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Connection Between Masculinity And Mental Health; Zelenskyy Arrives At The White House; Trump To Meet With Zelenskyy. Aired 10:30- 11a ET

Aired February 28, 2025 - 10:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:30:00]

ANDREW HUBERMAN, NEUROSCIENTIST AND HOST, "HUBERMAN LAB": That leads to the second point, which is, you know, it's not necessary, but it's been typical and it is healthy for there to be competition and hierarchy among young men. And when I say that, I mean, that's the way that many young men traditionally, but still now, sort out what they're good at, what they're less good at.

And I think there's a misconception that all men have to be excellent at everything, that every -- you know, I think it's a clear misperception that every young man has to be muscular and fit and brilliant and creative. You know, having grown up in a big group of young men and boys. And now, I'm 49 years old. Men, boys sort out where they are in the so-called hierarchy by figuring out what their natural talents are, what their gifts are, and where they thrive, and that is not done in isolation. That's always been done in groups.

And I think what we're missing nowadays is the opportunity to engage in healthy competition and hierarchy and be celebrated for that. And I look at this as just a healthy aspect of becoming a man. I'm hearing this a lot from my male audience, and about 55 percent of my podcast audience is male, the other 45 percent is female.

And what I'm hearing is, hey, you know, I don't feel like I can express myself, but that's true across the board for the more creative types, for the more athletic types, for those that have more intellectual leanings. And I think that the big misperception now is that if you're not in tech, you're not athletic or something, that somehow, you're not able to express yourself fully, that's never been true, and it's certainly not true now.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: I think it's so important to really drill down on what you brought up, Dr. Huberman, on the loneliness and how that is playing into all of this. There's a Gallup poll out recently, one in five people report being lonely. That's men and women. And by the way, there will be a time to come to discuss, you know, women and issues facing them as well. But right now, I want to focus on this issue facing men.

Dr. Hollis, why do you think loneliness is such a big issue, particularly among young men, as Dr. Huberman was just laying out there? JAMES HOLLIS, PSYCHOANALYST AND AUTHOR: Well, as the way I expressed it in the interview with Dr. Huberman, I asked women and young men to think about this. When did they get separated from themselves? When did they realize they have to start hiding their inner life? When did they get separated and distrusting of their inner life?

If you're a woman, you should imagine this, first of all, that all of your close friends, the people that you count on in discussing your family, your love life, your children, your worries about your body, et cetera, they're cut away from your life in perpetuity.

Secondly, to realize that your worth as a human being is going to be determined by your meeting abstract standards of productivity on a constant basis, and the line keeps moving, and it's defined by total strangers. And thirdly, that you're cut off from your source of inner guidance. Whatever the woman would consider her intuition or her instinctual guidance, the man has to be functioning constantly in a competitive world. And I agree that competition can be healthy. But we also have to understand it can be destructive as well. It creates, in men's lives, that you're either a winner or a loser.

And whenever men are experiencing their insufficiencies or inadequacies or failures or whatever, they label themselves in very severe ways. So, why would one want to share that with another? From childhood on, men have been shamed from -- by other children and by adults for expressing their inner life. So, at least to a profound self-estrangement that shows up in their refusal or apprehension about trying to connect with other males in their life.

BROWN: And in one of your books, I believe it's called "Under Saturn's Shadow," it's all about men, you say -- I believe it's in this book, every man is a mountain of anger and lake of tears. And you look at the data, data shows boys are struggling at school, they have fallen well behind girls in academic achievement. Women make up the majority of students on America's college campuses, a gap of 16 points. The labor force partition rate -- participation rate has also declined among young men.

Now, some viewers might be watching this and saying, you know, a lot of these men, they might be privileged, you know, to begin, with their race and their social class and so forth.

Dr. Huberman, I, just to bring you in on this in what Dr. Hollis said, how do you see that and just sort of the evolution of what it means to be a man in society now and, you know, especially among the young men? Because from what I gather, that's really where you're seeing a lot of the sort of core issues here.

HUBERMAN: Yes. Well, because my podcast focuses mainly on tools, or we call them protocols for mental health, physical health, and performance, what I mostly hear is, you know, certainly during the pandemic people felt isolated, right? But now, a lot of what I hear is that notions of self-care, for lack of a better phrase, notions of self-care, like getting better sleep, perhaps avoiding alcohol, certainly in excess.

[10:35:00]

I did an episode on alcohol that still is one of our most popular episodes, which emphasize really that zero is better than any, if you're talking strictly about health, and that there's a pretty small number of alcohol contained drinks that you can consume healthfully across the week that, you know, reducing alcohol or eliminating it altogether, engaging in exercise, getting sunlight in the morning, these are zero cost practices that really we could call self-care, right? I mean, they're applicable to everybody, not just men, but --

BROWN: Yes, I do some of that.

HUBERMAN: You know, I think in the past -- yes, I think in the past, the notion of self-care was considered kind of soft. What I'm hearing from literally millions of men and women as well, but millions of men, is that, you know, taking good care of oneself, emphasizing getting good sleep, emphasizing limiting or reduce -- limiting or eliminating alcohol, excuse me, or other substances like, you know, cannabis, we could talk about that as well. Trying to get regular exercise, these sorts of things, for everybody, not just people who seek to be athletes, that that better self-care converts into better mental health, better sleep, obviously, but better mental health, physical health.

And when I say performance, that sounds a little bit like health optimization or biohacking. When we say performance, it could be the ability to concentrate better in school, the ability to be more present to relationships of all kinds. I just want to mention one other thing, which is that I -- when I refer to competition and hierarchy, I mean, in the healthy sense.

You know, it's a little bit of healthy ribbing about, hey, like, yes, you could do. Better encouragement, right, through competition and healthy ribbing. Not -- certainly not shaming or anything of that sort. You know, that's healthy competition. And it is where boys typically find what they're good at and what they're less good at. And that often leads to -- for instance, I think we still celebrate the creatives, male creatives in our culture, singers, actors. I mean, there's -- these are some of the most highly revered people now in the United States and elsewhere, not just athletes, et cetera.

I think the -- any time we're talking about performance or competition or where one shines or has talent, I think a false assumption is that you need to be the CEO of a billion-dollar company or the founder of a billion-dollar company in order to really be in your full expression as a human, as a man. What I'm really talking about is how everybody, I do believe, men and women, but everybody has some unique talent that you can tap into if you really understand who you are with yourself and relative to others.

And I think one of the most important contributions among many of the others, but the most important contributions that Dr. Hollis has made is this process that everybody can go into. It sounds a little bit, you know, abstract to some, but it's very concrete that, you know, getting things done in the world. He calls it, you know, being in stimulus response, you know (INAUDIBLE) e-mails, taking care of your coursework, doing your athletics, et cetera, whatever that happens to be is critical, but so is going internally and really asking, you know, who am I? What do I really think about what I'm seeing around me? Do I like it? Do I not like it?

Learning to form one's own opinion so that you can arrive in the world with a stance of, yes, you're right. You know, I need that critical feedback as well as the opposite side of the coin of masculinity, I would say, which is when we suggest something, you say, you know, actually, I hear you and I completely disagree. And that both of those are welcome and that's part of being a healthfully internally and externally structured human being.

And forgive me, Dr Hollis, I didn't do that justice. But when you came on the podcast, that was one of the most themes with millions of people, this idea that you have to understand yourself and that can't be done in isolation. So, I thank you for raising that point.

BROWN: Yes, there's a reason that was the number one wellness podcast last year. All right. Stay with us, because I want to hear what Dr. Hollis has to say about that on the other side of this break. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:40:00]

BROWN: I want to continue this conversation with Stanford neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman and author and psychoanalyst Dr. James Hollis.

Dr. Hollis, I want to bring you in, because I wonder what your thoughts are as we're talking about the importance of introspection and really finding your true path and your authentic self. How you do that -- how you can do that when you have the use of phones and social media and these studies showing the impact that they have had on younger generations potentially making them more prone to anxiety, depression, and in some cases, suicide? I wonder what you say to that, what advice you might have, Dr. Hollis in this. The ecosphere of information overload that I know I experience every day.

HOLLIS: Of course. And you know, one of the things that we've realized is the more connected we are electronically, the less we're really talking to each other. People yell at each other online, but they're not actually sharing what their reality is.

Men are afraid of connecting with another man because they're always afraid of being shamed in some way or judged by another person. And so, the big test for any man, first of all, is to get conscious and begin to examine their life and ask where their choices are coming from and where are they getting their orders from, somebody who's making a lot of noise out there or from someone who is able to help them access their inner reality.

And then, secondly, to be willing to share that with another man, it's often easier to share it with women for the simple reason they do that routinely. For men, that means risking exposure, becoming vulnerable, opening to another man and to other -- a man. And of course, if you don't do that, it enhances the isolation and the self-shaming even more.

[10:45:00]

That's why we have a whole youth culture of living through video games, which is not real. It's distraction, pornography and for a pot and other drugs, because it's an avoidance of stepping into the reality of one's own journey and being conscious and taking responsibility for how one is conducting one's life and what one's behaviors are in service to.

BROWN: Dr. Huberman, what is your take on that as a neuroscientist from that perspective, and what this information overload, social media, et cetera, does to our brains?

HUBERMAN: Yes. So, well, I personally hold the strong belief that one of the core aspects of the human brain, but in particular the male brain, if I may, is to create action at a distance. You know, this is not to say that women don't do this, right? They are interested in this and can be extremely proficient in this as well. But there's a kind of fascination among many, not all, but many boys and men about creating action at a distance. And this is fundamental to human evolution, from everything from, sure, weaponry, but also, you know, putting new music into the world, putting new technology into the world, putting knowledge into the world.

Obviously, social media allows for action at a distance, but through language and words and sometimes video action and things of that sort. So, we've taken this, what I think is an innate human drive for creating action at a distance, and obviously, the further and the more visible that creates a certain reward in the human brain reward pathways, involving dopamine and other neuro modulators.

So, you know, you think about a generation of people who are raised doing this, where one of the primary ways that they get social validation or that they can express themselves literally is through action at a distance through words written with their thumbs. Very, very different than anything that happened prior to 20 years ago or 15 years ago.

So, what's happened, however, is that I think we've become more divorced from action at a distance in the physical world. And now, this could be a hike, right? This doesn't have to be throwing a rock to kill something, I'm not trying to be primitive with this.

But anytime we see a technology such as social media, any technology whatsoever, that technology is always going to be played out through neural circuits in our brain and body that have existed for hundreds of thousands of years, right, that evolved over millions of years and thousands of years. So, you know, this is why there's a very key point here, which is that the reward pathways that, yes, involved dopamine, that make us feel good, right, reward can be good and reward can be bad.

Anytime that you can achieve reward without having effort prior to it, it's dangerous. Drugs of abuse, methamphetamine, cocaine, online gambling, abundance of pornography. Anytime that you can achieve these dopamine releases without effort, prior to it, you run the risk of, yes, addiction, compulsion, these are different things, right? Habit, right? They're not always -- it's not always addiction, it could be compulsion or something could merely be habit for me.

But one of the things that I've really emphasized on the podcast is that we need to think about where we're getting these so-called dopamine hits a reward without effort coming prior to it. And I think social media gives that very easily.

Now, I use social media to teach. I think they're healthy uses of social media. Healthy use of social media, in my mind, would include it the accessing of mentors that you couldn't access in your close proximity. And so -- but I'd like people to understand this and just look at it in their own lives, anytime that you are achieving reward without effort prior, you run the risk of creating mental or physical disease.

BROWN: That's so important.

HUBERMAN: I mean, we've essentially created that in the food system, we create it in the notions of sexuality. And here I'm not to -- I'm not here to disparage, you know, necessarily even all pornography or all sports gambling, but I'm just saying that these are slippery slopes because of this lack of effort required to achieve the dopamine hit prior to it.

BROWN: Yes, you've approaching this from a scientific standpoint. And that's what's so fascinating about that. Yes, right.

HUBERMAN: Right, right. If I can order my food and not go pick it up, right, you eliminate a key step. It might seem like a minor step, but over time, you wonder why we're so abundant in calories and so deficient in health, for instance.

BROWN: Well, and I think about that as a mom with my kids. Like, that's something really important to think about. Wow. What a fascinating, interesting conversation. I learned a lot from this. Dr. Huberman, from the "Huberman Lab" podcast, thank you for your time. Dr. Hollis, thank you. You have had a profound impact on my life after my mom died. I read your book, "Living an Examined Life" and "The Second Half of Life," and it helped me tremendously. So, thank you for your time as well. Gentlemen, we'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:50:00]

BROWN: We're just moments away from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's arrival at the White House. Front and center in today's visit, Ukraine's natural resources, especially its rare earth minerals and the role they could play in ending the war with Russia. CNN's Chief Climate Correspondent Bill Weir joins us now. Bill, what kind of minerals does Ukraine actually have? BILL WEIR, CNN CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: That is the trillion-dollar question, Pamela. A lot of the information is a bit outdated. We're not really sure, but best estimates right now is they have an abundance of the stuff that is going to become much more valuable as the world moves away from fossil fuels, the fuels that burn toward a more electrified future here as well.

[10:55:00]

Let's -- we're talking about these particulars because of the products they lead to. Titanium, for example. Super strong and light. That's why it's used to make fighter jets. Lithium, of course, goes into the batteries in both cars and all the gadgets in our lives. Graphite is used in steel production. In fact, some startups are using it as thermal batteries. It's sort of the dense form of carbon. And nickel and cobalt is vital in battery supplies, also wind turbines. And most of this is found in places like Congo. A lot of cost to the environment, to the populations there as well.

And so, President Zelenskyy is saying, come to Ukraine and we can provide a lot of these sorts of things, but not all of these are equal, like titanium, for example, pretty big reserves in the western part of the country, easy to get to. But lithium, relatively tiny little pockets. And half of it, Pam, is behind Russian occupied territory lines right now. A lot more complicated.

And when it comes to nickel and cobalt as well, it's very complicated in terms of getting it out. And then, before the Russian invasion, something like 80 percent of these deposits had even been exploited. Ukraine is very, very in the nascent stages of major industrial mining. So, regardless of whatever deal is struck today, investors from the U.S. and other countries would have to pour hundreds of millions -- billions of dollars and spend up to decades just getting the infrastructure in place, especially in a country where half of their electricity grid has been devastated by this war.

And for example, the lithium in Ukraine is much harder to get because of the geology there. The rocks are different than in Chile and Australia, where it's easier to produce. So, a lot of complications around the plans and certainly not enough production to have any difference in this conflict right now, Pam.

BROWN: Bill Weir, thank you so much for helping us better understand. Now, we are minutes away from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's arrival at the White House for a meeting with President Trump. We'll bring that to you live when it happens.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:00:00]