Evolving Insights: Yearly Trends in the Huberman Lab Podcast — Part 1

The Huberman Lab Podcast has been a force of inspiration since its launch in December of 2020. With over 180 episodes it can be hard to know where to start. Using viewing stats from the podcasts published as YouTube videos I wanted to get a sense of which were the most popular. To not miss any of the great content I will be splitting up my analysis across the 3 “seasons” of the podcast (2021, 2022, and 2023).

For each season we will look at the most popular videos (top views & most liked) while highlighting key trends. Examining the category of topics, frequency of publishing or other notable trends over time.

The First Year 2021

Launching in late December 2020, the Huberman Lab Podcast was a hit with his podcast immediately achieving millions of views and one of the first year episodes currently stands over 8.6 million views.

Chart of views, likes and episode category trends created by author

This explosive start piqued my curiosity: Were these episodes instant hits, or did their popularity accrue over time? As I looked into the early episodes it was also clear that the production quality, format, sponsorship, cover art, etc was top notch from the start (even his trademark black button up shirt).

I was able to get to many of my answers by listening to an Andrew Huberman interview on My First Million. The interview provides insight in to the back story, highlighting his Instagram (@hubermanlab with 5.9m followers) postings came first. Dr. Huberman started posting interesting science/neuroscience related information. As the account grew in popularity he became a podcast guest on Joe Rogan (July 2020), Rich Roll (July 2020) and Lex Fridman (Nov 2020). With his popularity growing, and encouragement from Lex Fridman, Dr. Humberman partnered with existing acquaintances and launched the podcast.

@hubermanlab Instagram feed screenshot by author

Popular Episodes

With that settled I was ready to get into some of the most popular episodes for that year.

The top viewed episodes

1. Controlling Your Dopamine For Motivation, Focus & Satisfaction | Huberman Lab Podcast #39 (8.6 million views)
2. Effects of Fasting & Time Restricted Eating on Fat Loss & Health | Huberman Lab Podcast #41 (5.9 million views)
3. ADHD & How Anyone Can Improve Their Focus | Huberman Lab Podcast #37 (5.6 million views)

The top liked episodes

1. How Your Nervous System Works & Changes (4.1% liked ratio) [Also posted as How Your Brain Works & Changes]
2. Supercharge Exercise Performance & Recovery with Cooling (3.4% liked ratio)
3. Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools (3.3% liked ratio)

Thoughts and Observations

• What I really like about the first year is that so many of the episodes are foundational general topics, where in later seasons they become more esoteric. Specifically, I would highly recommend the Dopamine and Nervous system episodes if you are interested in understanding how the mind works.
• Looking at the chart we can see the top viewed episodes all happen within a month of each other in the fall of 2021. This might have been the result of a promotion/spotlight on Huberman from an appearance? Or maybe he was just on a roll with great content.
• Another trend from the chart is Dr. Huberman focusing on one category of topics across multiple episodes. For example we see 3–5 episodes in May with a streak of fitness topics and September has a streak of mental health related episodes. My take away from both of these observations is that if you like one episode you may want to look at some of the adjacent episodes.
• Finally it is worth pointing out that the first 6 months of the podcast had no interviews. They were all the “lecture” style episodes. This trend made me recall that in his My First Million interview Dr. Huberman brought up his thinking about mini podcast series put on by experts in a specific field. In the interview he did not mention that he would be involved, but between the interview format and later guest series it seems that is what it evolved into.

Wrap Up

Right from the start Huberman Lab was a success and the first year has many episodes where it is worthwhile to go back and take a listen for their general topic focus and lecture style. Stay tuned as I delve into the podcast’s subsequent years, unraveling the evolution of its content and audience engagement. For updates and more insights, follow me on Medium at GaryGeo.

Things to Know about this Data

• My analysis is based on YouTube data as of ~February 10th 2024. I do not have historical records of how the counts appeared at a set point in time (e.g. 1 month after airing), that might give a more equivalent evaluation.
• The chart has a blue line for views, red line for the like percentage and the bars indicate the category of the episodes (I would love feedback on alternative ways to visualize this).
• “Liked Percentage” is based on the number of likes divided by the number of views. I believe a single person can view an episode multiple times, but cannot like it multiple times.
• In general “Like Percentages” seem to be a single digit number. I think that is a reflection of how often viewers take the time to like videos.
• I used ChatGPT to summarize the episodes and provide the “Assigned Category” to create a grouping.
• The data I based my analysis on is here.
• An interactive version of the chart is here.