Video summary
Andrew Huberman addresses the viral concept of "[ __ ] maxing," a term popularized by Marc Andreessen that advocates for minimizing introspection and rumination in favor of pure action. This philosophy, which builds upon Luke's "look maxing" but extends to ignoring emotional problems entirely, was championed on David Senna's podcast as a counterbalance to the modern obsession with therapy and self-reflection. Huberman notes that while figures like Dana White have reinforced this stoic approach by discouraging men from publicly discussing emotional challenges, he argues against dismissing emotions altogether. Instead, he suggests finding a balance where individuals check in with themselves but avoid getting stuck in cycles of thought that prevent them from taking action or providing for their families. The discussion shifts to the historical context of high achievers and "rough edges," noting that great CEOs often score higher on disagreeableness traits compared to today's standards, which demand perfection across all dimensions. Huberman cites Steve Jobs as an example of a brilliant figure who was difficult, yelled at people, drove recklessly, and did not wear shoes in public spaces—traits once celebrated but now scrutinized under the lens of modern social media scrutiny. He argues that the era before ubiquitous phone cameras allowed for more nuanced judgments about character, whereas today's constant surveillance requires concrete video evidence to substantiate claims about someone being a sociopath or terrible person. Huberman illustrates how the expectation for proof has changed using examples like the Diddy parties and Coldplay concert incidents, where public outrage was fueled by rumors rather than verified footage until specific videos surfaced. He posits that this shift toward demanding visual data means that accusations against billionaires often dissolve into "chatter" or fog when lacking tangible evidence of wrongdoing. Consequently, he suggests that simply having a billion dollars should not automatically generate hatred unless there is demonstrable proof of harmful behavior, challenging the current cultural tendency to assume malice without seeing it captured on camera. The conversation concludes with practical advice for men in their 30s and beyond who are still training hard but face diminishing returns due to aging physiology. Huberman explains that while discipline remains crucial, recovery becomes more difficult as mitochondria—the energy producers within muscle cells—weaken over time. He introduces Timeline's Mitopure, a supplement containing clinically validated urolithin A, which supports mitophagy by clearing out damaged mitochondria and renewing healthy ones to maintain strength in the 30s, 40s, and beyond. Ultimately, he frames this not as an excuse to push harder but as a foundational step to support cellular machinery, ensuring that high achievers can sustain their performance without relying solely on willpower against biological decline.
Read the full video transcript
Are you threatened by the [ __ ] maxing
movement?
Have you heard about this?
>> great question.
>> That's a great question.
>> That's a good question.
>> He looks right at me.
>> Yeah. Yes.
>> Do you feel
>> Let me answer that the way I think you
intended it. Yes, I am personally
offended.
>> No, threatened.
>> Threatened
>> You wake up and you're like, are you
like I'm [ __ ] maxing today? Like is
that what you think?
>> All right. What is it? [ __ ] maxing?
>> All right. All right.
>> It's awesome.
>> No, I actually
>> What is this?
>> [laughter]
>> I've heard of look maxing.
>> Yeah.
>> There's look maxing then there's a guy
who does what's called [ __ ] maxing,
which is was popularized by of all
people Marc Andreessen, who's easily one
of the smartest people I've ever met.
Know Marc real well.
Um, he's a big fan of [ __ ] maxing.
[ __ ] maxing is this guy on the
internet who what
>> [gasps]
>> What? You want to explain?
>> No, I'm loving
>> So you know with all the stuff about get
up in the morning and you know, do this
and do that and you know, when you when
you have a problem or all the kind of
stuff that that you know, Chris covers,
you know, like about
emerging dynamics of male-female
relationships and self-perception and
philosophy and he interviews like, you
know, real thinkers and they have
British accents and that kind of thing.
This guy sits in his backyard, is
basically a farm, and he does this thing
that he calls [ __ ] maxing, which is
where you basically just don't think
about [ __ ] at all. You just do what
needs to be done. If something bothers
you, you just ignore it. Is this the the
the CEO that is like, I don't
self-perceive?
>> So Marc Andreessen came on the David
Senra Yeah, so Marc Andreessen started
Netscape.
>> Right.
>> And now he has A16Z, which is one of
the, you know, biggest investment firms
in
in the Bay Area and all over the world,
frankly. And he
came on the David Senra podcast, which
used to which is a guy who also does the
Founders podcast. David Senra Senra
podcast, incidentally, put out by
SciComm. We loved the Founders podcast.
So we brought Senra over and he brought
Marc Andreessen on. And Marc Andreessen
said, he used the words, these are not
my words, he said,
"Great men of history did not sit around
thinking about their thoughts and
introspecting, you know, like
introspection is not what we need to be
doing. We need more action, less
introspection." Yeah.
>> Actually, Dana White kind of doubled
down on this recently.
>> Saying that he's not he he
is not a fan of people
men talking about their
emotional challenges publicly. You know,
that it's like get up, go to war, make
money for your family, you know, sort of
the old school kind of stoicism thing.
So, the the Marc Andreessen thing
mobilized a big discussion online on X
in particular. One sort of angle of
attack that he opened was, "Oh, all
right, here's a billionaire who doesn't
like introspection." And you know, and
and I know Marc very well. He's not a
sociopath. He's not He's a very, very
kind person. I know his family. He's an
incredible human being at many levels.
I'm going to catch a lot of [ __ ] for
saying that, but that's the truth. If
you actually know him. All right.
>> And now he's retired.
>> Now,
>> [laughter]
>> he then made a plug for [ __ ] maxing.
He was like, "Hey, there's this guy on
the internet who basically doesn't say
[ __ ] at all. He just says, 'Just handle
your business. Do what you need to do,
and stop thinking about things so much.
Don't ruminate so much.'" And
he said he was a big fan of this [ __ ]
maxing. So, building off Luke's maxing.
And then
that caught
some momentum. And so, now the big thing
is introspection. Like, should we
introspect? Should we think about and
reflect on who we are and what's
challenging us? And Dana was basically
saying, "Hey, listen, a lot I think the
point Dana was trying to make was that
men's mental health, while critical,
right? Suicide rates are way up. Like,
we all acknowledge that." He made a very
good point, which is often times getting
into action and doing things as opposed
to being online and thinking about your
problems and rumination is a very
dangerous place to be.
>> Yeah, I think so.
>> he said, "Get up and work and provide
for your family." And but it when he and
Marc said these things, it came across
as a little bit dismissive of the idea
that emotions are relevant. And I do
think, you know, they have a a point in
the sense that I think we need to
balance out some of what we've been
hearing a lot of over the last few
years, sure. Which is that we need to
think about every aspect of self, every
aspect, you know, like oh, too much
therapy is not not good.
>> Yeah, if if you spend your time just
like thinking and not doing. So, cuz it
feels like that's kind of the the note
behind the note, right? Is like if you
just sit and introspect and think and
you just sit in like I feel this way and
you never actually take action, then
you're just literally not doing
anything. But I think there's kind of
levels to like I think it's good to to
be introspective to a degree, check in
with yourself, you know, express how you
feel, but don't just sit there and say
this is how I feel and then don't do
anything.
>> Yeah. I mean, there's a there's a kind
of a larger
perhaps deeper discussion around like to
what And Mark Andreessen said this as
well, like
people who've tended to accomplish a lot
of great things often times have some
pretty rough edges.
>> Yeah.
>> up in the town where Steve Jobs was
around. He used to come in and get
rollerblade wheels at the skateboard
shop where I worked. He was kind of a
rough edge guy. He didn't wear shoes.
You know, when he wanted what he wanted,
he wanted it. Then he was known for
yelling at people. He'd drive 95 miles
per like you, not this guy.
Yeah. Likes to drive fast, you know, he
got You know, and so there was this
There was this time up until phones with
cameras.
Thank you, Steve Jobs. There was this
time up until phones with cameras where
people were
kind of celebrated for being big
personalities with some rough edges.
But for the great things that they did.
Now, it's there's a movement largely
from the left of like, "Hey, you know,
everything needs to be rather tempered,
right? You can't be a big personality
unless you're perfect in every
dimension." And if you look, I mean,
historically, you look at any public
figure now, like you're going to find,
as you said, there's that dark and
light. Those And Mark's whole thing is
those things go hand in hand. Like great
CEOs often times have some strong
disagreeableness. They rate higher in
disagreeableness. Um they're
conscientious,
right? But they also are kind of
high-friction people.
>> But some of the like you know Mark and
you're like this is good, but some
really high achievers, historically,
even now, men, let's say that are really
high achievers, that get a lot of things
done and have a comp a lot, are also
like from many people's accounts like
terrible people, you know?
>> I guess I guess the question is how
close are those people to the actual
person, you know?
>> That are saying that?
>> Yeah, I mean I think right now there's a
lot of hatred of billionaires. And
look, I was born and raised in in
Silicon Valley. So
going big is like a thing. Like even my
friends that got into skateboarding in
the Bay Area, like they weren't thinking
about becoming billionaires, but like
the Embarcadero Plaza in the early '90s,
those guys like started big companies,
they went big. Rob Dyrdek, he's from,
you know, Midwest, but then came out
shows and then he's like ridiculous and
he
you know, big. Going big is is a theme
in right?
>> Yeah.
>> And everyone uses these platforms and
everyone hates these people.
But I don't know. I'm
I know some of these people. I'm not
like super close with them, but I I like
Mark. I trust Mark. I like the other
Mark. I trust that Mark, too.
Um I don't, you know, various folks at
at who run these big companies and
do I think they're perfect? No.
But I could Listen, if I were to start
talking about Nobel Prize winners past
and present,
man,
the men and the women, very complicated
people. Like you want to do a deep dive
on the complications of science funding,
like look up Jonas Salk and who he
married and getting money and then the
work that he was able to do by virtue of
his marital relations and things. I'm
not saying he used his wife to make
money.
>> Married for funding?
>> Many There's many examples of this in
science. You know, money fuels science.
You can do more science with
>> You got to love some science.
>> So there's a lot of interesting and it's
not sorted. It's just sort of it's
they're still humans,
you know? So anyway,
>> But if you've got constant CCTV cuz
there's a phone camera within two yards
of you everywhere on the planet, those
rough edges look a bit more harsh when
they're scrutinized. Is that what you're
saying?
>> Yeah, I mean
I have this whole opinion this purely
opinion now about what the cameras have
done to sort of what we need in order to
really make a
strong assumption about somebody. So in
the like in the past you could just say
hey this person like I don't like them
based on one thing they said and you're
entitled to do that. But I think two
things have happened in the last couple
of years that have completely
transformed like what our expectation is
about how rumor matches up with reality
at least for me. One would be this is an
unfortunate it's a bad incident, right?
Would be the you know, there was all
this speculation about Diddy and these
Diddy parties, right? And everyone
expected like at some point there's
going to be a video. Guess what? There
was never actually a video aired, right?
But there was a video of him beating up
this woman.
That sort of raised the threshold for
what people need to see in order to be
like okay that actually happened, okay?
The other one was this Coldplay concert
thing.
Like that Coldplay concert where the
couple got caught cheating or whatever
like whatever the context of the
backdrop of the relationship totally
uninteresting to me but you could not
have created this was like opera, right?
They're at a concert. They're cheating.
The guy goes oh look at these two
lovers, right? The guy is not just any
guy.
And then
>> It's literally like a
>> There's
>> this moment where they're in the like oh
that's us. Then there's this moment
where they're like oh [ __ ]
>> Yeah, yeah, [ __ ]
>> So it went from kind of like delight to
shock
>> in an instant, yeah.
>> to shame and then so we got to witness
the whole arc. Now I wasn't interested
in that but the whole world jumped on
that because it's like the human drama
playing out in real time. So now when
somebody goes oh I heard that this woman
had a kid with this guy I don't even
know their their names so you guys
probably do. You know and she named her
kid after this guy and like oh, it it it
has this kind of low-level like whatever
what happened between Justin Baldoni and
Blake Lively and this and that. And it's
sort of like Yeah, where's the video?
Show me the video where this People
don't People Then so the press can go
back and forth and back and forth and
people kind of pick their camps. But I
think real things being captured on real
video has set the stand like not
standard um low standard high threshold.
>> Yeah, yeah.
>> And so I think that's changed. So now
somebody goes, "Oh yeah, these guys are,
you know, sociopaths." You go, "Show me
the data for sociopathic." People
actually now need to see data. It's not
sufficient that somebody write some
little thing about one little thing.
They need to see the video. The video is
what what actually shifts people's
minds. So if people are saying, "Hey,
this billionaire founder, this
billionaire founder, this billionaire
These guys are terrible people."
>> Right, right, right.
>> How are they terrible people?
>> Yeah.
>> Show me them being terrible people. I
don't want to see it, but I just don't
see evidence of it. So I think it's just
turning to chatter and I think it's just
going to turn to fog and then I think
it's going to just go away.
>> Well, yeah, I think a lot of it differs
though. Depends who it is. There's
different billionaires doing different
stuff, so. But I I agree. If someone
just has a billion bucks, I wouldn't
hate them just because it's like you
shouldn't have that much.
>> If you're busy and you're doing well, I
think it's very easy to get upset with
other people cuz it's a lot easier than
like getting up and doing something.
Like re-target maxing is hard.
>> It is hard. And that's 100% true.
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