In this episode, I explain how nicotine impacts the brain and body, including its potent ability to enhance attention, focus, and alertness, increase blood pressure and metabolism and reduce appetite. I discuss nicotine’s ability to increase the action of neurochemicals, including dopamine, norepinephrine, and acetylcholine and activate sympathetic (alertness-promoting) neural circuits. I also discuss common nicotine delivery methods, such as cigarettes, vaping, dip, and snuff, and how they each create their own unique experience and how they, but not nicotine itself, cause cancer and other adverse health effects. I also explain science-based tools to permanently quit smoking cigarettes or vaping, including peer-reviewed clinical hypnosis tools, antidepressants, and alternative nicotine replacement (patches, lozenges, gums etc.). As nicotine is one of the most widely used substances with billions of users — most of whom report wanting to quit — this episode ought to be of interest to former/current nicotine users, those who want to quit smoking or vaping and/or those interested in learning the biology behind how nicotine impacts the brain and body.

Here, I describe “Physiological Sighs,” a pattern of breathing of two inhales followed by an extended exhale. This pattern of breathing occurs spontaneously in sleep when C02 levels get too high, but they can be done deliberately any time we want to reduce our levels of anxiety and calm down fast. Thank you for your interest in science!

In this episode, I discuss the profound effect the gut has on the nervous system. I cover the structure and function of the gut-brain axis and the role of the gut microbiome in the brain and overall health. I describe how the gut controls hunger or satiety by affecting neurons in our brain. I also contrast the many pathways by which the gut influences the brain: direct vs. indirect pathways, chemical vs. mechanical, and fast vs. slow signaling. Additionally, I discuss what defines a healthy microbiome and how your lifestyle impacts the gut microbiome, including the effects of stress, fasting, antibiotics, pets, environment, prebiotics and probiotics. I address how different foods shape the gut microbiome, in particular, the emerging data that fermented foods can increase the diversity of healthy gut microbiota. Throughout the episode, I explain peer-reviewed and textbook findings that reveal the critical role of the gut microbiome in supporting mental and physical health and I outline simple tools that anyone can use in order to enhance their gut microbiome health.

In this episode, my guest is Tony Hawk, the legendary and pioneering professional skateboarder, video game and skateboard industry entrepreneur, and founder of the Skatepark Project, whose philanthropic mission is to help underserved communities create safe and inclusive public skateparks for all youth. We discuss his career, how he helped popularize and evolve the sport of skateboarding, and his role as an ambassador for skateboard culture. We also discuss where he derives his intrinsic drive, how he sets and evolves goals and how he has made remarkable and continual progress throughout his career. We also discuss Tony’s ability to overcome what would otherwise be career-ending injuries. For anyone seeking to find or pursue their passion and make lifelong progress while serving the larger world, this episode with Tony Hawk ought to be of deep interest.

In this episode, I explain what microplastics are, their prevalence in the human body and environment, and their common sources, as well as their potential negative health impacts. I provide practical strategies for limiting exposure to microplastics, nanoplastics, and endocrine disruptors such as bisphenol-A (BPA), bisphenol-S (BPS), phthalates, and PFAS (“forever chemicals”). Additionally, I discuss methods to enhance the body’s detoxification and excretion of microplastics.

In this episode 5 of a 6-part special series on fitness, exercise and performance with Andy Galpin, PhD, professor of kinesiology at California State University, Fullerton, he explains how to optimize post-training recovery and how to avoid overtraining in order to better achieve your fitness and exercise goals. He explains the cellular mechanisms of muscle soreness and pain, why adequate recovery is essential for all physical adaptations, and how to enhance recovery using breathwork, thermal, movement, and pressure-based techniques. He describes how overtraining impedes exercise progress and how to assess if you are overreaching or overtraining, by using specific biomarkers and indicators. Like other performance metrics, recovery is a skill that can and should be trained, and that can be learned. This episode provides an actionable toolkit for how to monitor and improve your exercise recovery abilities, which will improve your overall mental and physical health.

My guest this episode is Gina Poe, PhD, a professor in the department of integrative biology & physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). We discuss her research exploring how sleep impacts learning, memory, hormones and emotions. She discusses tools to enhance your quality of sleep, increase deep sleep, rapid eye movement sleep and growth hormone release– a key hormone for health, immune function and vitality. Dr. Poe explains how a specific brain area, the locus coeruleus, facilitates the processing of emotions, helps relieve traumas and how to maximize locus coeruleus function. She also explains sleep’s vital role in opiate addiction recovery and how anyone can determine their optimal sleep timing and duration. This episode is rich with basic science information and zero-cost tools to enhance quality and effectiveness of sleep for sake of mental health, physical health and performance.

This episode my guest is Dr. Jack Feldman, Distinguished Professor of Neurobiology at University of California, Los Angeles and a pioneering world expert in the science of respiration (breathing). We discuss how and why humans breathe the way we do, the function of the diaphragm and how it serves to increase oxygenation of the brain and body. We discuss how breathing influences mental state, fear, memory, reaction time, and more. And we discuss specific breathing protocols such as box-breathing, cyclic hyperventilation (similar to Wim Hof breathing), nasal versus mouth breathing, unilateral breathing, and how these each effect the brain and body. We discuss physiological sighs, peptides expressed by specific neurons controlling breathing, and magnesium compounds that can improve cognitive ability and how they work. This conversation serves as a sort of “Master Class” on the science of breathing and breathing related tools for health and performance.

My guest is Dr. Wendy Suzuki, Ph.D., Professor of Neural Science and Psychology and (soon) Dean of New York University, whose research focuses on memory, attention, brain plasticity and simple, daily habits that can be leveraged to improve learning, focus, memory and cognitive ability. We discuss the role of cardiovascular exercise, weight training, deliberate cold exposure, meditation, verbal affirmations, sleep, and other behavioral practices for enhancing learning, mood and stress management, and increasing attention span. Dr. Suzuki shares the mechanisms by which these practices change our brain in order to improve cognitive function fast and reduce age-related cognitive decline.

In this episode, I explore the science of mental visualization and its application for learning motor and cognitive skills. I discuss neuroplasticity-based skill development and the roles of focus, sleep, movement restriction, and agitation. I then present five key principles of mental visualization to enhance learning speed, accuracy, and consistency. I also provide examples of specific protocols, including repetitions, rest periods, and session frequency, and how to adapt these methods for injuries or breaks from traditional training. Throughout, I reference the scientific studies supporting these concepts. This episode should allow anyone to learn or teach more effectively through the use of mental visualization and training.

In this episode, my guest is Dr. Matt Walker, Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology and the Founder & Director of the Center for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also the author of the international best-selling book Why We Sleep and the host of “The Matt Walker Podcast.” We discuss the biology of sleep, including its various stages and what specifically happens to those stages when we don’t get enough sleep. We also discuss the effects of sunlight, caffeine, alcohol, naps, hormones, exercise, marijuana, sexual activity, and various supplements on sleep. The episode consists of both basic science information and many science-supported actionable tools.

In this episode, my guest is Dr. Ethan Kross, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, director of the Emotion & Self-Control Laboratory, and author of the bestselling book Chatter. We discuss the purpose of the inner voice in your head and its impact on emotional well-being and motivation.

In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, I discuss the biology of emotions and moods, focusing on how development and neurochemicals shape our feelings and relationships.

This episode, I discuss grief and the challenges of processing losses of different kinds. I explain the biological mechanisms of grief, including how neural circuits for emotional and factual memory combine with those for love and attachment, to create feelings of absence and yearning. I discuss how grief is distinct from depression, yet why they can feel so similar. I also provide science-based tools to assist with the grieving process, including how to reframe and remap the relationship with those we have lost while still maintaining a strong emotional connection to them. I also explain the importance of having and building strong foundational psychological and biological states so that we can better cope with grief when it happens. Finally, I describe tools to adjust those states, including those for accessing sleep, managing stress and emotional swings. This episode is for those suffering from grief but also for everyone, given that we all experience grief at some point in our lives.

In this episode, I explain a specific writing protocol shown in hundreds of scientific studies to significantly improve immediate and long-term health. I explain how to implement this specific protocol, which takes only four days and 15-30 minutes per day. I also explain the mechanism for how the four-day writing protocol affects neuroplasticity (brain rewiring) and brain function in the short and long term. I explain how these brain changes positively impact our physical health, including our system’s immune function and thus our ability to combat infections, improve sleep, reduce feelings of physical and emotional pain, lower anxiety, and bring about healing from traumas. This episode ought to be of interest to anyone seeking better mental and/or physical health through the use of brief yet highly effective science-supported protocols.

I describe a fitness protocol that maximizes all the major sought-after aspects of physical fitness, including strength, endurance and flexibility. I discuss fundamentals of resistance training protocols, including repetitions, sets, inter-set and inter-workout rest periods and periodization of intensity and volume to improve strength and hypertrophy. I also explain how to integrate this with endurance training across the week by controlling the duration, timing and intensity of cardiovascular workouts. I also cover science-based protocols on leveraging the mind-body connection, deliberate breathing (during and after exercise), stretching, deliberate heat and cold exposure, and non-sleep deep rest (NSDR) for better workout performance and faster recovery. Further, I tackle a range of real-world issues that can affect a consistent training schedule, such as whether you should train if you are sick, have had a poor night of sleep or had a stressful event and how to start training again after a break and whether you should train in a fasted or fed state. Physical fitness is a key variable for immediate and long-term health. This episode provides a modifiable “foundational” template that can be adjusted based on your current fitness level, goals, time constraints, and access to different types of equipment.

In this episode, my guest is Satchin Panda, PhD, professor and the director of the Regulatory Biology Laboratories at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. We discuss his lab’s discovery that “time-restricted eating” (TRE) aka intermittent fasting, is beneficial effects for metabolic health and longevity. Dr. Panda explains how TRE, and also longer fasts, can positively impact obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular health, age-related chronic diseases, and improve mood and cognitive performance. He also describes how the timing of eating, light exposure and exercise that ~50% of all people engage in, negatively impacts their health and explains how specific simple adjustments to these can positively shift their subjective feelings of health and biomarkers of cardiovascular function, glucose regulation and metabolism. We discuss how our circadian behaviors, which include our patterns of eating, sleeping and socializing, have an enormous impact on our biology, mood and health and how by simply confining our calorie consumption to a semi-regular daily window, can positively impact our physical health, mental health and longevity.

In this episode, my guest is Josh Waitzkin, former child chess prodigy and the subject of the movie and true story Searching for Bobby Fischer. Josh is also a world champion martial arts competitor and the author of the book The Art of Learning. We discuss Josh’s childhood as a chess prodigy and how he learned to train and compete at the highest levels by facing his fears and overcoming points of weakness. He explains the principles that unify disparate physical and mental pursuits and how understanding the interconnectedness of the learning process enables ultra-high-level performance across disciplines.

In this episode, I explain how medications such as Adderall, Ritalin, Vyvanse and other stimulants work to increase focus and treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). I explain the brain circuits involved in focus and the key roles dopamine and norepinephrine play in their regulation. Then I explain how stimulants such as Adderall and Vyvanse can increase focus and reduce hyperactivity in kids or adults with ADHD, and how and why Ritalin and other medications (e.g., Modafinil, Guanfacine) may work better for some. I explain the long-term effects of ADHD medications on height, cardiovascular health, hormones, predisposition to addiction and psychosis, and whether these treatments can be used and then stopped. I also discuss the immense individual variation in dosage sensitivity for these medications and the negative side-effects that occur from recreational use. This episode ought to benefit anyone with ADHD, their parents, those on ADHD medications or anyone curious about how these medications work.

In episode 4 of a 6-part series, Andy Galpin, PhD, explains how to design an effective training program for fitness, health and longevity through a 10-step approach. He covers goal setting, exercise selection, balancing, recovery periods and real-world challenges. He provides a year-long training example that considers sleep, sunlight and social connection. The program is modifiable for personal fitness goals and experience.

Recently I had the pleasure of hosting a live event in Sydney, Australia. This event was part of a lecture series called The Brain Body Contract. My favorite part of the evening was the question and answer period, where I had the opportunity to answer questions from the attendees of each event. Included here is the Q&A from our event at the ICC Sydney Theatre.

My guest is Dr. Richard Schwartz, Ph.D., therapist, author, and founder of Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy. We discuss how IFS views the mind as a collection of parts, each shaped by different life experiences—both good and bad, including trauma. To demonstrate how IFS works, Dr. Schwartz guides Dr. Huberman and you, the listener, through an example IFS session. We also explore how IFS and body awareness can help break harmful thought and behavior patterns, promote emotional healing, and build healthier relationships.

In this episode, my guest is Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, EdD, professor of education, psychology and neuroscience at the University of Southern California and director of the Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning and Education, who has done groundbreaking research on emotions, self-awareness and social interactions and how these impact the way we learn and change across our lifespan. She explains how an understanding of emotions can be leveraged to improve learning in children and in adults, and how the education system should be altered to include new forms of exploration and to facilitate better learning and to include more diverse learning (and teaching) styles. This episode ought to be of interest to anyone interested in how we learn, human development in children and adults, as well as those generally interested in education, psychology or neuroscience.

My guest is Dr. Richard Schwartz, Ph.D., therapist, author, and founder of Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy. We discuss how IFS views the mind as a collection of parts, each shaped by different life experiences—both good and bad, including trauma. To demonstrate how IFS works, Dr. Schwartz guides Dr. Huberman and you, the listener, through an example IFS session. We also explore how IFS and body awareness can help break harmful thought and behavior patterns, promote emotional healing, and build healthier relationships.