Chapter 1: What insights does Andrew Huberman share about brain health?
Hey. Hey, Sean, I do want to get into this. I know we've got to do a cold open for the show, but I'm flying to New York today. Why are you going? Why are you coming here? I've got to go take care of some stuff. I'm not trying to be vague about it. No, I've just got to do some stuff. I've got to go to New York. I've got to come evict you from your apartment. Okay? Are you happy?
Welcome to Smart List.
Jason, you're still coughing. I'm still coughing. I'm still clearing. You guys both got it, right? Yeah, I'm doing a little better. But you're still, you've got it in the lungs?
No, I don't.
Everybody's working for the weekend.
See, I have enough energy to do that. I know I can get Sean.
I knew I could lose. Everybody's working for the weekend. Hey, band, right now, JB, who sang that? You want a piece of my heart? He had a headband.
Tiger Bomb. Fucking close. White Tiger. Tiger Bomb. Sort of. Tiger's Milk.
No. Tiger's Milk?
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Chapter 2: How can we combat the effects of holiday brain fog?
I loved it. But... I feel like my brain got real flabby. Like, now I'm, like, afraid to go outside. I feel like I'll have culture shock if I, like, run into somebody that's, like, a serious person.
Somebody, last night I was talking to, JB, you and I were texting a little bit during the last weekend of football. We're dating this when we're recording this, but we're talking about football and stuff, and I was talking to our old buddy Eli. Is that right? Oh, I do miss Eli. I love Eli. Sweet Eli. And... He was saying, the holidays are over. Like, tonight's the last night.
Like, it was the last football game of the regular season. Like, it was the last weekend after the thing. And the year starts. And honestly, I gotta say, I'm really happy about that. I had... We were all sick over the holiday. from starting Christmas Day, had the thing, JB, that you've had, Sean, which you now have. I think Jason gave it to me, yeah.
Yeah, that big Thanksgiving tri-kiss that we labeled it, right? Just as we were leaning in, we said, let's call this a tri-kiss. And then you guys got it. A turducket. It was a turducket kiss.
So I'm just, I'm like, at this point after we spent, which was nice, again, we felt very fortunate we got to be at home with the family, with all my kids, and we had sort of 10 days kind of sequestered on the East Coast, but I'm looking forward to emerging from this. Yeah, a little bit from this. Yeah.
And here we are. We're starting right back. We're at work now. 9.30, Monday morning. We're a little out of practice, right?
I know.
I'm really nervous about today's episode, you guys.
I know. Nobody's done, and we haven't covered the weather or the traffic yet.
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Chapter 3: What role does hot bathing play in immune function?
I'm kind of the same way. And then I know what you mean. Like, oh shoot, this has to end. And like the world starts again.
Sean, you're really on the fence between the, well, I got a couple of things. A, there's that. Because you say you like to cozy and do nothing. But the truth is, you also like to just rifle things off a checklist. Absolutely. You never stop. That's right.
Three in the morning.
I don't want to think about it.
Because if I don't... I know, we talk about this a million times. If I don't check it off or respond or something, then it lingers in my head. I'm like, I got to do that. And I just don't want to think about it.
I know. What's your email inbox look like? Is it clean or is it cluttered? Always zero. If it's not zero, I panic. Me too. Empty. Except for the only things that are in there.
All the emails are in there, but there's just no new messages.
If it's still in my inbox, I need to respond to it. That's right. That's how I feel.
But you don't delete all the emails you got.
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Chapter 4: How does exposure to sunlight affect our well-being?
Very nice. Way to land that.
See, what did I say? I said you'd show up in about 10 minutes. It only took like four.
He's back. He is back, you guys. 2026, look out.
All right, well, speaking of brain mushiness, this is perfect. My guest today is a fellow podcaster, but that's about where the overlap ends.
You can't even make your own writing sound natural. It's terrible.
You wrote it and it makes it sound like it's read.
It's insane.
Oh, I'll read the whole thing right in front of you. He's got a PhD in neuroscience. He's a tenured professor at Stanford School of Medicine in neurobiology and ophthalmology. and by courtesy, psychiatry and behavioral sciences. His work's been featured in Time, BBC, Scientific American, basically every publication that makes me feel dumb. His podcast is one of the most downloaded in the world.
It's the cold-plunging, dopamine-optimizing, sun-staring science genius, Andrew Huberman. Great. Finally.
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Chapter 5: What are the benefits and risks of nicotine use?
That's the kind of like, oh, you know, I'm feeling a little like under. I'm a little extra tired. That's the time... Ideally, in the hour or two before bed, you take a nice hot bath or hot shower and then just get into bed. And, you know, if you do that for a couple days in a row, you may be able to fend it off.
If not, once you have it, keeping that practice up, provided you don't have a really high fever, is fantastic. is really useful. That, and you know, I know I'm always talking about the morning sunlight thing. Please say smoking cigarettes. No, but we can talk about nicotine if you want. A lot to say about nicotine.
But getting some, what we call long wavelength light, so some sunlight, or I'm not here to say red light therapy, but getting some sunlight, this is really, very well supported by the literature because, again, it's helpful for your mitochondrial function, for your immune system.
In Arctic countries, not so much Arctic, but in Scandinavia, in Russia, they actually put babies bundled up out in the cold in the morning to mobilize these things.
Yeah, we throw them outside.
Here, we don't do that. Here, that'll get you child protection services.
No, but up in Canada, we'll toss her outside for sure.
And there are a couple other things we can talk about, but in any case.
Wait a second. Now, listen... Andrew, nice to meet you, first of all. Yeah, it's so great you're here. I wanted you on for so long. Okay, shut up. Can I call you Huberman? You can call me whatever you want. Okay. How about Doc?
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Chapter 6: How do dietary choices impact mental health?
And they said to me, the internet, they said, don't expose myself if I have the flu that they were worried about because they said that your body's already working hard enough. Historically... They were saying don't do the cold plunge or don't do the hot? Don't do either because they were saying... Because your body's already hard enough.
So this was the first time when I was sick that I did not... use the heat and or the cold to try to combat it. And it ended up being harsher. And now that I'm hearing you, I'm like, I wish I had, because historically I've always just gone in and I saw in our early days when I start to feel that thing in my throat or whatever, And usually I'm able to stave it off.
So you're saying- Yeah, you know the deliberate cold exposure, right? Cold showers, cold plunges, this kind of thing. It is a stressor, counter to what you hear out there. It does not raise cortisol, but it is a stressor. Your adrenaline spikes when you get in the cold, which is part of the reason you do it.
And then when you get out, you get that long tail of dopamine and adrenaline that makes you feel much better and more alert, et cetera. That's fine under healthy conditions. I would say if you're battling something or you feel like you're coming down with something, Use heat, sauna, hot shower, hot bath, whatever it is that works for you.
But I would drop the cold as you're getting into something because it's a very potent stressor. The thing about heat is if it's too hot, It can also be a stressor. I mean, when you're healthy, using the sauna as a way to get your heart rate up and kind of push it in there a little bit is good.
By the way, useful tip, if you put a towel over your head or, you know, you'll notice that Russian banyas, they wear those little hats.
I have a sauna hat.
Yeah, it insulates your brain from the heat so you can stay in longer. The impulse to get out is a brain thing, not unless it's very, very hot, a burn thing. And then, of course, if men... men want to conceive children in the next 90 days because of the 90 days spermatogenesis cycle. If you're going into the sauna, you need to put a cold packet. You're growing outside your shorts, guys.
If you don't want children, also don't use this as a surefire way to avoid having children. It's, you know, many accidents.
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Chapter 7: What strategies can enhance sleep quality?
Before I do that, just very quickly, first of all, I want to put a full disclaimer. I have no financial relationship to what I'm about to describe in any way. There's a beautiful study. published and it's on PubMed. I can send you guys the link if you want. And I learned about this from an ER doc out here in Los Angeles who needed to keep himself healthy during the winter season.
N-acetylcysteine, also called NAC, is a glutathione precursor. There's a beautiful study showing that when people signed up for a study where they were deliberately exposed to people who had flu, okay? And they either got NAC two or three times a day at about 600 to 900 milligrams per day or not.
Sorry, just describe what NAC is, because you said that long word, I don't know what that is.
N-acetylcysteine, it's a precursor to something called glutathione, which is used in a bunch of different cellular processes. Normally, I think you don't need this, right? You don't need elevated glutathione. I know it's all the rage now to get glutathione drips and that sort of thing. I have a more conventional opinion about all that.
But if you feel like you're coming down with something or you're going to be exposed to things, or Jason, you mentioned that you're heading off to New York, you've got work to do, you need to recover more quickly. The data on avoiding getting sick by taking 600 to 900 milligrams of N-acetylcysteine two or three times a day when you're getting sick or trying to avoid getting sick is quite robust.
In fact, there's a huge difference in the number of people all exposed to the same virus, flu virus in this case, that did not contract the virus. Some still did. It's in the high 20s. But had they not taken it, the control group was somewhere close to 80%. Wow. It's pretty impressive. And obviously check with your doctor, this kind of thing.
But that's the one thing, you know, we hear about zinc, echinacea, all this stuff. It's the one thing that the peer-reviewed research actually shows can help stave off fluid. Is there any downside to taking it constantly? Some people will take a little bit each day. It is a little bit of what's called a mucolytic. So it will make your nose run just a little bit more.
It's actually used to treat cystic fibrosis at very high doses, which is a buildup of fluid in the lungs. So it's a well-known mucolytic. So it's going to help you drain out more as well. But no, there's really no downside.
He wants to drain out. All he heard was drain out and he's so excited. If I'm losing water weight, I'm happy.
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Chapter 8: What future developments in neuroscience should we watch for?
But it's perhaps the only stimulant that also relaxes you at the same time.
Thank you, Andrew, for coming on the podcast.
So that's a very unique property, right? It gives you that alert but focused, kind of puts you in the groove. That is so alluring to humans, so much so, and I'm going to avoid going into a history about nicotine, but let's just say for hundreds of years, but in particular in the last hundred years, humans have figured out ways to get nicotine into their brain.
And we know that smoking, vaping, dipping, and snuffing all cause cancer. And I did put vaping in there. Vaping is perhaps safer than smoking, but still causes lung damage, the contaminants, et cetera. Vaping is bad.
I mean, the science isn't back yet on what the burning of the metal and all that kind of stuff. And I will say anecdotally, when I tried to use one of the vaping products, I'm not going to say which one, it increased my blood pressure. It increased my anxiety tenfold. And I went back off it.
Yeah, I'll take a hard stance. Obviously, smoking, we now know. Still cool. No one dips or snuffs, really, or people dip, but they don't.
My grandfather used to snuff. He used to put a little bit on his... Yeah, mine too. Yeah, he used to powder.
Snuffing is literally putting tobacco up the nostrils. I can't even imagine. Okay. Well, okay, so here's the deal. We went from smoking, dipping, vaping, and snuffing. Then we moved to what they used to call electronic cigarettes, vaping. And then now... oral nicotine is the main mode of delivery. Nicotine itself is not carcinogenic. This is very important. It doesn't cause cancer, right?
It's a stimulant that relaxes you, as I mentioned. It does raise blood pressure, and it increases vasoconstriction. Vasoconstriction is just a clamping off of the little capillaries and vessels, in particular in the periphery, you know, in the fingers, in other extremities, and... And, you know, strokes and other things like that are cutting off a blood supply to small regions of the brain.
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