A recent New York Magazine article paints a very unpleasant picture of Andrew Huberman’s romantic life, which has predictably resulted in a fiery backlash from his fans. Is it truly a ‘hit piece’, as his proponents are claiming, or is it a legitimate article that simply contains truths that some don’t want to hear?
If you don’t have an extra forty minutes to read Kerry Howley’s eight-thousand-word tome, then here’s an extremely quick and dirty summary of the accusations that pertain to his dating life:
- Huberman juggled up to several women at a time without any of them knowing about the others, one of which he was doing IVF with
- He had unprotected sex with some of them under the assumption they were exclusive, and one of them tested positive for HPV after seeing him
- There’s however no proof that Huberman gave it to her (there can’t be, as there is no approved test for HPV in men)
- One ex claims that he has rage issues, but no violence or sexual misconduct of any kind was alleged by anyone
- The article also mentions, quite fairly, that he remains friendly with at least three of his exes.
Other than a fairly pathetic attempt to denigrate Athletic Greens, one of Huberman’s top sponsors, most of what was said about his podcast was neutral to positive.
The article also includes some accounts of Huberman’s flakiness from Scott Carney, a journalist who planned a couple trips with him that he canceled at the last minute. As we’ll get into later, Carney clearly has it out for Huberman and published a slew of highly aggressive videos on his social media accounts right after the article came out.
If you want the whole picture, along with all its nuances and Huberman’s responses, you’ll have to read it yourself…if you have the time. We’re doing our best to give you the most important nuggets, but there’s plenty more to the story.
There’s one part in particular where the article goes way beyond the pale though, which we discuss toward the end. This is the point where the author really tips her hand, at least for the psychologically savvy reader.
They never found their smoking gun, so they settled for a dressed-up ‘barely-burger’
Perhaps it’s not quite a nothingburger.
It’s more like if you told them to sub an Impossible patty, replace the bun with iceberg lettuce, hold the cheese, and then dressed it up with some exciting aiolis to help you ignore the fact that you’re just eating fake meat wrapped in cold leaves.
After reviewing over a dozen pieces written in response to the article, here are the two sentences that sum it up better than anything else on the Internet:
“Here’s what I can tell you for certain, though neither Howley nor anyone at New York will ever admit to it: they invested a lot of time and effort on the Huberman piece and have spent the last few weeks leading up to publication fretting over the fact that there’s no smoking gun. Whether that should have told them something deeper about the endeavor, only they can say.”
This is from an article by Freddie deBour, a writer who’s also been published in New York magazine. He states that he’s not a Huberman fan or really into that scene whatsoever, so if we’re looking for someone relatively low in bias who’s also a legacy media insider, he’s our man.
You know that feeling when you invest a whole bunch of time and effort into something, and it’s extremely disappointing, but you’ve gone too far to totally give up, so you do your best to salvage it? That’s the vibe.
Consider that quote the initial hook in a devastating two-part combo. Here’s the finishing uppercut:
“It looks like a piece that contains a serious accusation, it looks like a takedown designed to maybe cost Huberman sponsors and his job at Stanford, but no such provocation is there to be found. I can hardly imagine a text better designed to inspire certain people to rally around Huberman. It’s a “Woke Magazine Publishes Hit Piece About Beloved Neuroscientist” headline waiting to happen.”
Exquisitely put, Mr. deBour. Well done.
What about us? We’re decidedly not woke, and we’re clearly fans of the Andrew Huberman Podcast. Does that mean we’re going to dismiss everything the article says and spend all our time defending Huberman?
Oh God no. That would be boring, and we don’t do boring at CHOQ.
Fans shouldn’t be afraid to point out when their boy is wrong
Nobody likes an obsequious fanboy, but then again, it’s equally annoying to listen to someone who already has something akin to “I’m triggered by what I perceive as bro culture so he’s definitely guilty” written on their forehead in all caps. You’re not going to learn much from anyone on either of these two extremes.
Sure, we think Huberman–for the most part–does great work. That being said, we’re not afraid to call him out when he makes mistakes within our particular domain of expertise.
Notably, out of the 70+ articles on our site, here are the two most popular of all time:
- Why Andrew Huberman Is Dead Wrong About Indonesian Tongkat Ali
- Why Andrew Huberman’s Wrong About Melatonin
Like anyone else, he does sloppy work sometimes.
To wit, in the first article above, we demonstrate how his claims that Indonesian Tongkat is more effective than Malaysian are refuted by the very paper that he cites. Yes, he profits from his affiliation with an Indonesian Tongkat product, so it might be more than sloppiness, but we don’t assume that outright.
That doesn’t mean we think he’s not generally a great educator and podcast host, but it does mean that he sometimes steps a little too far outside his wheelhouse and makes critical errors.
It’s not his typical M.O. as far as we can tell, but if we find that Huberman makes any more false or questionable claims in the future, we’ll be sure to write about it.
Was the original intent to smear Huberman?
According to Saagar Enjeti (who admits to being friends with Huberman), when Howley initially reached out in August of 2023, she sang his praises:
“When my editor suggested I look into him, I basically shot him down; it didn’t seem like the kind of thing I would be into. I listened to a single episode, and predictably, months later, I’m fully addicted and devoted…It was almost like I couldn’t engage, or become interested, until Dr. Huberman made it all profoundly concrete and chemical. I know I’m far from the only person to have experienced this change.”
I have to wonder what it felt like for the author to spend months on a massive piece that excoriates someone for dishonesty when she herself began the endeavor on a false pretense. Probably not great.
This seems to be standard operating procedure for a lot of journalists these days. Some people have even had full-length documentaries made about them, in which the filmmaker was extremely friendly and positive, only to find out that the entire thing was orchestrated to make them look as bad as possible.
Of course, we can’t know for sure what New York Magazine’s original intent was, but it looks pretty suspect.
Disgruntled journalist accuses Huberman of flakiness in the first degree
Here’s a quick summary of Scott Carney’s gripes:
- Huberman flaked on him after they planned a camping trip and he decided to focus on work instead; Carney ended up puttering around Huberman’s house and they went on couple hikes in lieu of camping
- Carney spent a bunch of time and money preparing for them to swim with sharks together; Huberman canceled the day before; Carney claims that Huberman enjoys building up people’s expectations and canceling on them at the last minute
- Huberman took a long time to review parts of Carney’s book, then responded with an angry phone call that accused him of US Naval Operational Security
If you’re in the mood to see some hypomanic if not a tad unhinged Huberman hate videos, then you’ll love Carney’s IG and YouTube accounts.
Carney’s going pretty hard in the paint. Six of the last seven videos on his Instagram are about Huberman, all of which were released just after the article came out.
The fact that this part made the final edit speaks volumes about how short they must have come up when they went digging. If they had to resort to including such plainly anemic content, then things clearly didn’t pan out for them.
Where the article truly goes beyond the pale
This part is unforgivable, and only weakens the article. It’s shocking that the editor let her keep this in the final draft, as it’s typically considered bad form to just casually imply that someone is a narcissist.
Immediately after telling a story about how he was once caught cheating, Howley quotes a discussion with psychologist David Buss on the Huberman Lab Podcast:
“’The dark triad consists of three personality characteristics,’ said Buss. “So narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy.” Such people “feign cooperation but then cheat (italics mine) 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.”
Of course, she’d never say it outright, but she’s happy to imply it. Twice. Later in the article, she doubles down on this motif by again quoting Buss: “People high on psychopathy are good at deception.”
This is where the article really starts to look like a hit piece, as this is getting into the territory of full-on character assassination.
Technically, narcissism is a spectrum, and everyone’s on it somewhere. Relatively few people are full-blown narcissists (AKA have ‘Narcissistic Personality Disorder’), but most people don’t know that, and thus folks throw this term around willy-nilly, as Howley has so irresponsibly done here.
Again, bad form, but thanks for showing us all your cards here.
Congratulations, New York Magazine. You just made us all a little more ignorant about this disease. Huberman may in fact be a true narcissist, but this article presents nowhere even close to the amount of evidence that we’d need to even start that conversation.
How much should we care about this?
Instead of taking an all-or-nothing approach, let’s just say that–if these allegations are true–they’re not entirely irrelevant, as they are a reflection of his moral character.
Of course, if you want to make any judgments about Dr. Huberman based on these allegations, you’ll need to read through the entire article, including the parts he does and doesn’t deny.
People are complicated. It would be wrong of us to assume that, just because someone exhibits questionable behavior in their dating life, they’d do the same in other areas.
At best, this article serves as a reminder that we shouldn’t assume too much about famous people. After all, we’re seeing highly polished, perfectly edited footage of them doing what they do best. What could possibly be less accurate?
There are undoubtedly far more important things for us to spend our precious attentional resources on than whether or not a popular health podcaster cheated on a bunch of his girlfriends, but at least there’s some potential here for a deeper conversation, something that might just make us a little smarter, a dash more psychologically informed.
Articles like these are just fodder for the recrimination feedback loop, where echo-chambered online subcultures perpetually hurl emotionally charged, sophomoric invectives at each other and nobody actually learns anything. Yeah, we all do it sometimes. Nobody’s immune.
But how about we go a little deeper? What’s actually interesting here?
People are complex but we pretend they’re not
That’s the real lesson here: don’t oversimplify people (yourself included).
It’s never nice to hear when someone you like regularly practices deception in any part of their life, and you’re right to take that into account when you consider their character.
Like governments, though, people are highly complex and also highly compartmentalized (though some more than others). We have many, many parts, and they’re not remotely as unified as we tend to think they are (see this article for more on that).
After all, Nazi soldiers would come home after committing unspeakable atrocities and kiss their babies like any other parent. Humans are ridiculously complicated, but this fact scares us, so we tend to massively downplay it.
We all have friends, whether male or female, who’ve utterly shocked us by admitting some of the terrible things they’ve done to their partners. It only seems out of character because you haven’t seen the specific character they become in a romantic relationship.
Every good psychologist knows that our most wounded, shadowy parts come out in the context of family and romantic relationships.
So yeah, if you’re considering dating Huberman, this article’s probably worth your time. Otherwise, don’t bother.
