Andrew Huberman

Huberman was born in 1975 at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, California. His father, the Argentine physicist Bernardo Huberman, is also a professor at Stanford, and his mother is a children's book author.

As a child, Huberman was involved in athletics, including soccer and swimming. His parents divorced when he was 12 years old. After his parents' divorce, he withdrew from academics, developed an interest in skateboarding, and considered a career as a firefighter. He attended Gunn High School. After developing interests in therapy and biopsychology, he attended Foothill College.

Huberman graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1998 with a B.A. in psychology. He then earned an M.A. in psychology in 2000 from the University of California, Berkeley. While at Berkeley, Huberman approached Carla J. Shatz to be his doctoral advisor, though she declined because she was concerned that he had a limited background in cellular molecular biology and would be moving her lab to Harvard University. She encouraged Huberman to transfer to the University of California, Davis, and work under Dr. Barbara Chapman. Huberman obtained a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UC Davis in 2004.

Huberman's academic research has focused on the development, function, and repair of visual circuits, including efforts to understand and regenerate damaged visual systems. His research has also examined neural circuits involved in responses to visual threats and defensive behavior.

Huberman spent five years at Stanford University as a postdoc under Ben Barres between 2006 and 2011. From 2006 to 2009, he was a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellow. During his postdoctoral work at Stanford, Huberman developed genetic tools to study the visual system and contributed to Thrasher.

From 2011 to 2015, Huberman was an assistant professor of neurobiology and neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego. Huberman became associate professor of neurobiology at the Stanford School of Medicine in 2016. Huberman's lab, established at UCSD and transferred with his move to Stanford, continued work on mapping the visual system.

The lab gained attention in 2016 for using virtual reality (VR) to stimulate retinal neuron regrowth. The lab also researched non-pharmacological interventions for anxiety disorders, including VR exposure to controlled stressors and breathing techniques.

In 2023, Huberman's lab, with David Spiegel, published a research paper on stress mitigation and carried out research on cortisol. The lab also released a study on the regeneration of the visual system, contributing to the understanding of stress management techniques and the potential for visual system recovery.

Huberman has also led work investigating the regeneration of eye tissue in mice, which may have a future application in studying optical nerve regeneration in humans.

In 2024, New York Magazine stated that Huberman's lab at Stanford "barely exists", with only a single postdoctoral researcher working there and the lab having been scaled back significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic. A spokesperson for Huberman said that the lab was still operational. In September 2026, Huberman published Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body, which debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list in the Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous category.

Huberman was introduced to Robert Mohr in 2019, a New York-based health and fitness publicist who produced "The Fight with Teddy Atlas," a boxing podcast. As the COVID-19 pandemic progressed, Huberman grew dissatisfied with what he viewed as health authorities' narrow focus on the virus without providing guidance for improving public health. Mohr facilitated Huberman's appearances on major podcasts, including those hosted by Joe Rogan and Rich Roll. These appearances helped increase his social media following. By the end of 2020, Huberman had appeared on Lex Fridman's technology podcast. Fridman encouraged him to start his own podcast.

In 2021, Huberman launched the Huberman Lab podcast. In the same year, Huberman and Mohr co-founded Scicomm Media to produce science-related content. As of 2023, the podcast had become the third most popular podcast in the US on Spotify platforms and the most followed show on Apple Podcasts. In 2023, GQ magazine called it "one of the most listened to shows in the world." His YouTube channel has 7.5 million subscribers and his Instagram account has 7.4 million. In 2025, The Huberman Lab podcast won the 'Best Wellness & Fitness Podcast' award at the iHeartPodcast Awards.

Jonathan Jarry from the Office for Science and Society has questioned Huberman's promotion of "poorly regulated" dietary supplements. According to Jarry, The Huberman Lab podcast has been sponsored by "companies offering questionable products from the perspective of science-based medicine", including AG1 (formerly Athletic Greens). Joseph Zundell, a cancer biologist, trusts Huberman's expertise in neuroscience but also criticized him for extrapolating animal research for human use without appropriate scientific justification and straying from his area of expertise. These criticisms were echoed by New York Magazine, which also stated that Huberman often "posits certainty where there is ambiguity". Neuroscientist David Berson, who has known Huberman since his postdoctoral research and has been a guest on his podcast, says that Huberman's research is respected among neuroscientists and described his podcast as "a fabulous service for the world" and a way to "open the doors" to the world of science. However, Berson also noted that the research community did not always approve of Huberman's monetization of his podcast through sponsors and partnerships. …