I Am Not an Andrew Huberman Fan, But I Condemn Lazy Journalism Cancelling Him  

Opinion pieces that prompt me to reflect and write immediately are often hard to come by. In short, I would not be writing this article if I hadn’t read the painstakingly long feature on celebrity podcaster and neuroscientist, Andrew Huberman, published recently in New York Magazine. 

“Andrew Huberman’s Mechanisms of Control” by Kerry Howley, a feature writer, professor, and screenwriter based in LA, stinks of lazy journalism and personal vendetta. But this is not the first time Huberman has been assassinated in the world of words. Perhaps other similar pieces were not outrageous enough for me. The one by Emma Brockes published in The Guardian last year—yes, the one that pinpointed to us Huberman’s broad shoulders and bearded face, and his problematic “bro-y energy” couldn’t manage to get me into action.  

I am sure unraveling the dirty secrets of someone as famous and successful as Huberman (“one of the biggest podcasters on the planet,” in Howley’s own words) must be a deeply pleasurable experience—albeit sadistically and purely at the cost of basic common sense. 

Still, I am curious about why someone as seasoned as Howley would want to engage in this kind of irresponsible writing. 

At first, I thought I was overreacting but now it’s been several hours since I read the feature and I still feel as outraged by the uncaring way the man has been canceled in Howley’s article. 

If this piece were to be written by anyone at all, it would need to be pursued more as an inquiry than what it reads like to me: a personal attack.  

Howley seems to be leading the gang of Huberman Lab detractors and yelling loudly:  

“Let’s trash this pop neuroscientist for once and for all because his anonymous ex says he is a scumbag womanizer.”  

The writer devotes several paragraphs to outlining the life and work of this YouTube health and wellness sensation, who is a tenured professor at Stanford with a Ph.D. in neuroscience from University of California. 

The Anonymous Ex  

Howley quotes Huberman directly from his podcasts and interviews—to set the tone of the article, and then quickly switches to: “By then he had a partner, Sarah, which is not her real name. Sarah was someone who could talk to anyone about anything.” 

And that’s exactly where the article’s main hook catches the reader. Being a self-respecting, fact-loving human, I should have shut reading right at this moment, but I couldn’t.  

Humans have been loving the fall of men since time immemorial. Even those who don’t follow Jay Shetty, for instance, now know his glorious monk past bears some discrepancies.  

I carried on reading only to be disappointed by a very high degree of lame reporting by Howley. So, this anonymous loose talker ex, Sarah, is a goody-goody woman in her forties, loved deeply by old friends and easily making new ones on the go! She reports having been massively oppressed and tormented by Huberman during their time together as a committed couple.  

He lied to her, had unprotected sex, and didn’t stay “exclusive” in the relationship, as agreed previously between the two of them. He ghosted Sarah when it came to meeting her parents and obsessed excessively over his bullmastiff—whose blanket had to cover him just right or Huberman would lose it! He failed at conflict resolution, yelled at her incessantly over trivial matters, and called her children from her previous relationship her mistakes.  

Sarah and Huberman wanted babies together but had a couple of failed IVF attempts. The anonymous woman also blames him for giving her a high-risk HPV variant.  

“Optimizers sometimes prefer not to conceive naturally; one can exert more control when procreation involves a lab,” Howley writes. Doesn’t this sentence look like it came from the mouth of someone narrating a crime thriller?  

The writer says she tried contacting Huberman for this story, but he didn’t wish to talk. His spokesperson refutes all claims made by Sarah (and others). Of course! What else can a spokesperson do, anyway? What was even the need to contact them when the ex concerned doesn’t want her name out and wouldn’t file a legal case despite her being a very intelligent, scattered but organized kind of woman entrepreneur, as Howley describes her?  

To add more credence to her reporting, Howley also quotes some friends and colleagues of Huberman’s. His friends who of course don’t blame him for transmitting STDs or forcing HCG injections into their bellies, describe him as an “amazing thought partner,” capable of affecting them emotionally through his wise observations and emails. He is also described as someone they find very hard to catch. People cannot fully fathom who he is. Anthropologist and author, Scott Carney calls him out for ghosting him when they planned to camp together.  

As I read through this entire article of over 8000 words, I understood more and more its premise:  

Huberman is a fraud. 

He is a misogynist.  

He doesn’t deserve such mass following. 

It sounds like a call to action—a lame attempt at gathering a kind of “me-too” against Huberman, but at best, it comes across as a clickbait, an indecent reportage on a famous person’s life for which the writer (and team) has even contacted his high school girlfriend. If I could, I would discuss with them the odds of anyone’s exes being very happy with them. Such is life! And even if Huberman is a fraud in his personal life—a womanizer worth punishing, should there not be a legal inquiry instead of such media hounding? I wonder how it was even allowed to be published. 

Features like Howley’s catch eyeballs and have people arguing in comment sections on social media, but, sans sound research and evidence, they can be massively destructive for the person involved. If Huberman ends up in a nervous breakdown because of this attack, who is responsible?  

My Thoughts on Huber Man Lab 

I listen to a variety of podcasts on YouTube and have plugged into some of Huberman’s as well. I have always found his podcasts and his overall vibe and tone of voice to be dry and methodical. He presents a parody of mixed scientific facts, which he is trained to do.  

Okay, let me tell you something. If you do even averagely fine at grad school, you can understand and interpret scientific studies. And topping that, if you are a good communicator, you can relay that information in simple words to your non-academic audiences who might not have access to research papers. Huberman is a tenured Stanford professor, after all.  

I agree chiefly with Howley when she says he “expounds for multiple hours a week on subjects well outside his area of expertise.” A Ph.D. in neuroscience and his background in psychology don’t make him an expert qualified to lecture us on every aspect of our lives. I don’t think he claims to be one. He is only reporting and interpreting facts for us and he manages to do fine at what he is trying.  

I have partially liked a few episodes when he has expert guests on the podcast, but what I miss largely are conversations I can relate to. His presentation of facts and his mannerisms often work like sleep inducers on me, but then it’s a subjective opinion.  

I also hate the amount of time he spends marketing the lotions and potions he is personally invested in (like Athletic Greens). I realize he has a large global following, but I have never been curious about his backstory. It’s one thing to see oneself and others as works in progress and quite another to make your life a public project. He chooses the latter, and I am happy if it makes him and his followers happy. I don’t need a Huberman to tell me morning sunshine is good for my eyes and body. Packaging Eastern teachings and Ayurveda in Western boxes is another thing I don’t get excited by, but if Huberman is benefitting from his methods and branding, good for him!    

Let’s not cancel the man without appropriate legal inquiry.   

Photo Credit: https://www.hubermanlab.com/