of quality peer-reviewed studies.
Which support the value of getting sunlight in one's eyes, in particular, early in the day to set your circadian rhythm.
This is something that I've talked about extensively on the Huberman Lab podcast and as a guest on other podcasts.
It's one of the first and, frankly, most important items on the toolkit for sleep, which is a zero-cost toolkit that you can access by going to hubermanlab.com, going to the menu, going to newsletter.
You can see it as a PDF there.
You don't have to sign up for the newsletter.
You can just access that toolkit for sleep.
And you'll notice that Very close to the top of that list, if not top of that list, is to get sunlight in your eyes early in the day.
You don't have to see the sun cross the horizon.
If you can, that's great, but if you wake up after the sun has already risen, go outside, face the sun, blink as necessary to protect your eyes, but get some sunlight into your eyes every single day or as often as you possibly can, especially on overcast days, okay?
That's an absolutely unequivocally science-supported Yeah.
So, Chris, sunlight.
I don't know the literature on this, but my vague understanding is that circadian rhythms, our internal processes, are at least partly driven by external stimuli, mainly natural light, which provides Our bodies with a good guideline as to the daily 24-hour cycle.
And if you're suffering from insomnia or your biorhythms are kind of out of sync in some way, then getting sunlight is probably the best way to help get your internal clock ticking properly.
Right?
Yeah, I don't think there's a huge amount of controversy about sunlight exposure being relevant for circadian rhythm regulation.
And the basic...
Concepts of having some degree of exposure to natural light for daily activities and early in the morning, likely there are benefits to that.
I think from the little research I did into it, these are relatively well established.
I will say that the strength of certainty that he attaches to them from my look into the literature a little bit about the effects of light, the general quality, Of studies around these topics are,
you know, small, multiple outcomes and a lot of people that are highly vested in the topic because they're promoting bright light therapy or something, publishing papers.
So there's a dearth of pre-registered, large sample size studies with well-controlled populations.
But nonetheless, I think the basic...
Concept is pretty well established and his claim here isn't...
No, it isn't controversial at all.
But I guess what you're saying is that the emphasis that he puts on it, like, I've got to speak plainly to you.
There is absolute, you know, it's almost like he's putting that into, as to create a stark contrast.
Well, yeah, the framing doesn't make sense at the start because he says, if I'm going to answer this, he's just done that bit where he's talked about, okay, I get these questions about grounding all the time, right?
And then he says, if I'm going to answer this question, I need to be direct with you.
And it suggests, like, I'm going to tell you, you know, the hard, important truth.
And then the first thing is, the sun, this other thing that I recommend is really important.
And it's like, okay, but this wasn't exactly a harsh...
Truth.
It's something that almost all of his audience will agree with.
And that is, you know, relatively low controversy attached to it.
Some people have presented them as implying that staring into the sun.
I don't think that's quite fair, but I think he might be strongly emphasizing.
The benefits in a way that the evidence might not entirely warrant.
But nonetheless, this is a thing that he is promoting.
I don't think it gets sunlight in the morning whatsoever.
And my issue a little bit is more with the framing than the particular intervention that he recommends here.
Yeah, sure.
So after that, we then get to the grounding thing.
Oh, no, we don't.
So next, what comes up is...
Negative ionization.
Now, why am I talking about this practice that I've already talked about extensively on numerous podcasts before?
Well, because the question is about nature and sunlight is a key feature of our natural environment.
But the person is also asking about other features of nature, seeing green colors or blue colors or running streams for that matter.
Well, here too, we can ask, what does the scientific data really say about things like...
Going near a waterfall or a running stream or being near an ocean.
And actually, this is quite interesting.
There is actually a peer-reviewed literature on negative ionization, as it's called, which is a pattern of ionization that's present close to bodies of water and particular types of bodies of water, such as waterfalls, running streams, et cetera.
There's actually a laboratory at Columbia University School of Medicine that has published fairly extensively on the health benefits of negative ionization as it relates to setting.
Okay, so negative ions floating around there in nature, particularly around bodies of water, perhaps.
Maybe sunlight helps as well.
What's the deal there, Chris?
This, again, is something that I know nothing about.
Yeah, so one thing there, Matt, is...
I want to highlight something.
So you see when someone says, okay, there's this topic and there's a lab that has focused on this a lot.
I'm not going to get the head of that lab in to talk about it.
This reminds me, remember we did the segment of Huberman where he had the guy in to talk about the pheromones in tears?
And there, we looked at the study and at the coding academia in some depth and it was...
Very messy study that was making claims that the data didn't support the strength that they claimed.
And also had a lot of p-values hovering around 0.05, if you remember.
Now, that guy is the head of a lab which has focused on pheromones and done some studies about tears.
But actually, I think having someone like that in to present the science...
The way that Huberman would frame it was, well, this is one of the leading experts of this in the field.
So having them on to talk about it, it's a kind of responsible scientific thing to do.
But I would actually say you've got to be careful there.
Because if you wanted to talk about power posing, the person that you should have had on 15 years ago or whatever would have been Amy Cuddy.
And she still advocates power posing despite...
The various issues with that literature that have come out in the replication crisis.
And I think if you had her on, you would get a skewed portrayal of how strong the evidence is.
So it's just that approach of there's somebody at a well-regarded university who's an expert on this topic.
I'm going to bring them on and we'll discuss this issue.
I would say that a...
Critically-minded science person, somebody like Stuart Ritchie or Ben Goldick or anything, would see the potential issue there.
But Huberman seems to present it as that will give us the best, most up-to-date information.
And, you know, it would be a concern that I have.
Yeah, yeah.
You're hearing from someone who is a proponent and an enthusiast for a given hypothesis.
And, you know, they absolutely exist in respectable...
Institutions as well as out there on the internet.
And I had a look into this literature because my prior would be for these kind of claims that there will be a low quality literature with some dramatic claims, some slightly higher quality study, but there will be people making claims that are much greater than the quality of evidence would lie.
And you won't find things like large...
Pre-registered studies with strong controls.
That would be my prior for a lot of these kind of topics.
When I went and looked, I found a meta-analysis from 2014 by Perez, Alexander and Bailey in BMC Psychiatry.
Air ions and mood outcomes are reviewing meta-analyses.
Now, I would say that overall, they are positively inclined towards this literature, and yet they still reach the conclusion, no consistent influence of positive or negative air ionization on anxiety, mood, relaxation, sleep, and personal
comfort measure
Now, the way I see that is you've got a ton of outcomes.
You have...
An observation that will rest on a couple of studies and that there are highly speculative mechanisms.
But you should notice that lots of the other ones didn't pan out.
So what I would want to see is exactly that.
Higher quality, more rigorously controlled studies before you want to claim that the relationship actually exists.
Priors and heuristics.
Well, first of all, in doing a bit of reading for this episode, I happened upon this website, healthline.com, and learned that it is total shit.
Nobody should be taking their advice from that.
But it is at least helpful in providing a summary, as you said, of the wide range of claims about the beneficial effects of certain things.
Now, this is the kind of thing that I remember back when looking at chiropractic.
And one thing, even before you look at any of the evidence about chiropractic, you should look at the purported benefits of it.
And it's a list a mile long.
Supposedly, it just fixes everything.
Absolutely everything, right?
Now, that should make you suspicious, right?
Because, generally speaking, there isn't a single silver bullet that is just going to magically fix every possible thing you might possibly have.
Now, if we look at the benefits of negative ions, according to this wonderful source of health line, we have Chris.
Regulating sleep patterns and mood, reducing stress, boosting immune system, increasing your metabolism, killing or inhibiting the growth of harmful bacteria, reducing serotonin to help manage anxiety, lower blood pressure, improve breathing.
There's more.
But almost all of these mentioned in this meta-analysis don't hold up, right?
Almost everything that you mentioned.
The only one that they, in this meta-analysis reference, has held up is depression, right?
Reducing...
Lower depression scores at highest exposure level.
So it's even like it is the highest exposure where the strongest relationship is.
Oh, sorry.
I have to go on.
Building strong bones.
Cancer prevention.
A list of a whole bunch of different cancers it could prevent.
Healing skin conditions.
Psoriasis.
We all want to cure psoriasis, don't we, Chris?
Arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease.
Like, it's often, you see this with complementary and alternative medicines, is that they always cure these sort of annoying chronic conditions that people want there to be a cure for.
Now, to be clear, Huberman didn't make all of those lists, right?
No.
But a responsible scientific assessment of this topic, I think, would note that people...
Do make those litany of claims with relatively sparse evidence, right?
And again, just to return to that review, Matt, from 2013, right?
It says, the quality of many studies, however, is low.
And there are several important inconsistencies across studies.
Differential study populations, follow-up periods, exposure outcome measurement, unmeasured confounders such as temperature.
Of particular importance is the heterogeneity observed in the frequency, duration, and intensity of air ionization evaluated.
That is, again, telling me this is low-quality literature, so your approach should be skeptical.
Now, let's go on and see if Huberman's descriptions reflect that, because his listeners are not going to have time to do what I did and go and look up a meta-analysis.
For now, we can safely say this.
There does seem to be some positive health benefits to placing oneself near bodies of water, in particular, moving bodies of water.
And of course, as is always the case when there's a discovery about how the natural world can impact health, there have been some technologies developed to create negative patterns of ionization within a home environment.
But as with viewing sunlight exposure and comparing it to, say, sad lamps, The negative ionization machines that one can purchase and put in their home environment have been shown in a few studies to produce some positive health benefits, but those positive effects in no way reach the level of positive effects that have been demonstrated in studies where people are actually spending a dedicated period of time outdoors near a moving body of water.
Yeah, I mean, so I guess what you'd be saying, Chris, is that he puts a positive
or optimistic spin on the available
Like very mixed findings with, you know, low quality studies, heaps of different outcomes.
And there's always like a random scattering of positive outcomes with any crazy thing you might propose.
And if you just focus on the positive bits and you sort of ignore all of the methodology and all the null results, then you can say without lying that positive benefits have been shown.
Or observed.
Yeah, and I also think this framing, he is presenting that the evidence is not so strong for the artificial stimulation via negative ionization machines in homes or whatnot.
So I think this is partly good because he's warning the audience to some extent that claims that people...
Yeah, buying products that will supposedly fix this for you.
But I think that that presentation also gives the impression That part is somewhat sketchy.
He doesn't say sketchy, right?
He just says it's not really...
It's not as strong.
The effect isn't as strong.
But the contrast is...
So the relationship is relatively robust when actually being out beside actual flowing bodies of water.
That effect is much more robust than these at-home treatments, right?
Yeah.
I mean, again, another one of my heuristics, and this is not...
Digging on Huberman in particular, whenever I approach these things as someone who's essentially a layperson, knows nothing about the effects of moving bodies of water on ionization or your body or whatever, is that, well, what's the purported mechanism here?
Like, how does being next to the moving body of water...
Is it magic or what?
No, but...
There's obviously heaps of benefits to going hiking and enjoying the great outdoors and not sitting in your cubicle hunched in front of a computer all the time.
Obviously, that's true.
But if there is some actual direct effect, then you have to identify the mechanism and then test it, right?
In which case, you should be going to a lab.
And doing a controlled experiment, like flooding some poor mice with huge amounts of ionization or moderate amounts of ionization or whatever it is.
Because you have to demonstrate the mechanism, right?
Yeah, yeah.
So in any case, here's the summary of what we've covered so far, provided by Huberman.
So in thinking about nature, natural environments, there's strong evidence for getting sunlight in one's eyes.
There is some evidence for being near moving bodies of water.
Perhaps, again, I really want to highlight perhaps because of negative ionization created by those moving bodies of water.
See, the thing there, Matt, is I actually think that's pretty accurate, right?
Depending on what you attach to those assessments, the evidence for sunlight being, you know, useful for regular...
Regulation, that's pretty strong.
Some, as he says, some evidence for benefits of being near moving water and then down, right?
Perhaps because of negative ion exposure and less evidence.
So the hierarchy is correct.
But I think the previous discussion, you can view this as pedantic nitpicking, right?
But I actually think it isn't because...
The impression I would take away if I know nothing about these topics and purely relied on Huberman's summary is that there's excellent research on the benefits of looking at the sun early in the morning.
There's pretty good, robust evidence for being out in nature, but the actual mechanism, we haven't quite established that and we haven't established that we can manipulate it in home environments.
But in reality, Most of these literatures, including the sunlight one, I think, to a certain extent, are not excellent quality research.
It's low-quality studies with effects which are much more debatable.
I don't know.
Do you think that's been unfair?
Because I can see people that would argue, well, he just said it.
You know, he correctly characterized the information there.
Yeah, I mean, at other points in his podcast, he emphasizes that We're not really sure of the precise effects of this, that, and the other.
But what I do know is getting outside, getting exercise, being in nature is good for you.
So don't worry too much about whether it's ions or this, that, and the other.
Just go and do that.
So, I mean, that's the positive spin, I think.
Yeah, but that wouldn't be controversial, right?
I feel that this is a little bit of a two-step because if Huberman's message is just understood as You know, go outside and do outdoor activities.
It'll improve your mood and make you feel better.
That wouldn't be controversial.
It's not like there's a big cohort of people saying don't go outside, don't spend.
It's the science bit.
That's the whole part that is important and why people think like what his advice is giving is more credible because it's based on science.
It's not just I like being hiking in a mountain.
Yeah, I think that's the issue, which is that And it parallels a lot of the advice around diet and how that contributes to our being.
And people are obsessed with that.
It's an existential concern, health and wellness, right?
And so people demand content and they desperately want to have highly credentialed, authoritative sources who are based in science to tell them the 10 secrets to living a happy, well life.
And I think the problem is that the stuff that is true...
is boring and there's not much of it, which is that eat a wide variety of different types of foods, don't eat too much, get regular exercise, try to make sure that you sleep well, go outside sometimes, touch grass, right?
Like that's kind of it.
But there is a whole industry, right, of supplements and dieticians and health and wellness professionals with extremely baroque.
And complicated and highly nuanced and specific kinds of things because they need to offer more than that.
Otherwise, why pay $100 to subscribe to their podcast?
Right, right.
So, in any case, let's move on to Huberman outlining the scientific process and how it works, building up to, you know, where...
What it can and cannot answer.
And then the asker of this question also, quite correctly, asked about things like calming sounds, watching wildlife, green colors, et cetera.
And herein lies a really important point for everyone to digest.
While, of course, answering a question about the natural world or about health requires that we first pose a hypothesis.
For those of you that aren't familiar with what a hypothesis is, a hypothesis is a stated prediction.
So it's not a question.
A question would be something like, is getting out into nature good for our health?
A scientific hypothesis is where one actually takes a stance.
For instance, you could take the stance and make the hypothesis that getting out into nature for 30 minutes per day, three days per week, improves.
Mood and nighttime sleep.
So that's a hypothesis that then one would go on to design an experiment to test and then evaluate the data from that experiment and compare it to the hypothesis, either validating or negating that hypothesis.
That's essentially how science is done.
There's a lot more to it, but that's essentially the scientific method.
And while of course the scientific method is a fabulously powerful tool, for some questions, it is a less potent tool.
And the question of Is getting out into nature helpful for enhancing our mental and physical health?
Is the sort of question that while ideally you could design a really well-controlled study to address, it's actually quite difficult to design such a study.
And here's why.
That sounds fine to me.
I actually totally agree with him there in a sense, which is that there are a lot of questions which don't lend themselves easily to experimental work.
Say people demonstrating the link between cigarette smoking and cancer.
It takes decades for the outcome to happen, and it's completely impractical and unethical to get a treatment through, do an RCT.
So when it comes to lifestyle factors, it is just difficult to investigate experimentally.
Objection, Your Honour.
Yes.
Objection.
It's difficult, however, the associations can be detected by doing rigorous studies that...
Are longitudinal and trace health outcomes and smoking habits.
And they were.
So it isn't that the scientific method is not capable of answering that question.
It's that specific scientific methodologies are not appropriate.
Oh yes, of experiments.
Of course.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, science is not just experiments.
So I always think what you're picking up on is that Hooverman there is kind of conflating science equals controlled experiments.
Look, I feel I am being a bit nitpicky at this moment, right?
But one, and he is clear that this isn't all there is to science.
He's just speaking shorthand, right?
And I think overall, his description of what a hypothesis is is useful because he's talking about making quantifiable predictions that you can test and see whether they hold up rather than like hugely speculative, like general things which are hard to operationalize.
That's all fine.
However, my little nitpicks that I had were...
Hypothesis does not have to be directional to be a hypothesis.
I think that there are ways that you could frame associations without predicting and it'd still be a hypothesis, right?
Not really.
I think hypotheses have to be directed.
I mean, you can still investigate things without a directed hypothesis.
Right, exactly, but that's my point.
But that is just a non-directional hypothesis.
You could say it's less useful, and I agree.
Yeah, and it is.
The important thing is the data and the evidence.
This is true.
And the other point, the thing that I would pick is the notion that...
Which is going to go on to elaborate on, so I'm jumping the gun a little bit, but it's really hard to design a well-controlled study where you would have a, you could examine the effect of spending time in nature versus not, right?
I agree.
There's lots of practical issues there.
I don't find it that hard to imagine a study, Matt.
Here's what you want.
Let me give you a go.
You get a...
Population, right?
You really want to know this question.
You've got a lot of money from the Tiny Foundation or the Huberman Lab, whatever.
You take an appropriately sized population of people, you pay them for their time for a set amount of weeks or whatever the case might be, right?
If you wanted to do it really properly, you know, you should house them all together and whatnot, but that might be prohibitively expensive.
So let's just say you take a population.
of people and you randomly allocate them to do something like a daily walk in the forest versus go to the cinema versus just do what they normally do versus spend time with friends and that's the thing that I think all of these studies tend to lack is that they're comparing spending time in nature versus not or they're comparing it like with Something else which is not a task,
which gives people joy and good feelings and is social, for example.
Yeah, I know what you're getting at.
And I think the more general issue is that there's a certain kind of research, and I've done a fair bit of it myself, which is looking at those broad behavioral interventions or things without really understanding what the precise mechanism is.
And if you're interested in practical outcomes.
Just giving people practical advice, and maybe that's okay.
So you could go, okay, we're going to send some people outside.
The methodology you described was perfectly fine.
We've done very similar things with people with gambling problems, for instance, with various types of interventions.
We do exactly this kind of research.
And, you know, you may...
Not uncover through that exactly why it is that going outside...
No, you definitely won't.
Of course you won't.
It could be the sun.
It could be the grass.
It could be the islands.
It could be the smell in the movie cinema.
It could be the popcorn.
Yeah, it could be the fact that you're walking around a bit more when you're off in nature, right?
It's pretty hard to get out in the nature without walking, right?
So it's confounded with this.
There's a whole bunch of things.
And if you really wanted to get at the mechanisms...
What is it specifically?
So that could be the first stage of your research, where you do that kind of...
And it will still be a somewhat controlled trial.
It's not like you're in a lab where you control every variable.
There's going to be random variability, but it will tend to cancel out.
As long as it's randomly allocated and the sample is big enough, it should be okay.
It should be okay.
That's right.
List to an order of approximation.
And let's say you find a nice big effect.
Great.
The people that went out into the forests...
Feeling much better.
They're healthier.
They've got more vim and vigor and a spring in their step and a sparkle in their eye.
Very good.
All right, so that's when you might go, okay, let's figure out specifically what is the reason for this and you do more specific experiments.
Well, I have a final nit to pick.
I'm with you too from that, Matt.
I know you're speaking in shorthand, but you can be the Huberman-Stanton.
So the way he presents it is the study negates or validates your hypothesis.
Not true, right?
Individual studies only give you a piece of evidence in favor or against a particular hypothesis.
They do not validate or invalidate on their own, right?
You need much more studies.
So if your study found out what you would want is the study to be replicated by an independent group with a sufficiently powered sample, and that happened multiple times, then you can...
Increase your confidence that the finding is valid.
But the way that this is presented and the image that this gives to people is you run a study, a single individual study proves or disproves a theory, and then you move to the next step, right?
What's the mechanism?
But that's incorrect.
That's not the correct image of science.
I know, Chris, I know.
It's this kind of approach that, you know, found that there's amazing links of drinking a glass of red wine a day and eating a bar of chocolate.
Exactly.
I drank so much wine and ate so much chocolate based on those studies.
Now look at me.
He's not telling the truth.
But I just, you know, again, human is not the only one that does this.
It's a way that when you're talking in shorthand, people often default to.
But again, I think there's just some issues there.
I think, broadly speaking, the points that he's making, that scientific evidence is not the only thing that matters, that randomized controlled trials are not the only piece of evidence that should count, and that's all unobjectionable.
But the other points, they niggle at me, Matt.
Broadly speaking, I don't have major issues with what Hoopman said in this particular material, but I suppose...
I do get the feeling that he's just got that optimistic sheen to the evaluation of the research.
And I guess what he was implying there is that there are some things that just can't really be investigated with science.
You could take it to mean that, right?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
He definitely is.
Yeah, which is not an implication I think people should take.
I mean, if I take him to mean, and I think he does imply this elsewhere, that, look.
I'm pretty sure that getting out into nature is good for you.
My suggestion for you to live a healthy life is to go do that.
I'm not precisely sure of the mechanism, but that for your purposes, you don't need to worry yourselves about ionization or whatever.
Then if you're saying that, then I think that's good, right?
And he does say that.
And that's not the bit I or I think any other people that are critical of him have.
If the be it is, should people go outside and enjoy nature and that it might make them feel better?
I don't think you have any issue there.
The issue comes with the science part.
Okay, so here's a longer extension of that part about why the scientific approach is limited when addressing these kind of questions.
Something like that obviously stuck in my memory.
It delighted me.
And at the very same time, there were a number of other things happening besides the presence of that novel wildlife experience.
There was the sound of a stream.
There's the sunlight.
There's the color contrasts everywhere.
I'm breathing fresh air because I was far away from any cars or any civilization, in fact.
And so here's what we know.
There are dozens, if not hundreds of studies that show that if people get out of doors into nature, this could be parks, this could be near a stream, this could be an ocean, any number of different natural environments, and if they do that for anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes, three to seven days per week,
indeed, there are demonstrated significant reductions in things like blood pressure, resting heart rate, improvements in sleep, improvements in mood.
And so I think we can very reliably say that yes.
Or perhaps even absolutely yes.
Getting outside into nature can enhance various aspects of mental health, physical health, and thereby performance in different aspects of life.
However, when talking about the benefits of getting into nature, we are talking about hundreds, if not thousands of variables, some of which we are aware of, such as the presence of wildlife or sunlight or color contrast.
And then of course, there are going to be dozens, if not hundreds, maybe even thousands of Other variables that we're not even aware of.
Perhaps it's negative ionization.
Most people aren't measuring the ionization of the air when they go out into nature, but perhaps it's also the presence of certain smells from the soils that are being broken down, and then they're changing the oxygenation state of the air around you, the plants, et cetera.
Again, so many variables that, frankly, to try and isolate any one of those variables in the laboratory.
Seems not just artificial, but I think that it actually would just lead to a diminished sense of just how valuable nature is.
Okay, so I don't really have a problem with what he's saying there, Chris.
I think he's right that it's hard to disentangle all of the little aspects of getting out into nature.
I'd certainly have a better mood if I was out tending my succulents instead of sitting here with you.
And-
Ecological, get it?
Yeah, I get it.
So, on the point that exposure to nature involves a whole bunch of variables, the entire smorgasbord of human sensations hitting you and trying to isolate individual causal relationships in that cacophony of sensory input,
very difficult.
Going to a lab and focusing on one specific element of the natural environment and looking for an effect.
Even if the effect was there, maybe it's an interactive aspect, which applies with all the other environmental stimulus around you that you can't recreate in a lab, so you don't find the effect.
But actually, it would be there if you could do it out in the wild, right?
All fine.
All good.
No objection.
Okay, okay.
I know your objection is about to drop.
It is with it, Chris.
Let's move on to the next...
No.
So, Matt, the part...
Again, I admit that this is potentially a preference for the way that things are presented, right?
It could be an objection about framing or that kind of thing.
But I think the issue here is the way that this is talked about is that perhaps the impact of these...
You know, it might be ionization.
It might be the smells that you're receiving from the environment.
It might be all these possible things.
But there, that seems to be, again, accepting the premise that it's going to be something about this kind of chemical, you know, like...
The negative ionization or the exposure to sun rays that does something internally.
But couldn't it be just as likely, and indeed I might say more likely, that it is just things like taking a break from work, doing something that isn't focusing on front of a screen in an office or something like that.
But the exact same effect you could get from spending time with your friends at a coffee shop, Don't have those features of the natural environment, the sunlight, the plants, you know, all the things, and yet you would still get a benefit.
But here it's kind of presented that it is nature, right?
It's a kind of unique aspect of nature, but I don't think that enough is given to the potential that everything that you're saying about it being enjoyable, and I enjoy being out in nature as well.
But I think a lot of the time that we're out in nature, we're not, you know, doing our menial job, depending on what the job is.
But most people are not park rangers or that kind of thing.
So that surely has to be factored in.
But the descriptions are much more towards the scientific approach about, you know, treating electrons and ionization potentially being the mechanisms.
Do you think I'm being unfair?
No.
I think you have a point.
I mean, everything Kubin said is not wrong, but the way it's framed can, I guess, encourage the interpretation that there is something ineffable out there in nature.
That is special.
Some people might believe it's ionization.
Some people might be the healing power of the sun's rays.
You know, people have a proclivity for these kinds of explanations and it kind of leaves the door open to that rather than just saying flat out.
Going out into nature involves getting some exercise, taking a break, being in a relaxing environment.
I'm totally open to the suggestion that putting ourselves in an environment that we're evolved to be in.
Right?
Which is natural environments.
My baseline assumption is that's probably more good for you than random artificial ones that we put ourselves in.
So let me suggest a counter and a thought experiment for the audience, right?
Do you understand my objection a bit more clearly?
Take a sushi restaurant.
Try to imagine all of the things that are there, right?
You have the food, sure, the delicious sushi that is being prepared, and you might see or you can order from your little pad, depending on what kind of sushi restaurant you're in.
You have to make the choice, right?
You've got all these, what will you select from the menu?
You've got the sensations in the environment around you, all the people there in the environment.
Usually you...
It depends, but you might be at a sushi shop with friends or family.
The social interactions, the commentary on the food.
Maybe you've had a hard day at the office or all week, and this is a reward for you.
All of those, to model that environment in a laboratory would be very difficult.
You wouldn't be able to do it by just giving people sushi and sitting down at a desk and reading their enjoyment.
True.
That's a completely artificial human environment.
I am certain that if you did studies looking at the mood improvement of people at sushi after they had sushi and whatnot, you would find an effect.
And my counterpoint to you about the natural environment and to Huberman is that artificial environments are constructed by us to be.
Like, comfortable and provide some stimulation, I think, that we like.
So, while the natural environment is what we evolved to appreciate, we can do better than nature in satisfying, in sometimes hyper-stimulating our things that we like, right?
So, it's just, I'm not saying don't go into nature, go into sushi shops, but I'm just saying that you could eat all of the things that he's saying.
Could apply to somebody who wants to argue there's a unique healing power to sushi restaurants, right?
Okay, but just to defend human, I don't know if he's saying that there's a unique healing power to going into nature.
He's just saying...
Going out to nature is good for you.
I don't think he's saying, don't go to sushi restaurants.
Maybe going to a sushi restaurant is just as good.
Well, yeah, that's fine.
Like, I wonder.
I wonder if that is what's being claimed.
But we can continue on with the potential objection that I'm being unfair by making that argument.
Again, Matt, the naturalistic fallacy is very common in these waters, I'm just saying.
I know, I know.
Yeah, and just to mention as well, the anecdote about the wildlife that he mentions is like encountering a squirrel carrying a large knot or something, and he finds this very charming.
And I appreciate that.
I see a turtle on the way into the office.
I'm very interested in what that turtle does.
You know, what various animals and insects are doing is a constant source of a fascination.
So I appreciate that.
That makes me want to defend Huberman again because he's exactly right.
He was mentioning the squirrel and the nut.
And, you know, I went on a book the other day with my dog and I saw an echidna.
It was really cute.
It was nice.
And that's what I mean by my default assumption is that being out in nature is going to be good for you, right?
Because it involves not some natural essence or vibrations or whatever, but just it's an environment, as he mentioned, where interesting things happen.
It's a complex environment.
On many levels, it's something that's appealing to human brains, I think.
At the sushi restaurant, I attend, well, this actually isn't the sushi restaurant, but at a place where you can get sushi, there is a robot server who comes, and myself and my sons are greatly interested in this robot server,
and the little face that is put on his, you know, like...
His robot visage and the various expressions that he's programmed to be.
I find that fascinating as well.
That's entirely artificial.
I think I know what's going on here.
You're a kid that grew up on the mean streets of Dublin.
Where are you from again?
And now you live in Tokyo.
You haven't seen the natural environment.
You don't even know what it's like.
I was just out in a forest.
Very smart.
In a log cabin in Karuizawa, camping, cooking on a barbecue.
I know nature!
I caught my, well, my son and I caught fish together, and my wife gutted them, and then we cooked and ate them.
So, yeah, all right.
Okay, all right.
That's pretty natural.
That was Hunter Gallery, right?
So just shut your mouth.
I'm just saying.
Brett and Heather would be very proud.
There are plenty of little children scampering around who I find intriguing.
I mean that there are things that happen in artificial environments that are also interesting and intriguing.
So yeah, yes.
You can have oils in cafes, Matt, if you want.
No, I mean, I just think, in general, on average, natural environments tend to be more stimulating, I think.
Artificial environments tend to be impoverished, right?
We cut down on...
Depends what kind of artificial environments you're hanging around in, I guess.
But look, that's fine.
I'm not arguing for the primacy of artificial environments.
I'm just arguing against there being any magical element to nature.
I'm not saying that...
But I'm saying that Hooverman and me is not implying that there's any magical element.
I was mentioning stuff like exercise, like I was going on the same line as you, right, which is being out in nature involves a whole bunch of things.
It involves walking, involves not working, not staring at a screen, like even just looking at things in the distance as opposed to looking things like right up close to your nose, like a screen, like a whole bunch of relatively small things.
And my baseline assumption is that...
Those things will tend to be good for you.
So would you say climbing a real steep mountain on an extremely hot day in the Australian Outback is going to be better for you than climbing the same...
Kind of wall, right?
In a climbing center, but without the burning sun on your back.
That's a very contrived example, Chris.
Yeah, but the issue that I want to point out is like the nature and the outdoors also has other things which could lead to lack of enjoyment.
Artificial environments, I'm not saying artificial environments are always superior.
They're not.
I grant that there are plenty of things that you cannot replicate in natural environments that might be uniquely appealing to us.
There's clearly something to us as primates being fond of foliage and trees and whatnot, right?
Because we put square...
Pieces of grass in front of houses, right?
Where we have the space to do so.
So I do not dismiss that.
But I'm just saying that there are things in the natural environment which also make it more negative than a controlled artificial environment.
And that that is not emphasized, usually.
It's just always presented in a way that implies that the uncontrolled, chaotic nature...
And natural environment is better.
And I think it's just different.
And I think that humans may find it more appealing intuitively, but it doesn't necessarily mean that there are features in that environment which make it completely having a unique effect that nothing in an artificial environment could ever come close to doing.
No.
You're wrong.
Your argument goes, well, you know, mosquitoes exist, so did you like that?
That's part of it.
Yeah, it is part of it.
I just...
But Huberman himself emphasizes that just like going to a park, right?
Like a park, is that artificial?
A park is not a purely natural environment.
Like it's a manufactured, manicured experience of nature.
And Huberman would say going to a park is a perfectly good option.
And in fact, I think he did say so in this recording.
So my point is you're arguing against the straw man.
I'm not.
I'm arguing against the naturalistic...
Fallacy, which I think has affected a lot of this reasoning.
I think you're applying the, you know, the anti-naturalist fallacy heuristic.
You're overall applying it because, like, when we do studies of, like, just people's preference for scenes, you know, you show them a whole bunch of photos.
They like the natural scenes, right?
I know.
My argument is not that people don't like...
I do think our nature as social primates and the evolutionary things mean that we find these kind of environments more appealing, lush environments and whatnot.
But I'm saying that in the particular application of talking about the health benefits of being in those environments and whatnot, that I really do think it would be hard to...
Disentangle the actual physical benefits that you derived from repeatedly taking walks in a local park versus repeatedly Going out with your friends.
But isn't that literally what Huberman was saying?
There's a bunch of benefits to going outside.
It could be exercise.
It could be just fresh air.
But it's only ever used with the natural environments.
That talking point is only ever used with natural environments.
No one talks about the uncontrolled aspects of bars and the interactions that you will have there and the unusual characters that will grasp your...
And that being a uniquely rewarding thing to do.
Like Jordan Peterson does.
He starts crying when he talks about being at a dive bar and hearing some band play a bad cover.
But, you know, that's the point that I mean.
I just want this standard applied consistently if you are going to meet this argument.
That's all.
Okay, let's let it go.
Okay, we'll let it go.
Agree to disagree.
So, back to Huberman.
I'll let you have the last word, as usual.
Well, the title is Get Into Nature, so I think he's going to back you up here.
So while, of course, the Huberman Lab podcast is a podcast where we always center on science and science-related tools, meaning protocols that are grounded in quality, peer-reviewed studies that have been subjected to...
Control conditions where some people are getting, say, the drug treatment or taking the supplement or doing a particular behavioral practice and other people are not, or doing some variant of those and dose response curves, all of that stuff.
When it comes to the question of whether or not it's valuable to get out into nature, I think it's a very straightforward yes.
Absolutely, yes.
Get out into nature as often as you can and safely can, of course.
I realize some of this is weather permitting.
People live in different areas.
Some people are in cities.
Some people are in desert.
Some people are near the ocean.
But getting out into nature has been shown over and over again to have numerous positive health effects.
And yet, unless we're talking about sunlight exposure and isolating the variable of setting one's circadian rhythm by viewing sunlight early in the day, all of the other features Of getting out into nature?
It's hard to identify what specific thing is the thing that's good for you.
Yeah, which I agree with.
I agree with all of that.
I agree with this too.
Only you could have a problem.
I don't have a problem with this.
This is the thing I don't have a problem with.
The pure advice of get out into nature, you know, if you can, and if you find it enjoyable, it'll be more beneficial for you.
Yeah.
Fine.
And specifically, I'm not linking it to peer-reviewed research and all these claims.
I'm just saying I find it beneficial and good.
That's fine.
Okay.
All right.
Yeah.
My issue is when you link it to the, you know, the kind of scientific aspect of it and start implying.
Some unique negative ionization coming from rivers, that kind of thing.
It's just I think many people would have listened to this, as I did, and didn't hear Huberman strongly implying that it was due to the ionization of the rivers.
No, but I'm not saying he's strongly suggesting that.
I'm saying that there's...
An implication by the things that you choose to mention.
And the things which Superman emphasizes are not those aspects of just getting time off work or, you know, giving yourself a break from stress and maybe spending some time on your own if you have a whole bunch of duties.
It's more the scientific sounding things.
And that gives a particular impression, which this particular audience, I think that's what they want to hear.
Right?
So I'm not saying he clearly said the evidence is not strong for ionization and whatnot, and it is not really important if that's the mechanism.
But I just think the framing gives a certain kind of emphasis.
And you have to remember, we'll get back to it at the end in the next couple of clips, but this is originally framed around grounding.
Right?
It took him for a long while to get back to grounding.
He foreshadowed.
He's not there yet.
I know, he's not there yet, but we'll get there.
We'll get there at the end.
Yeah, so just that's, I think it's worth keeping that broader context in mind, right, about grinding, setting this all off.
Okay, so anyway, Forrest Beaving, Matt.
Things like forest bathing.
This is a term coined from some, frankly, pretty nice studies that were done in Japan, in which people placed themselves into forest-like environments for a certain period of time.
There were control groups where people were not placed into those environments, and the people that did this so-called forest bathing experienced enhanced mental and physical health.
You'd be a forest beaver, wouldn't you?
I would be.
Look, I just think there was something good.
Did I see that framing, listeners?
Matt noticed the sense of derision in my tone, even though all I said was that you would be a forest beaver, wouldn't you, Matt?
So, Matt, look, here, forest beavering.
Again, if you want the moth, Go and hang out in a forest and it's probably nice.
No problem.
No problem.
My issue here is with the tying it to the pretty nice studies conducted in Japan.
I happened to look up a meta-analysis of forest bathing studies.
Shinrin Yoku, as they're apparently known as, by Wen at all, 2017, medical empirical research on forest bathing, a systematic review.
It's fair to say that Wen is a fan of this practice as well, Wen and colleagues.
It's not a great systematic review.
Nonetheless, let me just read a segment for it.
The risk of bias in the papers is relatively high.
Overall, in the 28 papers included in the study, The random sequence generation, the allocation, concealment, and the application of blinded methods are important sources of bias.
Loss of follow-up, reported adverse, and intervention measures or control measure compliance are secondary sources of bias.
The forest environment is also one potential source.
Compliance with intervention or control measures is also rarely mentioned in forest bathing studies, especially for forest bathing activities greater than one day.
The general implication from looking at these studies is that The majority of them are not good quality studies.
And when they do take it down to a smaller amount of controlled studies, they report that they find beneficial effects.
But again, Matt, the literature review, if you read it and you look at the stuff about quality, they've actually rated a whole bunch of these studies on a quality scale and they've tended to place them in the higher end of the spectrum.
If you read it from a critical eye, you can see that this is not a very well-regulated, you know, this is not a super high-quality literature.
The notion that any of these studies are pre-registered, I would bet money on them not being.
And I also know from looking at various studies in the hospitality psychology and this kind of thing, there's lots of studies where people are doing...
You know, like, does this kind of holiday activity contribute to mental well-being more than this one?
And they tend to be very small studies and have lots of outcome measures and all the usual things.
So I'm just saying that my issue again here is the kind of the veneer of like a very scientific, robust thing when it's just saying going into forests is nice.
Yeah, I hear you.
But if Huberman is guilty here, then so is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and so is Parks Victoria.
I was just looking around about forest bathing because I wasn't familiar with the term and I'm just seeing it being endorsed as an evidence-based practice to improve.
I wonder why, Matt?
Isn't that strange?
Why all these people that have all these concerns about bias, the pharmaceutical industries and whatever, don't they consider that a study which found that there was no difference between the control group and the...
One that went out into the forest.
Do you think that study is going to be promoted by the Natural Parks Commission?
Do you think the researchers who spent time taking people out into the forest are going to be happy with that result?
No, big parks.
Big parks.
I like natural parks too, but it's obvious.
What's that thing that people have been doing?
Like, butthole.
Sun exposure, right?
Wasn't that a thing recently?
Yeah, yeah.
And everybody laughed at that and said, oh, there's no science.
Like, that's just absolute.
Obviously, that's crazy, right?
But I will bet you, if you conducted this study, you could get a result that showed that was beneficial.
People have reduced stress hormones and so on.
So should we all be out?
Buttholes, honey?
I'm up for it.
I'll give it a go.
No, I mean, I guess, I mean, methodologically, it's the same issue, isn't it, with evaluating any of these things?
Like, what about meditation?
Like, the supposed health benefits of meditation?
The mindfulness literature is full of this kind of thing as well, right?
And again, you'll find lots of reviews touting.
It's been...
Absolutely proven that the effects of mindfulness meditation is beneficial in all these ways, but you would see all the issues with those studies, right?
And you know that the higher quality studies, the effect sizes tend to drop away.
And when you have controls, which are just person going swimming for the day, or there's even studies showing that binge drinkers score very high on mindfulness measures, right?
There's some issues there.
Yeah, I accept everything you're saying.
I still think it's good to go for a walk in a forest.
Yeah, I agree.
I still recommend it.
Matt, this is the part of Huberman where I'm on board.
Like, listen, this is the part where I would say, yes, here's another summary that he offered.
Well, most all questions about tools and protocols for enhancing health immediately lead me to say, ah, this study or that study or...
Yes, there's evidence, or no, there isn't evidence.
When it comes to questions about nature and grounding in particular, I take the stance that this is a unique instance where we know there are just so many benefits of getting out into nature that trying to isolate any one of those variables in a quality, rigorous way within the laboratory almost seems too artificial to really justify the conclusions that arrive.
- Okay.
- Oh, yeah, I forgot.
The grinding slipped in there.
So I completely sign off on this part about, you know, it's not really about the studies.
I'm mentioning studies now, but I'm just saying go out in the parks.
That's fine.
Priam does an opinion, and I just think it's good.
I just like it.
That's all right.
But it's, you know, just before this segment, this is when he referenced those good studies in Japan about forest bathing, and he's talked about the negative ionization potentially coming from moving bodies of water.
And now, We get grounding referenced in this endorsement, right?
And the message here is like, look, grounding, you know, do we really need to consider science as the important factor here?
Like, it's just good to get outdoors, right?
But why grounding is a specific claim?
And there is quite obvious ways to test the claims being made.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, the way I read this...
Is that I heard Huberman, I guess, slightly dissing Grounding, but in the most diplomatic way possible.
I think he's aware that many of his listeners will be interested in this, a fan of this.
If he were to say bluntly, there's no reliable evidence that Grounding does anything for you, wake up to yourselves, right?
Then he's going to get a bunch of angry.
Emails and maybe lose listeners, maybe even sell less supplements.
So he puts it in the most diplomatic way possible, which is to say, look, it is complicated to disentangle the effects of being grounded to the earth from just being outside and enjoying nature.
So I can't really comment on that.
But what I am sure about is getting outside, being in nature, that is good for you.
So I read it as a very diplomatic demurral.
Yeah, I read it in the same way, but I guess my issue that I take here is Huberman's a science communicator who positions himself as somebody providing protocols and evidence-based information about health.
What that should also involve is telling people when the evidence isn't there, when something is being promoted by a pseudoscientific industry without strong evidence to support it.
And I would draw here a parallel that...
Huberman's choice, which he's talked about, is during the pandemic, he wouldn't talk about COVID because it's not his area of expertise and it's a controversial topic.
And now people there say, well, that's good.
He's not stepping outside his area of expertise.
But I would say that in the middle of a pandemic, when vaccines are one of the most well-supported, beneficial things to protect your health from this novel...
The decision to avoid endorsing it as somebody recognized as a science and health communicator is sending a particular message.
And it's one that you want to avoid alienating your audience in preference of communicating accurate science.
Because Huberman surely knows, if he can read science and read the weight of evidence, that there was no debate.
The vaccines were beneficial.
That all of the hoopla around ivermectin and the negative side effects were all misrepresenting scientific evidence, right?
But he never referenced it.
He mentioned it in like two tweets.
If you search his Twitter timeline and COVID, there's only three tweets about it.
And two of them are talking about it being a controversial topic.
And that to me is making a decision that is...
Yeah, if you want to view it in a cynical light, it's about cultivating a larger audience.
If you want to see it in positive light, it's avoiding alienating an audience that you know will respond negatively to actual scientific information, right?
But in either case, it's choosing not to present scientific facts to an audience that you know will not respond well to it.
Yeah, yeah, I think that's a fair...
And correspondence to draw.
Like he is a health and wellness specialist, communicator, popular communicator.
He does frame himself as being absolutely informed by science and providing scientific perspective on things.
It would be well within, if he could wrap his head around the evidence for and against grounding.
Then it's within his capabilities to wrap his head around the evidence around vaccines, right?
If it was a more disputed issue, if it was more controversial or whatever, then you might go, okay, well, I'm going to leave that to specialists.
But actually, that would be well within his capabilities.
And I think it is also accurate to say that just like he knows his audience is sympathetic to topics like grounding, and maybe I'm being uncharitable, but I think he is excessively diplomatic, shall we say.
In his treatment of it to avoid alienating them.
I think being, you know, the big sort of, it's maybe unfair to call him like a paleo bro person or whatever, but, you know, he does, like, there is this movement in the health and wellness.
Sphere, which used to be kind of hippy-dippy and then kind of more feminine sort of thing with the Gwyneth Paltrow kind of thing.
But there is this new movement which is much more, I don't know, libertarian, paleo, skeptical of governments and these mass-produced things like vaccines.
And I think he would have to have an awareness that that's who his audience is.
These are the people that buy these supplements for self-optimization and so on.
And I have to agree with you there.
Yeah, and Huberman, of note again, very good friends with Joe Rogan and Lex Friedman, never issued a word of criticism about their coverage of, like, anti-vaccine, in Joe Rogan's case, overt promotion,
in Lex Friedman's very open, shall we say, to, you know, presenting Brett Weinstein to talk about the controversy.
And remember how much Lex...
He despises what Anthony Fauci did to science during the pandemic.
Now, people will say that's guilt by association.
To me, it is more about the way that he responds to those people having clearly, if not anti-science, in Rogan's case, I think it's indisputable that he had a huge anti-vaccine pulpit and continues to do so.
In Lex's case, More ambiguous, but certainly arguable.
And Huberman never mentions anything about that when he's talking about their content, right?
He's very, again, diplomatic about that and avoids those kind of topics.
And to his credit, he also avoids political topics, by and large, on his show.
You won't hear him doing an episode on the latest controversy in the heterodox sphere.
Yeah, I'm somewhat conflicted because on one hand, you know, I do not want to give the impression that I think people should be compelled to condemn so-and-so or to speak out against such-and-such.
You know, I don't think in general.
People have that obligation.
But I guess, I don't know, there are limits.
And when you're like a science-based health communicator and you move in those circles and you have that audience, then the omission can get stuck, right?
It's exactly that because like Joe Rogan, yes, he has a wide range of guests, but for years he's mentioned the vaccines and the pandemic almost every week of his podcast.
And he's constantly promoted anti-vaccine figures and so on.
He's probably the most influential, largest audience for anti-vaccine rhetoric.
And I just feel if you present yourself as someone who will honestly communicate to your audience about scientific issues that will affect their health, and you have never once raised any issue about Joe's coverage, but you've appeared on the show multiple...
And you will tweet out to thank him for, you know, some episode or something that he said.
It is making a choice.
It's not a neutral thing because you're essentially, unless you don't think that he's doing that, and if you don't think he's doing that, I think you don't understand how to recognize anti-vaccine advocacy.
But I give Huberman more credit than that.
I think he does know what...
Game is being played, but he doesn't want to get involved on the other side.
Yeah, I think for any influencer or independent content creator, yeah, I think all of the interests, all of the incentives lie in the other direction.
Like, it's only going to hurt you to do that.
Yeah, don't say anything negative about Rogan.
That's right.
You're going to make enemies.
These people won't like you, and the people in their audience won't like you.
A lot of your audience likes them.
So the incentives all lie in that direction.
So maybe it's uncharitable, but it does seem like that would have an influence.
All right.
Back to grinding, Matt.
Grinding part one.
Now, I'm sure there are some of you out there who are aware, and if you're not, I'll tell you, there are studies that have explored this practice of so-called grounding.
They've had people come into the laboratory and place their feet on soil.
That is contained within a box.
Or there are other studies where they actually have people go out of doors and place their feet onto the grass or the ground.
And there are a bunch of theories as to how grounding could improve one's mental and physical health that aren't just about getting outside.
So the theories go that this has to do with the exchange of electrons with the earth and the earth's surface in particular.
There's been the argument made that shoes, in particular shoes that have rubber soles, may block some of this electron exchange with the surface of the earth.
There've been theories about the tactile, that is the touch sensation with the earth being important.
Not a lot of science published in Let's just say blue ribbon journals, which is not to diminish some of the journals that these have been published in, but just to say that, again, there are so many variables associated with a practice such as grounding that I'll simply say, yes, please do get out of doors into nature.
I try every Sunday to do my zone two cardio by rucking or jogging or hiking, often with other people, if I'm trying to be social with family or others.
But the point is, getting out of doors has myriad positive effects on mental health and physical health.
And of course, when you're moving out of doors, you're also getting that zone 2 cardio or other forms of physical benefit by elevating your heart rate.
So he did emphasize there at the end the...
Benefits of exercise, and you mentioned mental health and socializing.
Yeah, exactly.
At least in this respect, right?
I'm sorry to revisit our argument.
It's not with reference to a magical natural force.
No, but in this part, yes.
In this part.
But yeah, I mean, one thing I'd quibble with is that you don't have to be polite about the kinds of quite dodgy journals.
And the big publishers here should absolutely...
I don't know how they get away with it.
But, you know, publishers like Elsevier are meant to be reputable publishers.
And yet they publish this thing called Biomedical Journal.
Sounds authoritative.
And they published this opinion piece called Grounding, the universal anti-inflammatory remedy.
Grounding, this is the abstract.
Grounding or earthy could be the anti-inflammatory antidote for modern man.
It is one of the greatest kept secrets when it comes to our health and aliveness, and only a small part of the scientific community really understands the concept.
Blah, blah, blah.
You know, one small established fact that conveys universal agreement is that the simple correlation that inflammation is the root cause of almost all diseases!
I mean, ending in abstract, right, with an exclamation point.
Alone.
Man, Ross and Carrie, the Seller podcast, they do these kind of in-depth investigations into...
And I think that's the context where Huberman really doesn't,
in any sense...
Grapple with that.
In the way that he is grappling with it, he's been extremely polite to the quality of that literature and saying, you know, look, we don't know, the science isn't, you know, there's been studies.
It's hard to say whether it's specifically the grounding or whether it could be something else.
Exactly.
But you should be aware that...
If your audience, in a large part, many of your audience are contacting you and asking you about grounding, then they're exposed to the popular media on the topic, which, as you say, if it contains massive amounts of pseudoscience, then...
Why not say it?
Why not say it?
Like, that would be the responsible thing for a science-based communicator.
You could even say, you know, I'm making no comment about various mechanisms that have been proposed because...
The evidence just isn't there one way or the other.
There's not been good quality studies.
However, I will note that there is a large industry that exists to promote products and this practice.
And I would say there is not scientific evidence that endures that.
And you should be wary when there is, you know, a kind of concerted effort and industry to promote something as a cure-all for ailments.
Like that kind of thing.
It just, it doesn't come up, right?
It's more...
It's a much more, like, it's a much more equivocal approach.
Yeah, I mean, an interesting little wrinkle on this is that whole dichotomy between, you know, the alternative media and the institutions in the establishment, right?
Now, on one hand, we have Ono, Ross, and Carrie, which by any definition is independent alternative media.
And then you have Huberman, who is a research scientist at Stanford.
So, I don't know.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Yeah.
Who did the more responsible, in-depth investigation into grounding?
Go see their multi-part series and you'll see.
So, here's the kind of concluding part on grounding.
So, the long and short of this is, yes, there's some evidence for grounding.
Is it super strong evidence?
No.
It's not.
We don't really know what it is about placing one's feet onto the earth that is producing the positive effects that were observed in those studies.
And those studies made some reasonable attempt to isolate the variables and figure out whether or not it was ion exchange with the earth or the tactile, meaning the touch sensation of having one's feet on the ground.
Frankly, I don't think there's enough quality science to really draw any firm conclusions about that.
However, if you like the idea of grounding, by all means, do it.
In fact, if it feels good to you, I recommend getting your morning sunlight out of doors with your bare feet on the ground.
Or if you're like me, you know, you put on your shoes and you take a walk most days.
Although I've tried this practice of grounding
Yeah, yeah,
sorry.
Yeah, so just a very gentle, equivocal.
Equivocal, but it's all positively balanced, right?
Is there evidence?
Yes.
Is it super strong?
No.
So, is it strong, though, either way?
Yeah, but I do recommend taking your shoes off and getting some sun.
Yeah, and if you like grinding, take your shoes off.
So, he doesn't actually say anything bad or wrong there, but it's the...
It's the valence and it's the stuff he doesn't say and it's the framing.
I mean, I love going barefoot.
I'll just say, by the way, I go barefoot all the time.
Like I keep saying, I'm a big advocate for going outside, communing with your succulents or whatever plant it is that floats your boat at the moment.
I hope that people know better than I do that succulent is a type of plant because when you say communing with your succulents, it's just conjuring up history and images.
The point about, he is saying there's not enough quality, like you said, there's nothing wrong, right?
If you take that out of isolation, I don't think there's enough quality science to really draw any firm conclusions.
How about shoddy science?
And he talks about, we don't know, you know, we can't draw about the mechanisms for the positive effects.
How about if the positive effects even exist at a real?
That's the bit that he doesn't imply that maybe these studies are too low.
It's true.
I heard that too, which is that the way, and you could just say it was just the choice of words, but the way it was phrased was that there were positive effects, but we don't know the exact mechanism necessarily.
Yes, and why don't we know the exact mechanism?
Let's return.
But the question about whether or not nature is valuable for our mental and physical health is, An easy one.
It's an absolute yes.
But isolating the particular variables about nature that are most beneficial, well, that's a much tougher question.
And it's one that frankly, the scientific method is not.
And to be honest, I don't think ever we'll be in a position to isolate and really nail down specifically because as soon as you get specific about that question, you start to diminish the value of the study itself.
So the long and short of this is get out into nature as often as you safely can.
Yeah.
But this is a bit of an aside, Chris, but I do think he's way too, like his framing of it is that it's ineffable, right?
Maybe grounding is good for you, maybe it isn't, but we just can't tell.
But like if there really is an effect to this, then you have to nominate a mechanism, right?
So for argument's sake, and there's a few mechanisms I've talked about, the most reasonable one, because some of them are completely insane, is something about ion transfers.
Now that is something that can be investigated in a laboratory.
Because if that's the mechanism, then it's not some gestalt of the complex tapestry of the experience.
It is actually ions going into your legs and doing stuff in your body.
And you should be able to do that via a controlled experiment.
It's actually not that hard to set up a ground sheet which has the same ionic properties as the ground and set up a control.
And you can blind it pretty easily too, right?
So people won't know whether they're on the negatively charged or the positively charged one.
And you could test that specific claim.
So, for it to even be a proposition, it has to be a concrete, testable claim.
And to the extent that it is, it can be investigated.
And if it can't be framed like that in a way that can actually be operationalized, then it's not a claim that lies within the remit.
Of scientific empirical investigation.
It's just something you take on faith or not.
Yeah.
And, you know, we were just talking about a broader context as well, Matt, but the answer there, right, if we...
So, I feel there's a little bit of dancing around, right, because is the question, is it good to get out into nature?
Yes.
And I'm not claiming there's...
It's all about scientific evidence.
I'm just saying it's good.
Then okay, right?
But this is in the context of answering a...
About the evidence of grounding as well.
And saying, well, science can't really determine the benefits.
And he just talked about grounding, you know, there's some studies.
But if you're saying, that's what all the alternative medicine people say, right?
It's like, these methods can't really be tested by science.
And the studies that are negative, it's because of the negative energies of people that are just out to prove things wrong and stuff.
And so I feel like he's...
Unintentionally, but he's kind of providing the people that want that takeaway to be that, sure, the evidence isn't up to the gold AAA standards, but science doesn't know everything.
And he's saying grounding feels good, and there's been studies in journals which are not mainstream, but maybe because the results are too controversial.
I feel that's the message that at least some portion, Of the audience will take away.
And it's intentional because you could easily add in the more critical thing comments about the bad quality evidence, the poor studies, and the invested interests that people have in kind of promoting these practices.
But he doesn't, right?
And he just keeps flipping it over into the broad category of, is it good to spend time in nature?
Yeah, yeah, it is, right?
So, it's a slippery one.
Strategic ambiguity, right?
Yeah.
You don't want to be caught out saying stuff that's blatantly unscientific or untrue.
But at the same time, you don't want to alienate your audience who wants to believe these things.
So you do that little tap dance and, you know, find your truth.
Yeah.
So here's the conclusion, Matt.
The conclusion, final concluding part of this segment.
And frankly...
I don't have a scientific explanation for why nature is oh so beneficial, except for the sunlight piece and perhaps this grounding piece and the negative ionization piece.
And frankly, I don't worry so much about the lack of variable, isolating, quality, peer-reviewed studies that support the benefits of getting out into nature.
I simply like getting out into nature and into different natural environments as much as I possibly can, because for whatever reason...
Imagine those reasons have something to do with serotonin, dopamine, hormones, oxytocin, probably a bunch of different things that are rooted in how our nervous system evolved in natural environments.
Well, it just feels really good.
The second part of that about, I don't know what the mechanism is.
It just feels good.
And I'm not that interested in rigorously isolating all the individual effects.
I approve all of that, Matt, but it's...
The bit before, just the first sentence, let me read it to you.
And frankly, I don't have a scientific explanation for why nature is oh so beneficial, except for the sunlight piece, and perhaps this grounding piece, and the negative ionization piece.
Right, so what, is he saying that grounding is potentially, you know...
It's ambiguous.
Right, and all those three things that he mentioned.
The sunlight, the grinding, the negative ionization.
I agree with him.
The sunlight is probably an exception.
But he bundles in, grinding the negative ionization as, you know, in the same except.
Yeah, I know.
I know.
I heard that too.
So it's just, this is the nature of disclaimers that you can kind of bundle them in and you can be saying one thing and then in the next sentence you...
You know, you kind of walk it back.
And our friend Timbo and Toast did a very good episode about Timpul.
And he's doing a very extreme version of it, where he's saying these extreme political things.
And in the next sentence, he kind of suggests that that's not what he's saying.
But it all goes in one direction.
And I'm not saying Huberman is as extreme.
No.
But I am saying it's a similar thing.
You're sticking to the general technique.
Yeah, no, that's...
That's true, I think.
Yeah, like if you actually broke down what was said in this recording, yeah, there's a bunch of sort of contradictory statements and, you know, and it's kind of equally balanced, you know, a bunch of ones going this way, a bunch of ones going that way.
And I think it can be quite, I mean, the upshot of it is for the audience to be able to go away with whatever.
Whichever one they, yeah.
Whichever one they choose.
And I think that is a good trick for actually maximizing your appeal to the broadest spectrum of people.
So, as you say, he's nowhere near.
as toxic as timpool obviously but people can go to timpool and come away from it with all kinds of different things from a spectrum of completely insane batshit neo-nazi things to skeptical ironic bloody i don't know moderate
stuff perhaps um yeah like and you can't be pinned on anything you you're not really wrong or right about anything but
It's all about the vibe.
And I think people walk away from the thing not logically passing out individual sentences, but actually after listening to 20 minutes or an hour of content, they come away from it with a vibe.
And those strategic disclaimers that you mentioned, Chris, they do nothing in terms of interfering with the general vibe that you're projecting.
Yeah.
And I was having a discussion about this issue with someone on Twitter who was...
They had a different read on the episode, right?
But kind of much more sympathetic to Huberman.
And I argued, they said, look, yeah, obviously grounding is bullshit, but he's not endorsing grounding, right?
I didn't take that away from what he's saying.
And I was suggesting, I would suggest to the people listening, would you take away from this that, one, Huberman thinks grounding is obvious bullshit, but there are benefits to being in nature?
Or two, alternatively, science doesn't know everything.
Some things can't be studied in the lab.
There are positive studies and proposed mechanisms for grounding, but we don't know yet, and maybe we can never know.
Which one is a more accurate summary of what Huberman communicates in this content?
And I think it's obvious that it's closer to the second than the first.
Yeah, these things can be a bit of a choose-your-own-adventure.
You can come away from it with the message that you want.
Well, one thing, Mark, when we do Huberman later in that food hang.
When we do him slowly, Chris.
We'll take a piece of content where we know the literature well, and we'll see how accurately it's presented.
Because one thing that people might do from this is say, well, Chris, you just went and looked for individual studies that supported your priors, right?
Actually, no.
I don't think the individual results of those meta-analyses matter that much, to be honest.
What I think matters is that they point at the overall quality of the literature in that area.
So it's the same thing that when you look at acupuncture, when you look at chiropractic studies, you will find meta-analyses that are positive, you will find negative meta-analyses.
But when you look...
At the quality of the studies, it's the same warning signs, multiple outcomes, low sample sizes, lack of rigorous controls, no pre-registrations, so on and so forth, right?
And so I just, I think it's important for people to recognize that like any individual one study, surely it can be studies that are relatively definitive.
If you do this massive trial and you, you know, Those can be very, very informative about the efficacy of a particular treatment or whatnot.
But generally speaking, science is done by small incremental contributions.
And so that can also lead, because of things like the biases in publication and previous acceptance of p-hacking, to having literatures that are skewed towards positive studies.
And we know about this.
We've known about this for quite a time, but we definitely know about it since the replication crisis.
So you can't just say, well, there's been 100 studies showing that grounding is correct.
And sure, lots of them are low quality, but overall, that means there's something to it because we know so many examples where there's been much more studies and the effect doesn't replicate when you have better controlled studies.
So, yeah.
Be skeptical.
Be skeptical.
That should be the default.
Yeah, maybe not as skeptical as Chris, but, you know, moderately skeptical.
Yeah, and go out in the park.
It's all right.
Also go to the sushi shop.
Do whatever you like.
Don't let Huberman judge you.
That's what I want to say.
Huberman or Matt.
We need a controlled experiment to compare going to the sushi shop with going to a forest, which is better.
Yeah, a sushi shop in a forest now.
Now you're talking.
Well, you're in Japan.
Well, you're in Japan, so you can go to a vending machine in a forest.
That is something you can't do.
That is true.
That is something I did do.
Yeah.
Well, it's been a pleasure.
I think people will take some issue with this.
They won't like my takes, and that's okay.
I'm here to accept the slings of ours.
I know.
I need to be the villain, but that's all right.
All criticism.
Directed to me is inevitably bad faith.
It's tainted by jealousy.
It's because they're haters.
I know it.
I know the guru.
I know how to do it.
You want to persecute me.
You'll never silence me.
I've got a faith.
That's right.
You're Batman.
You're not the hero we want, but you're the hero we damn well need.
Fair enough.
I think many people would object.
He just wants to see the world burn.
Yeah, we can't have nice things.
Anyway, wherever you fall and whether you agree with the person who's right or Matt, then that's fine.
We welcome different opinions and we look forward to your feedback as we did with the Chomsky episode.
Okay, Matt, now, since this is a pretty long episode, actually, in the end, I feel we do need to do the review of reviews because, Matt, it is a, you know, it's a moderate decoding.
It's not the full enchilada, however you say that.
It's a mid-sized one.
I'll do one review of reviews, and then nobody gets a shout-out.
Not today.
I'll double them up next time.
Matt's got appointments to get to.
So just a review of reviews.
That's where we'll finish with.
And I'm going to go with a negative one, Matt.
I feel we've been luxuriating in positive feedback too long.
Here's a negative one.
This is from DA.
Teenager level criticism.
Do you remember the time when as a teenager you thought you were super clever and knew loads of stuff?
Take that up a notch.
And listen, they show that they're centered around the feeling of smugness.
A show that centers around riding that sense of superiority to the point of no return.
All the way to the teenage, that's so dumb, giggles.
There you go, Matt.
Yeah, we are smug.
We are smug.
I have to admit that.
I can see how someone could come away from listening to us and go, what a pair of smug gets.
We're right, goddammit.
Why aren't you clapping?
Yeah, that's right.
So, smugness is...
Not necessarily correlated or negatively correlated with accuracy of criticism.
Exactly.
Otherwise, every professor in the world would be out of a job.
I even presented that riposte in a smug way.
But there we go.
There we go.
Well, that was that, Matt.
And thank you all for listening.
Just imagine your shoutouts.
How good they're going to be next time when we get to those.
This was longer than intended, but, you know, hopefully you enjoyed me and Matt arguing with each other.
And if you're not feeling too well, if you're feeling a bit poorly, you can get out in the forest or you could get yourself the Huberman Lab Hormone Support Bundle for only $78.95.
You can get some Alpha GPC for only $44.95.
You can get some Tongkat and Fadi Yoga, 60-day supply for $64.85 and many, many more.
Wonderful, good supplements.
Endorsed as sold by the Huberman Lab.
Support your hormones, support cognition, support optimizing for sleep.
Which Huberman Labs, Matt?
Which one?
Huberman didn't want to sell those anyway.
It was just his audience made him.
They kept asking him and he didn't want to make, but in the end he relented.
So yeah, he probably didn't know that.
So there's that.
So yes, if you're feeling a bit dying, go out into the forest.
Be of your butthole, do whatever pickles your fancy, or hang out in artificial environments, each to their own, and we'll leave it there.