Andrew Huberman’s non-apology tour

The podcaster finally addresses allegations—sort of

The frame is tight, staring up in stoic admiration. Three hours, thirty-seven minutes, entirely black and white—unironically, like the content itself—heavy on contrast. Gone are the cigar smoke and whiskey tumbler, replaced by green powder and sunlight therapy. The scene opens with a reading from a war movie, a film that featured an actor who would later play Jesus on film, then believe himself to be the son of god.

That’s how Jocko Willink launches into his recent conversation with Andrew Huberman, quoting from “The Thin Red Line.” 

…this great evil, where does it come from, how did it steal into the world, what seed, what root did it grow from, who's doing this, who's killing us, robbing us of life and light, mocking us with the sight of what we might have known…

Would you rather encounter a bear in the wild or beefy podcasters in the man cave? Tough call. Three-plus hours is hard to endure with any men, especially bloviating optimizers.

For our purposes, we’ll focus on just 15 minutes of this conversation, the moment when Huberman addresses—sort of—allegations of cheating and aggression first entertained in this March expose.

Scott Carney offers a good overview of Huberman’s non-apology. What’s obvious: men in the bro cave don’t apologize. They have nothing to apologize for.

During those long 15 minutes, Huberman invokes cheating once, immediately qualifying it by stating that he too has been cheated on. Introduce the demon, deflect. Look what they’ve done to me.

Two moments from Huberman’s non-confession jumped out, which I’ll get to.

First, Carney points out a few important moments. Huberman addresses the following paragraph at length, offering a big “fuck you” to anyone who would dare criticize him for caring about his dog. (Sarah is a pseudonym for Huberman’s girlfriend at the time.)

[Huberman] gave the impression of working on himself; throughout their relationship, he would talk about “repair” and “healthy merging.” He was devoted to his bullmastiff, Costello, whom he worried over constantly: Was Costello comfortable? Sleeping properly? Andrew liked to dote on the dog, she says, and he liked to be doted on by Sarah.

Huberman only focuses on these sentences, decontextualized from the full argument. Carney says the following sentiment is in the paragraph prior to the above quote (it’s actually a few paragraphs later), but the bigger issue is that the journalist, Kerry Howley, compares Huberman’s obsession and care with Costello to how he treats Sarah.

When they fought, it was, she says, typically because Andrew would fixate on her past choices: the men she had been with before him, the two children she had had with another man. “I experienced his rage,” Sarah recalls, “as two to three days of yelling in a row. When he was in this state, he would go on until 11 or 12 at night and sometimes start again at two or three in the morning.”

Does Huberman address this graph? Not at all. His entire “confession” is cherry-picked, decontextualized from the painting Howley constructs. He’s likely banking on the fact that Jocko fans haven’t actually read the article (likely true), which allows him to present limited framings, pulling the camera lens as tight as Willink’s production team.

The entire segment is filled with evasion and deflection. Carney also points out that Huberman says he offers “free” content, a provably false sentiment: anything sponsored or that includes ads is, by definition, not free. The content is paid for by marketers, which the public endures.

This form of monetization can be traced back to the origins of media 500 years ago: people pay for information either through subscriptions or by reading ads. A completely legitimate way for people to earn a living through the work they do.

It’s just not “free.”

Enter the bro cave

Onto the two moments that jumped out to me.

The first is Willink’s framing to introduce the New York expose, which, I’m guessing, was discussed in advance. It’s been six weeks since the article dropped, so Huberman has had plenty of time to consult with publicists on managing his public image. Willink tees it up in the most nonchalant way possible.

Hey, you mentioned the, the internet and all this kind of stuff, you just kind of, you just kind of popped up for the first time with some scrutiny, like public scrutiny, an article and stuff like this, what was that, what was that all about, what was that like?

A perfect bro cave segue, guys shooting the shit about skateboarding and optimization and being a man, and oh, hey, those women were popping off again, right? What the fuck is up with them? We can’t credit Willink as being a journalist, which he’s obviously not, nor credit him with trying to dig into the truth of the situation.

Man caves are safe spaces, after all.

The ambiguity of the question leads to the ambiguity of Huberman’s response. There’s no real focus, save himself. He opens with a long explanation of how his podcast started, how he was caught off-guard by success, how, hey, why put all this pressure on him, an imperfect man. Not a man who uses scientific credentials to monetize his podcast while offering health advice.

No, Huberman Rogans it: why are you looking at the clown for advice? Even though advice he gives, and makes millions from. He never address the ethics of wanting to be taken seriously as a science communicator on one hand and monetizing health pseudo-information on the other. Let the people decide what role I’m playing summates the vibe.

So Willink’s softball intro leapt out at me. Then, this.

Huberman criticizes armchair psychologizing that occurs in online spaces. Fair point: the language of therapy is often flattened in public conversation.

On one hand, more people talking about mental health is great. The flip side: diagnoses by non-experts on social media. This reduces our ability to grapple with clinical knowledge, which includes clinical diagnoses and treatment protocols. For example, not everything is trauma; yet trauma—as in being lied to and cheated on, for some—is important to discuss.

This isn’t what Huberman is actually critiquing, though. It’s more who are these people trying to diagnose me than a rallying cry for the American Psychological Association.

Here’s what hits hardest, though: Huberman builds a case against online diagnoses. Then: 

We give people labels. We call them sociopaths, or we decide, or non-clinically appointed people say, ‘oh that's a narcissist’ or ‘that's gaslighting’ or something like that.

Huberman says we shouldn’t “label,” or diagnose (per earlier comments). Consider his language, and how it shifts. According to the DSM-5, sociopathy falls under the broader category of antisocial personality disorder; a specific diagnosis requires clinical consideration of various traits. Narcissism is a DSM-specific diagnosis, narcissistic personality disorder.

Then there’s gaslighting.

Gaslighting is not a diagnosable personality. The term derives from a 1938 British play and has been used in psychoanalytic literature since the 1970s. While occasionally cited in clinical literature, it’s broadly considered a colloquialism (used for informal communication).

As with many buzzwords, gaslighting is overused. But it’s still an important phenomenon. Manipulators forcing others to question their own reality in order to pull them into theirs happens often. For example, cult leaders liberally employ this technique to draw people into their spell.

Still, one of the most common usages is men who gaslight women in order to manipulate and control them.

Reminder: Huberman is alleged to have been in a relationship with six women at once, including one he lived with and was trying to have a baby with. That he so casually includes gaslighting into an otherwise clinical list during a 15-minute Gish-gallop non-apology reveals more about his intention than an honest grappling with his accusers, or the journalist who gave voice to them.

I’m not trying to diagnose. I don’t need to. The evidence lives in a YouTube transcript.

And in the hearts and lives of countless women who have had to endure cults of personality propping up powerful men. Women who rarely receive apologies but take the lion’s share of blame.

Which is why a bear cave remains safer than a bro cave, no matter how much oxygen is expelled by bros trying to justify their way out of it.