As someone that always got the creeps from this guy and got tired of seeing him all over social media promoting his nonsense with his whole "I'm a professor at Stanford" act, this article is cathartic and somewhat vindicating to read.
The long and the short of it is that while preaching self control, cutting out toxicity from your life, and creating peace, he proceeded to have affairs with five or six different women at the same time, with unprotected sex and potential spreading of STDs/STIs, along with cheating on the woman he was trying to have a child with, as well as ghosting pretty much everyone in his life constantly. He also made up a dubious backstory to hide the nepotism that allowed him to have a career at Stanford:
What does seem certain is that in his adolescence, Andrew became a regular consumer of talk therapy. In therapy, one learns to tell stories about one’s experience. A story one could tell is: I overcame immense odds to be where I am. Another is: The son of a Stanford professor, born at Stanford Hospital, grows up to be a Stanford professor.
For context with this paragraph, Huberman talks about the benefits of therapy all the time:
Andrew’s relationship to therapy remains intriguing. “We were at dinner once,” says Eve, “and he told me something personal, and I suggested he talk to his therapist. He laughed it off like that wasn’t ever going to happen, so I asked him if he lied to his therapist. He told me he did all the time.”
As a summary for how his podcast is filled with projection:
With repeated listening to the podcast, one discerns a man undergoing, in public, an effort to understand himself. There are hours of talking about addiction, trauma, dopamine, and fear. Narcissism comes up consistently. One can see attempts to understand and also places where those attempts swerve into self-indulgence.
I definitely want to take psychological advice from a narcissistic sociopath who peddles Joe Rogan muscle powder
Yeah and Huberman is definitely knowledgeable enough to know that the "muscle powder" is completely ineffective in dosage and a scam, yet he still promoted it. That's just selling out.
As for his psychological advice, as I've said it always came across as preachy and the words of someone who protests too much.
The bit in the article where he spent 9 minutes armchair diagnosing a colleague who sent him a terse message for his flakiness is telling
If I ever encountered this guy in YT clips I certainly dismissed him as a grifter and forgot his face straight away
Never heard of him. Stanford is a wretched hive of scum and villainy.
I just remember seeing this guy's Youtube clips appearing on my feed and thinking that he's just a science based Joe Rogan clone. Then all of a sudden he got super popular on social media. Some of his videos were good, some were nonsense, especially when he promoted bunk supplements.
I think the article really doesn't make enough of the fact that his specialty is opthamology and he has no psychology training at all
EDIT: apparently does have a MA in psych, my mistake
Have you ever had a dream that you, um, you had, your, you- you could, you’ll do, where you’re a Stanford nepo baby so much you could do anything?
Actually he has relevant degrees from UC Santa Barbara and UC Berkeley and UC Davis as well. He’s also taught at UC San Diego.
Maybe he saw what Jordon Peterson was doing and thought he could jump on the university-to-conservative-grifter track too.
that his specialty is opthamology
THE FUCK? I've just assumed this whole time that this guy was at least psychology-adjacent
He's a neurobiologist EDIT: and he does have a master's in Psych frok Berkeley, I was wrong
Andrew’s relationship to therapy remains intriguing.
I'm reminded of Tony Soprano.
I feel like his solo podcasts aren’t all that bad. Gets straight to the topic at hand without any meandering. Some of the guests he platforms and his appearances in other media, though, tend to brush up against manosphere territory.
Yeah his podcast episode on alcohol is probably one of the best pieces of publicly available media with regards to explaining the terrible health effects alcohol has on the body, if you ignore his thinly veiled dislike for everyone who drinks alcohol. So he does make some good content. Though his content has always been straight up manosphere for me, like a scientific Joe Rogan.
I just found some of the preaching he does annoying and thought there was no way he actually believed or practiced it.
honestly i watched some of his stuff and actually liked it, there is good factual information in there and IIRC he selects topics based on his audience's requests.
i have always chalked up his "strangeness" to something innocuous like autism or something. had no idea about the crazy affairs, or the occasional crappy guests.
the supplement thing was always sketchy as fuck though, always felt way out of place. i imagine he could find a better sponsor with how big hes gotten, but he hasnt for some reason.