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He’s the self-styled Mr Perfect who counsels millions of men on health, happiness, and self-discipline.
Amassing billions of views globally, Dr Andrew Huberman’s YouTube channel, which offers men accessible scientific advice to counter everyday problems, has propelled him to fame in the massive world of online fitness.
As host of the Huberman Lab, the neuroscientist and professor at Stanford Medicine counts the likes of Reese Witherspoon and Joe Rogan among his 5.25million subscribers.
But now the Stanford professor risks crashing back down to earth after being accused of a network of affairs behind his partner’s back as she underwent IVF treatment.
A recent investigation by New York Magazine has shone a light on multiple womens’ claims that they were tricked into believing they were in exclusive relationships with the hulking 48-year-old, who reportedly earns millions from running adverts for dietary products and wellness supplements.
(Andrew Huberman/YouTube)
In the stunning series of allegations, one woman, whom the publication calls Sarah, says she was in a relationship with Huberman for around three years, and had been undergoing IVF treatment to have a child with him when she found he had been having unprotected sex with at least five other women at the same time.
Her suspicions were aroused when she contracted a high-risk form of HPV, a sexually transmitted infection linked to cervical cancer, despite having been tested for ten years.
A spokesperson for Huberman denied the couple intended to have children together, clarifying that they “decided to create embryos by IVF”. The spokesperson also insisted he had not been in a monogamous relationship with Sarah until late 2021, although he appears to suggest elsewhere that he could have given her that impression.
Along with Sarah, others known only as Eve, Mary, Alex, and an unknown fifth and potentially sixth, were all romantically associated with him – some having been led to believe they were exclusive for years.
All believed that other exes in Huberman’s life, had been “stalkers, alcoholics, and compulsive liars” according to the report. Sarah reports being told one woman had torn out her hair with chunks of flesh still attached, while another attempted to entrap him with a story about a dead baby.
Huberman denies the allegations and insists that the hair story was taken out of context.
“I’m at the stage of life where I truly want to build a family,” he told Eve while he was reportedly involved with several others. “That’s a resounding theme for me.”
Yet, despite the reassuring words he appeared to be chronically unreliable disappearing for periods of time with no indication of his whereabouts.
For a man interested in promoting personal growth, he also appeared to be unapologetic about deceiving his therapists, of whom he has had many over the years.
“We were at dinner once and he told me something personal, and I suggested he talk to his therapist,” shared Eve.
“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.”
Despite his dismissal of therapy, the podcaster appears to have maximised the use of “therapy-speak” to familiarise himself with the internal experiences of many women.
“I hear you are saying you are angry and hurt,” he texted Sarah as she discovered journal entries about his infidelity. “I will hear you as much and as long as needed for us.”
“Your feelings matter,” he told Eve on a day when he had injected his girlfriend Sarah with hCG as part of their IVF treatment. “I’m actually very much a caretaker.”
Discussing sex addiction with another woman, Huberman denied he was a sex addict, instead referring to himself as a “love addict”.
According to the investigation, the aggrieved women compared timestamps and discovered that Huberman had texted nearly identical pictures of himself to two of them at the same time.
While Sarah then found that Huberman had slept with Mary the day before the couple moved in together, and had also been with Mary in December 2023 around the time she had caught him on the sofa with a sixth unidentified woman.
On one day in March, the women realised that Huberman had flown Mary thousands of miles from Texas to LA to stay with him in Topanga, California, some six-hour drive from where Sarah stayed in Berkeley. On that same day, he left Mary at home with his dog as he drove to a coffee shop to meet Eve to have a serious conversation about their relationship.
In addition to the accusations of infidelity, Sarah alleges the podcaster would often fly into a rage, fixating on past choices including the men she had been with and the children she had with another man, and on one occasion likened their relationship to “bobbing for apples in faeces” – claims that Huberman’s team deny.
Huberman is accused of infidelity
(Chris Williamson/YouTube)
“I experienced his rage,” Sarah recalled, “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.”
Elsewhere, Huberman also appeared to suggest he believes in polygamy for men and submissiveness for women.
Mary said, “He told me 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.”
However, other ex-partners consulted by the publication claim they had amicable relationships with Huberman, crediting the podcaster with “incredible emotional capacity” and “such a good heart”.
Meanwhile, in a double blow, the article also cast some doubt on the extent of Huberman’s scientific prowess.
The laboratory he boasts about having at Stanford — and which inspired the podcast title “Huberman Lab” — is reportedly no more than a post-doctoral student working alone, while it is also claimed that he packs his podcasts with “pseudoscience”.
A spokesperson for Stanford told New York Magazine, “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,” while a spokesperson for Huberman said the equipment in his lab remained in use until the last post-doc moved to a faculty position.
It is also alleged that Huberman’s narrative of growing up in a broken home of “pure neglect”, getting into street fights, and spending time in a detention centre where young people took their own lives, may have omitted more suburban elements to the story.
Born to a Stanford academic and having attended a wealthy, high-performing school growing up, where he was known for skateboarding, his father acknowledges he was “troubled” at times.
The revelations divided social media as users were alternately outraged and nonplussed by the news, including among his six million Instagram followers.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald hit out, “I never listened to Andrew Huberman and know little about him, but I kept reading this endlessly gossipy article in this sh*t magazine, waiting for even a single revelation about his private adult life that merited public interest or knowledge, and never found a single one.”
However others shot down any attempts to defend him saying, “Andrew Huberman gets five girlfriends at the same time, tells each of them he’s exclusive, and gets them all to agree to unprotected sex. None of them are aware of or consent to him sleeping around. Dunno why everyone is rushing to defend him.”
Others offered that while the women’s experience demonstrated a failure of moral character on the part of the professor, it did not dispel his reputation for efficiency.
“He has a despicable moral character, but sign me up for whatever productivity scheduling and yang energy elixirs he’s flogging,” said one user on X/Twitter. Another added: “This article shows Andrew Huberman to be a huge dirtbag and very dishonorable in his treatment of women, although its description of his management of a five-simultaneous-girlfriends situation doesn’t dispel his reputation for extreme productivity/focus.”
Huberman has not responded to the backlash that ensued the publication of the report but released a new video on “Benefits & Risks of Peptide Therapeutics for Physical & Mental Health” on his YouTube channel two days ago.
The Independent has contacted Dr Huberman for comment.
