The guest
Ari Wallach: Adjunct associate professor at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs and founder of Long Path Labs, focused on long-term thinking. He hosts the TV series 'A Brief History of the Future.'
What this episode covers
Huberman and longtime friend Ari Wallach explore how the human brain perceives time and why modern technology has collapsed our 'temporal horizon' into a stimulus-response present they call presentism. Wallach lays out his Long Path framework built on three pillars: transgenerational empathy (for self, past, and future), futures thinking, and Telos (ultimate purpose). They discuss how emotions act as a 'kedge anchor' pulling us toward desired futures, the loss of meaning after religion's decline, and our species' denial of death. Wallach offers concrete protocols for connecting to one's future self and descendants, arguing that modeled behavior, not egoic legacy, is how we truly shape generations to come.
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
BookReferencedISBN verified
Homo Prospectus
Martin Seligman
“Marty Seligman uh kind of the father of positive psychology put forth this idea in this great book called homo prospectus”— Ari Wallach
BookReferencedISBN verified
The Anxious Generation
Jonathan Haidt
“Jonathan height who was on this podcast author of anxious generation codling in the American mind professor at NYU”— Andrew Huberman
BookReferencedISBN verified
The Coddling of the American Mind
Jonathan Haidt
“Jonathan height who was on this podcast author of anxious generation codling in the American mind professor at NYU”— Andrew Huberman
BookReferencedISBN verified
A Fighter's Heart
Sam Sheridan
“there's a book uh called a Fighter's Heart by Sam Sheridan and um it's a pretty interesting account of all the different forms of martial arts”— Andrew Huberman
BookReferencedISBN verified
The Denial of Death
Ernest Becker
“1972 Ernest Becker wrote a book which you'll know all about the book based on the title called the denial of death he won the pulitzer”— Ari Wallach
MediaReferenced
The Hunger Games
Suzanne Collins
“every piece of fiction that takes place somewhat in the future is dystopian all the Futures they know are the Hunger Games”— Ari Wallach
MediaReferenced
The Maze Runner
James Dashner
“all the Futures they know are the Hunger Games are the hund are the Maze Runner a world that has gone bad”— Ari Wallach
Big reveals from this episode
- Wallach argues culture has 'hacked' our 300,000-year-old hardware to force immediate gratification, closing our future-thinking horizon into 'presentism.'
- Wallach shares his father died of stage-four cancer four months after diagnosis when Ari was 18, and how he stopped beating himself up over it through self-compassion.
- Key correction: don't just think about future generations' emotions, actually FEEL them, because emotion is a 'kedge anchor' that pulls you toward action.
- Wallach's blunt claim: science destroyed religion '100%' by killing the structures that mediated between us and God, leaving a Telos vacuum.
- Hal Hershfield's fMRI study: thinking of your future self lights up the same brain region as thinking of a stranger/celebrity; aged-photo VR made people save more.
- Wallach describes undergoing a 'death meditation' with death doula Lua Arthur in the Arizona desert for his show.
- Wallach reframes the goal as optimizing not just the self but society/civilization, scaling via social-emotional contagion to tens of millions.
- Reveals the U.S. votes on Tuesday because of horseback travel from Sunday church to vote and back before Wednesday market day, a metaphor for unexamined inherited stories.
Worth remembering
- Mental time travel comes largely from the hippocampus, which is nearly 'atemporal' and reassembles past memory snapshots into future scenarios.
- A breakup study found people given acetaminophen (Tylenol) felt better, suggesting emotional and physical pain share neural circuits.
- 'Cathedral thinking': architects and stonemasons often died before their cathedrals were finished, planting trees whose shade they'd never enjoy.
- Wallach estimates he'll have roughly 50,000 descendants in 250 years.
- The minute hand on clocks only became common about 200 years ago; pre-industrial humans thought in 'horticultural' not 'mechanical' time.
- Wallach keeps a printed aged photo of his 70s-self on his bathroom mirror to make better daily decisions, including flossing.
- About 90% of companies over 1,000 years old on Earth are in Japan, tied to cultural respect for elders and death.
- Human babies are born at 9 months (vs. 18 needed) because bipedalism narrowed the female pelvis while brains grew larger from a protein-rich diet.
- 'Protopia' (Kevin Kelly's term) is a better-not-perfect tomorrow, contrasted with dystopian fiction that dominates teen bestsellers.
- Huberman confirms a 'Huberman Lab AI' LLM already exists that answers questions in his (dry, unfunny) voice.
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