how to write an essay jordan peterson

We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us!

Internet Archive Audio

• This Just In
• Grateful Dead
• Old Time Radio
• 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings
• Audio Books & Poetry
• Computers, Technology and Science
• Music, Arts & Culture
• News & Public Affairs
• Spirituality & Religion
• Radio News Archive

• Flickr Commons
• Occupy Wall Street Flickr
• NASA Images
• Solar System Collection
• Ames Research Center

• All Software
• Old School Emulation
• MS-DOS Games
• Historical Software
• Classic PC Games
• Software Library
• Kodi Archive and Support File
• Vintage Software
• CD-ROM Software
• CD-ROM Software Library
• Software Sites
• Tucows Software Library
• Shareware CD-ROMs
• Software Capsules Compilation
• CD-ROM Images
• ZX Spectrum
• DOOM Level CD

• Smithsonian Libraries
• FEDLINK (US)
• Lincoln Collection
• American Libraries
• Canadian Libraries
• Universal Library
• Project Gutenberg
• Children's Library
• Biodiversity Heritage Library
• Books by Language
• Additional Collections

• Prelinger Archives
• Democracy Now!
• Occupy Wall Street
• TV NSA Clip Library
• Animation & Cartoons
• Arts & Music
• Computers & Technology
• Cultural & Academic Films
• Ephemeral Films
• Sports Videos
• Videogame Videos
• Youth Media

Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet.

Mobile Apps

• Wayback Machine (iOS)
• Wayback Machine (Android)

Browser Extensions

Archive-it subscription.

• Explore the Collections
• Build Collections

Save Page Now

Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future.

Please enter a valid web address

• Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape

Essay Writing Guide - Jordan Peterson

Bookreader item preview, share or embed this item, flag this item for.

• Graphic Violence
• Explicit Sexual Content
• Hate Speech
• Misinformation/Disinformation
• Marketing/Phishing/Advertising
• Misleading/Inaccurate/Missing Metadata

plus-circle Add Review comment Reviews

Download options, in collections.

Uploaded by Cbracket Dash on December 3, 2022

SIMILAR ITEMS (based on metadata)

Articles, advice and tutorials from the Essay team

Writing Philosophy

How to write with Essay

Advanced Features

How to use the advanced features of Essay

Tutorial Articles

A collection of articles to help a writer follow Dr. Jordan B Peterson's essay writing process using essay.app

How to Write an Essay - The Jordan Peterson Writing Template

Curated from: qualiablog.com

Ideas, facts & insights covering these topics:

Problem Solving

Communication

Reading & Writing

Personal Development

80.9K reads

Explore the World's Best Ideas

Join today and uncover 100+ curated journeys from 50+ topics. Unlock access to our mobile app with extensive features.

JORDAN PETERSON

8.93K reads

The Levels of Resolution

An essay exists at multiple levels:

• The choice of words
• The formation of sentences
• The arrangement of sentences in a paragraph
• The arrangement of paragraphs in a logical progression, beginning to end
• The essay as a whole

A good essay works at every one of those levels simultaneously.

Step 1: Choose Topic, Read & Take Notes

Writing begins with these 3 steps:

• Pick a topic: because your essay should answer a central question.
• Make a reading list: You should aim to read 5-10 books before you write an essay. And plenty of online sources. 
• Take Notes: of everything that catches your attention. 

7.03K reads

Step 2: Make an Outline

The outline is the skeleton of the essay and provides its structure. 

An essay that is 1,000 words requires a 10 sentence outline.  

7.49K reads

Jordan Peterson's Rules of Thumb for Note Taking

• Take note of anything that catches your attention.  
• Don't highlight or underline .  (That doesn't work.)  
• Read a bit, then write down what you have learned or any questions that arise.  
• Take about 2 to 3 times as many notes by word as you will need for your essay.  

6.82K reads

Step 3: Write Paragraphs

Use your notes.  You can work back and forth between changing the outline and your sentences.

6.43K reads

Jordan Peterson's Rules of Thumb for Writing

• Your  first draft should be 25% longer than your final draft.   This will give you material to throw away during the editing process. 
• Each paragraph in your final draft should be about 10 sentences or 100 words long.   If your paragraph is much shorter than this, that is a sign that your idea isn't substantial enough.  If your paragraph is much longer, it's a sign you have multiple ideas going and need to split them into separate paragraphs.

5.94K reads

Step 4: Edit Your Sentences

Working paragraph by paragraph, take each one of your sentences and write a better version of it. 

 Peterson advises you place each sentence on its own line and write the revised version underneath.

5.36K reads

Jordan Peterson's Editing Advice

• Make your sentences shorter , eliminating all unnecessary words.  U should cut each sentence by 15-25%.
• Make sure each word is precisely the right word to express your meaning.  Don't use vocabulary you haven't fully mastered.
• Read each sentence aloud and listen to how it sounds.   If it sounds awkward, try saying it a different way, then write that down.

Steps 5&6: Reorder Sentences & Paragraphs

Within each paragraph, see if your sentences are in the best possible order.   Get rid of any sentences that are no longer necessary.  

Same for paragraphs:  They should help the essay flow in the best, most logical progression. Move the corresponding paragraphs until they are in the most appropriate order.

4.37K reads

Step 7: Make a NEW Outline

After finishing your first draft:  write a NEW outline of 10-15 sentences.   DON'T LOOK BACK AT YOUR ESSAY WHILE YOU DO THIS!!! 

The purpose of this step is to force yourself to reconstruct your argument from memory.   Generally, when you remember something, you simplify it and retain only what is most important.  Doing this, you will remove what is useless and keep what is vital.

4.57K reads

Step 8,9&10: Repeat Editing & Add References & Format

To continue improving your essay, you can repeat the process of re-writing and re-ordering your sentences, re-ordering your paragraphs, and re-outlining. Add references, links, biography. 

Then format it: 12pt font, tabbed idents. 

4.93K reads

Jordan Peterson Writing Template

For Peterson, writing is not just a matter of fulfilling an assignment; it is a skill with deeply existential consequences.  

7.06K reads

IDEAS CURATED BY

Never stop learning new things, no matter how old you are.

Jack 's ideas are part of this journey:

Learn more about problemsolving with this collection

Productivity Systems

How to set achievable goals

How to create and stick to a schedule

How to break down large projects into smaller manageable tasks

Related collections

Managing Email Effectively

The Art of Decision-Making

7 Books on Habits

Behavioral Economics, Explained

Similar ideas

How to Write Strong Paragraphs

grammarly.com

How to Edit Your Own Writing

nytimes.com

How to Write Usefully

paulgraham.com

Read & Learn

without deep stash

with deep stash

Personalized microlearning

100+ Learning Journeys

Access to 200,000+ ideas

Access to the mobile app

Unlimited idea saving

Unlimited history

Unlimited listening to ideas

Downloading & offline access

Supercharge your mind with one idea per day

Enter your email and spend 1 minute every day to learn something new.

I agree to receive email updates

Collections

11 episodes

Welcome to the Casual Depth Podcast!

The Casual Depth Podcast Arne Dörries & Irene Morales

• APR 6, 2024

E11 The One About Dexa Scans & Longevity

This podcast is available on all major platforms including a video version on YouTube. For more content, check out the Casual Depth Blog at www.casualdepth.com. There we write articles and essays on some of our favourite ideas and concepts including concrete instructions on how to practically apply them. Thank you for listening to the Casual Depth Podcast! Until next time. 👋 Follow us:Youtube 📹 https://www.youtube.com/@casualdepthNewsletter 💌 https://www.casualdepth.com/newsletterLinkedIn 🤝 https://www.linkedin.com/company/casualdepthLinkedIn 🤝 https://www.linkedin.com/in/arnedoerriesLinkedIn 🤝 https://www.linkedin.com/in/irenemoralesperez

• MAR 29, 2024

E10 The One About Beauty & Its Meaning

E9 the one about conservatism & liberalism.

• 1 hr 22 min

E8 The One About Strategic Socialising

• 1 hr 13 min

E7 The One About The Timeline Of Life

E6 the one about the cycle of growth.

• © 2023 Casual Depth

Top Podcasts In Education

• Contributors
• Newsletters

1 Trending: Biden Pressers Confirm ‘Get Trump’ Lawfare Is A Campaign Stunt

2 trending: corporate media think voters are dumb enough to believe biden’s border invasion is ‘quieting’, 3 trending: targeting alito’s flags is more about the boundless misery of leftists than the court’s ‘impartiality’, 4 trending: dennis quaid says ‘weaponization of our justice system’ convinced him to support trump, behind jordan peterson’s ‘biblical’ teaching is his own humanistic agenda.

Sensing a market with Christian evangelicals, Jordan Peterson is leaning into the Bible. The problem is, Peterson is not a Christian.

• Share Article on Facebook
• Share Article on Twitter
• Share Article on Truth Social
• Copy Article Link
• Share Article via Email

I don’t, as a rule, listen to podcasts. Not because I am uninterested or have nothing to learn from others, it’s just that in a crowded marketplace where originality is so rare and the theft of intellectual property is, even unwittingly, so common, I find the easiest way to avoid echoing others is to avoid the echo-chamber. As such, academic psychologist-turned-social commentator Jordan Peterson was late to appear on my radar. I had, of course, heard of the Canadian, and as a Bible-believing evangelical Christian, what I saw of him, usually a social media post featuring him skewering the woke mob, I liked.

Then I discovered my youngest son Zachary was a Peterson fan.

“You would like him, Dad,” Zachary said. “He’s gaining popularity with young men of my generation [Gen Z] because he’s exposing the woke garbage for what it is.”

My middle son, Christopher, a seminary graduate and pastor, had a different take: “Hmm. I think you won’t like him — his core philosophy, anyway. Zachary sees that you two are birds of a feather in your dislike of radical ideologies. But you can identify why you don’t like them. Peterson can’t.”

It was about this time last year when we began recording the first episodes of the “ Ideas Have Consequences ” podcast, and a few members of the staff were urging me to have Peterson on the show — some because they liked him, others because they wanted me to debate him. All of this was a glimpse of Peterson’s influence.

In 2 Corinthians 10:5, the Apostle Paul says, “We destroy arguments and every lofty pretention that sets itself up against the knowledge of God…”

That verse has formed a part of my personal mission statement. To that end, I have crossed swords with the late atheist-journalist Christopher Hitchens , Oxford atheist Richard Dawkins , Tufts cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett (who died last month), Skeptic Magazine Editor Michael Shermer , and a cohort of Muslim apologists on CNN International, Al Jazeera, and, where the true Muslim believers gather, in Hyde Park, London.

But debate Peterson?

A Bible Teacher and Spiritual Leader

The idea of debating Peterson seemed strange given his reputation with conservatives. In these days of child mutilation and a surging globalist tyranny, one finds unexpected allies. Who knew Elon Musk would be a de facto Trump supporter or that Shakira would be a champion of traditional (binary!) sex roles? Peterson is far more ideologically aligned with a biblical worldview than either of these and frequently voices his appreciation for the Bible even if he has not become a Christian himself. If they are not against us, they are for us, right?

That’s what Jesus said in Mark 9:40 of those doing Christian ministry, and that’s what ultimately got my attention with Peterson. He began doing Christian ministry . Not actual Christian ministry, but the appearance of it as a kind of deist pastor-at-large teaching the Jordan B. Peterson Biblical Series. Then, after his move to The Daily Wire, Peterson’s already ascendant popularity soared still higher, and with no demographic was he more popular than with Christians. Peterson, for his own part, rewarded them with a book: We Who Wrestle with God.

This struck me as more than a little odd given the fact that Peterson, by his own admission, is not a Christian.

That might come as a surprise to Peterson’s Christian fans, who are legion, because he speaks favorably of Jesus (though he can’t seem to decide if he thinks he was real); “the idea of god,” as he puts it; religion in general (he described himself as “ pro-Muslim ”); and the Bible. But when asked on repeated occasions if he believes in God or if he is a Christian, Peterson, who is otherwise precise, is ambiguous .

“I don’t like that question,” he says . “It’s none of your damn business.”

Like it or not, Peterson doesn’t seem to realize that it became a fair line of questioning the moment he deviated from his field of expertise to pontificate in others where he has none, teaching the Bible, giving spiritual counsel, writing a book about God, and even offering his advice to churches . I wonder, would Peterson be similarly annoyed if someone asked him if he believed in psychology, a field he teaches and in which he is eminently qualified? I doubt it.

Peterson’s “stock” response to the question is to reduce it to a lecture about the question itself. One comes away with the feeling that he’s listening to Ketanji Brown Jackson’s response to Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s question: “Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman’?” But never do you come away with a clear answer.

There is no small measure of irony in this. Peterson catapulted to fame, not as a religious teacher where he is utterly lost, but as one who offered a biting critique of a Western culture that has come off the rails and practical advice to young men who desperately needed it. To the delight of sensible people everywhere, he mercilessly mocked Wokesters who had a habit of obfuscating meaning and distorting reality.

But that is what Peterson does when it comes to the God of the Bible. Worse, he contorts historic biblical meaning to fit his own humanistic agenda. In a recent interview on the “ Impact Theory ” podcast, Peterson says of Oxford University atheist Richard Dawkins:

Dawkins believes in the redeeming power of the communicated truth. Well, there’s no difference between that and worshipping the Word, the Divine Word. It’s the same thing . … Dawkins, though he doesn’t know it, is mostly a Christian.

One might think that what Peterson means is that Dawkins “is mostly a Christian” insofar as his own intellectual assumptions rest on Christian foundations, an assertion that I have made many times . But that’s not his meaning. “Divine Word” is a reference to John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Peterson tosses 2,000 years of Christian biblical theology and redefines what it means to be a Christian as mere truth-seeking — no repentance, no regeneration, no profession of faith, and it seems not even a conscious decision to become a follower of Jesus Christ. This Christ-less Christianity is so cut-rate as to make what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace” look downright expensive.

One of many astute listeners tweeted Peterson a clear definition of what it means to be a Christian:

There was no snark. Jayda Fransen’s tweet offered a historic Christian definition with scripture reference. Peterson, instead of clarifying that he wasn’t talking about salvation, ridiculed her:

But Fransen wasn’t alone in her understanding of Peterson’s meaning. Dawkins, who clearly understood Peterson to be speaking of more than his intellectual suppositions, offered this terse correction:

In so doing, Dawkins demonstrated that he has a better understanding of what it means to be a Christian than Peterson does. Dawkins isn’t a Christian, and he knows it. He also knows that believing the Bible isn’t optional for Christians.

Richard Dawkins is instructive here. When I first made my way to the professional atheist’s Oxford home in the summer of 2006 beginning a decade-long odyssey, I was prepared to be overwhelmed by his anti-Christian arguments. If I thought this was going to be a test of my own belief, and I think I did, then I was disappointed. While articulate and interesting, Dawkins’ arguments were simply repackaged objections of skeptics centuries, no, millennia , past.

This is post-atheist (but definitely pre-Christian) Peterson. Interesting and profound within the confines of his expertise, he’s out of his depth when it comes to God. Christian Theology 101 is fascinating when he who teaches it has mastery of the subject well beyond the level he elucidates. By contrast, Peterson’s musings are elementary or just plain wrong because the subject surpasses his (current) understanding. To listen to him on Christianity is to listen to the stream of consciousness of a man who is trying to figure it out — but hasn’t .

Atheists are helpful to us in this discussion because their tests of authentic Christian belief are, sadly, more stringent than those of Peterson’s Christian defenders. British atheist podcaster Alex O’Connor thinks Peterson’s popularity can be attributed to the fact that he punts on the truth of the Bible and speaks instead of the models it provides. That resonates with the experience of Michael Shermer who couldn’t pin Peterson down on the question of the virgin birth.

Dawkins, who has debated Bible-believing Christians and knows what they sound like, senses Peterson is a fraud : “It’s bullsh-t. When he talks religion, he doesn’t make any sense at all. … People think, ‘Oh, it must be terribly profound because I can’t understand.’” He knows that Peterson’s belief is of the Jeffersonian à la carte variety: I’ll take some Jesus as a teacher of ethics and exemplar of self-sacrifice, hold the creation story and resurrection . Smelling blood in the water, Dawkins trolled him: “I’m still waiting for the in-person conversation Peterson keeps talking about…”

I’ve seen this movie before. Indeed, I moderated it. It was a debate between mathematician and writer David Berlinski, a self-described “secular Jew,” and atheist journalist Christopher Hitchens. Berlinski is as close to a Renaissance man as I have ever met. Brilliant. But Hitchens made short work of him in debate for the simple reason that Berlinski was defending a vague deity in whom he didn’t really believe. Hitchens saw this for what it was: hypocrisy. So, he proceeded to heap scorn on his opponent, going so far as to try to get me to debate him since Berlinski would not. ( A month later, I did .) Hitchens had, in effect, exposed Berlinski as a covert atheist.

If Peterson proposes to take such a position in a discussion with Dawkins, you can expect a similar outcome because it’s not just Jesus who spits out the lukewarm (Revelation 3:16). Hitchens did it, and Dawkins will too.

Peterson’s ‘ Cracked and Crooked Foundation ‘

This is because Peterson’s theology, as well-known pastor and theologian Doug Wilson put it, sits on a “ cracked and crooked foundation .” Like me, Wilson appreciates much of what Peterson has to say. He also knows a thing or two about celebrities who flirt with Christian conversion and readily recognizes that the whole trajectory of Peterson’s God-talk hits wide of the mark because he rejects the central premise of Christianity: the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Peterson says he finds the possibility of a historic Jesus who was God in the flesh “ too terrifying a reality to really believe .” As a result, the theological errors begin early and often.

Take, for example, this lecture in which Peterson says that to call oneself a Christian is to make “a claim to moral virtue.” It is one of his stock responses to those who ask if he’s a Christian. Peterson has made a habit of shaming those who dare call themselves Christians. Does he not know that it is a biblical designation ? As if doing so is a supreme act of self-righteousness. But that is precisely what being a Christian is not as every child who paid attention in vacation Bible school knows. It is the recognition that we are fallen, broken, and incapable of any good or of saving ourselves apart from the redeeming power of Jesus Christ. “Apart from me,” Jesus told the disciples , “you can do nothing.”

Again, Peterson’s Christian defenders will say he is early in his personal spiritual journey or he is seeking the truth and therefore deserves our unswerving support. Perhaps. But this is not what a fledgling faith looks like. That looks more like Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Less than a year ago, the Somali-born activist, politician, and writer announced her conversion to the Christian faith . This was no small thing given the fact that she had fled Islam at age 23 and joined the ranks of prominent Western atheists to denounce not only that religion, but all religions. No doubt to Peterson’s horror, she isn’t reluctant to call herself a Christian. Nor, to my knowledge, is Hirsi Ali offering a lecture series on the Bible or Christian theology. (Perhaps when her faith matures, she will.) Her declarations about her new faith are measured, modest: “I still have a great deal to learn about Christianity. I discover a little more at church each Sunday.”

That one statement, humble and self-aware, bears no resemblance to anything we are seeing from Jordan Peterson.

Peterson isn’t on a private Quest for God , to borrow the title of the late historian Paul Johnson’s memoir about his journey to faith, a book written once the author had arrived at the right spiritual destination. Peterson is wandering in his own spiritual wilderness while teaching the Jordan B. Peterson Biblical Series and hawking a book about the God in whom he has yet to really believe and doesn’t understand.

To put it another way, would Peterson think it odd if I rejected the main tenets of psychology but nonetheless offered the Larry A. Taunton Psychology Series and wrote a book titled, We Who Wrestle with Psychologists ? I think he would. He’s like one standing on the “Field of Dreams” who can’t see the players who practice there but is sure he has much wisdom to impart to those of us who can see them. It’s the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Having achieved command in one field (behavioral psychology), Peterson seems to think that qualifies him to pronounce authoritatively in other fields (biblical theology). As one Christian friend put it, “Seekers should be listeners, not teachers.” Someone should tell Peterson that.

To make sure I wasn’t behind on Peterson’s evolution on God, a frequent claim of his fans, I listened to this just-released interview with Shawn Ryan . It was more of the same.

“God isn’t a thing you believe in,” Peterson declared with misplaced self-assurance. “To believe in God is to commit your life. It isn’t the statement, ‘I believe in God.’ … It is commitment to a pattern.”

While there are many vague cultural meanings attached to the word Christian, in this essay we are only interested in the biblical one, and that book is very clear where Peterson is not. Romans 10:9-10 says:

If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.

It turns out that it is a statement, a profession from the heart but verbalized with the mouth, of belief in the resurrected Jesus. And lest there be any misunderstanding, Jesus is a person, God made flesh, not “a pattern.” On yet other occasions, Peterson offers another one of his stock responses to the question about his own personal belief in God by saying, “ I decided to act as if God exists long ago .” To which the Bible responds: “ You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe — and shudder! ”

The Bible According to Jordan Peterson

Peterson’s theological landscape crumbles whenever the Bible is brought to bear, and the Bible is, according to Peterson in an interview with Joe Rogan , “way more true than just true.” That’s a curious statement when one considers Peterson’s penchant for ignoring biblical meaning whenever it suits him.

“So, here’s an example,” he tells Ryan. “This is very complicated, but here’s an example. … God for Abraham was the spirit of adventure. The call to adventure. This is a definition. This is very much worth knowing. People have no idea what to do with the concept of God. God is the call to adventure. That’s a definition [Peterson’s emphasis]…”

Whose definition?

Well, Peterson’s, of course, because it’s certainly not the biblical definition. “When Christ calls a man,” wrote Bonhoeffer famously, “he bids him come and die.” But this is typical of Peterson who sees everything through the lens of self-improvement. In his telling of the biblical story, it’s always about us, our development, our potential, our yearnings, our sacrifice, our growth, and not about God. And that goes far to explain Peterson’s appeal. At bottom, Peterson is a self-help guru.

Compare Peterson’s claim that there is a “spark of divinity” within each of us waiting to unleash our potential with Indian-American self-help guru Deepak Chopra’s tweet to Michael Shermer and me on the eve of our Seattle debate in 2015: “In every being sleeps a God in embryo; it’s only desire is to be born.”

For Peterson, God is self-actualization. This has more in common with Eastern meditation than it does with Christianity. Among those themes the Bible reiterates time and again, that there is nothing good or divine within us is certainly one of them .

There is more of the postmodern about Peterson’s philosophy than one might imagine. This was my son Christopher’s meaning when he said Peterson’s objections to the woke mob are absent an anchor in the absolute. As a consequence, he’s all sail, at times sounding like a Stoic philosopher, a New Age spiritualist, or a hippie on an acid trip, but never like someone who should be giving lectures on the Bible.

Consider his ramblings about the Bible in the same interview with Rogan . If the view count is any indication, some have understood this to be a profound monologue. It’s nothing of the sort. For several minutes Peterson casts about trying to explain the importance of the Bible in our culture, but he never lands at the right place: The Bible is the Word of God. It is the absolute, eternal truth that he can’t seem to find. Instead, he has adopted a God of his own making, syncretic and benign who just wants to help us be better people. What exactly is the point of the cross in Peterson’s theology? That, too, is ambiguous, but it seems to represent a model of self-sacrifice rather than a real space-time propitiatory act to redeem a lost world.

Perhaps nothing reveals Peterson’s ignorance of the Bible so much as his assumption that Christians, Jews, and Muslims are all worshipers of the same God and just need to get along. This, of course, is nonsense given the fact that each says very different things about who God is. According to Christianity, Jesus is God made flesh who died for the sins of those who believe in Him and His bodily resurrection. In Judaism, Jesus was a crackpot who was executed for blasphemy. Islamic tradition says Jesus was a prophet who did not die on the cross at all. These differences are irreconcilable.

In perhaps his most revealing lecture, Peterson said tearfully:

Who would have the audacity to claim that they believed in God if they examined the way they lived. Who would dare say that? To have the audacity to claim that means you live it out fully. That’s an unbearable task, in some sense, to live that out…

He is only partially correct: It is an unbearable task. It was the purpose of the Law, the Decalogue, to drive this point home. What Peterson describes is how anyone who considers the Law should feel because, if he’s honest with himself, he will know that he has violated God’s Law in total. But Peterson stops short of the Gospel undoubtedly because he doesn’t know it: Christ has fulfilled the demands of the Law.

Romans 8:1-4 reads:

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

And this brings us to the heart of what Peterson fails to understand: grace. In this, he is no different than any atheist with whom I have ever argued: Dawkins, Dennett, Ehrman, Hitchens, Shermer — any of them. For Peterson, Christianity is a system, “a pattern,” a code of ethics, a myth, and the Bible is the ultimate guide to self-improvement. They are none of the above. Christianity pivots on one person (Jesus Christ) and one event (the resurrection), and the Bible is our means of knowing and understanding both.

We Who Wrestle with Jordan Peterson

It has not been my intention in this essay to denigrate Jordan Peterson the man nor even Jordan Peterson the cultural commentator. Far be it from me to think I am better than anyone. If grace has taught me anything, it is that I need no less of it than anyone else. No, I want Jordan Peterson to fully commit.

I hope to accomplish one of two things: to see him come to authentic faith in Jesus Christ or to push him back into the secular lane where this iteration of Peterson belongs. There he can hold forth on subjects in which he is genuinely an expert as, say, the late social critic Neil Postman once did, and who among us didn’t benefit from Postman’s superb books Amusing Ourselves to Death and Technopoly ? Postman’s eulogy , delivered by his son Andrew, is possibly the greatest of all time.

Perhaps Peterson will convert. We can hope. But to date, he has not, and coupling that with the fact that he has had the Gospel explained to him in very clear terms is a sign of nothing good. In using the “wrestle with God” motif in a manner that is inconsistent with the Bible story from which it is derived , it feels like Peterson is engaging in a kind of fashionable, handwringing intellectual exercise in which he endlessly rides the fence. He speaks incessantly of how “complicated” it all is, hedging theological assertions with “in a sense,” thus leaving the backdoor open should there be an attempt to corner him. In Peterson’s conception of Him, God waits patiently while Jordan Peterson decides what he thinks about Him. He brings to mind the Apostle Paul’s warning about those who are “always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.”

Of course, I don’t question Peterson’s right to do any of these things. I question the thinking of Christians who see him as a source of profound spiritual and biblical insight. It is a sad commentary on biblical literacy. So desperate are evangelicals for intellectual heroes the world respects that they often rush to elevate someone like Jordan Peterson to a status he has not actually attained.

In Galatians 2, the Apostle Paul confronts the Apostle Peter “to his face” because, in the latter’s behavior, he had obscured the path of salvation. Since it was not a matter of private sin but of de facto public teaching, the confrontation was public too. So it is with Peterson, who maintains a vast public platform that attracts millions of people, young men in particular. How many of them come away thinking they are Christians by virtue of their truth-seeking when, in fact, they remain as lost as Peterson is? More than a few, I suspect. There is a reason why the Bible warns us of the beguiling nature of philosophy.

The late medieval historian Etienne Gilson seems to have had this very thing in mind when he wrote, “No matter how high science may be, it is only too clear that Jesus Christ did not come to save men by science or philosophy; he came to save all men — even philosophers and scientists.”

Indeed. Let us pray for Jordan Peterson.

• Biblical Teaching
• Jesus Christ
• Jordan Peterson
• Richard Dawkins

More from Religion

How Louisiana Catholic Men Are Standing Up To The ‘Pride’ Infiltration Of Their Small Town This June 

Why All Christians Should Care About The Left’s Latin Mass Phobia

Presbyterian Church In America Invites Professional Polarizer David French To Lecture Christians On Getting Along

Here’s Just Some Of The Historical Evidence For The Biblical Exodus

Judge Merchan’s Jury Instructions Prove Trump’s Trial Is About Power, Not The Law

Don’t Mistake Democrats’ War On America’s Heritage As Just A Clash Over A Pine Tree Flag

Members Of Congress And State Election Officials Ask SCOTUS To Stop ‘Bidenbucks’

Introducing

The Federalist Community

Join now to unlock comments, browse ad-free, and access exclusive content from your favorite FDRLST writers

Start your FREE TRIAL

109 Books About Entrepreneurship (Part 2)

A s we delve into the second part of our exploration into the best books on entrepreneurship and the symbiotic relationship between entrepreneurs and the written word, we continue to unravel the profound influence that reading exerts on the entrepreneurial spirit.

From leadership manifestos to industry deep-dives and timeless classics, each recommendation serves as a beacon, guiding entrepreneurs through the multifaceted challenges and opportunities that define their dynamic landscape. Join us in Part 2 as we navigate the literary landscapes that not only inform but inspire, providing entrepreneurs with the insights needed to carve their unique paths toward success.

1. Networking and Relationship Building:

Many books are written by experienced professionals, industry leaders, and entrepreneurs. Reading their works is a way to connect with their ideas and philosophies. It also provides a common ground for networking and engaging in conversations with peers who may have read the same literature.

2. Communication Skills:

Well-read entrepreneurs often have better communication skills. Reading exposes individuals to different writing styles, vocabulary, and communication techniques. This can enhance an entrepreneur’s ability to articulate ideas, negotiate effectively, and communicate with various stakeholders.

3. Personal Development:

Entrepreneurship is not just about business; it also involves personal growth. Self-help and personal development books can contribute to emotional intelligence, resilience, and a positive mindset. These attributes are crucial for navigating the highs and lows of entrepreneurship.

4. Strategic Planning:

Books on business strategy and management provide entrepreneurs with frameworks and models for effective strategic planning. Understanding how to develop and implement strategies is essential for the long-term success and sustainability of a business.

5. Risk Management:

Entrepreneurship inherently involves risk, and reading about the experiences of others can provide valuable lessons in risk management. Entrepreneurs can learn from both successes and failures documented in literature, helping them make informed decisions and mitigate potential risks.

In essence, reading is a continuous learning process that empowers entrepreneurs with knowledge, skills, and perspectives essential for success in the ever-changing and challenging world of business. It is a habit that successful entrepreneurs often attribute to their ongoing growth and achievements.

55. Getting to Yes – Roger Fisher

“Getting to Yes” by Roger Fisher, along with William Ury and Bruce Patton, introduces the principled negotiation method. The book outlines strategies for reaching mutually beneficial agreements, emphasizing collaboration and problem-solving to achieve positive outcomes in negotiations.

56. Getting Past No – William Ury

William Ury’s “Getting Past No” is a companion to “Getting to Yes,” focusing on dealing with difficult negotiations and overcoming resistance. Ury provides practical advice for resolving conflicts, handling objections, and turning “no” into a platform for constructive dialogue.

57. Never Split the Difference – Chris Voss – Tahl Raz

“Never Split the Difference” by former FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss offers negotiation tactics based on real-world experiences. Voss shares principles for effective communication and persuasion, providing insights applicable to business, leadership, and everyday interactions.

58. The 10X Rule – Grant Cardone

Grant Cardone’s “The 10X Rule” advocates for setting goals and taking actions that are ten times greater than what one initially thinks is necessary. Cardone emphasizes the importance of massive action and unwavering commitment to achieve extraordinary success in business and life.

59. Dotcom Secrets – Russell Brunson

Dotcom Secrets” by Russell Brunson provides insights into building successful online businesses and sales funnels. Brunson shares strategies for creating effective marketing campaigns and maximizing online presence, making it a valuable resource for entrepreneurs in the digital age .

60. Virtual Freedom – Chris Ducker

Chris Ducker’s “Virtual Freedom” explores the concept of outsourcing and building a virtual team to enhance productivity and efficiency in business. The book offers practical advice on hiring, managing, and delegating tasks to remote employees, enabling entrepreneurs to focus on strategic aspects of their ventures.

61. The 80/20 Principle – Richard Koch

“The 80/20 Principle” by Richard Koch introduces the Pareto Principle, emphasizing that a significant portion of outcomes results from a small fraction of efforts. Koch explores how individuals can leverage this principle to prioritize tasks, increase productivity, and achieve better results with less effort.

62. The Start-up of You – Reid Hoffman

Co-authored by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, “The Start-up of You” applies entrepreneurial principles to personal career development. The book encourages individuals to view their careers as dynamic start-ups, emphasizing adaptability, networking, and continuous learning to navigate the ever-evolving professional landscape.

63. How to Get Rich – Felix Dennis

“How to Get Rich” by media mogul Felix Dennis offers unconventional and candid advice on building wealth. Drawing on his own experiences, Dennis shares practical insights, challenges conventional wisdom, and provides a humorous yet insightful perspective on the path to financial success.

64. The Snowball – Alice Schroeder

Alice Schroeder’s biography, “The Snowball,” delves into the life of legendary investor Warren Buffett. The book provides a detailed and comprehensive account of Buffett’s personal and professional journey, offering valuable lessons on investing, business, and life.

65. The Effective Executive – Peter F. Drucker

“The Effective Executive” by Peter F. Drucker is a classic guide on effective management and productivity . Drucker outlines key principles for executives to enhance their performance, emphasizing time management, decision-making, and focusing on strategic priorities.

66. Profit First – Mike Michalowicz

Mike Michalowicz’s “Profit First” introduces a unique approach to financial management for businesses. The book advocates for prioritizing profit by allocating funds to profit accounts before addressing other expenses, providing a practical framework for financial success.

67. What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20 – Tina Seelig

What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20″ by Tina Seelig offers insights and advice on life and career for young adults. Seelig draws on her experiences as an entrepreneur and educator to provide practical wisdom on creativity, resilience, and embracing opportunities.

68. Disrupted – Dan Lyons

In “Disrupted,” Dan Lyons shares his experiences working in the tech industry, offering a humorous and critical perspective on the culture of startups and the challenges faced by older employees in a youth-centric workplace. The book provides insights into the realities of the tech world.

69. The Dip – Seth Godin

Seth Godin’s “The Dip” explores the concept of strategic quitting and persistence. Godin argues that knowing when to quit and when to push through challenges is essential for success. The book encourages readers to focus their efforts on endeavors worth pursuing.

70. To Sell Is Human – Daniel H. Pink

“To Sell Is Human” by Daniel H. Pink challenges traditional notions of salesmanship. Pink explores the idea that everyone is engaged in selling, whether products, ideas, or themselves. The book provides insights into the art of persuasion and effective communication.

71. Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited – Steve Krug

“Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug is a user experience design classic. Krug provides practical insights and guidelines for creating intuitive and user-friendly websites, emphasizing simplicity and clarity in web design.

72. Like a Virgin – Richard Branson

In “Like a Virgin,” Richard Branson shares his unconventional approach to business and life. Branson’s autobiography provides a candid look at his experiences as an entrepreneur, offering insights into risk-taking, innovation, and the pursuit of adventure.

73. The Secret to Success – Eric Thomas

“The Secret to Success” by Eric Thomas is a motivational book that draws on the author’s personal journey from homelessness to success. Thomas shares principles of self-discovery, resilience, and perseverance to inspire readers to unlock their full potential.

74. Choose Yourself! – James Altucher

James Altucher’s “Choose Yourself!” challenges traditional career paths and advocates for personal empowerment. Altucher encourages readers to embrace change, develop multiple income streams, and prioritize their well-being in the pursuit of a fulfilling life.

75. Mindset – Carol S. Dweck

Carol S. Dweck’s “Mindset” explores the psychology of success and achievement. Dweck introduces the concept of fixed and growth mindsets, emphasizing the importance of embracing challenges and cultivating a growth-oriented mindset for personal and professional development.

76. Difficult Conversations – Douglas Stone – Bruce Patton – Sheila Heen

“Difficult Conversations” by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen provides a framework for navigating challenging conversations with empathy and effectiveness. The book offers practical techniques for communication, understanding perspectives, and reaching mutually beneficial outcomes.

77. It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be – Paul Arden

“It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be” by Paul Arden is a concise guide to achieving success. Arden provides unconventional wisdom and creative insights, encouraging readers to set ambitious goals and pursue excellence in their chosen endeavors.

78. Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite – Paul Arden

Paul Arden’s “Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite” continues his exploration of unconventional thinking. Arden challenges conventional wisdom and encourages readers to question norms, take risks, and embrace a mindset of bold decision-making.

79. Anything You Want – Derek Sivers

In “Anything You Want,” Derek Sivers shares lessons from his experience building CD Baby, an online independent music store. The book offers unconventional insights into entrepreneurship, decision-making, and building a business aligned with personal values.

80. The Coaching Habit – Michael Bungay Stanier

“The Coaching Habit” by Michael Bungay Stanier provides a practical guide for effective coaching in the workplace. Stanier introduces seven key questions that can transform coaching conversations, fostering a more collaborative and impactful approach to leadership and personal development .

81. What Got You Here Won’t Get You There – Marshall Goldsmith

Marshall Goldsmith’s “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There” explores the challenges faced by successful individuals as they ascend in their careers. Goldsmith identifies common habits and behaviors that may hinder further success and provides strategies for overcoming these barriers.

82. You, Inc.- Harry Beckwith – Christine Clifford

“You, Inc.” by Harry Beckwith and Christine Clifford offers insights into personal branding and self-marketing. The book provides practical advice on how individuals can effectively promote themselves, enhance their professional image, and navigate the challenges of personal branding.

83. The Goal – Eliyahu M. Goldratt

“The Goal” by Eliyahu M. Goldratt is a business novel that introduces the Theory of Constraints. The book follows the journey of a plant manager as he applies constraint management principles to improve operational efficiency and achieve business goals.

84. The Four Steps to the Epiphany – Steve Blank

Steve Blank’s “The Four Steps to the Epiphany” is a seminal work in the field of startup methodology. The book outlines a customer development process, emphasizing the importance of understanding customer needs and iterating business models to achieve product-market fit.

85. Tribes – Seth Godin

In “Tribes,” Seth Godin explores the power of leadership and community building in the modern world. Godin argues that anyone can lead and create a tribe—a group of like-minded individuals connected by shared interests—and advocates for leveraging this power to drive positive change.

86. The Essays of Warren Buffett – Lawrence A. Cunningham – Warren E. Buffett

“The Essays of Warren Buffett” is a collection of Warren Buffett’s letters and writings, compiled and annotated by Lawrence A. Cunningham. The book provides valuable insights into Buffett’s investment philosophy, business principles, and perspectives on financial markets.

87. Deep Work – Cal Newport

“Deep Work” by Cal Newport emphasizes the benefits of focused and undistracted work in an age of constant connectivity. Newport presents strategies for cultivating deep work habits, allowing individuals to achieve higher levels of productivity and creativity in an increasingly distracting world.

88. Atomic Habits – James Clear

“Atomic Habits” by James Clear explores the science of habit formation and how small changes can lead to remarkable results. Clear provides actionable insights on building good habits, breaking bad ones, and mastering the tiny behaviors that contribute to long-term success.

89. Click Millionaires – Scott Fox

“Click Millionaires” by Scott Fox provides guidance for building an online business and generating income through digital entrepreneurship. Fox offers practical advice on leveraging technology, creating online communities, and developing multiple income streams to achieve financial success.

90. Born to Win – Zig Ziglar

“Born to Win” by Zig Ziglar and Tom Ziglar is a motivational book that explores the principles of success, personal development, and achieving one’s full potential. Ziglar’s teachings inspire readers to set and achieve meaningful goals while maintaining a positive and purpose-driven mindset.

91. 12 Rules for Life – Jordan B. Peterson

“ 12 Rules for Life ” by Jordan B. Peterson offers practical and philosophical principles for living a meaningful and disciplined life. Peterson draws on psychology, mythology, and personal anecdotes to provide guidance on navigating the complexities of existence.

92. Mastery – Robert Greene

“Mastery” by Robert Greene explores the path to achieving mastery in any field. Drawing on historical examples and biographies, Greene outlines principles and strategies for developing skills, mastering creativity, and achieving excellence in one’s chosen pursuits.

93. The Psychology of Selling – Brian Tracy

Brian Tracy’s “The Psychology of Selling” delves into the psychological aspects of sales and persuasion. Tracy provides insights into understanding customer psychology, effective communication, and building successful relationships in sales.

94. Founders at Work – Jessica Livingston

“Founders at Work” by Jessica Livingston is a collection of interviews with successful startup founders. The book provides firsthand accounts of the challenges, successes, and lessons learned by entrepreneurs, offering valuable insights into the startup ecosystem.

95. The Art of Non-Conformity – Chris Guillebeau

“The Art of Non-Conformity” by Chris Guillebeau challenges conventional notions of success and encourages readers to pursue unconventional paths. Guillebeau shares stories of individuals who have chosen alternative lifestyles and provides inspiration for living a fulfilling and purposeful life.

96. The Entrepreneur Mind – Kevin D. Johnson

“The Entrepreneur Mind” by Kevin D. Johnson explores the mindset and principles essential for entrepreneurial success. Johnson provides practical advice on developing a strategic mindset, making effective decisions, and navigating the challenges of entrepreneurship.

97. Business Model Generation – Alexander Osterwalder – Yves Pigneur

“Business Model Generation” by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur introduces a visual tool for designing, analyzing, and innovating business models. The book provides a framework known as the Business Model Canvas, which facilitates collaborative and strategic planning for entrepreneurs and businesses.

98. My Philosophy For Successful Living – Jim Rohn

“My Philosophy For Successful Living” by Jim Rohn is a compilation of Rohn’s insightful teachings on personal development and success. The book offers principles and philosophies to guide individuals on their journey to achieving personal and professional fulfillment.

99. Selling 101 – Zig Ziglar

Zig Ziglar’s “Selling 101” provides a foundational guide to the art of selling. Ziglar shares fundamental principles and techniques for building successful sales relationships, emphasizing the importance of ethics, integrity, and understanding customer needs.

105. Laws Of Success – Les Brown

“Laws Of Success” by Les Brown delves into the foundational principles and strategies that lead to success in both personal and professional aspects of life. As a renowned motivational speaker , Les Brown shares his insights, encouraging readers to overcome challenges, unlock their potential, and embrace a mindset that paves the way for achievement.

106. The Greatest Salesman in the World – Og Mandino

“The Greatest Salesman in the World” by Og Mandino is a timeless classic that takes readers on a transformative journey through the life of a fictional character, offering profound lessons on success, perseverance, and the art of selling. Mandino’s work provides actionable principles that continue to inspire and resonate with readers worldwide.

107. The Thank You Economy – Gary Vaynerchuk

In “The Thank You Economy,” Gary Vaynerchuk explores the evolving landscape of business in the digital era. Vaynerchuk emphasizes the significance of genuine appreciation and connection in a world dominated by social media. The book serves as a guide for businesses to foster authentic relationships with their audience, leveraging the power of gratitude and engagement.

108. Awaken the Giant Within – Tony Robbins

Tony Robbins’ “Awaken the Giant Within” is a comprehensive guide to personal development and self-improvement. Robbins shares strategies for taking control of one’s life, mastering emotions, setting and achieving goals, and ultimately unlocking one’s full potential. The book serves as a roadmap for individuals seeking positive transformation and success.

109. Business Lessons – Herby Fabius

“Business Lessons” by Herby Fabius draws on the author’s experiences in entrepreneurship, offering practical insights and valuable lessons for those navigating the dynamic world of business. Covering a range of topics, Fabius provides actionable advice, making the book a resource for aspiring entrepreneurs and business professionals alike.

Video by Valuetainment on YouTube

In conclusion, the journey of entrepreneurship is a relentless pursuit of innovation, resilience, and growth. As explored in this article, the habit of reading emerges not only as a means of acquiring knowledge but as a transformative force that shapes the mindset and strategies of entrepreneurs. From the wisdom shared by successful individuals to the insights derived from industry analyses, each book read becomes a stepping stone toward heightened creativity, informed decision-making, and sustained motivation.

In a world where change is constant and challenges are inevitable, the commitment to a reading culture empowers entrepreneurs to navigate uncertainties with agility and foresight. As the final chapter of this narrative unfolds, it becomes evident that the well-read entrepreneur is not just a seeker of information but a pioneer equipped with the tools needed to shape a lasting impact on their ventures and the broader business landscape. The pages turned today pave the way for the success stories of tomorrow, reminding entrepreneurs that, in the pursuit of greatness, knowledge truly is power.

Images provided by Pixabay and Shawn Reza; Pexels; Thanks!

The post 109 Books About Entrepreneurship (Part 2) appeared first on Under30CEO .

Master Yourself & Win The Game of Life

What Personality Type Is Jordan Peterson? Clean Your Room Bucko

Share your insights:.

As we explore Jordan Peterson & his intellectual legacy, we can’t help but respect the sheer intensity of his trip. From his early days as a political science student to his ascendance as a Professor Emeritus, Peterson has become synonymous with thought-provoking & often controversial discourse.

He’s most recognized for his bestselling book “ 12 Rules for Life ” and his incisive commentary on personal responsibility. Analyzing his lectures & writings, it’s clear to us that he embodies the traits of an INTP personality type , with his logical precision and deep introspection.

As a member of the “ Alpha” Quadra “, his approach to life’s complexities is both refreshing and intellectually stimulating. He is a beacon for those of us who revel in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding.

For further insight into the world of these analytical & introspective individuals, including profiles of well-known figures, continue your journey with more famous INTPs .

Table of Contents

Jordan Peterson , a distinguished figure in the realm of psychology, has firmly established his influence within the sphere of modern intellectual thought . His trajectory from an eager political science student at the University of Alberta to the respected role of Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Toronto is a testament to his determination and intellectual rigor.

Beyond the academic world, Peterson’s seminal work, “ 12 Rules for Life ,” has reached a global audience, selling millions of copies and cementing his status as a guiding force for those seeking direction amidst life’s tumult. His insightful analysis of personal responsibility and the human psyche, often reflected through the lens of The Big 5 personality model , has positioned him as one of the most influential thinkers of our era.

However, the passion that drives Peterson’s engagement with complex ideas has also ignited controversy . His staunch critique of compelled speech and certain Canadian policies has divided public opinion, portraying him as a polarizing voice in societal debates.

His unwavering commitment to free speech has attracted a legion of supporters, yet it has also provoked criticism from detractors, sparking debates that have at times eclipsed his scholarly contributions. Despite these challenges, Peterson’s candidness about his health struggles reveals a humanizing aspect of his character, reminding us of the vulnerability inherent in even the most resolute intellectual figures.

Why Jordan Peterson is an INTP Personality Type

Dissecting oppression w/ a logical framework.

Jordan Peterson opens his lecture by highlighting the futility in attempting to measure individual oppression, and immediately find his tone of voice to be reminiscent of the Introverted Thinking (Ti) function. His critique is reminiscent to the debate on identity politics , which often attempts to assign levels of privilege or disadvantage based on race, nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and so on, aiming to engineer a balanced society.

This approach, he suggests, is fundamentally at odds with the Ti preference for objective analysis over the Fi-driven “ equality ideology ” that commonly springs from the Delta Quadra & enforced by the Beta Quadra . His precise, logical dissection of the topic is a hallmark of the INTP’s analytical prowess.

Se vs Si – Not An ENTJ

Throughout the video, Peterson is verbose, weaving numerous stories and anecdotes into his discussion, which we associate with the narrative strength of Introverted Sensing (Si) . Contrary to the belief that he might be an ENTJ , his discourse lacks the broad, decisive action that Extroverted Thinking (Te) would dictate. He’s not trying to control the audience & get them to think a certain way or outlining the best way to do something.

Instead, his detailed & precise assertions suggest a strong Ti & Si presence . When he speaks of “ bearing the suffering ,” it’s a nod to Si’s focus on endurance rather than the Se’s drive for taking action , outperforming the competition, & attaining glory . This emphasis on internal reflection & historical continuity is another indication of his INTP nature.

His whole “ Clean Your Room ” trope is based on growing your Si through organizing your immediate dwelling. By taking care of the small things, you can then take on the greater things in life. It’s as above, so below or The microcosm affects the macrocosm (for all you NFs out there).

Finding Meaning in Suffering

Peterson’s insistence on enduring suffering is not merely about tolerating hardship; it’s about the search for meaning within it, which is a clear manifestation of Extroverted Intuition (Ne) . This perspective aligns with the INTP’s cognitive function stack, where Ne seeks to understand the broader significance of experiences.

Among the Alpha Quadra types , this is the axis of Ne & Si which are intrinsically linked. Want to be more prescient & strengthen pattern recognition? Have more experiences. Want to be more desirable to others? Be more organized & disciplined in your life.

Jordan Peterson’s argument that personal growth & a meaningful life emerge from confronting and transcending our struggles exemplifies the Ne’s desire to explore & find purpose in the patterns of life itself.

The Human Connection

Despite the rigorous logic that permeates Peterson’s lecture, we observe moments where his Extroverted Feeling (Fe) shines through, particularly at 3:42 where he connects with the audience on a human level. This shows the supportive role of Fe in the INTP’s function stack, allowing for empathy & social harmony to surface amidst the analytical nature of Ti.

His ability to articulate a shared human experience and the need for collective responsibility highlights the balance he strikes between incisive thought & compassionate understanding. Something that he seemingly has gotten better at with time… Less intellectual debate for the sake of winning, & more connecting with others on an emotional level.

What Personality Type Is Jordan Peterson – INTP

Jordan Peterson’s intellectual discourse clearly exhibits the hallmark traits of an INTP, with his analytical rigor rooted in Introverted Thinking (Ti) .

His narrative style, rich with anecdotes and a focus on the transformative power of personal challenges, showcases the depth of Introverted Sensing (Si) , while his quest for meaning through suffering reveals the expansive vision of Extroverted Intuition (Ne) .

Additionally, his evolving ability to connect with audiences on an emotional level via Extroverted Feeling (Fe) underscores the maturation of his personality type’s traits over time.

With this comprehensive alignment of cognitive functions, it is unequivocal that Jordan Peterson is an embodiment of the INTP archtype.

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Related Posts:

INFJ Famous People – A Definitive List

Embark on a journey through the lives of some of the most impactful and introspective individuals believed to embody the INFJ archetype. Our carefully curated…

INFP Famous People – A Definitive List

Welcome to our definitive list of INFP famous people, a curated collection that shines a light on various individuals who exemplify this introspective & intuitive…

INTJ Famous People – A Definitive List

In this article, we explore a roster of INTJ famous people, each of whom exemplifies the characteristics of this distinct personality archetype. Our list is…

ENFP Famous People – A Definitive List

Jump into the eclectic & spirited realm of ENFP famous people with our meticulously curated list, a celebration of the trailblazers and innovators who exemplify…

The Shop is currently under construction — no orders will be fulfilled. Dismiss

Things you buy through our links may earn Vox Media a commission.

Andrew Huberman’s Mechanisms of Control

The private and public seductions of the world’s biggest pop neuroscientist..

This article was featured in One Great Story , New York ’s reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly.

For the past three years, one of the biggest podcasters on the planet has told a story to millions of listeners across half a dozen shows: There was a little boy, and the boy’s family was happy, until one day, the boy’s family fell apart. The boy was sent away. He foundered, he found therapy, he found science, he found exercise. And he became strong.

Today, Andrew Huberman is a stiff, jacked 48-year-old associate professor of neurology and ophthalmology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He is given to delivering three-hour lectures on subjects such as “the health of our dopaminergic neurons.” His podcast is revelatory largely because it does not condescend, which has not been the way of public-health information in our time. He does not give the impression of someone diluting science to universally applicable sound bites for the slobbering masses. “Dopamine is vomited out into the synapse or it’s released volumetrically, but then it has to bind someplace and trigger those G-protein-coupled receptors, and caffeine increases the number, the density of those G-protein-coupled receptors,” is how he explains the effect of coffee before exercise in a two-hour-and-16-minute deep dive that has, as of this writing, nearly 8.9 million views on YouTube.

In This Issue

Falling for dr. huberman.

Millions of people feel compelled to hear him draw distinctions between neuromodulators and classical neurotransmitters. Many of those people will then adopt an associated “protocol.” They will follow his elaborate morning routine. They will model the most basic functions of human life — sleeping, eating, seeing — on his sober advice. They will tell their friends to do the same. “He’s not like other bro podcasters,” they will say, and they will be correct; he is a tenured Stanford professor associated with a Stanford lab; he knows the difference between a neuromodulator and a neurotransmitter. He is just back from a sold-out tour in Australia, where he filled the Sydney Opera House. Stanford, at one point, hung signs (AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY) apparently to deter fans in search of the lab.

With this power comes the power to lift other scientists out of their narrow silos and turn them, too, into celebrities, but these scientists will not be Huberman, whose personal appeal is distinct. Here we have a broad-minded professor puppyishly enamored with the wonders of biological function, generous to interviewees (“I love to be wrong”), engaged in endearing attempts to sound like a normal person (“Now, we all have to eat, and it’s nice to eat foods that we enjoy. I certainly do that. I love food, in fact”).

This is a world in which the soft art of self-care is made concrete, in which Goop-adjacent platitudes find solidity in peer review. “People go, ‘Oh, that feels kind of like weenie stuff,’” Huberman tells Joe Rogan. “The data show that gratitude, and avoiding toxic people and focusing on good-quality social interactions … huge increases in serotonin.” “Hmmm,” Rogan says. There is a kindness to the way Huberman reminds his audience always of the possibilities of neuroplasticity: They can change. He has changed. As an adolescent, he says, he endured the difficult divorce of his parents, a Stanford professor who worked in the tech industry and a children’s-book author. The period after the separation was, he says, one of “pure neglect.” His father was gone, his mother “totally checked out.” He was forced, around age 14, to endure a month of “youth detention,” a situation that was “not a jail,” but harrowing in its own right.

“The thing that really saved me,” Huberman tells Peter Attia, “was this therapy thing … I was like, Oh, shit … I do have to choke back a little bit here. It’s a crazy thing to have somebody say, ‘Listen,’ like, to give you the confidence, like, ‘We’re gonna figure this out. We’re gonna figure this out. ’ There’s something very powerful about that. It wasn’t like, you know, ‘Everything will be okay.’ It was like, We’re gonna figure this out. ”

The wayward son would devote himself to therapy and also to science. He would turn Rancid all the way up and study all night long. He would be tenured at Stanford with his own lab, severing optic nerves in mice and noting what grew back.

Huberman has been in therapy, he says, since high school. He has, in fact, several therapists, and psychiatrist Paul Conti appears on his podcast frequently to discuss mental health. Therapy is “hard work … like going to the gym and doing an effective workout.” The brain is a machine that needs tending. Our cells will benefit from the careful management of stress. “I love mechanism, ” says Huberman; our feelings are integral to the apparatus. There are Huberman Husbands (men who optimize), a phenomenon not to be confused with #DaddyHuberman (used by women on TikTok in the man’s thrall).

A prophet must constrain his self-revelation. He must give his story a shape that ultimately tends toward inner strength, weakness overcome. For Andrew Huberman to become your teacher and mine, as he very much was for a period this fall — a period in which I diligently absorbed sun upon waking, drank no more than once a week, practiced physiological sighs in traffic, and said to myself, out loud in my living room, “I also love mechanism”; a period during which I began to think seriously, for the first time in my life, about reducing stress, and during which both my husband and my young child saw tangible benefit from repeatedly immersing themselves in frigid water; a period in which I realized that I not only liked this podcast but liked other women who liked this podcast — he must be, in some way, better than the rest of us.

Huberman sells a dream of control down to the cellular level. But something has gone wrong. In the midst of immense fame, a chasm has opened between the podcaster preaching dopaminergic restraint and a man, with newfound wealth, with access to a world unseen by most professors. The problem with a man always working on himself is that he may also be working on you.

Some of Andrew’s earliest Instagram posts are of his lab. We see smiling undergraduates “slicing, staining, and prepping brains” and a wall of framed science publications in which Huberman-authored papers appear: Nature, Cell Reports, The Journal of Neuroscience. In 2019, under the handle @hubermanlab, Andrew began posting straightforward educational videos in which he talks directly into the camera about subjects such as the organizational logic of the brain stem. Sometimes he would talk over a simple anatomical sketch on lined paper; the impression was, as it is now, of a fast-talking teacher in conversation with an intelligent student. The videos amassed a fan base, and Andrew was, in 2020, invited on some of the biggest podcasts in the world. On Lex Fridman Podcast, he talked about experiments his lab was conducting by inducing fear in people. On The Rich Roll Podcast, the relationship between breathing and motivation. On The Joe Rogan Experience, experiments his lab was conducting on mice.

He was a fluid, engaging conversationalist, rich with insight and informed advice. In a year of death and disease, when many felt a sense of agency slipping away, Huberman had a gentle plan. The subtext was always the same: We may live in chaos, but there are mechanisms of control.

By then he had a partner, Sarah, which is not her real name. Sarah was someone who could talk to anyone about anything. She was dewy and strong and in her mid-40s, though she looked a decade younger, with two small kids from a previous relationship. She had old friends who adored her and no trouble making new ones. She came across as scattered in the way she jumped readily from topic to topic in conversation, losing the thread before returning to it, but she was in fact extremely organized. She was a woman who kept track of things. She was an entrepreneur who could organize a meeting, a skill she would need later for reasons she could not possibly have predicted. When I asked her a question in her home recently, she said the answer would be on an old phone; she stood up, left for only a moment, and returned with a box labeled OLD PHONES.

Sarah’s relationship with Andrew began in February 2018 in the Bay Area, where they both lived. He messaged her on Instagram and said he owned a home in Piedmont, a wealthy city separate from Oakland. That turned out not to be precisely true; he lived off Piedmont Avenue, which was in Oakland. He was courtly and a bit formal, as he would later be on the podcast. In July, in her garden, Sarah says she asked to clarify the depth of their relationship. They decided, she says, to be exclusive.

Both had devoted their lives to healthy living: exercise, good food, good information. They cared immoderately about what went into their bodies. Andrew could command a room and clearly took pleasure in doing so. He was busy and handsome, healthy and extremely ambitious. He 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. “I was never sitting around him,” she says. She cooked for him and felt glad when he relished what she had made. Sarah was willing to have unprotected sex because she believed they were monogamous.

On Thanksgiving in 2018, Sarah planned to introduce Andrew to her parents and close friends. She was cooking. Andrew texted repeatedly to say he would be late, then later. According to a friend, “he was just, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll be there. Oh, I’m going to be running hours late.’ And then of course, all of these things were planned around his arrival and he just kept going, ‘Oh, I’m going to be late.’ And then it’s the end of the night and he’s like, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry this and this happened.’”

Huberman disappearing was something of a pattern. Friends, girlfriends, and colleagues describe him as hard to reach. The list of reasons for not showing up included a book, time-stamping the podcast, Costello, wildfires, and a “meetings tunnel.” “He is flaky and doesn’t respond to things,” says his friend Brian MacKenzie, a health influencer who has collaborated with him on breathing protocols. “And if you can’t handle that, Andrew definitely is not somebody you want to be close to.” “He in some ways disappeared,” says David Spiegel, a Stanford psychiatrist who calls Andrew “prodigiously smart” and “intensely engaging.” “I mean, I recently got a really nice email from him. Which I was touched by. I really was.”

In 2018, before he was famous, Huberman invited a Colorado-based investigative journalist and anthropologist, Scott Carney, to his home in Oakland for a few days; the two would go camping and discuss their mutual interest in actionable science. It had been Huberman, a fan of Carney’s book What Doesn’t Kill Us, who initially reached out, and the two became friendly over phone and email. Huberman confirmed Carney’s list of camping gear: sleeping bag, bug spray, boots.

When Carney got there, the two did not go camping. Huberman simply disappeared for most of a day and a half while Carney stayed home with Costello. He puttered around Huberman’s place, buying a juice, walking through the neighborhood, waiting for him to return. “It was extremely weird,” says Carney. Huberman texted from elsewhere saying he was busy working on a grant. (A spokesperson for Huberman says he clearly communicated to Carney that he went to work.) Eventually, instead of camping, the two went on a few short hikes.

Even when physically present, Huberman can be hard to track. “I don’t have total fidelity to who Andrew is,” says his friend Patrick Dossett. “There’s always a little unknown there.” He describes Andrew as an “amazing thought partner” with “almost total recall,” such a memory that one feels the need to watch what one says; a stray comment could surface three years later. And yet, at other times, “you’re like, All right, I’m saying words and he’s nodding or he is responding, but I can tell something I said sent him down a path that he’s continuing to have internal dialogue about, and I need to wait for him to come back. ”

Andrew Huberman declined to be interviewed for this story. Through a spokesman, Huberman says he did not become exclusive with Sarah until late 2021, that he was not doted on, that tasks between him and Sarah were shared “based on mutual agreement and proficiency,” that their Thanksgiving plans were tentative, and that he “maintains a very busy schedule and shows up to the vast majority of his commitments.”

In the fall of 2020, Huberman sold his home in Oakland and rented one in Topanga, a wooded canyon enclave contiguous with Los Angeles. When he came back to Stanford, he stayed with Sarah, and when he was in Topanga, Sarah was often with him.

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.”

The relationship struck Sarah’s friends as odd. At one point, Sarah said, “I just want to be with my kids and cook for my man.” “I was like, Who says that? ” says a close friend. “I mean, I’ve known her for 30 years. She’s a powerful, decisive, strong woman. We grew up in this very feminist community. That’s not a thing either of us would ever say.”

Another friend found him stressful to be around. “I try to be open-minded,” she said of the relationship. “I don’t want to be the most negative, nonsupportive friend just because of my personal observations and disgust over somebody.” When they were together, he was buzzing, anxious. “He’s like, ‘Oh, my dog needs his blanket this way.’ And I’m like, ‘Your dog is just laying there and super-cozy. Why are you being weird about the blanket?’”

Sarah was not the only person who experienced the extent of Andrew’s anger. In 2019, Carney sent Huberman materials from his then-forthcoming book, The Wedge, in which Huberman appears. He asked Huberman to confirm the parts in which he was mentioned. For months, Huberman did not respond. Carney sent a follow-up email; if Huberman did not respond, he would assume everything was accurate. In 2020, after months of saying he was too busy to review the materials, Huberman called him and, Carney says, came at him in a rage. “I’ve never had a source I thought was friendly go bananas,” says Carney. Screaming, Huberman threatened to sue and accused Carney of “violating Navy OpSec.”

It had become, by then, one of the most perplexing relationships of Carney’s life. That year, Carney agreed to Huberman’s invitation to swim with sharks on an island off Mexico. First, Carney would have to spend a month of his summer getting certified in Denver. He did, at considerable expense. Huberman then canceled the trip a day before they were set to leave. “I think Andrew likes building up people’s expectations,” says Carney, “and then he actually enjoys the opportunity to pull the rug out from under you.”

In January 2021, Huberman launched his own podcast. Its reputation would be directly tied to his role as teacher and scientist. “I’d like to emphasize that this podcast,” he would say every episode, with his particular combination of formality and discursiveness, “is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost-to-consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public.”

“I remember feeling quite lonely and making some efforts to repair that,” Huberman would say on an episode in 2024. “Loneliness,” his interviewee said, “is a need state.” In 2021, the country was in the later stages of a need state: bored, alone, powerless. Huberman offered not only hours of educative listening but a plan to structure your day. A plan for waking. For eating. For exercising. For sleep. At a time when life had shifted to screens, he brought people back to their corporeal selves. He advised a “physiological sigh” — two short breaths in and a long one out — to reduce stress. He pulled countless people from their laptops and put them in rhythm with the sun. “Thank you for all you do to better humanity,” read comments on YouTube. “You may have just saved my life man.” “If Andrew were science teacher for everyone in the world,” someone wrote, “no one would have missed even a single class.”

Asked by Time last year for his definition of fun, Huberman said, “I learn and I like to exercise.” Among his most famous episodes is one in which he declares moderate drinking decidedly unhealthy. As MacKenzie puts it, “I don’t think anybody or anything, including Prohibition, has ever made more people think about alcohol than Andrew Huberman.” While he claims repeatedly that he doesn’t want to “demonize alcohol,” he fails to mask his obvious disapproval of anyone who consumes alcohol in any quantity. He follows a time-restricted eating schedule. He discusses constraint even in joy, because a dopamine spike is invariably followed by a drop below baseline; he explains how even a small pleasure like a cup of coffee before every workout reduces the capacity to release dopamine. Huberman frequently refers to the importance of “social contact” and “peace, contentment, and delight,” always mentioned as a triad; these are ultimately leveraged for the one value consistently espoused: physiological health.

In August 2021, Sarah says she read Andrew’s journal and discovered a reference to cheating. She was, she says, “gutted.” “I hear you are saying you are angry and hurt,” he texted her the same day. “I will hear you as much as long as needed for us.”

Andrew and Sarah wanted children together. Optimizers sometimes prefer not to conceive naturally; one can exert more control when procreation involves a lab. Sarah began the first of several rounds of IVF. (A spokesperson for Huberman denies that he and Sarah had decided to have children together, clarifying that they “decided to create embryos by IVF.”)

In 2021, she tested positive for a high-risk form of HPV, one of the variants linked to cervical cancer. “I had never tested positive,” she says, “and had been tested regularly for ten years.” (A spokesperson for Huberman says he has never tested positive for HPV. According to the CDC, there is currently no approved test for HPV in men.) When she brought it up, she says, he told her you could contract HPV from many things.

“I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask about truth-telling and deception,” Andrew told evolutionary psychologist David Buss on a November 2021 episode of Huberman Lab called “How Humans Select & Keep Romantic Partners in Short & Long Term.” They were talking about regularities across cultures in mate preferences.

“Could you tell us,” Andrew asked, “about how men and women leverage deception versus truth-telling and communicating some of the things around mate choice selection?”

“Effective tactics for men,” said a gravel-voiced, 68-year-old Buss, “are often displaying cues to long-term interest … men tend to exaggerate the depths of their feelings for a woman.”

“Let’s talk about infidelity in committed relationships,” Andrew said, laughing. “I’m guessing it does happen.”

“Men who have affairs tend to have affairs with a larger number of affair partners,” said Buss. “And so which then by definition can’t be long-lasting. You can’t,” added Buss wryly, “have the long-term affairs with six different partners.”

“Yeah,” said Andrew, “unless he’s, um,” and here Andrew looked into the distance. “Juggling multiple, uh, phone accounts or something of that sort.”

“Right, right, right, and some men try to do that, but I think it could be very taxing,” said Buss.

By 2022, Andrew was legitimately famous. Typical headlines read “I tried a Stanford professor’s top productivity routine” and “Google CEO Uses ‘Nonsleep Deep Rest’ to Relax.” Reese Witherspoon told the world that she was sure to get ten minutes of sunlight in the morning and tagged Andrew. When he was not on his own podcast, Andrew was on someone else’s. He kept the place in Topanga, but he and Sarah began splitting rent in Berkeley. In June 2022, they fully combined lives; Sarah relocated her family to Malibu to be with him.

According to Sarah, Andrew’s rage intensified with cohabitation. He fixated on her decision to have children with another man. She says he told her that being with her was like “bobbing for apples in feces.” “The pattern of your 11 years, while rooted in subconscious drives,” he told her in December 2021, “creates a nearly impossible set of hurdles for us … You have to change.”

Sarah was, in fact, changing. She felt herself getting smaller, constantly appeasing. She apologized, again and again and again. “I have been selfish, childish, and confused,” she said. “As a result, I need your protection.” A spokesperson for Huberman denies Sarah’s accounts of their fights, denies that his rage intensified with cohabitation, denies that he fixated on Sarah’s decision to have children with another man, and denies that he said being with her was like bobbing for apples in feces. A spokesperson said, “Dr. Huberman is very much in control of his emotions.”

The first three rounds of IVF did not produce healthy embryos. In the spring of 2022, enraged again about her past, Andrew asked Sarah to explain in detail what he called her bad choices, most especially having her second child. She wrote it out and read it aloud to him. A spokesperson for Huberman denies this incident and says he does not regard her having a second child as a bad choice.

I think it’s important to recognize that we might have a model of who someone is,” says Dossett, “or a model of how someone should conduct themselves. And if they do something that is out of sync with that model, it’s like, well, that might not necessarily be on that person. Maybe it’s on us. Our model was just off.”

Huberman’s specialty lies in a narrow field: visual-system wiring. How comfortable one feels with the science propagated on Huberman Lab depends entirely on how much leeway one is willing to give a man who expounds for multiple hours a week on subjects well outside his area of expertise. His detractors note that Huberman extrapolates wildly from limited animal studies, posits certainty where there is ambiguity, and stumbles when he veers too far from his narrow realm of study, but even they will tend to admit that the podcast is an expansive, free (or, as he puts it, “zero-cost”) compendium of human knowledge. There are quack guests, but these are greatly outnumbered by profound, complex, patient, and often moving descriptions of biological process.

Huberman Lab is premised on the image of a working scientist. One imagines clean white counters, rodents in cages, postdocs peering into microscopes. “As scientists,” Huberman says frequently. He speaks often, too, of the importance of mentorship. He “loves” reading teacher evaluations. On the web, one can visit the lab and even donate. I have never met a Huberman listener who doubted the existence of such a place, and this appears to be by design. In a glowing 2023 profile in Stanford magazine, we learn “Everything he does is inspired by this love,” but do not learn that Huberman lives 350 miles and a six-hour drive from Stanford University, making it difficult to drop into the lab. Compounding the issue is the fact that the lab, according to knowledgeable sources, barely exists.

“Is a postdoc working on her own funding, alone, a ‘lab?’” asks a researcher at Stanford. There had been a lab — four rooms on the second floor of the Sherman Fairchild Science Building. Some of them smelled of mice. It was here that researchers anesthetized rodents, injected them with fluorescence, damaged their optic nerves, and watched for the newly bright nerves to grow back.

The lab, says the researcher, was already scaling down before COVID. It was emptying out, postdocs apparently unsupervised, a quarter-million-dollar laser-scanning microscope gathering dust. Once the researcher saw someone come in and reclaim a $3,500 rocker, a machine for mixing solutions.

Shortly before publication, a spokesperson for Stanford said, “Dr. Huberman’s lab at Stanford is operational and is in the process of moving from the Department of Neurobiology to the Department of Ophthalmology,” and a spokesperson for Huberman says the equipment in Dr. Huberman’s lab remained in use until the last postdoc moved to a faculty position.

On every episode of his “zero-cost” podcast, Huberman gives a lengthy endorsement of a powder formerly known as Athletic Greens and now as AG1. It is one thing to hear Athletic Greens promoted by Joe Rogan; it is perhaps another to hear someone who sells himself as a Stanford University scientist just back from the lab proclaim that this $79-a-month powder “covers all of your foundational nutritional needs.” In an industry not noted for its integrity, AG1 is, according to writer and professional debunker Derek Beres, “one of the most egregious players in the space.” Here we have a powder that contains, according to its own marketing, 75 active ingredients, far more than the typical supplement, which would seem a selling point but for the inconveniences of mass. As performance nutritionist Adam McDonald points out, the vast number of ingredients indicates that each ingredient, which may or may not promote good health in a certain dose, is likely included in minuscule amounts, though consumers are left to do the math themselves; the company keeps many of the numbers proprietary. “We can be almost guaranteed that literally every supplement or ingredient within this proprietary blend is underdosed,” explains McDonald; the numbers, he says, don’t appear to add up to anything research has shown to be meaningful in terms of human health outcomes. And indeed, “the problem with most of the probiotics is they’re typically not concentrated enough to actually colonize,” one learns from Dr. Layne Norton in a November 2022 episode of Huberman Lab. (AG1 argues that probiotics are effective and that the 75 ingredients are “included not only for their individual benefit, but for the synergy between them — how ingredients interact in complex ways, and how combinations can lead to additive effects.”) “That’s the good news about podcasts,” Huberman said when Wendy Zukerman of Science Vs pointed out that her podcast would never make recommendations based on such tenuous research. “People can choose which podcast they want to listen to.”

Whenever Sarah had suspicions about Andrew’s interactions with another woman, he had a particular way of talking about the woman in question. She says he said the women were stalkers, alcoholics, and compulsive liars. He told her that one woman tore out her hair with chunks of flesh attached to it. He told her a story about a woman who fabricated a story about a dead baby to “entrap” him. (A spokesperson for Huberman denies the account of the denigration of women and the dead-baby story and says the hair story was taken out of context.) Most of the time, Sarah believed him; the women probably were crazy. He was a celebrity. He had to be careful.

It was in August 2022 that Sarah noticed she and Andrew could not go out without being thronged by people. On a camping trip in Washington State that same month, Sarah brought syringes and a cooler with ice packs. Every day of the trip, he injected the drugs meant to stimulate fertility into her stomach. This was round four.

Later that month, Sarah says she grabbed Andrew’s phone when he had left it in the bathroom, checked his texts, and found conversations with someone we will call Eve. Some of them took place during the camping trip they had just taken.

“Your feelings matter,” he told Eve on a day when he had injected his girlfriend with hCG. “I’m actually very much a caretaker.” And later: “I’m back on grid tomorrow and would love to see you this weekend.”

Caught having an affair, Andrew was apologetic. “The landscape has been incredibly hard,” he said. “I let the stress get to me … I defaulted to self safety … I’ve also sat with the hardest of feelings.” “I hear your insights,” he said, “and honestly I appreciate them.”

Sarah noticed how courteous he was with Eve. “So many offers,” she pointed out, “to process and work through things.”

Eve is an ethereally beautiful actress, the kind of woman from whom it is hard to look away. Where Sarah exudes a winsome chaotic energy, Eve is intimidatingly collected. Eve saw Andrew on Raya in 2020 and messaged him on Instagram. They went for a swim in Venice, and he complimented her form. “You’re definitely,” he said, “on the faster side of the distribution.” She found him to be an extraordinary listener, and she liked the way he appeared to be interested in her internal life. He was busy all the time: with his book, and eventually the podcast; his dog; responsibilities at Stanford. “I’m willing to do the repair work on this,” he said when she called him out for standing her up, or, “This sucks, but doesn’t deter my desire and commitment to see you, and establish clear lines of communication and trust.” Despite his endless excuses for not showing up, he seemed, to Eve, to be serious about deepening their relationship, which lasted on and off for two years. Eve had the impression that he was not seeing anyone else: She was willing to have unprotected sex.

As their relationship intensified over the years, he talked often about the family he one day wanted. “Our children would be amazing,” he said. She asked for book recommendations and he suggested, jokingly, Huberman: Why We Made Babies. “I’m at the stage of life where I truly want to build a family,” he told her. “That’s a resounding theme for me.” “How to mesh lives,” he said in a voice memo. “A fundamental question.” One time she heard him say, on Joe Rogan, that he had a girlfriend. She texted him to ask about it, and he responded immediately. He had a stalker, he said, and so his team had decided to invent a partner for the listening public. (“I later learned,” Eve tells me with characteristic equanimity, “that this was not true.”)

In September 2022, Eve noticed that Sarah was looking at her Instagram stories; not commenting or liking, just looking. Impulsively, Eve messaged her. “Is there anything you’d rather ask me directly?” she said. They set up a call. “Fuck you Andrew,” she messaged him.

Sarah moved out in August 2023 but says she remained in a committed relationship with Huberman. (A spokesperson for Huberman says they were separated.) At Thanksgiving that year, she noticed he was “wiggly” every time a cell phone came out at the table — trying to avoid, she suspected, being photographed. She says she did not leave him until December. According to Sarah, the relationship ended, as it had started, with a lie. He had been at her place for a couple of days and left for his place to prepare for a Zoom call; they planned to go Christmas shopping the next day. Sarah showed up at his house and found him on the couch with another woman. She could see them through the window. “If you’re going to be a cheater,” she advises me later, “do not live in a glass house.”

On January 11, a woman we’ll call Alex began liking all of Sarah’s Instagram posts, seven of them in a minute. Sarah messaged her: “I think you’re friends with my ex, Andrew Huberman. Are you one of the woman he cheated on me with?” Alex is an intense, direct, highly educated woman who lives in New York; she was sleeping with Andrew; and she had no idea there had been a girlfriend. “Fuck,” she said. “I think we should talk.” Over the following weeks, Sarah and Alex never stopped texting. “She helped me hold my boundary against him,” says Sarah, “keep him blocked. She said, ‘You need to let go of the idea of him.’” Instead of texting Andrew, Sarah texted Alex. Sometimes they just talked about their days and not about Andrew at all. Sarah still thought beautiful Eve, on the other hand, “might be crazy,” but they talked some more and brought her into the group chat. Soon there were others. There was Mary: a dreamy, charismatic Texan he had been seeing for years. Her friends called Andrew “bread crumbs,” given his tendency to disappear. There was a fifth woman in L.A., funny and fast-talking. Alex had been apprehensive; she felt foolish for believing Andrew’s lies and worried that the other women would seem foolish, therefore compounding her shame. Foolish women were not, however, what she found. Each of the five was assertive and successful and educated and sharp-witted; there had been a type, and they were diverse expressions of that type. “I can’t believe how crazy I thought you were,” Mary told Sarah. No one struck anyone else as a stalker. No one had made up a story about a dead baby or torn out hair with chunks in it. “I haven’t slept with anyone but him for six years,” Sarah told the group. “If it makes you feel any better,” Alex joked, “according to the CDC,” they had all slept with one another.

The women compared time-stamped screenshots of texts and assembled therein an extraordinary record of deception.

There was a day in Texas when, after Sarah left his hotel, Andrew slept with Mary and texted Eve. They found days in which he would text nearly identical pictures of himself to two of them at the same time. They realized that the day before he had moved in with Sarah in Berkeley, he had slept with Mary, and he had also been with her in December 2023, the weekend before Sarah caught him on the couch with a sixth woman.

They realized that on March 21, 2021, a day of admittedly impressive logistical jujitsu, while Sarah was in Berkeley, Andrew had flown Mary from Texas to L.A. to stay with him in Topanga. While Mary was there, visiting from thousands of miles away, he left her with Costello. He drove to a coffee shop, where he met Eve. They had a serious talk about their relationship. They thought they were in a good place. He wanted to make it work.

“Phone died,” he texted Mary, who was waiting back at the place in Topanga. And later, to Eve: “Thank you … For being so next, next, level gorgeous and sexy.”

“Sleep well beautiful,” he texted Sarah.

“The scheduling alone!” Alex tells me. “I can barely schedule three Zooms in a day.”

In the aggregate, Andrew’s therapeutic language took on a sinister edge. It was communicating a commitment that was not real, a profound interest in the internality of women that was then used to manipulate them.

“Does Huberman have vices?” asks an anonymous Reddit poster.

“I remember him saying,” reads the first comment, “that he loves croissants.”

While Huberman has been criticized for having too few women guests on his podcast, he is solicitous and deferential toward those he interviews. In a January 2023 episode, Dr. Sara Gottfried argues that “patriarchal messaging” and white supremacy contribute to the deterioration of women’s health, and Andrew responds with a story about how his beloved trans mentor, Ben Barres, had experienced “intense suppression/oppression” at MIT before transitioning. “Psychology is influencing biology,” he says with concern. “And you’re saying these power dynamics … are impacting it.”

In private, he could sometimes seem less concerned about patriarchy. Multiple women recall him saying he preferred the kind of relationship in which the woman was monogamous but the man was not. “He told me,” says Mary, “that what he wanted was a woman who was submissive, who he could slap in the ass in public, and who would be crawling on the floor for him when he got home.” (A spokesperson for Huberman denies this.) The women continued to compare notes. He had his little ways of checking in: “Good morning beautiful.” There was a particular way he would respond to a sexy picture: “Mmmmm hi there.”

A spokesperson for Huberman insisted that he had not been monogamous with Sarah until late 2021, but a recorded conversation he had with Alex suggested that in May of that year he had led Sarah to believe otherwise. “Well, she was under the impression that we were exclusive at that time,” he said. “Women are not dumb like that, dude,” Alex responded. “She was under that impression? Then you were giving her that impression.” Andrew agreed: “That’s what I meant. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to put it on her.”

The kind of women to whom Andrew Huberman was attracted; the kind of women who were attracted to him — these were women who paid attention to what went into their bodies, women who made avoiding toxicity a central focus of their lives. They researched non-hormone-disrupting products, avoided sugar, ate organic. They were disgusted by the knowledge that they had had sex with someone who had an untold number of partners. All of them wondered how many others there were. When Sarah found Andrew with the other woman, there had been a black pickup truck in the driveway, and she had taken a picture. The women traced the plates, but they hit a dead end and never found her.

Tell us about the dark triad,” he had said to Buss in November on the trip in which he slept with Mary.

“The dark triad consists of three personality characteristics,” said Buss. “So narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy.” Such people “feign cooperation but then cheat on subsequent moves. They view other people as pawns to be manipulated for their own instrumental gains.” Those “who are high on dark-triad traits,” he said, “tend to be good at the art of seduction.” The vast majority of them were men.

Andrew told one of the women that he wasn’t a sex addict; he was a love addict. Addiction, Huberman says, “is a progressing narrowing of things that bring you joy.” In August 2021, the same month Sarah first learned of Andrew’s cheating, he released an episode with Anna Lembke, chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. Lembke, the author of a book called Dopamine Nation, gave a clear explanation of the dopaminergic roots of addiction.

“What happens right after I do something that is really pleasurable,” she says, “and releases a lot of dopamine is, again, my brain is going to immediately compensate by downregulating my own dopamine receptors … And that’s that comedown, or the hangover or that aftereffect, that moment of wanting to do it more.” Someone who waits for the feeling to pass, she explained, will reregulate, go back to  baseline. “If I keep indulging again and again and again,” she said, “ultimately I have so much on the pain side that I’ve essentially reset my brain to what we call anhedonic or lacking-in-joy type of state, which is a dopamine deficit state.” This is a state in which nothing is enjoyable: “Everything sort of pales in comparison to this one drug that I want to keep doing.”

“Just for the record,” Andrew said, smiling, “Dr. Lembke has … diagnosed me outside the clinic, in a playful way, of being work addicted. You’re probably right!”

Lembke laughed. “You just happen to be addicted,” she said gently, “to something that is really socially rewarded.”

What he failed to understand, he said, was people who ruined their lives with their disease. “I like to think I have the compassion,” he said, “but I don’t have that empathy for taking a really good situation and what from the outside looks to be throwing it in the trash.”

At least three ex-girlfriends remain friendly with Huberman. He “goes deep very quickly,” says Keegan Amit, who dated Andrew from 2010 to 2017 and continues to admire him. “He has incredible emotional capacity.” A high-school girlfriend says both she and he were “troubled” during their time together, that he was complicated and jealous but “a good person” whom she parted with on good terms. “He really wants to get involved emotionally but then can’t quite follow through,” says someone he dated on and off between 2006 and 2010. “But yeah. I don’t think it’s …” She hesitates. “I think he has such a good heart.”

Andrew grew up in Palo Alto just before the dawn of the internet, a lost city. He gives some version of his origin story on The Rich Roll Podcast ; he repeats it for Tim Ferriss and Peter Attia. He tells Time magazine and Stanford magazine. “Take the list of all the things a parent shouldn’t do in a divorce,” he recently told Christian bowhunter Cameron Hanes. “They did them all.” “You had,” says Wendy Zukerman in her bright Aussie accent, “a wayward childhood.” “I think it’s very easy for people listening to folks with a bio like yours,” says Tim Ferriss, “to sort of assume a certain trajectory, right? To assume that it has always come easy.” His father and mother agree that “after our divorce was an incredibly hard time for Andrew,” though they “do not agree” with some of his characterization of his past; few parents want to be accused of “pure neglect.”

Huberman would not provide the name of the detention center in which he says he was held for a month in high school. In a version of the story Huberman tells on Peter Attia’s podcast, he says, “We lost a couple of kids, a couple of kids killed themselves while we were there.” ( New York was unable to find an account of this event.)

Andrew attended Gunn, a high-performing, high-pressure high school. Classmates describe him as always with a skateboard; they remember him as pleasant, “sweet,” and not particularly academic. He would, says one former classmate, “drop in on the half-pipe,” where he was “encouraging” to other skaters. “I mean, he was a cool, individual kid,” says another classmate. “There was one year he, like, bleached his hair and everyone was like, ‘Oh, that guy’s cool.’” It was a wealthy place, the kind of setting where the word au pair comes up frequently, and Andrew did not stand out to his classmates as out of control or unpredictable. They do not recall him getting into street fights, as Andrew claims he did. He was, says Andrew’s father, “a little bit troubled, yes, but it was not something super-serious.”

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.

I have never,” says Amit, “met a man more interested in personal growth.” 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.” (A spokesperson for Huberman denies this.)

“People high on psychopathy are good at deception,” says Buss. “I don’t know if they’re good at self-deception.” 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. On a recent episode with the Stanford-trained psychiatrist Paul Conti, Andrew and Conti were describing the psychological phenomenon of “aggressive drive.” Andrew had an example to share: He once canceled an appointment with a Stanford colleague. There was no response. Eventually, he received a reply that said, in Andrew’s telling, “Well, it’s clear that you don’t want to pursue this collaboration.”

Andrew was, he said to Conti, “shocked.”

“I remember feeling like that was pretty aggressive,” Andrew told Conti. “It stands out to me as a pretty salient example of aggression.”

“So to me,” said Huberman, “that seems like an example of somebody who has a, well, strong aggressive drive … and when disappointed, you know, lashes back or is passive.”

“There’s some way in which the person doesn’t feel good enough no matter what this person has achieved. So then there is a sense of the need and the right to overcontrol.”

“Sure,” said Huberman.

“And now we’re going to work together, right, so I’m exerting significant control over you, right? And it may be that he’s not aware of it.”

“In this case,” said Andrew, “it was a she.”

This woman, explained Conti, based entirely on Andrew’s description of two emails, had allowed her unhealthy “excess aggression” to be “eclipsing the generative drive.” She required that Andrew “bowed down before” her “in the service of the ego” because she did not feel good about herself.

This conversation extends for an extraordinary nine minutes, both men egging each other on, diagnosis after diagnosis, salient, perhaps, for reasons other than those the two identify. We learn that this person lacks gratitude, generative drive, and happiness; she suffers from envy, low “pleasure drive,” and general unhappiness. It would appear, at a distance, to be an elaborate fantasy of an insane woman built on a single behavior: At some point in time, a woman decided she did not want to work with a man who didn’t show up.

There is an argument to be made that it does not matter how a helpful podcaster conducts himself outside of the studio. A man unable to constrain his urges may still preach dopaminergic control to others. Morning sun remains salutary. The physiological sigh, employed by this writer many times in the writing of this essay, continues to effect calm. The large and growing distance between Andrew Huberman and the man he continues to be may not even matter to those who buy questionable products he has recommended and from which he will materially benefit, or listeners who imagined a man in a white coat at work in Palo Alto. The people who definitively find the space between fantasy and reality to be a problem are women who fell for a podcaster who professed deep, sustained concern for their personal growth, and who, in his skyrocketing influence, continued to project an image of earnest self-discovery. It is here, in the false belief of two minds in synchronicity and exploration, that deception leads to harm. They fear it will lead to more.

“There’s so much pain,” says Sarah, her voice breaking. “Feeling we had made mistakes. We hadn’t been enough. We hadn’t been communicating. By making these other women into the other, I hadn’t really given space for their hurt. And let it sink in with me that it was so similar to my own hurt.”

Three of the women on the group text met up in New York in February, and the group has only grown closer. On any given day, one of the five can go into an appointment and come back to 100 texts. Someone shared a Reddit thread in which a commenter claimed Huberman had a “stable full a hoes,” and another responded, “I hope he thinks of us more like Care Bears,” at which point they assigned themselves Care Bear names. “Him: You’re the only girl I let come to my apartment,” read a meme someone shared; under it was a yellow lab looking extremely skeptical. They regularly use Andrew’s usual response to explicit photos (“Mmmmm”) to comment on pictures of one another’s pets. They are holding space for other women who might join.

“This group has radicalized me,” Sarah tells me. “There has been so much processing.” They are planning a weekend together this summer.

“It could have been sad or bitter,” says Eve. “We didn’t jump in as besties, but real friendships have been built. It has been, in a strange and unlikely way, quite a beautiful experience.”

Additional reporting by Amelia Schonbek and Laura Thompson.

• remove interruptions
• newsletter pick
• hard paywall
• andrew huberman
• new york magazine
• one great story
• audio article

Most Viewed Stories

• Is Pete Buttigieg Doing a Good Job?
• There’s Nothing New About Pronatalism
• New Jackpot City
• Who Wants 30,000 Used Teslas?
• Watching the Trump Jury

Editor’s Picks

Most Popular

• Is Pete Buttigieg Doing a Good Job? By Bryce Covert
• There’s Nothing New About Pronatalism By Sarah Jones
• New Jackpot City By Noah Shachtman
• Who Wants 30,000 Used Teslas? By Kevin T. Dugan
• Watching the Trump Jury By Andrew Rice

What is your email?

This email will be used to sign into all New York sites. By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy and to receive email correspondence from us.

Sign In To Continue Reading

Create your free account.

Password must be at least 8 characters and contain:

• Lower case letters (a-z)
• Upper case letters (A-Z)
• Numbers (0-9)
• Special Characters (!@#$%^&*)

As part of your account, you’ll receive occasional updates and offers from New York , which you can opt out of anytime.