Transcript
00:00:00Lots of people deal with brain fog and low energy throughout the day. What's your advice for combating
00:00:06that? I mean, it's funny. I probably end up saying this 20 times in today's conversation, but
00:00:10if I were to really, if I had two minutes with somebody and they said, what's the thing I can
00:00:16do for my health? I'd say, make the first hour of your day high cortisol and the last hour of your
00:00:21day low cortisol. High cortisol in the morning sets you up for elevated mood, focus, and alertness
00:00:26all day long, allows you to buffer stress better, and it makes sure that your nighttime cortisol is
00:00:32going to be low. If you don't spike that morning cortisol enough in the first one to three hours
00:00:37of your day, you're going to have a high, flat cortisol curve. Not good. Makes you less resilient
00:00:44to stress, brain fog, less amenable to learning, and on and on. So then you just say, well, what can
00:00:49you do? And we make this very simple. Bright light, especially from sunlight or 10,000 lux artificial
00:00:54light, especially in the first 30 minutes after waking, hydration, caffeine, if you like caffeine,
00:01:00exercise in the first three hours of your day if you can, right? Some people can't, and then roll
00:01:06into your day. At night in that final hour, you do everything you can to reverse that. You dim the
00:01:12lights, especially overhead lights, dim your screen. You could do the red light thing or the candlelight
00:01:17thing. Limit caffeine, obviously exercise in the final hour before sleep only if that's the only time
00:01:23you can do it. Some people, that's the only time. And actually eating in the first three hours of your
00:01:30day, even though I'm a fan of, I personally fast in the first three hours of the day, but that actually
00:01:35can also spike cortisol. People say, why would eating spike cortisol? Well, I mean, basically anything that
00:01:41you do that's a pro arousal that's about activity is going to spike cortisol. So bookending your day with
00:01:49things that spike your cortisol at the beginning and lower your cortisol at the end is really, it really
00:01:55is the, if there is a cheat code to life. Now, why do I say to life? I mean, is it going to make you
00:02:00completely stress resilient? No. Is it going to make you able to learn anything you want with ease? No.
00:02:06But what it does is it sets you up for the best possible sleep, which makes you more alert the
00:02:12next day, of course. It also, it anchors this process that I haven't talked about before on any
00:02:18podcast. And frankly, that I didn't touch on directly in the book, which is so much of life
00:02:25is about balancing what we call bottom-up and top-down influences. Bottom-up influences would be,
00:02:31you know, you want the cookie, you're going to just eat the cookie. You know you shouldn't be
00:02:39scrolling as much as you're scrolling, you just keep scrolling. Those are bottom-up influences. These
00:02:44are impulses that are driven by hypothalamic and other deep brain structures. Then we have,
00:02:52thankfully, we have top-down influences. This is your prefrontal cortex suppressing impulses.
00:02:57Okay. This is the two marshmallow test in kids, which by the way, a lot of people say was debunked.
00:03:02The debunk was debunked, by the way. Yeah. So the ability to suppress action. It's what I
00:03:08taught my bulldog pit mix strummer the day I brought him home. And it's the basis of everything. He put a
00:03:15piece of food in front of him. He, of course, wants to take it, right? His prefrontal cortex isn't even
00:03:20online yet. And you take it away until he learns and he learns the first day and never forgets that
00:03:26he has to wait until I say, okay, what are you doing there? It's actually not about making him
00:03:32wait for a treat. It's about making him suppress what feels like anxiety and impulse. And that wicks
00:03:37out to every type of waiting. So you say, wait, or like, see you later, I'm going to work. And then
00:03:41you come back and he's not freaking out. He can just, now he doesn't have to actively suppress the
00:03:45whole time, but the ability to suppress impulse. So much of life, the ability to learn and lean
00:03:51into just enough stress that you trigger learning, the ability to listen when you want to react,
00:03:55the ability to force yourself to get up and work on the book or the thing that you don't want to do.
00:04:02So much of that is top-down influences. And basically being an effective human is about
00:04:08building up those circuits of top-down. Now, do you have to do them in everything? This is a matter
00:04:14of debate. I think that people like Andy Stumpf, who I have tremendous respect for.
00:04:20It's just awesome. I've learned so much from him. I actually made some late, late stage additions to
00:04:25the book based on a conversation I had with him. So he actually made, you know, very late in the game,
00:04:29I was like, I need to, my editors were like, you can't do this anymore. Like enough is enough. And I'm
00:04:34like, I want it back or else I'm not signing off on the final draft to put in this. You know, Andy has
00:04:39a number of tools that are, that are really useful, but you know, he has this philosophy that he shares,
00:04:43which is throughout your day, when given the option between the easier thing and the harder thing,
00:04:51do the harder thing that there's tremendous value in that. It's the make your bed thing. It's the
00:04:55replace the toilet paper roll is the example he gives in his book, Drownproof, which is an awesome
00:05:00book. I highly recommend it. It doesn't pay me to say this. It's just an awesome book. I recommend it to
00:05:04everybody, but these little things like there's that piece of trash on the floor. That's this big. Do I
00:05:10pick it up? Why would it, you know, does, is it about the trash? Does it really make that much of a
00:05:15difference in your life? No, but the action of going against that bottom-up influence of just ignoring
00:05:21the harder thing and going toward ease, more pleasure, less pain, even just avoiding subtle pain.
00:05:27There are two ways to build up these circuits. One is by forcing yourself to go like, as we say,
00:05:33like writers always say, like ass to chair, like, you know, it's just, you're just going to like
00:05:36sweat blood until you get those 800 words a day out. There are advantages to that or doing the hard
00:05:42workout that you do not want to do. There's also a building up of the same circuits, those top-down
00:05:47suppression of impulse through the little things all day long. You probably need to do both, but I think
00:05:53that many of us nowadays who are exercising and doing health protocols, we absorb a lot of energy in order
00:06:01to get ourselves to those. Some people more, some people less. And I've started doing these, you know,
00:06:08stump type, uh, smaller things throughout the day. He does the big things too, obviously, but
00:06:13those little things, what you find, what I find is that they make it much easier to overcome the
00:06:20friction that comes from anything. And so there's a really just like getting the reps in, like it
00:06:24doesn't, what it proves is that it's the circuit. It's not what you're doing. You're getting the reps
00:06:29into the circuit. It's kind of like Pavel Satsula and the strength guys, like the grease, the groove
00:06:33thing. Okay. You do two pull-ups every time you pass through, through the door. And does that mean
00:06:38that you can do 200 pull-ups in a single set? No, but it actually turns out to be more effective
00:06:43than doing like three sets of 10 twice a week. Okay. Then people say, well, that's no true. If you add,
00:06:48wait, perhaps not, but it's maybe it's just two different roads to the same place, but the top-down,
00:06:55bottom-up tension, this dynamic tension between those two is so much about what being non-reactive
00:07:01is about. It's about what not procrastinating is about. It's what morality is about. It's about
00:07:05being calm under pressure. It's about being, making appropriate decisions in the face of stress,
00:07:12because it's not all about not feeling stress. It's about making adaptive decisions.
00:07:16Is there anything else that you would advise people to do for training willpower?
00:07:20I mean, I think what Andy talks about in his book, and obviously he's not the first person to talk
00:07:24about this, but you know, that, that philosophy, like how you do one thing is how you do anything.
00:07:28That's a little bit vague for me. I like the way he describes it, which is these little micro
00:07:32sucks all day long. Like, like it happened to me the other day.
00:07:36Trust Andy to call it micro sucks.
00:07:38Yeah.
00:07:38He's a man with a helicopter that's jumped out of a plane, like 50,000 times.
00:07:41He holds two world records at wingsuiting.
00:07:43I think he flew 36,000 feet or something like that. I mean, yeah. And I mean, there are a lot
00:07:49of badasses in the world and in the tier one operator sphere. And I know a number of those
00:07:53guys that there are a lot of badasses, obviously what's impressive to me is somebody who has the
00:07:58intelligence and the communication skills to be able to share the things that are relevant to
00:08:02everybody in a way that's relevant to everybody. Um, he's also from Santa Cruz, which is a cool
00:08:06town. It's right over the hill from where I grew up. And like the fact that somebody like that came
00:08:10from Santa Cruz, there's kind of a hometown joke, which is a pretty, there's only two reasons to go
00:08:14to Santa Cruz. If you're a guy in your teens or twenties or thirties, you go to the, go to the
00:08:19boardwalk to meet girls or you go to fight people in Santa Cruz. It was like, they, you'd always see
00:08:24fights in it. So I always thought of Santa Cruz as people think as this hippie town. I always thought
00:08:28of it as kind of a, kind of a, there's a rougher side of Santa Cruz. And then I hear about, you know,
00:08:33Andy's from Santa Cruz. I'm like, that makes no sense whatsoever. But you know, he took all of that
00:08:38kind of local environment. Sounds like he had a good upbringing. He talks fondly about his parents,
00:08:42which is cool and put it to some really impressive feats and can communicate what, what the exports
00:08:49from that, those experiences are. So, you know, I mean, how many of us in our daily life need to like
00:08:54shoot, move and communicate, you know, like the, the macronutrients of, you know, operators. I mean,
00:08:59some people, yes, but most of us know. So to me, that's one way. The other way is obviously
00:09:05to do your workouts. And, you know, I'm a big believer in asking yourself, what am I genuinely
00:09:11curious about learning? And where's the fear point for me? What is kind of, why am I shying away from
00:09:16learning about something? Cause for fear of like poor performance. And then that's the thing you
00:09:19should lean into. You have to be curious about something unless you're in school where you have
00:09:23to learn a subject. So that's another way, like pushing yourself to learn cognitively. And then
00:09:27to me, I think a big other part of this top down training is just the way that we approach life.
00:09:36Like, you know, I think there are two reasons to do hard things. Rogan and I were talking about this
00:09:41yesterday. One reason is because it makes you better at doing hard things. The other reason is it allows
00:09:48you to access more awareness of the beautiful things in life. I mean, there's so much,
00:09:53dog shit floating around on the internet and anger. And we, you and I talked about this. There's so
00:09:59many barbed wire drama things. I mean, if I went around posting every opinion that I reflexively have
00:10:06about some of the like nonsense antics that I see online or the crazy documentaries that are coming
00:10:12out and like, when, and you know, you get to a certain point in life and you tend to be one to
00:10:16six degrees of separation from pretty much anything you see online as much as you would like to not
00:10:21think of you. Oh, I know someone who knows someone who knows that person. I met that person once in a
00:10:24party, got a eerie feeling. I won't say who that's about, but that was a real experience.
00:10:29You know, you can go down that rabbit hole. So much of being effective is going nonsense,
00:10:34nonsense, nonsense. And I always just take myself back to high school. There were only really three
00:10:39or four reasons to actually be in high school. There's like to learn, right, from teachers and from
00:10:45your peers and in class. That's a legitimate reason to go to school. You know, there were social reasons.
00:10:51There were all sorts of observations that I had, like one that was still salient for me. I'll share
00:10:57in a moment. You can learn a lot about people in life. I have a friend who's a professor at Stanford
00:11:03who says, unfortunately, he calls me Andy. It's really annoying. And he's-
00:11:07You don't like Andy?
00:11:08No, no, no, no, no.
00:11:10I think this guy's just persisted.
00:11:11Yeah. So what happened was-
00:11:13Kind of a power move.
00:11:14I lost a coin flip to another Andrew, like in the third grade.
00:11:18He gets to be Andrew and you have to be Andy.
00:11:19He got to be Andrew and he still pisses me off, you know? So anyway, I eventually took back Andrew.
00:11:24And, you know, and the other reason is a lot, there's certain observations that I had in high
00:11:30school that taught me a lot about human nature that are still true across men, women of all ages,
00:11:37all demographics is really, really helpful. Actually, I'll just share it right now. So as some people
00:11:42may know, in round 14, I got really into the skateboarding thing. Prior to that, it was like
00:11:47school, swimming, soccer. Every kid in my town did those. Really excited about skateboarding.
00:11:51Skateboarding was small then. It wasn't this big thing. No X games, nothing. I wasn't very good
00:11:56skateboarder. I was decent enough to get picked up, probably just out of sheer sympathy by one
00:12:00sponsor. And if people want to check me on this, because people are always trying to get out his
00:12:04name. My team manager was Steve Ruge. I rode for Spitfire. It was out of sympathy. Steve,
00:12:08I love you. Thank you for putting me on. I appreciate you also telling me I'd never be one of the big
00:12:12guys. Boom, done. But I remember there was this phase of skateboarding in the early 90s,
00:12:18and it wasn't a good phase, but where like the clothes got baggy, the shorts got baggy. There
00:12:22was some sag. And at that time, no one did that. No one. Not in hip hop, nowhere. Now it wasn't
00:12:29really like really extreme sag. It was just like the shorts went from like mid thigh to like right
00:12:34above the knee, maybe a little longer. All right. So that's what we did. We were skateboarders. We
00:12:39didn't care what anyone else did. Came to school and just ridiculed, ridiculed by the jocks,
00:12:45by everybody. Didn't matter. The kids were like black, white, male, or female, like Mexican.
00:12:51You were uncool.
00:12:52We were like teased relentlessly.
00:12:54Everyone knew that Andy was uncool.
00:12:56Teased relentlessly. But we knew we liked it. It was a little extreme. Like, you know,
00:13:00we liked it. The point back then was to be different, not the same.
00:13:04Okay. Summer happens. That summer, something happened in the world of hip hop where somebody
00:13:09starts sagging their, their pants. Next year, everybody. And I just realized in that moment,
00:13:15I was like, okay, this, I was like, they actually don't know. They actually don't know what they
00:13:19like. They really don't. They're just following. It wasn't following a trend. They actually haven't
00:13:25formed taste. And I was like, what I love about skateboarding, what I loved about certain forms of
00:13:30music, what I love about certain podcasters and what I love about certain scientists. I can name
00:13:35certain scientists who just have the best taste. In particular, this guy, Jonathan Horton,
00:13:41a neuro-ophthalmologist, like his papers are beautiful. They're articulate. The images are
00:13:46beautiful. The discoveries are clear. And he's just a, he's a phenom. And, but for a lot of years,
00:13:52you know, his papers kind of existed in good journals, but didn't really pop to the biggest
00:13:55ones. Then they popped. And what I realized was like, whether it's in high school or as adults,
00:14:00people actually, most people don't develop a sense of taste.
00:14:04Correct.
00:14:04They confuse what they like and don't like with what feels socially acceptable and what feels so
00:14:12different that it's uncomfortable to them. Now, I don't believe in doing things just to be
00:14:16different. That's not taste. That's doing things just to be different. I started realizing,
00:14:20I was like, there are certain people in life that have an exquisite sense of taste. Rick Rubin's
00:14:25one of them. My friend, David Cho is one of them. I believe you have taste. You think about how,
00:14:31you know, the people don't let the velvet British accent fool you. Sometimes the British accent can
00:14:37confuse people into thinking, especially Americans into thinking that somebody's smarter than they are.
00:14:41I'm not trying to, where the kids say, I'm not trying to like puff you up here. They have all sorts
00:14:45of names for this now, but, but really like, I'm not just trying to flatter you, but if it flatters
00:14:49you find like you're my friend, but also you think right at the boundaries between conflicting opinions,
00:14:56and then you form a third new opinion, usually that highlights something both beneficial and
00:15:04deficient about both. That is a skill. It's a super skill that most people don't possess.
00:15:10Most academics don't possess it, frankly, because careers are sort of built on like planting your
00:15:14flag and protecting it until you absolutely get battered. And then you have to like, like relent,
00:15:18you know, and then pivot to something new. I have a beautiful story about that, actually.
00:15:22But I realized that taste is something that many people never develop. And the worst thing is when
00:15:30people who have taste think that their taste isn't taste, that it's a misdirection internally or
00:15:37something, and they don't cultivate that. And I think that, you know, so high school taught me a heck
00:15:42of a lot. It's true, the baggies got too baggy. The sag went way too far. And we just sort of laughed
00:15:48as it took off. We were like, this is hilarious. Actually, but it happened in skateboarding, too.
00:15:53There were years later where this kid that I grew up with, I'm friendly with now, but Danny Wei,
00:15:58who jumped the Great Wall of China, amazing, jumped out of a helicopter. He has all these world records,
00:16:03he was an aggro kid. He built the first mega ramps. I mean, he's gnarly. He was always just like,
00:16:08so aggressive skateboarder. Incredible, incredible athlete. I remember, you know, years later when he
00:16:17broke his neck surfing at Newport, he started working out with Paul Cech. He started and he
00:16:21built like a strong physique. And I remember skateboarders being like, that's for jocks.
00:16:26Skateboarders are working out. Now, if you look, not all of them, but a lot of skateboarders are into
00:16:30like lifting weights, taking care of their body. Chris Jocelyn, Trey flipped the, you know,
00:16:35El Toro stairs this year. This was like a heroic feat. It was like breaking the four-minute mile,
00:16:39more or less, ish, for skateboarding. I mean, that dude clearly works out. He takes care of himself.
00:16:45So the things within a subculturing community that make that such a special community,
00:16:51what eventually happens is the community defies its own principles. It, that, you know,
00:16:56the punks turn against it, go, that's not punk. Well, you know, they did that to people like
00:17:00Joe Strummer who brought hip hop acts as openers. They've done that to friends of mine who are in
00:17:05the, uh, like high-level band, punk rock. They go, they sold out. Actually, no, actually they're
00:17:09doing great. And you're caught up in the eighth grade is what happened. But it's not regressive.
00:17:15It's that taste is the hardest thing for people to understand because it forces them to really put
00:17:21a mirror in front of themselves and go, what do I actually like and dislike?
00:17:25It's a countervailing force against both what's popular and the fickleness of blowing in the wind.
00:17:29Like people confuse something that's popular for something that's tasteful. And you can also
00:17:34confuse something which is, uh, very tasteful, not popular as something that's bad. Like you said
00:17:40before, the difference between liking something and not liking something, you can like something which
00:17:44is untasteful. And I think the difference between taste and popularity and liking is taste is the
00:17:48ability to discern between good and not good. Like, is this thing good in and of itself? And this is one
00:17:55of the problems. If you run it up because everyone's looking for performance. If you run enough split
00:17:59tests, you will end up with a porn website. That's what happens. You run it. It all regresses. Can you
00:18:04explain this? Cause I, you and I have talked about this. It all regresses to porn. Eventually is
00:18:08everything. Is it like, if you basically, if you want to get the most eyes and clicks on something,
00:18:12look, you keep going more, more extreme, more salacious. Correct. And you end up in the dumpster
00:18:17heap of online content. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Going back to the brain. What's your
00:18:23best advice for improving memory and focus? People understand brain fog is a thing. I'm struggling
00:18:28with that. I have lulls with energy throughout the day. And now you want me to actually answer the
00:18:32question? Yeah, that'd be great. Whenever you want. So, okay. So brain fog is not a specific thing.
00:18:39It's an inability to focus. Let's get a couple of core principles down. People with severe clinical
00:18:45grade ADHD can focus if they're doing something they really like. Tells you something. It means
00:18:51the dopamine, norepinephrine, epinephrine, we call these the catecholamine systems of the brain and body
00:18:56that are involved in many things, but focus among them are there. They're functional, but the threshold
00:19:02to access them is too high. Okay. What does that mean? What it means is that people can,
00:19:09learn to focus and they can get assistance in doing that by pushing on one of two ends or both. One
00:19:16is to ramp up the level of those chemicals. That's what things like Adderall, Vyvanse, Ritalin,
00:19:20and so on do. Okay. A study this last year out of Washington University in St. Louis,
00:19:27sort of the Harvard of the Midwest, if you will, although I think that's unfair to the Midwest,
00:19:30maybe you would call Harvard the Wash U of the East, showed that when you compare the attention-improving
00:19:40effects of Ritalin to a great night's sleep, they're effectively equal. Some of these stimulants,
00:19:48we know blunt stunt growth, excuse me, they stunt growth. We know this. Okay. They limit ultimate height.
00:19:55They reduce sleep. So they're circumventing a problem. So there's a new idea, which is that
00:20:01maybe lower dosages of these medicines combined with better sleep would be as effective a treatment.
00:20:07A lot of parents are erring that way. A lot of adults are erring that way too. That said,
00:20:13some of these medications can be useful in extreme cases. If somebody wants to learn, let's just say,
00:20:19if you want to learn, you want to focus and get rid of brain fog, you want to learn. Here are the key steps.
00:20:24And I review some more of this in the book, but I'm, during today's conversation, and always,
00:20:28I'm going to try and reference the book only in if people want more information. I'm just going to try and
00:20:32give people the information. If people want the book, they can get it, but I don't want to like cloak the information.
00:20:37Everyone needs to go and buy the book.
00:20:38Well, thanks for your support of the book. I did, there is a lot of, you'll learn a bled for this thing, dude.
00:20:43I watched you. I watched you basically eight years. You glanced off the bottom of insanity in order to
00:20:49be able to put this. Then the original word count was 120,000. And then you were forced to chop it
00:20:54down. And it's basically seven short books with, with a long intro, which is some story in context.
00:21:00Um, and I promise you can just navigate to a particular point in the book and understand what's
00:21:06going on and get the tool and go. You can learn the science or not get the science. You can take the
00:21:10story and read it or not read it, but I figure leave it all on the mat. Look, I'm 51 next, this later this
00:21:17month. Like, I don't know if I'll make it to 52. I feel great. My biomarkers say I'm great, but you
00:21:21know, I mean, who knows? So I'm, I'm not living this life to try and, you know, soft pedal anything.
00:21:28I'm just going all in. So here are the steps to learning. You need to focus, obviously to learn,
00:21:36to focus, you need to be alert to get alert. There are many things you can do. And I talk about all of
00:21:43them in the book. There are foundational things like sleep. All right. That's going to help you get
00:21:47alert and focused, but there are also things like exercise. We all hear that exercise makes our brain
00:21:52better. It makes us better at learning. Exercise makes you better at learning for two reasons. One,
00:21:58it increases the catecholamines, dopamine, epinephrine, and norepinephrine. So in the four to six
00:22:03hours after exercise, you are more alert and you can focus better unless you exercise to exhaustion.
00:22:11If you have leg day for, you know, you know, 10 sets of 10 on the squats, followed by a bunch of
00:22:15hamstring work and et cetera, your brain's not going to be so good at focusing, but you know, 45 to 75
00:22:22minutes of hard training, not taken to extreme a bit like what we did this morning. That was a little
00:22:27bit on the lighter side, not just because we didn't have a whole lot of time, but you're going to come
00:22:32out of that more alert because you have more adrenaline in your body, more norepinephrine
00:22:36being released in your brain and more dopamine being released in your brain. And dopamine is a
00:22:41critical component for learning. Okay. Focus, then it becomes easier to access. And in your focus,
00:22:48what are you focusing on? You need to focus on making errors through genuine attempts to do something,
00:22:55something physical, maybe a tennis serve, or you're learning billiards, something cognitive,
00:23:00you're trying to learn a language. The error between what you currently do and what you're
00:23:05trying to do, the error, is the signal that the neurons, the nerve cells need to change.
00:23:11It runs through a circuit involving the cerebellum and a bunch of other things, but that gap is what
00:23:16the brain tries to close. If you can do something, there's no reason for your brain to change.
00:23:19And the agitation you feel from those errors reflects elevated levels of epinephrine and
00:23:25norepinephrine in the body and brain respectively. And those tag, literally chemically tag the synapses.
00:23:32I mean, there's some additional steps, but they tag those synapses so that then at night when you sleep,
00:23:37the synapses rearrange and you close the gap between your current ability and the ability
00:23:43you're striving to achieve. That's how it works. So a curiosity and willingness to learn gets you
00:23:50to the gate of learning. The making of errors through genuine attempts puts the key in and turns
00:23:55the key. The agitation is walking through that gate and then getting some sleep, or maybe even
00:24:01a day or two later, even if you don't sleep quite as well as you would like, just some time for the
00:24:06synapses to rearrange. That's the last piece. There's an additional piece that can reinforce it
00:24:10all, which is self-testing. If you want to get good at something and stay good at it and continue to
00:24:16get better at it, you need to self-test. Mental self-testing is the best way to consolidate learning
00:24:22and learn faster. What do I mean by that? I don't mean visualization. I mean, asking yourself,
00:24:28like for me, if I want to make my memory better, generally speaking, I might think, okay,
00:24:33so that was September 11th, 2001. Where was I exactly? What were some of the details? Now,
00:24:39that might be something I might not want to think about, but if I were to say, okay, I'm going to go
00:24:43back to my, you know, year one neuroscience graduate school training. Of course, I know what a
00:24:49synapse is. I know what neurons are. I know what astrocytes. I know all this stuff. It's embedded so
00:24:52deeply in me. I can almost do it in my sleep. But then I think, yeah, that's right. Like, what is the
00:24:57role of astrocytes? And then say, okay, because that's stuff that's relevant to me. When you hit the point
00:25:02where you can't remember something, you go and look it up, boom, you've now closed that gap again,
00:25:08and it reinforces those synapses that were weakening. Yeah. So if you're trying to learn
00:25:12something new, or you want to maintain information from way back when, you need to retest. This is why
00:25:18we used to make people retake their driver's tests, where, you know, physicians need to-
00:25:21Really? Yeah. I mean, it used to be you had to retake your driver's test, not always behind the
00:25:25wheel, but you didn't used to just give people a license and turn them loose.
00:25:30Right. Because they knew the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve was going to come in and
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00:26:32I suppose one of the advantages, at least with regards to driving practically, is that people are
00:26:37re-triggering that on a multiple times per day basis.
00:26:41Yeah. Or you get a ticket or you get into an accident. I feel like I'm quoting my dad a lot
00:26:45lately. That's a good sign. As my dad always says, the thing about speeding tickets is they're
00:26:52expensive and money hurts. You know, speeding tickets were $20. For most people, that's-
00:26:57Formative experience.
00:26:58It's not trivial, but it's not enough money to really dent your heavy foot on the pedal.
00:27:04But if you give someone $300 ticket, plus your insurance goes up, people speed less.
00:27:10You're going to remember that. People speed less. I'm not saying it, you know,
00:27:13I mean, we could argue about speeding laws, but money hurts, right? So that's how you learn.
00:27:20You have to bring yourself to those points of agitation. I wish I had learned that in the
00:27:23third grade. I wish they had told me that. Now, many people find that they are very disciplined
00:27:29about certain things. They're getting their sets and reps in. They're pushed past failure.
00:27:33They love their video games. They love perhaps mathematics, but not literature.
00:27:37The things that we are not facile in that don't come easy to us, there are two reasons to do some
00:27:43of that learning at every stage of life. One is it enriches us. We often find that the things that
00:27:49are hardest to learn that we then learn are the most satisfying. This is the effort that precedes
00:27:54dopamine is far more reinforcing than when just dopamine comes in. You could say, well, you know,
00:28:00scrolling, there's no, you know, there's no effort involved. And that seems very reinforcing. That's
00:28:06more of a compulsive behavior after a certain point that's going to get passed into reflex, but
00:28:10talk to anybody, anyone and their life experience. If they've had a life will say something like,
00:28:17oh yeah, everything was going great until this big thing. Then I overcame that big thing. And that was
00:28:23really the thing that taught me that I'm capable of even bigger things. Right. I mean, no,
00:28:27we don't really like success stories. We like, um, we like underdog often to success story pitfall
00:28:35come out of that. The hero's journey is something that we resonate with in part because it's so true,
00:28:41but in part because for so many people, it's not true. We know it's there, but most, most people
00:28:46don't embark on those things. And I think it's because we set too lofty an idea of what the hero's
00:28:50journey is. I mean, for a lot of people, it's about learning to do less. I know a lot of hard
00:28:56driving people. It's about learning how to achieve more peace. It's about exploring ideas around
00:29:01spirituality or, um, fiction. If they only read nonfiction, I mean, we all have to ask ourselves,
00:29:07how much should we push ourselves to do things that are, that we're not just naturally inclined to do.
00:29:11I think a mixture of what we love to do and some of the things that we've just avoided because,
00:29:16um, they just seem too hard. I think there's real value in doing those things. And all the data on
00:29:22cognitive, on maintaining cognitive abilities say, will exercise make you smarter? No, it's necessary,
00:29:27but not sufficient to make you smarter. You still have to go learn. And without completely joking,
00:29:33I mean, this is evidenced by many guys that spend hours upon hours in the gym and they're not
00:29:37brilliant people. They, so they're exercising plenty. Their brain is clearly not getting bigger.
00:29:42They're not necessarily getting stupider, but they're not doing anything to make themselves
00:29:45smarter. You need to learn information. So there's that, but then there's also people say,
00:29:51is it crossword puzzles? If you love doing crossword puzzles, guess what, my friend,
00:29:55you're, they're not going to help keep your brain young. You had to do the, the hard puzzles.
00:30:00You know, if they're easy for you, then it's not going to help. You like chess, play go. You like
00:30:05checkers learn chess. So this is where I think people really lose out on the understanding that
00:30:11people who are striving, maintain brain and bodily function for a long period of time,
00:30:16their internal state is not necessarily one of like, Oh yeah, I just love learning. And so I just
00:30:20keep learning. I bet you Andy Stumpf as calm and cool and collected as he is, even though so many of
00:30:27his tier one operator peers tell me it's really frustrating because Andy's really good at everything.
00:30:31I bet you, if we looked at his internal state, his narrative is probably by now says, you know,
00:30:38you can do this, but is, I doubt it's one of complete calm all the time. I'm sure there's,
00:30:43he's just managing the external rep. Like he's not showing it.
00:30:47Yeah. Talking about that. It seems like one of the things that gets in the way of a lot of
00:30:50people's lives is stress. What are your best protocols for managing stress?
00:30:56And I, I realized some people may have heard this from me like 35,000 times morning sunlight. Yes.
00:31:03But that physio, just do a long exhale. When you're stressed, do a long, deliberate exhale.
00:31:10It slows your heart rate down through a phenomenon called respiratory sinus arrhythmia,
00:31:15which sounds bad. People hear arrhythmia, it sounds bad, but we've all heard of the vagus nerve. The
00:31:20vagus nerve collects sensory information from our viscera, which is nerd speak for your internal organs.
00:31:24So your stomach, your spleen, your liver, sending that information up to your brain. Unconsciously,
00:31:29your brain is responding to that all the time. The vagus nerve also has a portion of it that goes from
00:31:35the brain to the heart and other organs. And there's one particular pathway that contacts and communicates
00:31:42with the sinoatrial node of your heart. And it slows your heart rate down when you exhale. And the
00:31:48reason is as you inhale and exhale, the space available for your heart changes. So when you, at some point,
00:31:55your heart is a little bit smaller, right? During your breathing and the volume of blood that's in there
00:32:01moves more quickly. So your brain sends a signal through this vagus nerve pathway to slow your heart
00:32:05rate down. So when you exhale deliberately, this is the key deliberately. I don't think I've ever described
00:32:13it this way. You slow your heart rate down significantly. You offload carbon dioxide and your level of
00:32:19autonomic arousal, meaning sympathetic alert versus parasympathetic calm balances. It tips more towards
00:32:26parasympathetic calm immediately. It's the fastest and most effective way to calm down fast. Better if you can do
00:32:33two big inhales first. And then exhale all the way to lungs empty. That's the so-called physiological sigh discovered in the
00:32:421930s. Not by shamans, not by breath workers, but by physiologists. You have a dedicated set of neurons in the
00:32:49parafacial nucleus of your brainstem that capture the activity of this vagal pathway and slow your heart rate down. But the beauty of this
00:32:59mechanism is it also increases what's called HRV. Most people know I want higher HRV. How do I do that? Well, I train VO2 max. I do some high intensity interval training. Great. I do some long distance endurance training. Lower intensity. Great. You have higher VO2 max. What is higher HRV? Heart rate variability reflects the number of times throughout the day and night that this pathway, this pathway in the vagus signals your sinoatrial
00:33:26growth to slow your heart rate down. In fact, you can increase your HAV pretty significantly if you just do 10 deliberate exhales throughout your day. And then at night, look at your
00:33:35HAV. It will be significantly elevated. This is why I spoke about this last time. This is why I need to get you one of those ohm.health lamp things for resonance breathing. We talked about this previously. Oh yeah. So you, it's an algorithm. It's a stone on the top of this lamp. I think they're about to launch this month. This ohm.health. Stone on the top of the lamp. You, it vibrates. You breathe in time with the stone. It's got a hundred hertz.
00:33:56It's a sensor in it. So it's detecting your HIV all the time. And as it vibrates up and down, you breathe in time with it. And it modulates to maximize that arrhythmia.
00:34:05And if you were to see it, you would be swinging from 61 to 72 to 62 to 70.
00:34:14So like 60 to 72. And it is so fucking cool. And the sensation of doing that, if no one's ever done resonant breathing before, it is like, after about three minutes, it almost feels like you've had a drink.
00:34:27It almost feels like you're a little bit drunk. It's very, very, when you get it. And the guy, Jay Wiles, who's the main science dude behind it, he talks about precision with this, because you can get a resonance breathing that's not doing biofeedback.
00:34:41The problem with that is everyone's resonance pattern is a little bit different. Everyone's resonance pattern. You might be 4.9 out, 4.9 in and like eight out. And I might be 4.1 in and seven out. And that difference to him, he says, makes a big difference.
00:34:59One final thing on that. He said to go from state change to trait change, with regards to resonance breathing, you need to do over 12 minutes. He says over 20, it doesn't start to like-
00:35:10It's a lot like meditation, it sounds like.
00:35:12Very similar. Very, very similar. And what's cool about this, what I love about this particular thing is you can grab it and you can hold it while watching a movie.
00:35:18Like if you're just doing something else, it's silent. Even if you're with someone, you've got the lamp next to the couch or you've got the lamp next to the bed, you can't sleep at night. You grab it, it vibrates. It's pretty much silent. And you can just breathe in time with it. You can be doing, watching something else.
00:35:31I haven't been able to read whilst doing it. That's a bit too cognitively demanding. But you can breathe whilst watching the TV. And that I've racked up hundreds of hours in the last year doing resonance breathing because I've grabbed that.
00:35:42All right. I'm going to go buy one of these. Don't give me one. Don't, I don't, I don't want, and I don't want Om to gift me one. I actually, it's funny. I, I love, still love finding new technologies, trying new things.
00:35:53Dude, new interventions are the best. They're just harder and harder to find new ones that people don't know about, which is why when I find one, I get, I like chirp on about it for ages because I think, I think that it's cool.
00:36:03I do the same. I mean, I, it's funny throughout the book, several times I mentioned, cause I talk about behavioral tools. I would say 80% of behavioral tools. And then there's a lot of discussion.
00:36:12About pharmacology and supplements about the pros and cons of everything from nicotine to amphetamines and on and on. But multiple times I mentioned some of the devices that Sauna Space, a company I'm not affiliated with at all. Sauna Space makes these indoor red light saunas that are incandescent.
00:36:29They heat up right away. But I also, I travel with a, with one of their red lights. It fills the whole room. I love those things. Raw Optics has these incredible non-flicker shortwave length, uh, eliminated that, well, the actually same bulbs go from daylight to, you can get candlelight at night with, with no flicker.
00:36:47And it's led because incandescents aren't very energy efficient. And I have no relationship to raw optics or to sauna space. Like I know the people there now because I've mentioned them enough times they've reached out, but I just enjoy sharing things that I find useful physiological size or, or, you know, these particular lights.
00:37:05Like I just like sharing what I think might be useful to people. And some people have more disposable income than others. I think that, you know, that nowadays, it seems like the, are we over optimizing becomes a big question. Like, are we over optimizing?
00:37:16I did a huge essay about it long ago.
00:37:18Yeah. No, I listened. And I think it's, um, it's an important question. I mean, to me, optimization is just taking the, like, what do you got today? What's on your plate today? And how do you feel best and do best in that context? And this brings me back to something that I failed to say earlier, which is that top down versus bottom up dynamic tension, pretty much everything that's in the book, morning cortisol high, nighttime cortisol low, um, physiological size, et cetera. They're all of those things put you in the best
00:37:46in the best position, put these circuits in the best possible position for you to have a more adaptive, less reactive. It's not meant to rhyme, more adaptive, less reactive life, right? To be more aware of the goodness in life and less reactive to the BS that you have no control
00:38:02This kind of thing to be less prone to impulse and more prone to focusing on what really motivates you, the people that you love and doing the right things in accordance with that.
00:38:10You know, we all know that a bad night's sleep cripples this circuit such that the bottom up influences take over. We know this, right? People sleep less. They're more prone to, they have less impulse control across the board and they become slightly psychotic also, especially if they don't sleep well for three or four nights in a row.
00:38:28But when you have these top down mechanisms really reinforced by high morning cortisol, low nighttime cortisol, great sleep, you're buffering stress. Well, you do a learning bout or two, and I do refer to them as bouts because it should feel like a bout.
00:38:46Uh, that's when your life is actually headed in the direction you want, but it doesn't matter where you're starting from. That's when your life starts really heading in the direction that you want consistently. And these things don't take a lot of time.
00:38:58In fact, they save time because they position you to be at your best. Show up as your best. That's not a marketing ploy. It's just true. And some people now I'm skipping around a bit, but I want to make sure I close a few hatches. Some people might say, how alert and focused do you need to be to learn? We rarely talk about this. Like one thing I really emphasize in the book is like people talk about be present. I give a tool that explains exactly how to be present. Okay. Okay. So we'll talk about that. But how alert do you need to be in order to focus and learn? What's the state of mind?
00:39:28Alert and calm. What is that? Because that might mean something different to you than it means to me. How do you stay there? Okay. Have you ever played that game, Hot Hands? Where, you know, I put my hands on top of yours.
00:39:39Wouldn't that be nice? I put my hands on top of yours.
00:39:41That's what we did all morning. That's literally, we didn't go to the gym.
00:39:44I put my hands on top of yours. And we play a game where you're going to flip your hands over and you try and smack my hands. Okay. And I'm going to try and pull them out of your way. And you're younger than I am. So you think you have faster reflexes, but you don't. No, I'm just kidding. You probably do. You're the person whose hands are on top.
00:39:57So let's say my hands are on top and you're ready to flip your hands over and tag me. You're the person with hands on top. And you're in that ready anticipation of what's going to happen next. That's the state of mind for optimal learning.
00:40:10That's the state of mind you want to be in. So when you sit down to read something and you're like, I read that whole page and I didn't learn anything. Of course you didn't because your brain was, you're running four or five different circuits at once. In order to really turn on focus, you need to turn off a bunch of other circuits that are, or you need to lower the activity in those other circuits.
00:40:27You can't be thinking about at the same time. Okay. What's the, how do my feet feel? How's, what's my heartbeat? What's going on online? What's my girlfriend thinking? What does she know? You need to be focused. What is focus? Focus is obviously in a tunnel, but then how much alertness? I don't think anyone's ever described it before, but when you look at levels of arousal in a game like hot hands, and believe it or not, there's some equivalent data on this or data on the equivalent sort of thing.
00:40:53When you're waiting for a time trial and you're waiting for something to happen and you have to react quickly, that's the state of mind you want to be in to learn something that's hard for you, but beneficial for you. Period. End of story. So hopefully that'll help people kind of find that mental groove. And then as you learn, if you find you're getting too stressed, that doesn't, that brings down reaction time. It actually, you start making false positive. You start moving your hands away before the person even does anything. Okay.
00:41:19Hopefully that will help people understand the level of attention and why it's so tiring after about 90 minutes and you're like, okay, I need to take a break.
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00:42:30What about presence? How can people be more present?
00:42:34Okay, so this one really surprised me. So the final chapter of the book is about personal development. Okay.
00:42:38Um, I was going to do a chapter about relationships, but for various reasons, I felt like that wasn't appropriate.
00:42:44Then I thought about relationship to self. I thought, well, that's kind of weird because what is relationship to self? It's too squishy, a theme that like personal development, step back and start asking questions about.
00:42:57First acknowledge, step back and acknowledge. There's a lot out there about how to get through trauma, but what are the unifying themes? And can I put a structure on those themes that helps people navigate all of that?
00:43:12What's the business of having a great life? So we talk about that. We hear be present. There's this massive study out of Harvard a few years ago that a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. I'm sure you're familiar with the data.
00:43:24You ping people throughout the day. You ask them what they're doing and how present they are to it. Turns out happiness is really about being present, having your attention.
00:43:33What's called present tethered awareness. Your focus on what's happening now, even if it's unpleasant, people report that as being much happier on average than if their mind is someplace else.
00:43:44Daydreaming has its place, but daydreaming is usually mind wandering to bad things, things of past, things of future. We're just not present.
00:43:53Distraction is literally unhappiness.
00:43:54Yes. Yes. Yes. And the converse is also true that focusing on what you're doing is a great way to build up your mental health.
00:44:03So then I started asking because I'm a biologist, not a psychologist. What the hell is presence? Does it mean anchoring my visual attention?
00:44:10How do I be present? Because otherwise it's just a bumper sticker. And otherwise I look, I love psychologists say these beautiful studies that discover phenomena.
00:44:17But then it's like if you're going to say like fall asleep, what is falling asleep? And we can talk about that. What is being present?
00:44:24Okay. So be here now. I think Ram Dass said that. Great. Be here now. How? Turns out that if we step back and we just say, okay, what does the brain do? Don't worry.
00:44:34This won't turn into a whole lecture. What does the brain do? The brain takes physical phenomenon in our environment.
00:44:39Photons of light, sound waves, mechanical pressure, chemicals through the nose and mouth translates those from sensation to perception. Cool.
00:44:48Then we also can remember things, predict things. It's basically what the brain does and it can change itself.
00:44:53So that's neuroscience in a nutshell. How do we move our brain from thinking about the future and the past to what's happening now?
00:45:01Okay. So that means perceptions about what's only in our immediate physical environment.
00:45:06It means not thinking, not doing, not planning, but asking questions about the immediate physical environment.
00:45:13So we can do this just right now. And you can do this anytime you want to be more present.
00:45:18And I want to just preface this by saying, what I'm about to describe is not the end point.
00:45:23It's the way to get into the present. But what you do next is critically important too.
00:45:28So first you ask trivial questions about your immediate environment that can only be answered accurately by focusing on the present.
00:45:36So for instance, what does it smell like in here right now? Like, like I'm not getting much for me, but okay.
00:45:48What is like, how many cans are on this table?
00:45:51One, two, three, there's a couple other vessels, four cans.
00:45:56Okay. All right. Answering two or three trivial questions, seemingly trivial questions about your present environment.
00:46:02How many people are in line in front of me? How loud are the kids screaming in the backseat?
00:46:07Is it louder or softer than last time? Things like that bring our mind toward obviously perception of the present.
00:46:17Duh. There's nothing, you know, profound about that, but it's what they take our mind away from.
00:46:23That's critically important. The brain. There's a whole section on thinking. What is thinking?
00:46:28The brain works in what are called dynamic attractor states, which is nerd speak for.
00:46:33If I take a ball bearing and I put it on a, on a plate, it essentially can move in any direction.
00:46:38There's some details related to the smoothness of the bearing and the plate, et cetera.
00:46:41But if I put a little groove on that plate and I tilt the plate slightly, it obviously will go toward the groove.
00:46:47It'll get into the groove. And then if I turn that groove into a, I make it more concave and eventually a trench, the ball bearing stays there.
00:46:53That's how your brain works. The more that you see the thought, the more that you see the perception, the more that brain circuits are devoted to things related to that thought or perception.
00:47:04So when you want to be present, something that we know from excellent data at this large study at Harvard, but subsequent studies as well, is so critical for happiness.
00:47:14The way to practice that is to learn from taking your mind from thinking and doing and remembering about things of past and future to just anchoring your perception to the present.
00:47:25It doesn't require meditating. Meditation is one form of that. What, what are we doing when we meditate? We close our eyes, we focus on our breathing that's here now, and we focus on the quote unquote third eye center or whatever, but that's actually interoception.
00:47:40It's focusing on our internal bodily state, which is not that great. Frankly, if you look at the data for being present in a happy way, most people who are overly focused on their internal state in the present are like, my heart rate is increasing.
00:47:54My heart rate is too low. I'm sweating. I'm uncomfortable. You start thinking about the fact that like, you're, you're, you know, your boxers are like pulled up on one side, one leg, you know, they, that's not the way to get present and calm and aware.
00:48:06The way to get present, calm and aware, and be able to move forward from that in a, in the best way is to ask questions about your immediate physical environment. Once you do that, remember, that's just the first step.
00:48:17The second step is to use that heightened level of awareness to ask yourself, what do I want to, what do I actually want to do next? What do I want to say next? What do I want to think about next? This is the way that you take control of your thoughts.
00:48:32And I won't go into all the detail now, but thoughts have this way they seed each other. So I think we've done this thing about the cat, right? I think we did that previously. We say like, you know, I think of a cat. Okay. You know, tell me about it.
00:48:47And people say, well, it has soft, it's this color, it's this, that you're starting to recruit more and more neural machinery toward the thought about this trivial thing that we call a seed idea, which is the cat.
00:48:59But if you just let your brain run or like through the tributaries of its like own choices, you end up in a pretty unhappy place.
00:49:08So the key to being a high agency, happy person, it turns out, is being able to control your thinking and bring it back to the present.
00:49:15But then you don't just stay there thinking about your breathing. That's like kind of sociopathic, right? It's weird. It's like, it's just weird.
00:49:22You ask questions about your immediate environment, and then you pivot into the person that you want to be in terms of action and thinking and speaking, or maybe silence is called for.
00:49:33And so none of this is psychology. This is all 100% neuroscience. I get into the underlying mechanisms and it fully supports everything that I just described.
00:49:42I should say is fully supported by the work that shows that people who have heightened levels of activity in the so-called default mode network.
00:49:50This is the network of activity that just takes place when you're doing essentially nothing are more depressed too much activity in the default mode network.
00:49:58Yes, some is associated with creativity, but usually elevated levels of activity in the default mode network are what you find in depressed people because their brain is just kind of all over the place and they feel discombobulated.
00:50:11Unless we're in sleep, we need to organize our internal landscape. The problem is most people here, you need to organize your internal landscape and they think, oh, you have to get up in the morning, do 10 breaths of meditation, get your light. And they think about it as rigidity.
00:50:23I'm talking about now and throughout the book, it's all about the things that set you up to lean into life so that you're more reflexively more effective. You're reflexively happy, you're reflexively more adaptive, you're reflexively more present.
00:50:37And I think this is where the over optimization conversation is relevant. None of these practices are an end in and of themselves, right? I mean, I think nowadays because people go to the gym and they get like the aesthetic effect they want, they think like, oh, you go to the gym to do that.
00:50:53I go to the gym so that I can sprint for the plane, open the pickle jar, move all the boxes on moving day up and down the stairs and feel great, tired, but great at the end of the day. And I like being strong for life.
00:51:07I like having endurance so I can go hiking in Yosemite. If we go, let's go tomorrow, we're going and carrying 80 pound packs, we do it tomorrow. And yeah, it hurts a little bit, but like in a good way.
00:51:16And you can sprint for the plane and not cough up a lung. You can, you know, there's a section on mobility, which is, you know, for trivial mobility exercises, you know, get your knee behind your glutes once a day, squat down to bend and look up at the ceiling, like to a right angle, be able to look up on both sides, identify any, you know, kind of mismatches on either side and work through those.
00:51:37And so I can like lean down and grab things and move so I can reach and grab things like, you threw me the protein drink out there. I just, for the record, I caught it.
00:51:44You did catch it.
00:51:44I'm not so proud of that. I'm just pissed that your camera guy will probably wait until I drop it and then film that one.
00:51:50So for the record, they're running a diabolical scheme here at Modern Wisdom where they wait for you to F up and then they film it. But when you get it right, no, I'm just kidding.
00:51:59No one's capturing it.
00:52:00I'm just kidding. Actually, I don't care about, I'm not, obviously my hand-eye coordination is not something I'm like really concerned about.
00:52:07But, um, nor do I boast about, but the point being that it's all about being able to move through life with confidence and agency and awareness and sensitivity to what you need to be sensitive to and being, and saying to the things that you need to say to, that's a really good life.
00:52:25It's not about the tools. It's about what the tools open up for you.
00:52:28Yeah, I think a lot of people have an issue with the over-optimization thing because it feels like more homework. They're already overwhelmed. They're already working hard. The sort of people that read your book and listen to your podcast and are fans of Modern Wisdom, they're already contorting themselves into a pretzel trying to get more out of their day. They've already got standards that are so impossibly high that they can't meet them.
00:52:46And now when they sometimes hear people saying you need to do this and do this and do this and this, they feel like they're overwhelmed.
00:52:51Sure.
00:52:51And the difference being, you can make yourself fragile if your entire performance and your whole life is predicated on this kind of rain dance ritual that you are only able to do the stuff if you have had this like weird two hours of foreplay beforehand.
00:53:08I understand why that's the case.
00:53:09Two hours of foreplay. Yeah, that's a lot.
00:53:11I knew that that would be.
00:53:12Yeah, I mean, what's that?
00:53:13Nothing.
00:53:14I mean, some people might argue it's not enough.
00:53:15Yeah, that's true.
00:53:16Yeah.
00:53:17That is true.
00:53:18I guess it depends on how much time you got.
00:53:19That's true.
00:53:20It could be a Sunday.
00:53:21But I think, at least from my experience, periodizing your life is one of the best ways to think about this.
00:53:26And a lot of people, especially toward the end of their twenties, especially a lot of guys, go through this manopause.
00:53:32They go through this period where they realize that all of the strategies, tools, habits, routines, modes of getting recognition and success from the people around them, they've stopped working.
00:53:43And they want to become something better.
00:53:45It's kind of like a second adolescence.
00:53:47It's actually a more important adolescence, I think, than the one from, you know, 13 to kind of like 17.
00:53:52And, okay, what sort of person, what sort of man do I want to become in this world?
00:53:56I don't know.
00:53:57Maybe women go through it too.
00:53:58But I know that I see it in a lot of guys, especially dudes that are a little bit more deep thinkers, and maybe they played the game in their twenties.
00:54:05They were successful, perhaps, maybe at playing the game.
00:54:08Which game are you referring to?
00:54:09Like the social norms game.
00:54:10I'm going to like, you know, contort myself or like chameleon a little bit.
00:54:13I'm not going to bring up quite what I think or what I mean or my unique interests.
00:54:17Well, that can be adaptive too.
00:54:18I mean, especially in the age of camera phones.
00:54:20I mean, when I grew up, you say something outrageous at a party, just like, you know, not offensive, but just outrageous.
00:54:27And it may land, it might not land, but you don't worry that it's going to land everywhere.
00:54:31It's not concretized on the internet for the rest of time.
00:54:33Yeah.
00:54:34I mean, I, I, and this is not just for public facing people.
00:54:36I mean, I feel like, um, you're probably a great dancer, but you know, I think like a lot of people are, are not right.
00:54:41A lot of men in particular are not.
00:54:43Um, and you know, you'd like to be able to like go to a wedding and dance and have fun and not think about how that's going to happen.
00:54:49I'm not thinking about how that's going to show up.
00:54:50Yeah.
00:54:51Is someone going to knock me for this video?
00:54:52So anyway, you know, guys get, get to this period and they think what sort of a person am I going to be?
00:54:56And that to me and for me and for a lot of my friends as well, I needed to basically bundle together quite a lot of locking.
00:55:03I needed to lock the fuck in.
00:55:05I needed to lock in for an extended period of time.
00:55:07Yeah.
00:55:08And from the outside that might look like, uh, an over-reliance on protocols and self-experimentation and optimizing and doing things like that.
00:55:15But what they don't see when they look at somebody that's going through that period is I was basically paying a debt that I had slowly accumulated over a decade and a half of running nightclubs.
00:55:25But I will go toe to toe with pretty much anyone for degenerate behavior in my twenties.
00:55:30Right.
00:55:31I ran more parties, did more of the things that you're not supposed to do in my twenties than almost anyone else.
00:55:37I met a million people on the front door of nightclubs.
00:55:39I attended a thousand parties.
00:55:41A thousand parties.
00:55:42A thousand parties.
00:55:43That's how many we ran.
00:55:44My twenties were very different.
00:55:45We had a million.
00:55:46We had a million lifetime entries.
00:55:47I had a great time, but very different venues.
00:55:49Um, so I'm like, I've served my time.
00:55:51And then I needed to, I wanted to become somebody that was a little bit more well-rounded, that understood himself, that had a great connection, all of those things.
00:55:58And I was like, okay, so if you look at me from 28 to 32, 33 in isolation, it actually looks like probably quite a fragile, um, highly strung life where I've got this elaborate morning routine that's going on for a couple of hours.
00:56:11And I'm like getting up and getting sunlight in my eyes before it's cool and doing the lateral flow eye movement as you're ambulating through the thing.
00:56:19Like do you putting salt, Redmond salt in water that to import from America?
00:56:22Cause I once read in some random blog posts that it might work.
00:56:25Like all of this shit before it was kind of popularized and then journaling and breath work and meditation and reading a book and doing space repetition with Anki flashcards and all of this shit.
00:56:35Why?
00:56:36Well, because I wanted to like discover what worked for me.
00:56:39And I wanted to like rip myself out of this hole that I dug myself into.
00:56:43And my thing around the, the optimization, like guilt that a lot of people feel or fear that they have this kind of pushback against the fragility that definitely comes along with it.
00:56:53Like there is such a thing as like the fear of the worry that you have of trying to be optimal, killing you more quickly than your suboptimal behaviors.
00:57:04Like you're so stressed about this, but there is also a period.
00:57:07I think that you can really use it to like get the momentum moving.
00:57:10Okay.
00:57:10I've got a training practice.
00:57:11I understand how to meditate.
00:57:12I've stopped going to bed late.
00:57:14I've started getting up on time.
00:57:15I've started, you know, those are things that then carry you forward and you can either try and slowly ingrain them over a long period of time, or you can Navy Seal Hell Week it and bundle it together.
00:57:25And that's what I did.
00:57:26I've learned from over a thousand podcast episodes.
00:57:28The easier that you make your health routine, the more consistent you'll be.
00:57:31It's like golf, right?
00:57:32You want to keep it simple and not makes a bunch of pills.
00:57:34You want the eye of the tiger, not the DUI of the tiger.
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00:58:17That's drinkag1.com/modernwisdom.
00:58:20I came on this podcast because I was excited to talk to you.
00:58:23And yes, I'm out on the book thing, but I like learning from you.
00:58:27So can I just like take in what you said for a sec?
00:58:30Hit me.
00:58:31Because I'm happy to share what I know.
00:58:33But I want to think about this because I always learn with you.
00:58:37So one thing that you're so excellent at, and then I'm trying to do more of by way of example from you,
00:58:44is you are very good at spotting contradictions.
00:58:49And as I said earlier, trying to like clashes and contradictions and trying to export something of value, like a new direction from that.
00:58:59So, you know, I will say, and I acknowledge you in the book for many reasons, by the way.
00:59:05Which is, you know, we get these conflicting messages inside of any space.
00:59:11Okay.
00:59:12So you have so much within you.
00:59:14If you do the right things, you can access these things.
00:59:16Okay.
00:59:17If you do all these things, you're actually a weaker version of yourself.
00:59:20Because if you don't do those, not doing the hard thing now becomes the hard thing.
00:59:23Okay.
00:59:24Yeah.
00:59:25I mean, hell week is a week for a reason.
00:59:27It's not hell year.
00:59:28Although, talking to people who are instructors and SEAL training and this kind of, I mean, I do think they are identifying people that are, that have something different in them, as opposed to building that up.
00:59:40I think they build it up in those people, but I think that filter is really unique.
00:59:44I think for the rest of us, you know, I don't, you'd probably make it through, but for the rest of us, the real question, I think, is how do we resolve all these tools and contradictions that are out there and put a structure on them?
01:00:01Forgive me for going slow here, but for once I'm speaking slow enough.
01:00:04I'm speaking slow enough.
01:00:05Okay.
01:00:06So years ago, when I was a graduate student, a guy who is really a luminary in the field of neuroendocrinology said to me, he said, you know, it's rarely the people who make like the key discoveries that go on to be associated with the great findings of a field.
01:00:23I go, how can that possibly be?
01:00:25He said, it's almost always people that are in that field or educate themselves on that field that put a structure on it.
01:00:32And he said, this is why it's important to publish research papers, but also regularly publish reviews.
01:00:37And I always made a point for about every three research papers I published to publish one high quality review, not some like, you know, like yellow ribbon journal, you know, review.
01:00:48Cause you can publish a review anywhere, but like real compendiums of where the knowledge is now.
01:00:53Like I took those very, very seriously, like annual reviews and so forth, very seriously.
01:00:58And why?
01:00:59Because they help you organize your mind around what's happening.
01:01:02And they help other people do that too, because most people aren't going to take the time to do it in the health and optimization space.
01:01:08Now there's so many tools, right?
01:01:10So what we need and what I try and highlight in the book are principles.
01:01:13Yep.
01:01:14High morning cortisol means low nighttime.
01:01:16Cortisol means high nighttime.
01:01:17Melatonin means great sleep, means better days and so on and so forth.
01:01:21You're essentially got the gears of the system linking together with that.
01:01:25Understand that.
01:01:27And then yes, it's true.
01:01:29Bright light is the best way to spike your morning cortisol, but exercise is pretty effective too.
01:01:33Sometimes you don't have access to either.
01:01:35Sometimes you have access to both.
01:01:36Sometimes you're on a plane, you can't, but you can start doing other things to nudge the system or keep the system online.
01:01:42When you have 30 seconds, you also understand that if you miss a day or two, you're okay.
01:01:47Yep.
01:01:48Because you've set up the system through good behaviors going into it.
01:01:51So you don't have to dissolve into a puddle of your own tears because you're on a plane and they don't have any caffeinated coffee and you can't do your air squats.
01:01:57And like, I mean, come on, no one wants to be that.
01:02:00It's fragility.
01:02:01Exactly.
01:02:02So once you understand a bit of the principles that organize the mechanisms, you're in a great position to be truly strong of mind and body because you can organize information.
01:02:13And the same thing is true.
01:02:16And like in chapter seven, the book on personal development, I took a step back and I said, what are the unifying features of all the trauma therapies?
01:02:24What are the unifying features of how to have a great life?
01:02:26Let's just start with how to have a great life.
01:02:28James Hollis came on my podcast, 84 years old, surprised the shit out of me when he said, here's how you have a great life.
01:02:35It involves four things.
01:02:36The first three are shut up.
01:02:39That's the first one.
01:02:40I go, shut up.
01:02:41And he goes, yeah, someone's always got it worse than you.
01:02:44Nobody wants to hear you whine.
01:02:46Have gratitude for what you do have.
01:02:48If you're alive, you got something to be grateful for.
01:02:50I didn't really expect that from him.
01:02:52You know, he's like this 85 year old Jungian analyst.
01:02:54He talks about the unconscious mind.
01:02:55He goes, shut up.
01:02:56Your day should start with Huberman.
01:02:59Shut up.
01:03:00Whatever's got you bothered.
01:03:01Shut up.
01:03:02You got it better than somebody.
01:03:03Interesting.
01:03:03I wish someone had said that to you earlier, but that's okay.
01:03:05Thank you.
01:03:06Second.
01:03:11You can keep this in.
01:03:12Next.
01:03:13It's a continuation.
01:03:14Next.
01:03:15He said, Chris Williamson, go fuck yourself.
01:03:17Yeah, that's true.
01:03:18Sorry.
01:03:19First is shut up.
01:03:22Second is suit up.
01:03:23What is suit up?
01:03:24Suit up is you have a role to fulfill each day for other people and for yourself and for the world.
01:03:30Suit up is get prepared.
01:03:32Shower, organize your room.
01:03:34We've heard this stuff from Jordan and from other people, but get your act together so that you can then do the third thing effectively, which is show up.
01:03:42Go find a role in life and fulfill it.
01:03:45It might not be the role you fulfill your entire life, but if it's a summer camp counselor, if it's a babysitter, if it's a nanny, if it's a firefighter, if it's whatever you you are doing at some point in order to have confidence and be a healthy, happy person, you need to fulfill roles for society, meaning for people in your life, not just for you.
01:04:04You have to be in service.
01:04:05Now, some people might think, well, I want to make as much money in the world as possible.
01:04:09So that's not me, but a lot of people feel that way.
01:04:11Great.
01:04:12To do what?
01:04:13Go fulfill that role.
01:04:14So get dressed properly.
01:04:15Do those things.
01:04:16It sounds so basic, right?
01:04:17So shut up is about gratitude.
01:04:19Suit up is about prepare and practice.
01:04:21Don't show up.
01:04:22You know, don't.
01:04:23For me, I delayed the publication of the book three times.
01:04:25Why?
01:04:26Because I want the book to be something I'm truly proud of and that people will feel that they were honored as smart people who deserve quality information.
01:04:35Period.
01:04:36End of story.
01:04:36And I was willing to tell the publisher and everyone else, look, I'm so, so sorry, but I'm going back in again and again and again.
01:04:42Eat the shame because ultimately I had a higher value, which was that the book be of good to extreme value to anyone that read it or even just looked at a chapter, for instance.
01:04:55And then that last one of show up is actually go do the work like chop wood, carry water.
01:04:59Like no one gives a shit that you don't want to do it today.
01:05:01Just do it.
01:05:02Great confidence comes from those.
01:05:04But then he said the fourth thing, the pitfall is that when we get too much into role playing these roles and doing these things, we, we don't often enough or excuse me, many people end up down a road that they don't really want to be on.
01:05:22And everyone fears that.
01:05:23So he said that solution to this is very simple.
01:05:26Once a day, go into your mind and get out of stimulus response.
01:05:30You either meditate or just breathe.
01:05:32You draw, you listen to music.
01:05:34You don't look at your phone.
01:05:35You don't think about your role in the world.
01:05:37And all you do is you try and listen to, and it sounds real squishy, but when it's next to shut up, suit up, show up.
01:05:44I feel comfortable saying it, which is you ask yourself, like, what is my deeper wish?
01:05:50My heart's desire.
01:05:51What do I need to be focusing on now?
01:05:53Maybe I have enough career, enough money, enough, enough, whatever, you know, colleague, respect, et cetera.
01:05:59Maybe now it's time to focus more on relationships.
01:06:04Maybe it's time to focus less on one's role as a mother or father, not completely, but focus more on an artistic creative side that if you don't satisfy, you're not going to feel like you had a good life.
01:06:15So personal development, if you look at those bins, it's not about shut up, suit up, show up, and do this internal practice of getting out of stimulus response.
01:06:25That's just one example.
01:06:27You look out across the landscape of personal development, and almost everything slots into one or two, but usually just one of those.
01:06:34Entire books are about the first one or just the last one or two of the four.
01:06:40And I go, that's very satisfying to me because, as my colleague said, putting a structure on things is very helpful because it helps us navigate without feeling like there's all this information.
01:06:50Wait, I'm supposed to journal, and I'm supposed to do therapy, and maybe psychedelics, maybe not, and I'm supposed to have social connection.
01:06:56And, like, pretty soon you're like, when am I supposed to do the morning sunlight thing?
01:06:58It's a lot.
01:06:59So the idea is that you understand the framework.
01:07:02And then when it comes to the trauma piece for unlearning, right, like there's a tremendous amount of information in the book on how to focus and learn better.
01:07:10But then also, what about unlearning?
01:07:12All of getting over bad stuff is four steps.
01:07:16The process is four steps.
01:07:18The first thing, you need to acknowledge the bad thing.
01:07:21You can't just deny it anymore.
01:07:22You can't suppress it.
01:07:23What are you suppressing?
01:07:25You need to acknowledge this happened.
01:07:26This sucks.
01:07:28Two, the second step is you need to feel the feelings completely.
01:07:31There is no working around this.
01:07:33There are entire books and workshops written around breathing into, psychedelic-ing into, talking into, hugging into, shaking into, feeling the full suck of the horrible thing that happened or things.
01:07:50But that's not where it stops.
01:07:52People often just end there.
01:07:53The next piece is feeling calmer, even slightly, and more peaceful around the accurate, detailed memory of the thing.
01:08:03You're now uncoupling the emotion from the thing.
01:08:06You can't just live and the feel your feelings.
01:08:08We have an entire generation of people and collection of people online who are only there.
01:08:12And they wonder why they're still there.
01:08:14At the mercy of their feelings.
01:08:15They're at the mercy of their feelings.
01:08:16But also, they're not effective in the world.
01:08:18They're not affecting change.
01:08:20They think they are, but they're not affecting change.
01:08:22This is actually why I think they hate, one of the many reasons why successful people are often hated.
01:08:27Because they're moving along.
01:08:29They're like, I feel like sometimes online, I look and I'm like, you remind me of those kids when I would go home.
01:08:34Because I left, I went to college, then came back.
01:08:37And that scared the shit out of me.
01:08:39Because I was like, oh my God, you guys could write a textbook on how to become like a world-class loser.
01:08:46And some of them weren't like drugging out or anything.
01:08:48I was just like, you guys are still talking about stuff that, well, today I talked about stuff that happened in high school that was helpful for me.
01:08:53But you guys are like stuck.
01:08:56It's like these people that hang out in the parking lot of bars for years and years talking about this thing.
01:09:01I mean, it's the saddest thing in the world.
01:09:03And men do it one way.
01:09:05Women do it another way.
01:09:06It's this fixation on the things that happened that we feel wronged about.
01:09:10And we all have them, right?
01:09:12And granted, some people were genuinely wrong.
01:09:14That's not the point here.
01:09:15It's not whether they were wronged or not.
01:09:16It's that they're stuck there.
01:09:17And the third piece is about the uncoupling.
01:09:20And then the fourth piece is what we kind of think of as the magic of life.
01:09:25Where people take the hard thing and the experience and their journey of moving through it.
01:09:30And they transmute it into something of beauty and goodness for the world.
01:09:35These are the people that go and talk at bereavement workshops.
01:09:40Talk to people who've lost a child.
01:09:42Talk to people who have experienced horrible things.
01:09:46Talk to maybe they even just plant a flower and put it in the windowsill.
01:09:51And every morning, they appreciate not the pain they went through, but the pain they went through that they no longer experience and the beauty that they're representing.
01:10:00A small detail, right?
01:10:02A small detail in their life.
01:10:03They've transmuted the pain, but you can't just go.
01:10:06Oh, you know what?
01:10:07You had this horrible thing happen.
01:10:08You know, plant a flower, put it in the windowsill and think about how beautiful it is.
01:10:12You can't take somebody who's struggling in number one or two or three and put them there.
01:10:17So for me.
01:10:18Go back through those four for me.
01:10:19What's that?
01:10:20Go back through those four.
01:10:21Acknowledge the thing.
01:10:22Yep.
01:10:23Straight on.
01:10:24Exactly what happened or how many things, you know, what is the thing that sucks that hurts so much?
01:10:29Two, you have to in a safe environment.
01:10:31This is why there's an interest in clinical trials on MDMA because it's this pathogen makes people feel, you know, love and safe.
01:10:39But you need that's not the only way.
01:10:41I mean, there's therapy.
01:10:42There's journaling.
01:10:43I talk about this and talk about all the different approaches to each of these steps.
01:10:46That's the second step.
01:10:47You have to feel the feelings completely of the horrible thing that happened.
01:10:51The third thing is once you've done that enough, and we talk about what enough is, you need to be able to recall the details and specifics of the horrible thing that happened with less emotional load.
01:11:05The emotional load starts to peel back.
01:11:08And it's a hard step to get to.
01:11:10But once you get there, it's a process.
01:11:12It's not like you go in and you go, okay, today I'm going to remember everything, but it's not going to bother me at all.
01:11:16Little by little, you start to uncouple.
01:11:18It's like memory exposure therapy.
01:11:20Some people do EMDR.
01:11:21Yep.
01:11:22That's one way.
01:11:23Some people do hypnosis.
01:11:24Some people do talk therapy.
01:11:25Pennebaker has people journal four times for 15 minutes each about the horrible thing that happened.
01:11:30This takes them through steps two and three.
01:11:3315 minutes one day, 15 minutes the next day, 15 minutes the next day, 15 minutes the next day, no more, no less.
01:11:39And by the fourth day, tens of thousands of data points now, not just individuals, but many, many papers, even if, you know, manuscripts, scientific manuscripts.
01:11:47But even if you tear up the writing afterward, even if you delete the file, you find that people move through steps two and three to a significant degree.
01:11:55Yeah.
01:11:56And then the fourth step is not just letting it hover there as this thing that you got through, but finding some way or ways, it can be many, of transmuting that entire experience.
01:12:09The thing that happened in the way you moved through it into some point of beauty or contribution to your own well-being and to others' well-being.
01:12:18It could be your dog, and the dog represents every bit of your ability to love unconditionally and their ability to love unconditionally that represents the unconditional love you didn't get.
01:12:28Maybe it's someone who has suffered a horrible trauma, is helping people who suffered similar traumas, or maybe it's some just symbol, right?
01:12:38I mean, you know, in a very Jungian way, it can just be a symbol of like, maybe you have this paperweight and that symbol is the weight of your certainty that you made it through.
01:12:47And you just, you know, the human mind can assign symbols to experiences very easily, good or bad.
01:12:53So those are the four steps.
01:12:55And for me, in thinking about personal development, it was like, how do I look out on the entire landscape of all these books and all these podcasts and science and think, what's the best way to move through?
01:13:06You acknowledge that process.
01:13:08Neuroplasticity is alert focus, agitation through genuine errors to get things right, reinforce through sleep and self-testing.
01:13:16Those are the steps.
01:13:18There's not a fifth step or a sixth step.
01:13:21There's not jump to step three and avoid steps one and two.
01:13:24So these days, a lot of my role in my public life is to educate about processes.
01:13:30And this all comes from my training in neuroscience.
01:13:33You don't teach people, neurons fire action potentials.
01:13:37That's the first thing you teach them.
01:13:38Then you tell them how that happens.
01:13:40And once they understand how that happens, you get the action potential.
01:13:44So they have embedded in their mind an understanding of when a neuron fires.
01:13:48You get a neuron fires.
01:13:49They're not thinking about all the steps.
01:13:51But it's all there.
01:13:52That's what we call true understanding.
01:13:54You have a nuanced, multi-level understanding of something.
01:14:00And I think that all too often in the optimization space, we say, hey, this red light is going to give you better skin.
01:14:05It's going to improve your mitochondria.
01:14:07And people, of course, just want those effects.
01:14:09But if people are feeling overwhelmed, they should think, well, what's better, red light or GHK copper?
01:14:15I would say, well, what's the best source of red light?
01:14:18It's the sun minus UV.
01:14:20When does that happen?
01:14:21When the sun is low in the sky?
01:14:22Boom.
01:14:23You got the best red light therapy that you could ever get minus UV for zero cost.
01:14:28Congratulations.
01:14:29You want a red light too?
01:14:30Cool.
01:14:31Be my guest.
01:14:32I own one.
01:14:33You might want one too.
01:14:34But just we're talking about long wavelength light minus UV.
01:14:36End of story.
01:14:37So it's not complicated.
01:14:38And I think the same is true in resistance training.
01:14:41Andy Galpin talks about this or exercise.
01:14:42They're only like five or six different adaptations.
01:14:45Better speed, better power, better, you know, I mean, you've added a seventh of like, like, you know, forearms, but for the rest of us, they're only six.
01:14:54And you can get that through CrossFit.
01:14:57You can get that through sets to failure.
01:14:58You can get more volume with near failure.
01:15:01Like once you understand something, you're in a position to make much better choices around it.
01:15:06And so I'm actually wondering when to retire right now.
01:15:09I'm kind of thinking what's next.
01:15:11And I have some ideas about where that's going.
01:15:13But I think we, in 2026, right heading into 2027, I think we pretty well understand the principles of great mental health, physical health and performance.
01:15:23There'll be more peptides.
01:15:24There'll be more devices.
01:15:26I think devices and pharmacology are really going to change the game.
01:15:29AI is going to change the game.
01:15:31But I think we're there.
01:15:33The fundamental, the physics of the system.
01:15:35Pranayama breathing or Wim Hof breathing.
01:15:37Hmm.
01:15:38How do you want to feel?
01:15:39More alert.
01:15:40Inhale emphasized breathing.
01:15:41Passive exhales.
01:15:42You want to feel calm.
01:15:43How should you do that?
01:15:45Exhale emphasized breathing.
01:15:47Passive inhales.
01:15:48Longer exhale relative to inhale.
01:15:52More calm.
01:15:53Why?
01:15:54We know all the mechanisms.
01:15:55So the naming, and this probably scares some of my, you know, health colleagues.
01:16:00Hopefully not because no longer can people name things after themselves or give something a name that cloaks what you're trying to achieve.
01:16:08The reason I went yoga nidra non sleep deep rest.
01:16:11And I, I have great respect for the yoga culture that developed this thousands of years ago is non sleep deep rest is the goal.
01:16:19What does it involve?
01:16:20Exhale emphasized breathing and slow the heart rate down.
01:16:22Shifting the mind from thinking, doing, and, and planning to pure sensation.
01:16:28Great.
01:16:28How do you do that?
01:16:29Present tethered awareness.
01:16:31Long exhales.
01:16:32Eyes closed.
01:16:33That gets you into a pseudo sleep that recovers some of your lost sleep, makes you better at sleeping at night, lowers cortisol, puts the brain into microstates of sleep, enhances learning.
01:16:45That's non sleep deep rest in a nutshell.
01:16:48Now, why the book has to be so long given I can just kind of cut it down to a nutshell.
01:16:52That's a different story.
01:16:54But principles are what allow a field to say, you know what?
01:16:57We got it.
01:16:58Yep.
01:16:59Doesn't mean the stuff isn't important.
01:17:00It means we got it.
01:17:01We're moving on.
01:17:02We understand the action potential.
01:17:03Yeah.
01:17:04We understand plasticity.
01:17:05We understand getting over trauma.
01:17:08The tools still need work, but we understand how to get to sleep.
01:17:12We understand how to be focused.
01:17:13We, and so people, I think I'm hoping will appreciate that we are here now.
01:17:18I didn't podcast and do all this for the last six, seven years so that I could be in the exact same place and regurgitate the same things.
01:17:25I'm like, here you go.
01:17:26This is my thesis.
01:17:27This is my thesis is my graduate thesis.
01:17:30My graduate thesis, like, you know, some people say there's a little bit of like pigeon chesting, but I didn't publish like two papers in some, you know, red, red ribbon journal.
01:17:39We publish close to eight first author papers in awesome journals, some in apex journals.
01:17:44I could have graduated way earlier.
01:17:47I did it because I wanted to close a story in a field.
01:17:51We didn't get everything, but I wanted to get to the point where that field didn't make sense to work on anymore.
01:17:56It was like, we're done.
01:17:57We did it.
01:17:58Like, like, what are we doing?
01:17:59Like what?
01:18:00I don't want to stay in high school.
01:18:01I want to graduate.
01:18:02So it's now time.
01:18:03This is my thesis.
01:18:05I'm done.
01:18:06I think it's, I believe it's of real value.
01:18:08I'm onto the next thing.
01:18:09And if people want to quibble about the details, I'm all ears.
01:18:12I'm happy to talk about it.
01:18:14Um, or even the big things, but it's not like I'm done.
01:18:17It's not important.
01:18:18It's like, we got it.
01:18:19Let's move to the next level.
01:18:20And I want you to do this too.
01:18:21I talked to Lex the other day on the phone.
01:18:23You know, everyone's like, where's Lex?
01:18:24Haven't heard.
01:18:25Lex is building up the next big move.
01:18:28I can't talk about it, but it's awesome.
01:18:30And I'm like, he's so brave.
01:18:32And I'm like, yes, you're always on the next thing.
01:18:36You know, Rick's always on the next thing, you know, and it's so cool.
01:18:39Like, it's like, we got to keep going.
01:18:42We can't stay back there.
01:18:44Can't stay back there.
01:18:45That's what happened in the 1960s and 70s.
01:18:48These people got went down the rabbit holes.
01:18:50They took too many psychedelics thinking psychedelics were the answer.
01:18:53And a lot of them lost their minds or they did too much somatic therapy.
01:18:58And they forgot that the mind that actually you don't store emotions in the body.
01:19:02I'm sorry, folks.
01:19:03You store them in your brain and the body represents them.
01:19:06Turns out we've now moved on.
01:19:08Body and brain are important.
01:19:09So I think it's time we move to the next step.
01:19:12Tell me if this sounds familiar.
01:19:14You train regularly.
01:19:15You eat reasonably well.
01:19:16You feel fine, but you're just kind of going off vibes.
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01:20:08That's functionhealth.com/modernwisdom.
01:20:11Is there a good test for microplastics?
01:20:13And what is the best detox protocol that you're aware of at the moment for microplastics?
01:20:18Detox as opposed to limiting the ones coming in, because we know where they are, right?
01:20:23They're pretty much everywhere, but glass better than plastic and so on.
01:20:28The data on sweating are decent, right?
01:20:32They're not going to purge them completely, but they're pretty decent.
01:20:36So sauna.
01:20:38Sauna, living in Texas, running outside.
01:20:40I mean, heat is heat, right?
01:20:42So, you know, I was kind of joking this morning on a press call.
01:20:45You know, if you're standing outside in Texas in the middle of the day, like you're getting some deliberate heat exposure or non-deliberate heat exposure.
01:20:51It's the same heat as heat.
01:20:53So that definitely helps.
01:20:55You know, there's this idea that sulforaphane, which is in cruciferous vegetables, might be able to bind some of it and you can purge some of it.
01:21:02That arterosol, is that what it's called?
01:21:04I think it's sulforaphane.
01:21:06You can take concentrated sulforaphane.
01:21:08That's the broccoli.
01:21:09Broccoli.
01:21:10Broccoli.
01:21:11Yeah, Rhonda's very bullish on this.
01:21:12I don't take sulforaphane.
01:21:14I do try and sauna because it has other benefits a few times a week.
01:21:18And I just think more and more companies that can their beverages are going to start, you know, looking.
01:21:23A lot of canned beverages do and a lot of canned beverages don't.
01:21:26Rhonda put me in touch with a company from Newtonic who have a different wrapper on the inside because all of these cans, it's not tin.
01:21:33It's the plastic lining.
01:21:35Yeah.
01:21:36But there's an organic biodegradable liner that you can get.
01:21:40So we're looking into that.
01:21:41It's going to take forever.
01:21:42Yeah.
01:21:43I mean, the stuff is everywhere.
01:21:44There's the particulate from tires.
01:21:47You can buy a better trap for some of the microfibers.
01:21:50I'll be honest.
01:21:51I don't do those things.
01:21:52I'm conscious of trying to not put heated food in plastic whenever I order.
01:21:56Well, this is limiting input though, right?
01:21:57We're talking about.
01:21:58That's limiting input.
01:21:59To the extent that it's getting things out, we don't know.
01:22:02I mean, I think also, like anything, some people are going to be more susceptible to this.
01:22:06I mean, if people are doing a bunch of other things to disrupt their endocrine environment, right?
01:22:09They're not going to be more susceptible to this.
01:22:11I mean, if people are doing a bunch of other things to disrupt their endocrine environment, right?
01:22:14They're not sleeping well.
01:22:17They're, you know, they're not doing all the right things, or they're doing some things badly wrong, especially if you're getting a lot of environmental exposure to toxins.
01:22:26Because you, you know, a lot of people work jobs where they work with paints and solvents.
01:22:30You know, laboratories, it's kind of wild.
01:22:32You know, laboratories, you find all sorts of things that can, what we call, intercalate into DNA.
01:22:36That's how you run gels and things of DNA.
01:22:39And I mean, without getting into the details of looking at proteins and different types of blots or RNA or DNA.
01:22:45In order to break up proteins or break up DNA, in order to, you know, basically run them out on these gels, you have to put chemicals in them that break the bonds, right?
01:22:54That's not good, right?
01:22:55You don't want that happening to you.
01:22:56It's good for the experiment.
01:22:57It's not good for you.
01:22:58People are dermally disrupting their own DNA.
01:23:00People who work in laboratories are exposed to, you know, paraformaldehyde constantly.
01:23:05And if you work, if you have a neuroscience lab that where you're perfusing brains, you're fixing brains to cut them up.
01:23:10You're working with paraformaldehyde and other fixatives all the time.
01:23:13You're working with things that are mutagens, sometimes radioactivity.
01:23:17I mean, viruses.
01:23:19I mean, my lab for years, I'm not running a lab anymore.
01:23:22Last, I think last paper came out in 2023, 24.
01:23:25I'm now just teaching.
01:23:26But the lab had adenoviruses, synbis viruses, modified rabies viruses.
01:23:32I mean, we-
01:23:33Some stuff you don't want.
01:23:34We worked with, we had, yeah, we did, we had sedatives that are, you know, federally controlled.
01:23:38You had to keep them in a locker, account for every microliter.
01:23:40I mean, laboratories are full of dangerous things.
01:23:44Unless it's a computational laboratory, in which case we call those carpet labs, where they have carpeting computers.
01:23:49Yeah, Lex.
01:23:50No, no.
01:23:51That's real science.
01:23:52It's just different science.
01:23:53When it comes to the microplastics thing, I learned some interesting insights around the fact that the, like, micron size of microplastics and the size of your sweat glands can get some out, but not all.
01:24:05Because microplastics range in size.
01:24:07This is a conversation that Ben Greenfield was bringing up.
01:24:10Another interesting one.
01:24:11We're talking on 9/11.
01:24:13A friend told me a story about this particular firefighter who had gone into the towers and had been out of the towers and then was exposed to all of the, you know, the most particulates probably in history, apart from volcanic eruptions.
01:24:26And he'd developed like a Parkinsonian tremor.
01:24:29And he did niacin flush with charcoal and had a towel wrapped around it when you do that.
01:24:36You get your heart rate up doing exercise.
01:24:38You get into the sauna.
01:24:39You take the niacin.
01:24:40Then you take the charcoal.
01:24:41Niacin to flush everything out and then charcoal to bind it so it doesn't get reabsorbed again.
01:24:44And apparently the towel that this guy had wrapped around him was like verdigris.
01:24:49It was all colors of blue and pink and green.
01:24:52Those firefighters, I mean, they absorbed so much mental and physical damage in those days.
01:25:00I mean, one thing we should say before, I want to talk about 9/11 and that particular thing I do.
01:25:06But before we do that, I just want to mention one thing that I think is important because the message got out based on one publication that we have a credit card's worth of plastic in us.
01:25:16Already been there.
01:25:17Okay.
01:25:18So it turns out there's a second publication that went to the same data and basically found that the tool they used in that first study to measure the number of particles was not a very good tool.
01:25:29And it turns out we have far less than that in us.
01:25:32You saw this stuff about the gloves, right?
01:25:34Not about the gloves, but what's interesting about this study is I think that some people say you have a marble sized amount of plastic in your brain at this moment.
01:25:43Maybe, distributed, maybe.
01:25:45But I looked at both the data, analyzed two different ways in those papers.
01:25:49And unfortunately, the more catchy thing, you have a credit card and it's worth of plastic in you or your brain.
01:25:57And that sort of, you know, I kind of did the telephone game of the internet.
01:26:00The second paper didn't get as much airtime.
01:26:03Yep.
01:26:04The retraction versus the accusation.
01:26:06Right.
01:26:07It was a separate group.
01:26:08It wasn't a total retraction, but having spent a lot of years in my lab where you try and count cells and you're trying to decide on a computer screen what's a cell.
01:26:15It seems trivial to you.
01:26:16You mean that's a cell, that's a cell.
01:26:17Sometimes it's very easy.
01:26:18Sometimes you see two clumps like this.
01:26:19Is that one cell or two cells?
01:26:21So where you set your threshold for what you define as a cell is very important.
01:26:24Mm-hmm.
01:26:25And in this study...
01:26:26So this was...
01:26:27Sorry for interrupting.
01:26:28No, no, no.
01:26:29I think the message is...
01:26:30This was what I saw.
01:26:31So basically, when people were using nitrile and latex gloves to do the microplastic thing, the way that nitrile gloves actually bend is because tiny fragments of plastic peel off.
01:26:42Basically...
01:26:43Oh, this just came out this last year.
01:26:45This is...
01:26:46People measuring microplastics wore gloves that got plastic on the plastic detector.
01:26:51That's what happened.
01:26:53So this is like...
01:26:54Yeah.
01:26:55...one of the biggest...
01:26:56Look, I mean, if you talk to...
01:26:58There it is.
01:26:59A wild microplastics goose chase based on the glove.
01:27:02Yeah.
01:27:03So we might be overestimating the amount of these things, which would be great.
01:27:06Let's, you know, if we...
01:27:07To be more worried and actually be safer is better than to be less worried and actually in danger.
01:27:11If you think about this, though, if it's the case that microplastics are less prevalent by a factor of a lot...
01:27:16Some of the studies I've seen around this, it's like a hundred less, a hundred times less, or maybe even a thousand times less than we've got.
01:27:22If that's the case, what that suggests is the X factor, which is disrupting endocrine, impacting testosterone, stuff like that, is even greater.
01:27:30Because people have been able to lay at the feet of microplastics, like it's kind of the microplastics of the gaps of what's going on with endocrines, why is sperm count going down, et cetera, et cetera.
01:27:40So if we say, oh, actually we've been over measuring that, the X factor begins to need to fill more of the hole.
01:27:48Yeah, we don't know how to match, you know, number of particles to biological relevance.
01:27:52I mean, you know, one parallel example would be for many years, you know, there were new antibodies coming on, becoming available for the study of the brain.
01:28:01And you could label up like, where is the richest concentration of serotonergic neurons in the brain.
01:28:06And a group identified this massive serotonin input to the brain circadian clock, massive.
01:28:11I mean, it accounts for, you know, basically half of the input to the clock.
01:28:15You know what happens if you disrupt that input to the clock?
01:28:18Nothing.
01:28:19Functionally, it means nothing.
01:28:20Does that mean it's doing nothing?
01:28:21Excuse me.
01:28:22Functionally, it means far less than the anatomy would suggest.
01:28:26In the brain, big, strong synapses mean a lot more than number of synapses.
01:28:31Number matters, but big and strong matters way more.
01:28:34And so we don't really know how to correlate X number of particles with this much dysfunction.
01:28:39Also, you know, it's not a study that I think about very often, but my colleague, Mike Eisenberg, who you've had on a podcast, right?
01:28:46I mean, it does seem that sperm counts are going down generation to generation.
01:28:51But they have data that, do you know about this, that penis size is going up, right?
01:28:56And no pun intended.
01:28:58But then you start asking, you know, how is this measured?
01:29:01And it's either self-report, and then you get into these details that I really don't want to discuss.
01:29:06It's too early in the day.
01:29:07You know, like, are they measuring from, like, the top or the bottom?
01:29:11Like, are they, is it flaccid or is it erect?
01:29:14Like, all these different things.
01:29:15And you'll talk to Mike and he'll say, you know, they try and standardize these studies.
01:29:18But it's one of these things where the headline is so catchy, right?
01:29:22One or the other headline.
01:29:24But then you get to, no pun intended, but then you get to the nuance of how these studies are done.
01:29:30And the answer almost always is, well, let's just stick to microplastics.
01:29:35We need more data.
01:29:36I think that the other.
01:29:37We need more penises.
01:29:38Some people on the planet would argue we need fewer.
01:29:41Yep, that's true.
01:29:42But that's a different, that's a different podcast.
01:29:44But 9/11, I'd been on the East Coast.
01:29:49So I'm 51 years old.
01:29:51So I remember this very clearly.
01:29:53I'd been on the East Coast at an amazing place on the North Shore Long Island called Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories.
01:29:58This is sort of summer camp for scientists where they go to learn molecular biology.
01:30:02You take courses.
01:30:03And it actually operates all year long as one of the premier laboratories in the world.
01:30:06Are you telling me there's something on my face?
01:30:08No, no, no, no.
01:30:09I'm just grinning about this fucking summer camp for the nerds.
01:30:11Okay.
01:30:12It's all right.
01:30:13Oh, it was a great time.
01:30:14So I was a student there at Cold Spring Harbor.
01:30:15I was a TA.
01:30:17I was an educator and I was a course director for many years.
01:30:21And then I passed the course off onto, you know, people who are better equipped to do that at that time.
01:30:26But we had gone to this course and then flown back, right?
01:30:30A number of us had flown back and some people were still in the process of going back.
01:30:33So I remember that day very well.
01:30:35I also remember two years later, because the course was every other year, going back to this course on Long Island.
01:30:42And there's this day off where half of the students would just recover from their hangovers.
01:30:46There was a lot of drinking back then, not so much of these courses anymore, but you and took the Long Island Railroad into the city and went to the 9/11 site.
01:30:56So it was a memorial slash site because it was still, they were still excavating the site.
01:31:02What date was this?
01:31:03What day?
01:31:04Date.
01:31:05Oh, this would have been a summer of, okay.
01:31:07So two years after 9/11.
01:31:08So it'd be 2003.
01:31:09And they still hadn't finished?
01:31:11Oh, no, no.
01:31:12I mean, this was a giant.
01:31:13I mean, I think it's hard for people to conceive.
01:31:16Like you see the towers in the photos and they're so huge, but the footprint of these towers was just enormous.
01:31:22You know, multiple city blocks long in it, you know, and there was just all there was, was it like a, you know, a wooden gate.
01:31:31You could walk around the site.
01:31:32There were pictures everywhere, obviously, and a lot of inscribings and some photos and things of that sort.
01:31:38And there were people working the site, you know, construction workers working.
01:31:41Many of them, no masks, you know, and then you've got all these tourists, you know, we were essentially tourists, reading the stuff on the wall, walking around.
01:31:51No doubt, everyone was inhaling tons of whatever was in their jet fuel particulate, et cetera.
01:31:58But the people that got there first, I mean, I can't even imagine what the firefighters and others were exposed to.
01:32:04I did hear an interesting story that one of the companies that was housed in those buildings was led by somebody who had some former military training.
01:32:14Do you know about this who had been there for the first bomb bombing of the World Trade Center and had run drills for his entire company insisted on drills going into it and all.
01:32:27But I think 11 of the of the people in that company got out.
01:32:32So they were they would run these drills about how to, you know, single or double file out of the stairways.
01:32:37I don't know the particulars of this, but it turns out there were people who were very concerned about this going in for a number of years and that increased survival.
01:32:46Now, you don't I don't know where they were, you know, which which level, et cetera.
01:32:50But I mean, that was a that was a huge game changer.
01:32:54And yes, there were videos online at that time.
01:32:57So different because there wasn't social media of people some places in the world, you know, quote unquote celebrating.
01:33:05But I would say the vast majority of media that you saw, the vast majority of what was online was just people either in shock or in in anger and just in surprise.
01:33:16A lot of people in the United States at that time didn't know where Afghanistan was.
01:33:21They didn't they didn't know what Afghanistan was.
01:33:24They didn't know where Pakistan was.
01:33:25They didn't understand that.
01:33:27I mean, they knew these places in the world exist.
01:33:29They probably heard the names before, but there wasn't a lot of awareness of that side of the world.
01:33:33It was like, oh, yeah, like a bombing in Yemen.
01:33:35People would hear these things.
01:33:36But that was the that in the Challenger explosion where in my lifetime were the two where you just went, oh, shit, like this.
01:33:45This is a line in the sand.
01:33:47Like things are are very, very different now.
01:33:50You mentioned nicotine earlier on.
01:33:53I'm seeing pouches everywhere.
01:33:54What's your opinion on nicotine and pouches?
01:33:56Same.
01:33:57Look, I consume caffeine every day.
01:33:59I love caffeine.
01:34:00Nicotine is sort of similar, although caffeine is safer.
01:34:04Obviously, it can even improve health.
01:34:06Nicotine will definitely make you feel alert and calm, unlike other stimulants, which is a very unique state.
01:34:13That's great for learning.
01:34:14Right.
01:34:15Sets you up for learning.
01:34:16Doesn't let you learn.
01:34:17But it.
01:34:18Doesn't make you learn, but it lets you learn.
01:34:21Raises blood pressure.
01:34:23Highly addictive.
01:34:24And and here's the thing people don't realize.
01:34:26If you take three to six milligram pouches multiple times per day, it's not going to have a cognitive enhancing effect.
01:34:33It's just rescuing the deficit from nicotine withdrawal.
01:34:36Right.
01:34:37Like if you don't drink caffeine for two days, you're not going to feel good.
01:34:42You drink caffeine, you'll feel good.
01:34:44It's bringing you back to baseline.
01:34:45Okay.
01:34:46So if you want nicotine to be a performance aid, you use it occasionally, meaning, you know, three to six milligrams once or twice total twice per week maximum.
01:34:59Yeah.
01:35:00But how many people do you know that are not develop a dependency or just not do it very often?
01:35:04And then it does something.
01:35:05I mean, this is how I feel about a lot of energy drinks.
01:35:07I love them, but I'll take them when I really want to dial in really want to like I, I slept last night, but not quite as much as I would have liked.
01:35:13I'm a time shifted and so on.
01:35:15Um, so this morning I drank one of yours and one of, uh, Derek's.
01:35:19Yep.
01:35:20Um, that's a lot.
01:35:21The old twin turbo.
01:35:22Yeah.
01:35:23Yeah.
01:35:24Very good.
01:35:25And, and that's a lot, but you know, I thought we had a pretty good workout.
01:35:26Yeah.
01:35:27You performed well.
01:35:28The previous, uh, mode of delivery was smoking.
01:35:31And then we moved on to vaping pretty quickly and vaping became massive.
01:35:34Let's talk about the history of this.
01:35:35Humans have found a way to get their nicotine.
01:35:39Smoking causes cancer.
01:35:41Okay.
01:35:42Not good.
01:35:43Dipping snuffing.
01:35:44Not good.
01:35:45Cancers.
01:35:46Okay.
01:35:47Oral nicotine.
01:35:48Oh, vaping.
01:35:49It turns out it's not good for us.
01:35:50Really not good.
01:35:51Yeah.
01:35:52Yeah.
01:35:53Yeah.
01:35:54Yeah.
01:35:55Yeah.
01:35:56Well, the behavioral data say, because you can do it anywhere.
01:35:59Pretty much.
01:36:01People are doing far more of it.
01:36:02They're taking in far more nicotine and they're coming now having issues, lung issues and issues
01:36:06related to nicotine.
01:36:07So smoking was less healthy and maybe more dangerous per puff, but because the number of
01:36:12puffs that you're consuming from vaping, because you can do it in more places and it's
01:36:15more tasty and there's less fatigue from it, means that maybe the healthier delivery mechanism
01:36:21of vaping versus smoking is more than offset to the point where it's more dangerous.
01:36:25Right.
01:36:26Wow.
01:36:27In the same way that, you know, cannabis, you don't say is good or bad.
01:36:29Yes, it nukes REM sleep, but that's very, very bad.
01:36:32It can cause psychosis and certain males have a predisposition of psychosis.
01:36:37But you'd say, smoking cannabis, people are able to put themselves into a plane of high
01:36:44that is not freaking them out.
01:36:47They can take one toke.
01:36:49I did bong.
01:36:50You know, when I was in college, everyone just like did bong reps.
01:36:53I was like, you know, and then, but you knew if you could do half a one or one or you wouldn't
01:36:57go like four and then wait and see what happens.
01:37:00Some people did that.
01:37:01That didn't work out so well.
01:37:02But with an edible, the problem is people can ingest, you know, 100, 150 milligrams of
01:37:06THC like that, and then they're freaking out.
01:37:09In some cases, it can trigger a psychotic episode that lasts a long time or doesn't reverse.
01:37:13And so it's the ease of ingestion.
01:37:15So that's the vaping thing.
01:37:17The oral nicotines, they're here to stay.
01:37:20Humans have, since the discovery of nicotine, have found a way to get their nicotine.
01:37:25Same with caffeine.
01:37:26They've just found a way to, they're not going to quit.
01:37:28But a lot of young people using nicotine, they should just be aware of how addictive it
01:37:32is and the fact that it raises blood pressure.
01:37:35And I think that, you know, usually you can scare guys out of it a little bit by just
01:37:38saying, oh, it's vasoconstriction.
01:37:40And, you know, that can have some sexual side effects.
01:37:42But nowadays, people are using pharmacology to combat pharmacology, you know, and thanks
01:37:46to Mike Eisenberg and other people.
01:37:48You know, like I've said, you know, the low-dose Tadalafil for prostate health.
01:37:53But then people go, well, if you take a little bit more, then it's a, you know, it's like a sex drug and like that kind of thing.
01:37:59You know, anyway, it was developed as a prostate drug.
01:38:02But it's a vasodilator.
01:38:03Does that combat the vasoconstriction of nicotine?
01:38:06Yeah, in theory.
01:38:07But now you're doing like sort of a push-pull.
01:38:13Bad language.
01:38:14You're now doing a push-pull between, you know, one set of effects and another set of effects.
01:38:19And, you know, I would say this is just by observation, you know, people in their teens, 20s, 30s, even early 40s, you really want to get away with it using as little pharmacology as necessary.
01:38:32This is why, you know, during my manopause, monk mode era, I did a thousand.
01:38:36Your what?
01:38:37Manopause.
01:38:38I went monk mode.
01:38:39You were in manopause?
01:38:40Yeah.
01:38:41You're too young for manopause.
01:38:42Manopause.
01:38:43No, manopause is end of 20s.
01:38:44Listen.
01:38:45What?
01:38:46I told you.
01:38:47We got to return to that.
01:38:48Manopause.
01:38:49Manopause.
01:38:50Your androgens dropped at the end of your 20s?
01:38:52It's a colloquial bro science term that I use to describe when guys stop behaving the way that they did in their adult infant 20s.
01:38:59I have so many thoughts about that hat and none of them good.
01:39:02Please take that off.
01:39:05So, a lot of the time, like when I was doing my period of personal development, becoming a proper human, I did a thousand days without alcohol and 500 days without caffeine because I wanted to prove to myself,
01:39:16I don't need to use any of these things.
01:39:18I don't need to buttress my life with this.
01:39:20I wanted to have that in the back of my mind that if there was ever a period because I knew for the rest of my life that I was going to be like around parties.
01:39:26I was going to be around like caffeine.
01:39:28That's like my thing, right?
01:39:29And now I have a company that does it.
01:39:30Something that's kind of interesting.
01:39:31So, we've been doing these, which are these pouches.
01:39:33Oh, yeah.
01:39:34And those, I think by the end of next year, we could do more volume in pouches, more revenue in pouches than in cans because of how many people want to dial back their nicotine.
01:39:45So many people feel like I'm not in control of my nicotine usage and the delivery mechanism has been locked in.
01:39:52And these are, and it's easy to take and we'll talk about the canister. By the way, if you write a 600 page book, what happens is you stare at things up close, your eyeball lengthens and you become myopic.
01:40:03You've worsened your eyesight because you wrote the book. You literally, literally damaged your own.
01:40:08But at the end of this year, right after this book promotion tour is done, I'm going to spend a lot of time staring at horizons and hiking in the mountains and I might even go hunting this year.
01:40:18So, yeah, that's why I'm wearing these. I mean, look at it. This is crazy. This prescription.
01:40:21You tried to, you made me put them on and you're blind.
01:40:24They're like cool bottle glasses.
01:40:25So, yeah, when you stare at things too close, you become nearsighted. So kids, adults.
01:40:31Be careful.
01:40:32Get some long view vision each day. My vision at a distance is great, but up close is lousy.
01:40:37So the other thing about this and these canisters is it's interesting, you know, that I'm not trying to diverge topics here, but, you know, like we'll get to peptides, I'm sure.
01:40:46But, you know, the pens that the GLPs use, that pen with needle, you know, has basically gotten people over their needle phobia.
01:40:53It turns out it was the plunger people were afraid of.
01:40:55I don't like needles. Do I have to inject myself? Turns out if you put the needle at the end of something, it looks like a pen.
01:40:59Everyone's pinning themselves. Men, women, people are just pinning themselves.
01:41:03So these canisters are interesting because they have like a tactile field, a little bit like chips at the casino.
01:41:10You know, but when I was a kid, there was a jerky. Do you remember this? There was a beef jerky that came in a canister that looked like tobacco.
01:41:20And kids, oh, this stuff was horrible. You would take a pinch of beef jerky and you'd put it in your lip.
01:41:27We were like nine years old, 10 years old. And then you'd eat the beef jerky eventually.
01:41:30You were just cosplaying as your dad.
01:41:32Kids, my dad didn't chew. He did occasionally smoke a cigar pipe. My grandfather smoked a pipe.
01:41:36For the people that did.
01:41:37Yeah. So it was like you would. So we were like little kids.
01:41:40Fucking beef jerky.
01:41:41We were little kids walking around lipping beef jerky. Not licking, lipping beef jerky.
01:41:47Yeah.
01:41:48So, and it was, they clearly figured out that like candy cigarettes and, you know, and, and so there is something about the pout, the canister.
01:41:55Oh, there it is.
01:41:56There it is. Jerky stuff. No, no. It's called jerky stuff. That looks so gross. Oh my God.
01:42:00It looks like the fluff that you find in your pocket.
01:42:04It's called jerky stuff. Look at this. Ready? There you go. Jerky stuff.
01:42:09And you would, you would stuff your cheek or you'd stuff your, your lip.
01:42:12Wow.
01:42:13Yeah. This was a thing.
01:42:15So it was, it was kind of like jerky flavored sawdust.
01:42:18It was, and also barely any, it was probably like four grams of protein.
01:42:22In the entire.
01:42:23And you would pay more for it. And it was because it was, you know, a good way to take in something.
01:42:28So these canisters are also very reinforcing. Yeah. It's really tactile. It's nice.
01:42:32And also like, you know, it's your back pocket. Guys love carrying something in their back pocket.
01:42:36Nobody wants to carry the man purse. You know, I might've brought like a small zip thing to the gym today.
01:42:41I did see that. I did see that.
01:42:43Yeah. You didn't ask what was in it, but I'm not going to tell you.
01:42:45What are the spiciest protocols that you weren't able to put in the book?
01:42:50What was the stuff that you wish that you could have got clearance on?
01:42:54Right. So the book is everything I'm certain about that we understand the mechanisms for, and that I know work.
01:43:01Not just because I experienced that, but because many, many people have, and we have great data to support it.
01:43:06Like everything's substantiated. There's only one protocol that's a little bit out there.
01:43:10And I said, this is kind of out there. We have a little bit of data, not a, not a ton, but here's, here's why I'm including it.
01:43:15And I think you might want to try this because it can really help you fall asleep when you talk about this.
01:43:19But we know why it ought to work. I don't talk about psychedelics, although I do fit them into a framework along plasticity and learning.
01:43:29And so they make sense of when they might, might be the appropriate tool.
01:43:33I don't talk about hormone therapies and I don't talk about peptides in part because the data are still coming and also because they'll likely be a second book.
01:43:44Although, you know, if you write a book like this long with, you know, thousands of references and, you know, it can damage relationships in your life.
01:43:52People have been super understanding. This book basically acted as a filter in my, in my own life for like, who really loves me?
01:43:57Right. So, um, but look, it's big, but it also operates as a doorstop, a weapon.
01:44:03Yeah. I was going to say, if you're feeling not quite tall enough at the table, you can sit on it at Thanksgiving.
01:44:08And, um, and as I joke, if nothing else, it'll cure insomnia.
01:44:11Mm. Very nice. Okay. What are some protocols that you fully believe in, but you can't scientifically prove?
01:44:20Ooh, that's really good. Um.
01:44:26Okay. Yeah. Let's just be blunt here. Um, but these would be things that aren't in the, in the book, right? Okay.
01:44:32Because everything there is substantiated by mechanism and description. Um, so I've had some wild experiences with a couple of peptides that most people, some people have heard about.
01:44:47Um, you know, I don't have shoulder pain. I've never had shoulder pain, but about three, four months ago, I made the decision.
01:44:54I was like, you know, I should start doing some heavy pressing again. I, I do my dips. I do my overhead press.
01:44:59So I just start doing some, like, I don't like flat benching. So I do some low incline pressing.
01:45:03And after about three months, two, three months, I started getting some shoulder pains.
01:45:08I started doing some external rotation work. I'm like, this thing isn't going away. Like, what is this? Maybe I need to back off.
01:45:14And it's like, you know what? Like, it's pretty bad. I'm going to just put two injections of BPC in there.
01:45:21So two injections of maybe a hundred or 200 micrograms, tiny amounts, right? Um, gone history. Can't find the pain. It's gone now.
01:45:32Is it placebo? I don't know. Maybe it is. I mean, I knew what I was injecting. A better experiment would have been somebody, you know, traded out, uh, saline.
01:45:40And I go, oh my, you know, that didn't happen. Um, that's pretty incredible. The animal data are really impressive.
01:45:47And I know a number of people with pets, dogs in particular, who've been injecting their animals with BPC because their dogs are getting older.
01:45:54Uh, I don't want to name names here because it's, I haven't cleared it with them, but, um, they have dogs that either had spinal strokes or just aged and were limping and not doing well.
01:46:04And they asked, you know, does this stuff work in animals? I'm like, all the data are animals, you know? Um, so mouse and rat owners, like your, your mice and rats will.
01:46:13If you rupture the antenna, they kill you.
01:46:15Exactly. Cause there are a lot of data on that. Um, but I know a lot of people now, um, injecting their dogs, aged dogs and saying, oh my goodness, this is crazy.
01:46:23Like they're more mobile, et cetera. And it's hard to give the placebo argument there.
01:46:28I mean, you could say that the owners are doing other things like they're also massaging, more care.
01:46:34They didn't do the saline control, you know, but kind of hard to explain it away.
01:46:39Okay. Okay. So the other one is pinealon. Um, pinealon is ironically is a peptide that doesn't come from the pineal comes from brain tissue. Epithalin comes from the pineal.
01:46:52Who names this stuff is like, it's insane. But, um, I've experimented with pineal on every third or fourth night, taking about, about, uh, you know, uh, 10th of an IU.
01:47:04And, um, in those nights, those nights that get anywhere from two and a half to three hours of REM sleep, that's a lot of REM sleep inside of six to seven hours inside of six hours.
01:47:17You're kind of cheating the system because like, wow, I like normally I'd have to get into my last third of sleep, which for me is seven or eight hours in order to, um, total in order to get that REM enriched phase, which always comes at the end of the night.
01:47:31But what's here, what's so wild is that on the subsequent nights, I also experienced this massive REM increase.
01:47:37So it's, I've cut that back to doing it once a week or at once every 10 days and still getting the same effect.
01:47:43The only downside for me is that the next day I can feel not foggy, but I feel like it's harder to become fully alert.
01:47:51I can still focus, but a little bit of sleep in us, maybe.
01:47:54And I know people who are taking it in the daytime because they like being in this kind of shallow plane of sleep, wake for cognitive work.
01:48:01That's not me, but, um, you know, there's talk about, I don't, you know, well, I mean, rumors, whatever.
01:48:06There's talk about people at tech companies who are like, oh yeah, if you're going to do something for, you know, 12 hours, that's like really bad.
01:48:12Maybe this is good.
01:48:14I don't know.
01:48:15Um, so that's been interesting.
01:48:17Um, you know, I think there's a lot of excitement nowadays about growth hormone secretagogues, things like Tessa Morell and Upper Morell and CJC.
01:48:26I'm not a fan.
01:48:27They've always nuked my REM sleep.
01:48:29They've always spiked my PSA.
01:48:30I, I just, for me, they don't, they don't tend to work.
01:48:33Um, I am curious about, but I, I don't think I'm old enough yet to really embark on a, um, somatotrope growth hormone experiment, but that clinical trial by exploring low dose growth hormone for people.
01:48:48That would be exogenous, right?
01:48:49That would be exogenous.
01:48:50Yeah.
01:48:51Um, that's intriguing to me, but there, there are data, right?
01:48:54There are data, but I feel like at 51, I'm like still in this place where I feel good.
01:49:00So, so there's no real science there.
01:49:02The other, sorry, aside from the growth hormone thing, the other stuff is there's animal data, not human data, but my experience has been pretty impressive.
01:49:09Now, of course, maybe I gave myself a tumor by injecting the BBC.
01:49:13I have to acknowledge that.
01:49:14Um, but a whole body MRI tells me no.
01:49:17So, you know, um, the things that, well, I've talked about this openly.
01:49:25Um, so I'm happy to talk about it.
01:49:28Um, you know, you'll find clinical trials on MDMA assisted psychotherapy for PTSD.
01:49:34You'll find clinical trial, beautiful clinical trial data, in my opinion, on psilocybin for depression and PTSD.
01:49:43Um, you won't find a lot of data combining them.
01:49:46Um, I've, I've experimented in a clinical setting with combining them, right?
01:49:51This is done in a legal clinical setting.
01:49:53So, you know, that means therapy going in therapy during therapy coming out.
01:49:58You have to be very thoughtful about where you do this and who you do it with.
01:50:02They have to, all the adequate supports have to be there.
01:50:04But, uh, for me, that was incredible.
01:50:06I have to say that, um, psilocybin alone was helpful, but didn't really feel like it resolved certain things for me.
01:50:14MDMA was helpful and being feeling feelings, et cetera.
01:50:18That first and that kind of first and second been acknowledging the thing and really feeling the feelings.
01:50:23But the moving through part, um, was really, for me, was uncoupling the negative feelings from the, from the negative thing, but also replacing the negative feelings with positive feelings.
01:50:35That really came about through that combination therapy and, and you won't find a lot of data on that.
01:50:41I mean, it's unfortunately, um, the data on polypharmacology of different psychedelics isn't there yet.
01:50:48But then again, the FDA approval for the first single treat, you know, single ingredient approaches aren't there yet.
01:50:56And so that's why people have to go out of country to do this, um, or else it's illegal.
01:51:02So I think that the, you know, the, the data on Ibogaine are really intriguing.
01:51:07We've had conversations with people that are very open about the fact that they did it and it's helped them.
01:51:12I know a number of people are trying to get us to go down to Mexico.
01:51:15Are we going to go on a daily basis?
01:51:17I feel like I'm being peppered by somebody else to go, Hey man, just come down and turn your life upside down for a week in fucking Mexico.
01:51:23I didn't have a friend that's there right now.
01:51:24And, um, I'm, I told him not to go, honestly, I'm sorry, but I, I just was like, you don't, he doesn't have a substance abuse issue.
01:51:30So maybe he has PTSD, but I think there's this idea also with peptides that we can just up level ourselves.
01:51:37Like people say, should I use peptides?
01:51:39Like what, what effect are you looking for better?
01:51:42Yeah.
01:51:43You know, it's sort of like, uh, you know, it's sort of like, should I invest in blank?
01:51:46It's like, well, what effect are you looking for?
01:51:47And they're like more, they want more money.
01:51:49They want more money.
01:51:50Um, so it's, it's understandable.
01:51:52People want to feel better.
01:51:53If like you feel seven out of 10, could you feel 10 out of 10?
01:51:57If you feel 10 out of 10, could you change what 10 means and be eight out of a new 10?
01:52:02That's way better than your current 10 out of 10.
01:52:04Like that's an intriguing idea, but I'm not so afraid of the Ibogaine to be honest done in the proper clinic with heart rate monitoring.
01:52:12The thing I'm afraid of is the DMT.
01:52:14Yeah, because they have to hit you with that the day after and then pretty much straight after as well.
01:52:19I also know a number of people have done DMT and they're, I mean, I know plenty that have done DMT and they're okay.
01:52:24I know a lot who've done DMT and they're genuinely weird now.
01:52:27Not all of them, but some of them are like legit weird.
01:52:31Yeah.
01:52:32And they were not that weird before.
01:52:34Some are perfectly fine.
01:52:35The other thing is a guy like DJ, he's talked about this, right?
01:52:38I love that podcast that you guys did by the way.
01:52:40Thank you.
01:52:41DJ is a solid mind, you know, so.
01:52:46Well, also he's starting from a very low baseline.
01:52:49If you're sat watching the sunset with a gun in your mouth, you're already like, what's going to be worse?
01:52:55You know, like you've already considered taking your own life.
01:52:58Okay.
01:52:59You go smoke the thing, take the drugs, see how you feel.
01:53:03Yeah.
01:53:04I mean, it seems to have really helped him and Marcus and some of these other guys.
01:53:08I've helped him enough that he's trying to be a, like maitre d' for me and you, but a maitre d' that sits down at the table and eats along with you.
01:53:16What if we go to sleep one night?
01:53:18Not near each other, of course.
01:53:20Yeah.
01:53:21Although, actually, given where we live, actually quite fucking near each other.
01:53:25What's so funny is, I got a place that turned out to be really close to Chris.
01:53:30Spitting distance.
01:53:31It's going to be like the podcaster neighborhood if we're not careful.
01:53:33Yeah, that's right.
01:53:34It's cool, man.
01:53:35We ended up being neighbors.
01:53:36Good taste.
01:53:37Good taste in neighborhoods.
01:53:38Um, but what if, uh, you go to sleep in your house and I go to sleep in my house and then we, we wake up in, in Mexico in this clinic.
01:53:47I guess.
01:53:48Because DJ's done a like Maduro on us.
01:53:49Because somebody did a, someone did a Maduro.
01:53:51I got fucking Maduro'd by DJ Shipley.
01:53:53Exactly.
01:53:54Yeah, exactly.
01:53:55Uh, I've had similar things happen in totally different contexts, uh, years ago, uh, where I was supposed to get dropped off after working with this, some friends have this awesome band.
01:54:04Um, and they were supposed to drop me off, uh, back at my lab in my car.
01:54:08And I, I woke up in Utah.
01:54:10They drove to Utah in the middle of the night.
01:54:12I woke up.
01:54:13I was like, where are we?
01:54:14He's like, Utah.
01:54:15He's like, you're one of us now.
01:54:17This is my good friend, Elvis Cortez.
01:54:19He's actually the one that found me Costello.
01:54:21I've been kidnapped.
01:54:22And, uh, I love Elvis.
01:54:23He's great.
01:54:24Yeah.
01:54:25They, uh, technically they kidnapped me, but it was, it was a lot of fun.
01:54:27That was, that was many years ago.
01:54:28Um, I don't know.
01:54:29I don't know.
01:54:30We'll see.
01:54:31We'll see.
01:54:32There are other things that are, uh, perhaps a little less of the Mount Everest of, of that stuff.
01:54:38Yeah.
01:54:39Lower, lower risk.
01:54:40But you seem to be in a really good place now.
01:54:41That's true.
01:54:42But still there's always the sort of ability to show up, uh, versus how much of the four steps have you done in terms of being able to get over some.
01:54:53Yeah.
01:54:54Well, how do you respond when people say, um, they go, Oh my goodness.
01:54:58Like here you are looking for this next thing and the thing you can do.
01:55:01And they, and they just say, Chris, what you really need to do is just get married and have a couple of kids.
01:55:06I agree.
01:55:06And that will be the psychedelic.
01:55:07I agree.
01:55:08I agree.
01:55:09I say, yes.
01:55:10Plus, plus two golden retrievers.
01:55:11I agree.
01:55:12And I say, yes, but they're not preaching to the choir.
01:55:14You said two girls and retrievers?
01:55:15Golden retrievers.
01:55:16Golden retrievers.
01:55:17I mean, I, that's a Freudian slip from you.
01:55:19No, it's a Freudian slip from you.
01:55:20I said, fucking golden retreat.
01:55:22People can rewind the tape.
01:55:23Uh, I, I completely agree.
01:55:25I completely, I completely agree on that.
01:55:27And, um, I I've said this before, like I'm the most ardent guy without kids, supporter and ambassador for guys, just starting a fucking family.
01:55:36And it's not for me to say, Hey, I want you to stop your ambition in the same for women too.
01:55:40Like you stop your socioeconomic climb and doing all this stuff.
01:55:43Just like so many of the things that I see people doing, you know, young people and people that are getting into more middle age, like surrogate families.
01:55:51It's like the, the business that you're building, the fervor with which you're going after this political party or this new sort of social campaign or this like obsessive, uh, hobby that you've got, or, you know, trying to become wealthy or whatever.
01:56:08A lot of that to me looks and feels like this is the energy that you would be putting into a family, especially the existential energy that you've gotten.
01:56:17I'm like, um, I think a lot of your, I don't really know what my purpose is.
01:56:21I don't feel like I'm contributing more largely to the world.
01:56:24All of these questions that people have, like, why am I here?
01:56:26It's like, well, a lot of this, I think has kind of been solved throughout time, which is like you, you do the golden retriever thing in the family.
01:56:34Like golden retrievers do come first.
01:56:35That is an important caveat for me.
01:56:37Interesting choice of breed.
01:56:38Ah, dude, I just want an animal that can't, there is no danger of it competing with me cognitively.
01:56:44So I want something that's both cuddly and stupid.
01:56:47Uh, so I would.
01:56:48Golden retrievers are not all stupid.
01:56:49I'm going to, I'm going to try and find a breed of golden retriever, which is particularly fluffy and stupid.
01:56:54Just find a dog with a really flat head.
01:56:56A single digit IQ golden retriever.
01:56:58I mean, if you think about the Mastiff breeds, they're all very sweet and they have flat heads and they look at you like, you know, so the, the Mastiffs, the bulldogs, the, you know, the boxers, they're smart about certain things, but they're kind of like dog with a flat head.
01:57:11Okay.
01:57:12You know, are you doing phrenology for dogs?
01:57:14I mean, I, I went to the, this is fucking phrenology for dogs.
01:57:18I went to the meet the breeds in New York and met hundreds of breeds.
01:57:21Second time I've done this.
01:57:22Right.
01:57:23And walk through and met all the different breeds.
01:57:25And I can tell you a couple of things.
01:57:26First of all, people look like their dogs.
01:57:28Okay.
01:57:29So the.
01:57:30You do look a lot like strummer.
01:57:31You know, the, thank you.
01:57:33Uh, the otter hounds, like these otter hounds, they're the owners look like otter hounds.
01:57:38It's crazy.
01:57:39The bulldogs are kind of like the, the demeanor of the people and you just, and it's wild.
01:57:44You have to go.
01:57:45It's so much fun.
01:57:46It's at the Javits center each year.
01:57:47It's awesome.
01:57:48You meet all the breeds.
01:57:49I walked out of there.
01:57:50I was like, you know, I, I turned to my girlfriend.
01:57:53I go.
01:57:54Getting a bulldog breed.
01:57:55I'm getting a mutt.
01:57:56Because I've, I've been around enough dogs.
01:57:58I've experienced them all.
01:57:59And the, the mudded bullies, not the pure bullies, but the mudded bullies.
01:58:02They're, they're kind.
01:58:04They're vigorous.
01:58:05They're got a little bit of goofiness.
01:58:07They're very emotional in a good way.
01:58:09But then they also like get over there.
01:58:10They're just like a little hedonist sometimes.
01:58:12And, and they'll back you.
01:58:14Like they will, they will fight to the death for you.
01:58:17Your life's not on the line.
01:58:18Like they're not doing shit at all.
01:58:19They're not reactive.
01:58:20They're not reactive.
01:58:21I mean, are you kidding me?
01:58:22Um, so yeah, I, well, listen, I hope you get a dog.
01:58:26Then the dogs can hang out in the neighborhood.
01:58:28Um, and I do think that, no, I mean, family is awesome.
01:58:31I mean, family's amazing.
01:58:32Uh, so what, so what's the, what's the delay?
01:58:35You, you're.
01:58:36It's very difficult.
01:58:37Yeah.
01:58:38First off, I need to get the dog thing.
01:58:39I always felt guilty because my mom and dad had been so good with dogs.
01:58:42Like they would, they walked them all the time.
01:58:44They gave them a great life.
01:58:45And I would feel, I I've seen what a good life for a dog looks like.
01:58:49And I would feel incredibly guilty, not being able to, and I can pay someone.
01:58:54I'm sure.
01:58:55Or is somebody I could bring, bring them to the office, bring them on the trip or whatever.
01:58:58I'm like, I, I want, I don't want to have a dog that's flying once a week or, you know,
01:59:02that I'm having to travel that much.
01:59:03Uh, I did what?
01:59:05Like a hundred thousand miles and maybe 80 flights last year.
01:59:08Oh.
01:59:09Like a new.
01:59:10Yeah.
01:59:11I don't want to do that.
01:59:12Also for kids.
01:59:13You want to be present for your kids.
01:59:14Yeah.
01:59:15Of course.
01:59:16And that, but that is another thing that I think is, it's kind of beautiful if you frame
01:59:19it this way, and at least maybe this is just cope from me, uh, that if you take the, oh
01:59:26my God, maybe I have just been surrogate family building with this business or with this hobby
01:59:31or with this body or with whatever this finance is investing, whatever it is that you've been
01:59:35doing with your time skill building.
01:59:37But on the flip side of that, I think if you've really closed a lot of the different loops
01:59:42of like, I really feel like I like put it all out there on the table.
01:59:46I do get the sense that there is an additional level of presence that's afforded to you because
01:59:51materially, hopefully you're, you're, you're pretty well set.
01:59:53I can tell you, I mean, I don't want to get into details of my personal life, but 100%.
01:59:58I'll also tell you as a hard driving, like in pursuit of knowledge, skills and resources person,
02:00:03which you are, which I am and which our teams are also, I mean, very, very few things feel
02:00:10as good as being able to resource the people around you that you love.
02:00:14Of course.
02:00:15Like that there's like, yes, your presence, obviously, it's not just about earning money
02:00:19and giving them things, but being able to relieve suffering, however minor or major, being able
02:00:25to resource people to be in their full expression of what they want to do.
02:00:30Like I, I, I think very few things will feel as satisfying as, as that, especially if you.
02:00:37And I say that based on knowing you, but also your prior statement, the fact that you don't
02:00:41want a dog yet because you want the dog to be thoroughly resourced by your, by the, the love
02:00:48that you're going to, you know, provide tells you everything you need to know.
02:00:51David Perel, who does how I write and write a passage.
02:00:56It was when I first moved to Austin and he's about a similar age to me.
02:00:59And he said, we're having coffee.
02:01:01He turned to me one day and he said, you know what, man, I realized that most of my twenties
02:01:05and thirties were just spent becoming the dad that I want my future kids to have.
02:01:09And I wasn't even bothered about having kids and all of the accumulation of skills of habits
02:01:14of, you know, closing the loops of desires that he wanted to pursue.
02:01:18It's an adventure and all of this stuff.
02:01:20He'd got rid of that.
02:01:21And he said, oh, you know, I sort of, I feel like I'm here is a way that you could say it.
02:01:25It's like, I actually feel like I'm fucking here.
02:01:27And I think a lot of guys, and you see this with a lot of dads and mums too.
02:01:31I've got these unrequited dreams and children sort of imposed on them.
02:01:34And there's this, you know, low key, perhaps resentment of, oh, you know, I'm doing this thing,
02:01:39but you don't know what I sacrificed for you.
02:01:41And then there's the shame or, oh my God, what sort of a monster am I to blame my kids
02:01:44that I chose to have because I didn't fulfill my dreams beforehand.
02:01:48Yeah.
02:01:49Becomes really messy.
02:01:50Yeah.
02:01:51I mean, I want to be thoughtful with my words here.
02:01:53Cause again, I do like to maintain some sense of privacy in my life,
02:01:56but I will say that it does check off a sort of a, a deep must, what must be a primitive circuit of like,
02:02:06of, of satisfaction.
02:02:08Like having kids is a really good feeling.
02:02:10Like it just feels like, like you fulfilled something of duty, you know, that feels really, really good.
02:02:17And at the same time, it comes with all sorts of challenges and complications, you know?
02:02:21Um, but yeah, I think that, um, you know, it's become this, uh, kind of ongoing debate, you know, between me and Lex or like, you know, is it, you know, like, uh, I like, you know, but I think that, look, it sounds like there are going to be a lot of kids to wrestle and play.
02:02:37Yeah. I can't wait. It is a competition between me, you and him for who will have kids last, but we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll see who's, who's the holdout.
02:02:43I think I, well, I'm going to keep my mouth shut.
02:02:45There we go.
02:02:46Um, I'm going to keep my mouth shut.
02:02:47Um, but in, um, cause we all nevermind.
02:02:51Um, wait, I take this back.
02:02:54Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
02:02:55It's turning you crazy.
02:02:56So, um, I've been asking you questions.
02:02:59This feels good.
02:03:00I didn't tell you that the last page of the book is where I do therapy on you.
02:03:03No, I'm just kidding.
02:03:04No, but can I, can I read my acknowledgement to you?
02:03:06Absolutely.
02:03:07Cause I, I didn't even, I didn't even get to that bit.
02:03:09Oh, I'm going to, I'm going to do this.
02:03:11I, I acknowledge you, uh, here, um, here we go.
02:03:20So it's brief because the acknowledgements are five pages long.
02:03:25I think there's eight pages long, but I figure if you're going to do something, you just do it.
02:03:30So I just put a bunch of names.
02:03:31Um, I put you, uh, Chris Williamson for your friendship and for breathing so much life into the podcast.
02:03:39And what I refer to as the everyone's sphere, because I don't think you're about the manosphere.
02:03:43I think you're about the human sphere, but human sphere sounded weird.
02:03:46So I said, everyone's sphere.
02:03:48So, uh, I, I mean it, you breathe so much life into this thing.
02:03:51Like I remember first seeing you online and then you on Rogan and us, you know, and I'm not a skeptic.
02:03:58I always want the best.
02:03:59I thought, well, who is this guy with this British accent?
02:04:01And like, so, you know, and why are the women in my life asking me if he's single?
02:04:06Um, and, um, and I go, well, this guy is really smart.
02:04:12He's really nuanced and he seems like a really cool guy.
02:04:15And you totally exceeded expectations on all those things.
02:04:18And it's awesome to just see what you're doing.
02:04:19And also day or night you're available for an emergency or, or an adventure call.
02:04:25That is, you'll get to the gym early on jet lag.
02:04:27Um, and you've been super honest and vulnerable in your online and in our, in that career and relationship with your audience, but also just one-on-one.
02:04:38I, you know, there, um, for anyone that wonders, Chris is who he appears to be on the internet, which is really.
02:04:43For better off or worse.
02:04:44No, for better, man.
02:04:45For better, for better.
02:04:46Like it's a, it's an honor to have you as a friend.
02:04:48You're a great, great friend.
02:04:49Yeah, you too, man.
02:04:50And I, I feel very blessed.
02:04:51It is, it is really cool.
02:04:52You know, I, I think one of the almost inarguable great parts of life is becoming respected and admired by people that you respect and admire.
02:05:02Like it's one of the coolest things that you can do.
02:05:04My back is also hurting.
02:05:05So I'm trying to self massage at the same time.
02:05:07We did neck training this morning.
02:05:08We did a few face pulls.
02:05:09Yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:05:10That's true.
02:05:11Yeah.
02:05:12This is sounding terrible.
02:05:13Jeff Cavalier has an exercise called face pulls.
02:05:14Face pulls.
02:05:15We did some neck training because as we both know, having a, the wrong head place, like a, if a neck is too narrow with wide shoulders, it looks, what do you call the coat hanger?
02:05:25Yeah.
02:05:26You look like a coat hanger.
02:05:27Yeah.
02:05:28It's terrifying.
02:05:29You don't look like a coat hanger.
02:05:30Thank you.
02:05:31Yeah.
02:05:32Becoming admired and respected by people that you admire and respect is just one of the fucking coolest things.
02:05:36It really is.
02:05:37Like I like that person.
02:05:39I think they've got good taste.
02:05:40I think they're noble.
02:05:41I don't think that they're spiritually chinless and they.
02:05:44Spiritually chinless.
02:05:45I love that.
02:05:46If ever there was a Chris Williamson-ism, spiritually chinless.
02:05:49Spiritually chinless.
02:05:50Spiritually chinless.
02:05:51I'm going to borrow that, but I'll give you attributes.
02:05:53It's Adam Mastroianni originally, originally, originally.
02:05:56So, looking around.
02:05:57Wait, you didn't make that up?
02:05:58No.
02:05:59Spiritually chinless is from Adam Mastroianni.
02:06:01Oh.
02:06:02Well, you know that song.
02:06:03Breaking rocks in the hot sun.
02:06:05I fought the law in the.
02:06:07That's a cover of a cover of a cover.
02:06:09Okay.
02:06:10But everyone assumes the clash did it.
02:06:11It's fine.
02:06:12You're the centipede of spiritually chinless now.
02:06:14You're the guy at the very, very end.
02:06:15I'm going to just give it to you.
02:06:16Adam.
02:06:17Then me.
02:06:18They gave that song to the cops.
02:06:19Fine.
02:06:20I'll take it.
02:06:21Spiritually chinless.
02:06:22So, you know, you see these people and you go, wow, they're cool.
02:06:24I respect them in a way that I think is really, really sort of noble and aligned.
02:06:28And then if you manage to do something in that industry or a different industry, and they
02:06:33turn to you and they say, hey, like, I like what you do.
02:06:36You think, holy fuck.
02:06:37Like, that's really cool.
02:06:39And can people take it to an extreme?
02:06:40Yeah, of course.
02:06:41You can basically construct your entire life trying to reverse engineer being liked by people
02:06:46that you like.
02:06:47And that's the, like, charlatan social climber that doesn't have anything below them.
02:06:51But assuming the people that you respect are discerning, and one of the reasons that you
02:06:55respect them is that they are discerning, you shouldn't be able to finesse or fugazi
02:06:59them, famoose them into believing something they don't believe, or you being a person that
02:07:03you aren't.
02:07:04Yeah, man, like, I really hope that everybody that's listening to this gets to experience
02:07:07what it's like to sit opposite someone that they were a fan of and then became a friend
02:07:12of.
02:07:13Like, it's the fucking coolest thing in the world.
02:07:14It's really, really cool.
02:07:15Well, that statement includes my experience of you, you know, fan of and then became friends
02:07:19of.
02:07:20You've got an awesome life energy.
02:07:21I mean, we don't want to spiral into a whole other conversation, but maybe for a future
02:07:25time.
02:07:26But I think a lot about energy these days, not just mitochondria, but like some people genuinely
02:07:32have, I'm going to offend some people with this, some people just have more life energy in
02:07:36them.
02:07:37And I think, I like to think that if you're thoughtful, which you are, and I tried to be, that you,
02:07:45one allocates their life energy toward career and pursuits and health and resolve and then
02:07:50pivots that energy, but doesn't decide, you know, I'm going to shift all my chips to this
02:07:55and then all my chips to that.
02:07:56You have a lot of energy to go around.
02:07:58You know, Rob on my team, my producer of the podcast is such an engine of productivity
02:08:03and running and he's got a family now.
02:08:06And it's like, you always hear these things like people have kids and then they like slow
02:08:10it.
02:08:11Like he's picked up speed.
02:08:12We're just like, whoa.
02:08:13And you know, I, I think some people just have that extra gear.
02:08:17Some people don't, and they need to take their, whatever they've been allocated and do maximize
02:08:23with that.
02:08:24And some people just have a tremendous amount of life energy.
02:08:28And I think the goal is to not die at 27.
02:08:30If you have a lot of that energy, right?
02:08:31You think about the 27 club.
02:08:33It's almost like took all the energy of a life and crammed it into this early existence.
02:08:37Usually it's drugs and alcohol.
02:08:39And then, you know, so, but you also don't want to like a low, slow arc in life that you
02:08:46never figure out what your peaks are.
02:08:48Put your fucking foot on the gas.
02:08:49Yeah.
02:08:50I'm in the third quarter now.
02:08:51So I figure I'm at, you know, so.
02:08:53Speaking of engine, I texted you about this last week.
02:08:56What is happening with the VO2 max versus zone two debate?
02:08:59Because when I was thinking more deeply about like, I'm getting a little bit older.
02:09:05I should pay attention to my cardio, respiratory fitness and stuff like that.
02:09:09Low and slow was like everything.
02:09:10Yeah.
02:09:11You sent me that Jeffrey Dahmer video.
02:09:13Yeah.
02:09:14It wasn't a fucking Jeffrey Dahmer.
02:09:15He sent me a video of a guy talking about this.
02:09:17It was very good video.
02:09:18And my first thought was the guy looks like Jeffrey Dahmer, which is making it a little
02:09:21hard to listen to watch.
02:09:22So you could have just listened and said that would have been good.
02:09:24What's happening with VO2 max versus zone two debate at the moment, in your opinion?
02:09:28Because for a long time it was focused exclusively on low and slow.
02:09:31Now it seems like the VO2 more high intensity Norwegian four by four is increasingly important.
02:09:36I think the word to delete there is exclusively.
02:09:38I think my read of the data is you need some volume of cardio training to get that quote
02:09:44unquote aerobic base that can be very beneficial.
02:09:47I mean, the sorts of adaptations that come from doing 45 to 60 minutes of long and slow.
02:09:52We're not talking walking, but zone two, three ish.
02:09:54I don't ever think of about zone two.
02:09:56I think about upper zone two, zone three around there where you just barely can continue without,
02:10:03you know, you could, if you tried to speak, you would, you would have to pause a few times
02:10:07as opposed to just super easy.
02:10:09I mean, you are getting buildup of more capillary networks, you know, which has a lot of positive downstream consequences.
02:10:17You're getting all sorts of enrichment of the mitochondrial system and genuine enrichment of the cardiovascular system.
02:10:24But I think doing that once a week, so I make it a point to do a long, slow jog.
02:10:31So 45 to 60 minutes or so once a week or a rock for usually if I hike, I'm going for longer than an hour with some weight or something like that.
02:10:40It's often social with somebody.
02:10:42And then once a week I'll do the, I feel like I'm going to die hit workout, which for me is the Airdyne bike 20 on 10 off eight rounds.
02:10:51And by the seventh round, you're just like cursing everybody and yourself and you get off that thing.
02:10:55You feel so good.
02:10:56You probably cough a few times because you're just like breathing that hard.
02:10:58And I actually just, I do the crude measurement of heart rate, like 220 minus my age.
02:11:02And then figure out like what my heart rate is, a percentage of that max heart rate, right?
02:11:07So we get max.
02:11:08So I hit like 85, 90% of.
02:11:10Are you wearing a chest strap for something?
02:11:11I don't.
02:11:12So I talk about this in the book.
02:11:13You're not fucking fingering your heart rate, are you?
02:11:16Dude, your choice of language, man.
02:11:18No.
02:11:19You with your, your, your.
02:11:20Britishisms.
02:11:21Look, I get it.
02:11:22You want two wives and a golden retriever.
02:11:25You said that and you're fingering your heart rate.
02:11:28I just put my fingers on my neck and record my pulse or I just, and I'm looking at a stopwatch.
02:11:35So absurdly low.
02:11:36And I do that for 30 seconds and then I double it and I'm probably off by, you know, plus or, or minus, you know, five beats.
02:11:42But I'm, you know, in the ballpark and.
02:11:45You're like fucking Schrodinger's podcaster.
02:11:47You're someone who is both very forward thinking, like technologically prepared, excited about AI and also using like a fucking sundial in your fingers to work out.
02:11:58So funny.
02:11:59I, I, my girlfriend, I have birthday recently and she, we, we, I got this like compass sundial, which is so cool.
02:12:05I love primitive and very advanced tools.
02:12:08When I look at you, I do think.
02:12:09Yeah.
02:12:10Primitive.
02:12:11Thank you.
02:12:12I book it.
02:12:13Thank you.
02:12:14And not a lot in the middle.
02:12:15You're the barbell.
02:12:16You are the barbell of a human.
02:12:17Yeah.
02:12:18Thank you.
02:12:19Actually, I, I'll take that.
02:12:20I, there's a, a, a great song called street wise professor that I love.
02:12:23Um, it was referring to somebody else.
02:12:25Um, but, uh, um, yeah, sort of like a barbarian, um, uh, intellectual.
02:12:32Yeah.
02:12:33Something like that refined.
02:12:34Um, so the, once a week, get your heart rate up near maximum for six to 10 minutes, maybe do a mild, mild trial, you know, for most people that'll be somewhere between six and 10, unless you're really, really fast.
02:12:47In which case it'll be less or slow.
02:12:49In which case it'll be longer.
02:12:51Um, so jog two laps.
02:12:53I talk about this in the book and then do a mile time once every two or three weeks, uh, two or three months.
02:12:57Um, you do Norwegian four by four.
02:12:59You do the air.
02:13:00The nice thing about the airdyne bike, like 20 on 10 off.
02:13:02You can stop immediately.
02:13:03It's like, yeah.
02:13:04And after six to eight rounds of that, you're smoked, you hop in the shower and you go, but you, it takes so little time.
02:13:13Yeah.
02:13:14It takes so little time.
02:13:15But you're also using the reason the airdyne is so great or an assault bike, you know, echo bike pick your like handles and.
02:13:21The whole body.
02:13:22Handles and feet bike of choice.
02:13:24The reason that that for me is a superior form for what we're trying to do, which is get heart rate as high as possible.
02:13:29Yeah.
02:13:30Is that you're getting to use your arms as well.
02:13:31Yeah.
02:13:32If you try and do that on a bike erg, which is a fucking awesome piece of equipment.
02:13:35If you could give me any piece of cardio equipment, I'd choose a bike erg.
02:13:38It's super comfy.
02:13:39Yeah.
02:13:40You can speed up.
02:13:41Then your calves won't fit in the room.
02:13:42That's true.
02:13:43You're only using your legs, which means that your legs are going to be burning like hell.
02:13:47Okay.
02:13:48If I can get a little bit more.
02:13:49I mean, if I was a better rower or a ski erg, I imagine you can probably get to an even higher, higher heart rate.
02:13:56Yes and no.
02:13:57I mean, the rower, I mean, it's not a super skill.
02:13:59It's not brain surgery, but getting the row form proper is not as easy.
02:14:04The airdyne, as long as you set the seat height right, you can't really screw it up.
02:14:09So go as hard as you can to get your heart rate elevated for six to eight rounds, but do it in a way that you're not going to hurt yourself.
02:14:17Like the skier thing, like, you know, it's not going to hurt yourself, but like you said, it's hard to get the heart rate way, way up.
02:14:23So that once a week, the longer thing once a week.
02:14:25And then in the middle of the week, I just do a 30 minute run that's somewhere in between or a 30 minute swim that's somewhere in between.
02:14:32So five minutes of warm up, perhaps, you know, just like jogging.
02:14:35And then you do a 25 to 30 minute run where you're in your zone four, right?
02:14:41Yeah.
02:14:42You're breathing hard and you know you could go faster, but you don't.
02:14:47Yeah.
02:14:48Because then you got that HIIT workout later and, you know, two days later or a day later.
02:14:51And I talk, and then I'm just interspersing three days of working out with weights.
02:14:55One day legs somewhere in the week, one day torso.
02:14:59Today we did a push.
02:15:00So it's chest, shoulders, neck.
02:15:03And then another day of the week, you're doing, you know, biceps, triceps, calves, maybe neck again.
02:15:08Definitely.
02:15:09I'm big on abdominal work these days, core work, not just abdominals.
02:15:12What are your favorite exercises before?
02:15:13Pikes.
02:15:14Pikes?
02:15:15Pikes.
02:15:16What the fuck is that?
02:15:17You hang from a bar.
02:15:18Okay.
02:15:19You do knee ups to 90 degrees slow without swinging back and forth.
02:15:23You do five of those drop down.
02:15:25Then you see if you can do knee up, legs out.
02:15:28So L-sit.
02:15:29Can you go back?
02:15:30Do five of those.
02:15:31If you can do five and you just build this up.
02:15:33If you can't do the L-sit, you just do what I'll do five sets of five of the knee ups.
02:15:38Next time I come back and try and do at least one or two L-sits.
02:15:41So then you're doing, if you can do five L-sits.
02:15:43So you just bring your knees up, then straightening your legs.
02:15:46You're still holding, right?
02:15:47So you're also getting the grip strength work.
02:15:49Then you lower slowly.
02:15:50If you can do five of those, then you start, you could do the one knee at a time.
02:15:54Kick out, kick out, kick out, drop one, bring down one leg at a time.
02:15:58And then over time, what you're trying to do is bring your feet up to your hands on the bar
02:16:03without just swinging back and forth.
02:16:05Controlled.
02:16:06Non-crossfit toes to back.
02:16:07Using your lower abs.
02:16:08Five sets of five or even three sets of five on the pikes.
02:16:10And especially if you're hanging from a thick bar, so you're really working your grip.
02:16:14That's a great ab work.
02:16:16And I do back hyperextensions.
02:16:17And so it keeps your core really, really strong.
02:16:19Why are you bothered about torso work so much?
02:16:22You want strong abs.
02:16:24You want strong midsection and you want strong lower back muscles.
02:16:28I mean, I noticed that basically all injuries for me, nagging injuries completely disappear.
02:16:35Even if I'm sitting a lot, I don't have any pain.
02:16:39If I'm doing, I make sure I get a hundred reps of hyperextensions per week.
02:16:44So I don't care when I put them in.
02:16:46Sometimes I'll put always at the end of a workout, but I'll put them at the end of arm day or leg day or back day.
02:16:50I'll just mix them up.
02:16:51I just, I have a commitment to a hundred reps and I started getting strong enough that I can do them with one leg.
02:16:56So on the 45 degree, you just, you sort of like kick up one leg, like you're a horse getting your, your shoe cleaned or something.
02:17:01The GHD, that would have been insane.
02:17:04No, not on the GHD.
02:17:05I don't do those on the GHD.
02:17:06And then I just go slow and controlled.
02:17:08You don't want to be tilting from one side to the next.
02:17:10So you really discover any imbalances that are there.
02:17:12You're bracing yourself and you just, I'll do five, five reps, switch to the other leg, back and forth, back and forth.
02:17:18And now I'm at the place where I can hold some weight or use a band.
02:17:21And I'll tell you that having those strong spinal erector muscles, like my default posture has suffered in writing this book, even with a standing desk, because you're just looking down.
02:17:30So eyesight and posture.
02:17:31Exactly.
02:17:32But yeah, there's some recovery that needs happening, but I did buy an inversion table.
02:17:37Those are fun.
02:17:38I love hanging upside down.
02:17:39I've tried, I've tried those as well.
02:17:40Yeah.
02:17:41You have to be careful if you have eye pressure issues, like glaucoma, you can blow a gasket.
02:17:44You can make glaucoma worse.
02:17:45Yeah.
02:17:46Yeah.
02:17:47Yeah.
02:17:48Eye pressure upside down.
02:17:49Not good.
02:17:50I don't have glaucoma.
02:17:51So knock on wood, but having a strong lower back, I noticed leg days are so much stronger.
02:17:57Pressing, pulling, everything just gets stronger and you don't want any weak links in the chain.
02:18:01And I think Jeff Cavalier really nails it when he says you want to do the small things like face pulls, back hyperextensions, the glute medius work to stabilize the pelvis.
02:18:11Those little things allow you to do the big things for much longer.
02:18:14Mm-hmm.
02:18:15People will say, oh, that stuff is like namby-pamby stuff.
02:18:17You need to do just your squats and deadlifts and split squats.
02:18:21And yeah, the way you do those things into your 50s, like me, with, yeah, I had this little shoulder thing, but no biggie, is, and continue to get stronger, is by doing the little things.
02:18:33Mm-hmm.
02:18:34And if you do the little things, you stay strong and healthy.
02:18:37If you don't, you are the person who's complaining about your back, who can't deadlift, or you're using a deadlift bar with like elevated handles from plates.
02:18:45You know, you're, you know, it's not, not good.
02:18:47It's, it's, it's just, you're, you're becoming weaker through negligence, which is, it's excusable, but it takes three minutes to do some hyperextensions.
02:18:59For most educated people as well that are into their training, they know that what they're doing is trading short-term gain for long-term fragility, because they've got five minutes left at the end of their session.
02:19:14And they're going to go and do another set of bicep curls instead of going to go and do some hyperextensions or whatever, right?
02:19:21Like it's, it's always a trade off.
02:19:23And there's a level of ignorance where you're allowed to not do the thing that you didn't know you were supposed to do.
02:19:28Mm-hmm. Totally.
02:19:29But for most people that listen to you and listen to me, like my brother, you know that you should be doing lower back work.
02:19:35You know that you should be doing some mobility work.
02:19:37You know that you should be getting your heart rate above 170.
02:19:39You know that you should be going low and slow.
02:19:41You know you need to be walking after meals, the 10-minute walk, postprandial thing.
02:19:45Like, you know these things.
02:19:47Yeah.
02:19:48Ignorance is no longer an excuse for you.
02:19:50Oh, it's all out there.
02:19:51I mean, especially since, and I talk about mobility in the book, it's basically get your knee behind your, each knee behind your glutes at least once per day.
02:19:57Like a couch stretch?
02:19:58Well, yeah.
02:19:59Like a couch stretch, like Kelly Starrett talks about.
02:20:01Or just a lunge where you're stretching your hip flexors out.
02:20:03Because sitting, walking, almost everything is like knee in front of the glutes, right?
02:20:07Yep.
02:20:08You could skip like Stu McMillan, but then you have to have the confidence to be a skipper.
02:20:12Are you sitting and holding?
02:20:13Is this more like a yin yoga type position?
02:20:15Yeah, you could do it.
02:20:16You might talk about just getting your knee behind your glutes or your foot up on a chair or a stool and stretching that out if you're at the airport or something.
02:20:22How long?
02:20:23I'll do, you know, 10 seconds per side, three times per side.
02:20:26Yep.
02:20:27You want to try and squat down once per day, as I talked about, like sumo squat.
02:20:29Yep.
02:20:30Put elbow on inside one knee and then looking up, being able to look up from the squatted position, point directly overhead.
02:20:37Most people can't do this right away.
02:20:38They have to, you know, start here and gradually, you know, over a week or so, get to the point where they can look straight up at their finger.
02:20:46And then you want to be able to do it to the other side too, right?
02:20:49But what are you doing here?
02:20:50You're getting stretching through neck, thoracic, spine, shoulder.
02:20:53It's not, look, they're great mobility programs, but most people don't make the time or have the time.
02:20:58These are the minimum, right?
02:21:00You do the squatting things.
02:21:02You do a couple of those.
02:21:03Then I talk about doing reverse, what gymnasts would call like, kids would call like the crab pose where you're in a reverse tabletop.
02:21:11You know, you can push up for shoulder extension.
02:21:14I don't have like excessively good shoulder extension, but I can get my shoulders behind me.
02:21:18No problem.
02:21:19You know, you have horrible shoulder extension.
02:21:21Okay.
02:21:22So working on that a little bit gradually.
02:21:23And then there's something in there that I didn't develop, which is called, which I, which is really cool called the founder's pose.
02:21:30And I describe it there.
02:21:31It's from, it looks a little bit like a chair sit in yoga, but it's actually for the posterior chain.
02:21:37And I talk about that.
02:21:38And that's described there.
02:21:39It's someone else's creation.
02:21:40I want to be clear.
02:21:41And I credit him.
02:21:42It was really, really cool.
02:21:44And those four things take, you know, five minutes to do maximum.
02:21:48You can do them anywhere.
02:21:49You can do them watching Netflix.
02:21:50You can do them at your desk.
02:21:51You can do them spread throughout the day to maintain some level of mobility.
02:21:55The other thing is use a full range of motion in your resistance training sets.
02:22:00Strength is gained through the range it's trained.
02:22:02Oh, that's good.
02:22:03I like that.
02:22:04Full range of motion and holding tension on the stretched position.
02:22:08Not, you know, indefinitely, right?
02:22:09Don't turn it into an isometric, but, you know, really like on your hamstring curls, making sure that you're setting the machine such that on your seated or lying leg curls, you're really holding tension in the stretch, not passively stretching.
02:22:21And I find like my range of motion is pretty darn good.
02:22:24It's not amazing.
02:22:25You know, I was real stiff for a bit in my mid back and I did some work to get over that.
02:22:31You just move better.
02:22:32You'll feel better.
02:22:33You'll be more comfortable.
02:22:34So, yes, I think that what you're pointing out that there's really no excuse for people once they have the knowledge gets to a deeper psychology.
02:22:42I don't want to parse this, you know, infinitum, but there are two things that I think are worth stating out loud.
02:22:50One is that if you're somebody who's in pursuit of taking care of yourself and doing well, there are going to be people that say like, you're doing all this stuff all the time.
02:22:59You're doing all this stuff all the time.
02:23:00Like, what is this?
02:23:01These are the people that when I would go to scientific meetings would give me shit for not drinking on the first night.
02:23:06I had a rule.
02:23:07I don't go out the first night.
02:23:08But you find me on night three of a five day meeting and all day I'm rocking and like I'm engaged.
02:23:14I'm learning.
02:23:15I'm not at a meeting to socialize, but I do some of it.
02:23:17But I'm learning.
02:23:19I'm getting techniques.
02:23:20I'm there to work.
02:23:21Okay.
02:23:22And they're talking about their hangover.
02:23:23They look like garbage.
02:23:24And over the years that accumulates for them and it accumulates for me in a positive way.
02:23:28So people will give you a hard time for exercise and they'll give you a hard time for taking good care of yourself.
02:23:35And I do think that the other thing is there is a certain loneliness that comes with being the person who's really diligent.
02:23:42It's a different community of people that I can call at 7:00 AM and go, you want to work out?
02:23:49And it's like, you might say, hey, listen, I was up way too late.
02:23:51Or you might say, yeah, let's go.
02:23:53Your friend group changes.
02:23:55I mean, I have a friend who used to work with people from like really troubled backgrounds.
02:23:59And he would say like somebody would occasionally make it out of that world and just leave completely.
02:24:04But many times they would get themselves into all sorts of financial and social messes because they would continue to like kind of revert to this world they grew up in.
02:24:14You've heard me talk about this lonely chapter thing, right?
02:24:16Like this is the whole idea behind that, that there is a period where you are so developed that you don't resonate with your old set of friends, but not yet sufficiently developed.
02:24:24That you built your new one and you keep looking back and you're tempted.
02:24:27I think Martha Beck calls this the empty elevator.
02:24:30Oh, interesting.
02:24:31You're just, you know.
02:24:32Between floors.
02:24:33Between floors.
02:24:34That's beautiful.
02:24:35Yeah, the empty elevator.
02:24:36Yeah.
02:24:37And then you get there and you realize, well, there are other people who've also felt lonely, who are now in this place, who are doing cool things.
02:24:43And it takes a strength of character to say, no, I'm not going to do that.
02:24:47And yes, I'm going to do this.
02:24:49And, and to also not be defiant and also still be able to go to Thanksgiving and still, yeah, you don't.
02:24:54And better than you.
02:24:55Exactly.
02:24:56It's not about better or worse.
02:24:57It's just different.
02:24:58And that I think that people fear being lonely.
02:25:04And I understand, like, I get it.
02:25:05You know, you're drinking buddies or you're, you're eating lousy food buddies.
02:25:09The first night we land in a city, my team always likes to go out to dinner.
02:25:13I'm always in the hotel taking care of myself because I want to have the full week of vigor.
02:25:20And they do great, but they're younger than I am.
02:25:22We'll see.
02:25:23We'll see that because we're going to be in New York together next week.
02:25:26Last time that we spoke, you were telling me that you were teaching an octopus to use an iPad.
02:25:30Yeah.
02:25:31How's that going?
02:25:32She died.
02:25:34But she died because.
02:25:36She electrocuted?
02:25:37No, she, she died because she laid eggs and they die after they lay eggs.
02:25:42So they live about two years.
02:25:44You bought a pregnant octopus.
02:25:45Yeah.
02:25:46No, no.
02:25:47Well, they lay eggs and then the eggs get fertilized by a male and then they die.
02:25:50This is the life cycle of the octopus.
02:25:52So I didn't know how old she was when I got her.
02:25:54They don't tell you.
02:25:55It's hard to, to, to know.
02:25:57And you have some sense, but yeah, she was in her second year.
02:26:01So she, she was really cool.
02:26:03Yeah.
02:26:04Yeah.
02:26:05Fuck.
02:26:06I thought it was a male, but that was pure projection.
02:26:09Right.
02:26:10Um, and then I named him Van Gogh cause he was a starry night octopus.
02:26:14Okay.
02:26:15Yeah.
02:26:16Um, and.
02:26:17Didn't you replace with a new one?
02:26:18That one died too.
02:26:19Um.
02:26:20Maybe you shouldn't have kids.
02:26:21No, no.
02:26:23Fucking strum is like looking around all the time.
02:26:26Like just waiting.
02:26:27The.
02:26:28The.
02:26:29Both of these octopuses were old.
02:26:30They were old.
02:26:31Okay.
02:26:32Yeah.
02:26:33They were, they were.
02:26:34Have you given up on the octopus thing for now?
02:26:35No.
02:26:36Heck no.
02:26:37Okay.
02:26:38I have a new tropical tank.
02:26:39I got the dog.
02:26:40I got the other, uh, freshwater tank.
02:26:41Hell no.
02:26:42Um, but I need to get a younger octopus.
02:26:45Okay.
02:26:46Like a purebred newborn on a puppy octopus.
02:26:50I just need, I need either a male octopus or I need a younger octopus.
02:26:55I can't believe that you weren't able to discern whether or not you bought a male or a female.
02:26:58Like who the fuck are you getting this from?
02:27:00Um.
02:27:01Some bloke on Venice Beach.
02:27:02I swear.
02:27:03No, I get them legally, but, um, let's just put it this way.
02:27:06Their fate would have been far worse if they hadn't come to me.
02:27:09Right, right, right, right.
02:27:10Yeah.
02:27:11Salvaged an octopus.
02:27:12I've not done that yet, but I will say that, um, Van Gogh was spectacularly smart and,
02:27:19um, would sit down in front of the coral and mimic the coral.
02:27:23It was awesome.
02:27:24It was, it was so cool.
02:27:25Um, they're a little bit sadistic, which is a little bit troubling.
02:27:28I think we should probably talk about this so I can get over it.
02:27:31Um, we're in that like second phase of the trauma thing, um, in all seriousness.
02:27:35Like the weird thing about octopuses, they're a little bit of like drama queens, um, because
02:27:41they're, they play with you.
02:27:42So like I, I would hand feed Van Gogh and she would take the fish and sometimes she would
02:27:47just eat the fish, you know, and give it to her on a forceps.
02:27:50And other times she would take it and she'd stuff it against the glass of the aquarium and
02:27:56slowly eat the, eat the fish, then take a nap halfway through.
02:28:00And I was like, oh my God, these octopuses are pretty brutal.
02:28:03Kind of ruthless.
02:28:04Yeah.
02:28:05And then sometimes she would just like play with it, you know, and that's rough.
02:28:08You know, a dog is a benevolent creature.
02:28:10They're gonna eat their food.
02:28:11That's it.
02:28:12A cat will play with its prey.
02:28:13Cephalopods are motherfuckers.
02:28:15I, I like cephalopods.
02:28:17I like cuttlefish.
02:28:18I had those for years, kept those alive for a long time, by the way.
02:28:21Congratulations.
02:28:22Thank you.
02:28:23Um, so it was a little disturbing to see the octopus, um, sadistically play with and partially
02:28:32eat its food.
02:28:33That's funny.
02:28:34Yeah.
02:28:35We don't like to think about the animal kingdom that way, but if you look at nature is metal,
02:28:38that account.
02:28:39Yeah.
02:28:40That'll, that'll teach you some stuff pretty quick.
02:28:41Uh, you got to get on a plane, my brother.
02:28:43I do?
02:28:44I love you to bits.
02:28:45Do you get on a plane?
02:28:46Yeah.
02:28:47You got to get on a plane.
02:28:48One day.
02:28:49Uh, sorry.
02:28:50On Tuesday, I'm going to be in New York.
02:28:51You'll be there.
02:28:52We'll do.
02:28:53We'll try and get Rick and a couple of other people.
02:28:54So we could do a wrap up.
02:28:55So, well, I should just properly say, um, I should say thank you for hosting me.
02:29:00Um, grateful for your friendship.
02:29:02Thanks for supporting me through this book for taking my calls at odd hours.
02:29:06My sanity.
02:29:07Thanks for supporting my, restoring my sanity.
02:29:09And, um, I'm so glad we're neighbors.
02:29:11Me too.
02:29:12And, um, fun to work out with you this morning.
02:29:14Yeah.
02:29:15You're the best.
02:29:16Where should people go to get the book?
02:29:17Uh, protocols, book.com will put links to all the places you can buy books and different
02:29:21books in different languages.
02:29:22The audio book is read by me and my voice.
02:29:25It's 19 hours long.
02:29:27Um, but you can hop to a particular section, learn what you want to learn, and then put
02:29:32it away.
02:29:33Come back to it anytime.
02:29:34Question.
02:29:35Question.
02:29:36I like to ask authors.
02:29:37What is an insight from the book, either an intervention or an area or something that
02:29:42you think most people are going to skip over, but you wish that they didn't?
02:29:46The wacky eye movement thing to fall back asleep.
02:29:49Oh, we talked about that last time that we were together.
02:29:51Yeah.
02:29:52Yeah.
02:29:53I think people would think it's too crazy, but it's, but it costs nothing and it works and
02:29:56it will get you back to sleep because it confuses your body awareness system.
02:30:00You need to forget where your limbs are.
02:30:01It is really fucking like dizzying when you do it.
02:30:05It, it, you need to forget about your body position in order to fall asleep.
02:30:10That's a prerequisite to falling asleep.
02:30:11So that will help.
02:30:12I think the one that people will skip over, frankly, is the personal development thing around
02:30:20how to finally let go of the difficult things that are, you're still carrying forward.
02:30:27You know, I can say 15 minutes of journaling on the hard thing one day, and then subsequently
02:30:32on three more days, the data from Pennebaker and others show conclusively, it's a super powerful
02:30:38technique, but people just don't do it.
02:30:40And we should ask ourselves, why don't they do it?
02:30:42And I think, cause the thing is hard.
02:30:43And also nowadays getting people to write for 15 minutes is tough.
02:30:47I learned a lot about focus, overcoming procrastination and scruffing oneself into doing hard things
02:30:54and writing this book.
02:30:55And I thought I was pretty good at doing it.
02:30:56When I, when I have to write someone a card, like if it's someone's birthday or whatever,
02:31:00I realize I haven't done this in some physically writing a thing.
02:31:03I haven't done this in so long.
02:31:04I've basically forgotten how to do it.
02:31:06But Peterson, before he did 12 rules and then 12 more, there's 24 there.
02:31:11The original answer, the original place that that was born out of was a list of 44 rules
02:31:17on Quora.
02:31:18Do you remember that place?
02:31:19It was a website where people could answer questions.
02:31:21And somebody asked Jordan, what are your rules for a good life or something like that.
02:31:25And he just listed 40 that include like pet a cat when you see it on the street, don't
02:31:29bother children when they're skateboarding, don't let your children do anything that means
02:31:33that you don't like them, et cetera, et cetera.
02:31:35And one of his that I remember from that was, um, uh, if memory still upset you, full comma,
02:31:41write them down, full stop.
02:31:42And it's like so much of this stuff is pointing in the same direction.
02:31:45Dude, you're awesome.
02:31:46Book's fantastic.
02:31:47I'm glad that you're not insane, but you are a little bit short sighted now.
02:31:50Um, I'll see you in New York next week.
02:31:52Thanks so much, Chris.
02:31:53You're a gentleman, a scholar, and a beast.
02:31:55Uh, big love.
02:31:56Goodbye, my beauties.
02:31:57Dude.
02:31:58Dude.
02:31:59Thank you.
02:31:59Congratulations.
02:32:00You made it to the end of a podcast episode without dying.
02:32:04Here's another one
02:32:05Go on, watch it
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