The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)

Hello everybody welcome back to the show 2024 is nearly over so I decided to put together a compilation of some of my favorite moments from the show over the last year it was going to be a top 10 uh but I couldn't choose so it's 11 11 favorite moments expect to learn Andrew huberman's best advice on how to become a mour person why Oliver burkeman thinks you should stop trying to control your life the reason Eric Weinstein believes more young men are becoming right-wing Dr Mike Israel's most important advice for choosing muscle building exercises Alex homo's advice on why everything worth doing is hard and much more I appreciate all of you this show has been insane and tough and beautiful uh and all of the things and if you haven't done your end of your review yet you can go to Chris willll x.com review it's a free annual review template that helps you to reflect on lessons from last year and plan what you want to get done next year it's the exact template that I use and I updated it I updated it from last year to this year so there's tons in there uh it's so cool getting to revisit these old episodes uh a lot of stuff that aren't just the biggest moments from the biggest episodes but underground clips and sections 10 15 minutes that uh maybe you missed and perhaps there is something that you forgot that you wish that you hadn't and anyway I'll stop talking we can get into it happy New Year have you seen the data showing the movement of teenage boys politically to the right you been looking at this where else are they going to go it's a good question I mean I I had a teenage boy I still have one but he's 18 now and I watched them be pushed farther and farther right by their schools you suck all of your instincts are bad these girls are amazing look at you you're pathetic be less masculine and more attractive you're just barking at them constantly they're not moving right they're moving out of your stupid way you've given them what nothing nothing one of my son's friends died recently by his own hand and I don't know what kind of pressures he was put under but I watched those kids go through this pressure cooker created by this crazy parasitized left-wing educational movement get away from our sons get away from our daughters get away from our sons and away from our daughters it's not left or right I don't have a republican bone in my body get the crazy people who do not understand human development away from our children stop giving our daughter's terrible life advice but like um that's one of these mgrm questions what am I supposed to say um let me speak abstractly so we don't get distracted with stupid stuff gender is about reproduction and it's paired and there's nothing you're going to do that's as good as the male female pairing that produces families yes there's a ton of problems with it there's a ton of problem with traditional femininity with traditional masculinity I actually believe that toxic masculinity used to mean something before it meant nothing right now we are allowing our children to be parented by people who should be nowhere close to a child because development for humans is different we're not like Wilder Beasts where you come out with programming where you can walk on day one we're basically not blank slates but self- assembling computers and what you put into a developing mind um you know what normal child trying to figure out gender identity um does not go through a process trying to figure out oh I like that dress do I want to marry somebody who's wearing it or do I want to wear it myself that's a normal process that you go through in development and if a parent hears that they usually you know try to guide natural gender identity now what happens when an administrator says oh he said he wanted to wear a dress he's a girl everybody respect his choice you're thinking wait wait wait what you took a moment that happens in every boy's life and you turned it into a trans affirmation moment and then you tried to like freeze it in and let me guess you really just want to protect something which is great some people want to protect trans kids trans kids exist they have life very hard on them okay let's ask how many trans kids got manufactured by this Dei movement versus how many would occur naturally and you have type one and type two error you have a trans kid who was always going to be a trans kid that wasn't properly treated that's terrible I agree with the Dei people about that you have another collection huge collection of normal kids who are never going to be trans and you push them towards this I had J Michael Bailey on the show who his paper on rogd rapid onet gender dysphoria yeah uh was pulled very very rare that this happen happens uh and I learned during my research for that about the left-handedness argument for both gay and transsexual people so in the Middle Ages it was seen as being a mark of Witchcraft or being touched by the devil that you were left-handed which meant that people who were hid their left-handedness yeah I think about 12% maybe of the population is Left-Handed something like that but during the Middle Ages uh it was sign signicantly less the uh ceiling gets released and people are free to be their true left-handed selves and more people become left-handed I I can now fully manifest that forward and that is an argument that gets put forward a lot for well now that we have released the lid on the pressure cooker that was tamping down People's Natural trans or gay proclivities or whatever they're now free to be themselves but that doesn't explain why gender dysphoria appears to occur in clumps it's not evenly distributed across all you you linked two things that I think have to be unlined we are fighting the last war because we got male homosexuality wrong I'm old enough to remember when it was a lifestyle choice right and I had gave friends in college who it's not a choice you know it's like a quiet I didn't choose this um we're lumping a bunch of stuff together I don't think male homosexuality has almost anything to do with female homosexuality I think calling them both homosexuality is very confusing there's something that seems much more obligate about male homosexual it's highly conserved I don't think it's unnatural I think it's it's part of the design of humans and we haven't quite figured out why it's there I don't disagree but I think the left-handed argument makes sense when it comes to homosexuality but not when it comes to the trans issue no it makes sense in both but the size of the effect is the problem you're claiming I have no doubt that there were some people who had transgendered brains who were closeted uh you know transvestites and and they had a closet somewhere in the basement where they got to be them their true selves no question that that exists the issue is that you created an enormous amount of like type two error so you could go after a much smaller amount of type one error you created all sorts of negative stuff by not balancing type one and type two and that's unforgivable you're not actually the defender you think you are you're somebody who's destroying some lives to privilege others and why have you made that decision I completely agreed with you like I I won't say there are only two genders you know why because it's not true in humans yeah two genders or two Sexes well first of all the gender and sex used to be largely snonymous before we decided that one was in some sense obligate uh biological and the other was software programming well that was a lexical game that was believe in the 1950s that was played to try and bate theam yeah but you can you can make an argument that you need a term I don't think the gender should be purposed for that but you could make a an argument that just like abstracting male and female into top and bottom had some utility right okay so what do you mean when you talk about that intersex is an really important category to me I know people who are interex and they're they're screwed they were screwed because our society had no way of dealing with them the gender binary is so strong that somebody through zero fault of anybody is born with ambiguity in their genitalia and their chromosome something so yes there are two intended Sexes or genders but nature isn't good enough to hit that Mark all the time and those are those are human beings those are souls and and and the sloppy right-wing thing which is to find the shelling point where you just sit there and you say there are only two Sexes and two genders I understand why you're doing it you're trying to stop this crazy conversation that's taken off so it's not like I don't have sympathies with why you're saying that but when I bring up you know my favorite example is persistent muan duct syndrome where somebody goes into their doctor having trouble having a kid and it's like well you have Twigs and berries but you've also got a uterus you're female does that person produce both sperm and eggs no right actually that's the definition that is the that is the line in the ground around male and female large gametes yeah but sorry the gentleman who goes into his doctor and to find out that he's got a uterus who is he if he wants to be male I understand why he wants to be male if he wants to be able to talk about the fact that he got handed some very strange cards by uh by the Creator and her Infinite Wisdom um I want him or her however that person conceives of self to be that's that's a soul to me and I don't like the energy of saying there are only two Sexes and two genders and that's it it's like I get it I understand what you're trying to do you're trying to say that there are two intended sexes in genders it's reproductive it's nature I get it it depends on how we're going to Define sex because if it comes down to gamet size that's that is binary sure okay but what do you do about the edge Cate the edge case but no one's producing both so there are none I don't know that nobody's producing both maybe that's a fact you know usually the issue is is that you have this this list of homologues right so that the clitoris maps to the penile shaft and the labium Majora map to the testicles what you're doing is you're taking a common female template I believe and you're treating it through the SR Cascade uh differently during development so that the default is female but you also have this ability uh through this one protein to create a Cascade that creates male out a female okay that doesn't always work out now you've got an ambiguous situation and you've got a a culture that basically can't think in ambiguities that's where a lot of this frustration with the gender binary comes from is that you you know somebody in this in a category where they're not really one thing or the other at a hardware level I I believe that Beyond that there's also a software level there are people with male brains and female bodies and and conversely I don't understand this stuff but I believe that that's true if you ever have the opportunity to interview Dedra mclusky who used to be I think Dennis mclusky very famous economist I had the pleasure of speaking with her a while back and um you know one of the things that she said was that she wasn't doing this to be Hotsy totsi she was going to she wanted wanted to die a an old lady not an old man it wasn't it wasn't a sex thing it was just the fact that she'd been uncomfortable in a male body her whole life so I'm using the term her do I have to use the term no no I could use the term him or his but why would you do that don't don't you have enough compassion that somebody ruined their family life and went through hell and in public because it was so painful to be in the wrong body I get it okay now you have that compassion and how many lives are you going to ruin over that how many lives are you going to ruin pretending that this is an enormous cohort so to the extent that I have a slogan and I basically never speak about trans My slogan is make trans accepted and rare make it rare means use the developmental environment in order to give good coaching about male strategies and female strategies for life don't relitigate the fact that we screwed up male homosexuality just take your lumps we screwed it up it's a part of The Human Condition it's never going to go away it's different from female homosexuality almost certainly we don't exactly know why it's here we've been blessed with Untold riches uh particularly in the mimetic realm from male homosexuals it is what it is and now we're going to refight this over trans where no I think you have tremendous opportunities through development to assign behaviors is the skirt a female object no the Lungi in South Asia is a skirt men wear it I have a Lungi it's like telling a Scottish person that he's a he's he's crossdressing what are you an idiot you ever you ever dealt with a Scotsman you do not want to make that mistake they will let you know very quickly who they are um we're out of our minds we're out of our mind Minds we're creating so much misery for these young men and young girls and and you know it just it makes me upset because we don't love our children enough we we don't love our children enough to tell these teachers hands off my kids go work out your weird stuff I get it but get away from our children you're going to lose sleep you'll doubt whether it'll work you'll stress press to make ends meet you won't finish your to-do list you'll wonder whether you made the right call and have no way to know for yours this is what hard feels like and that's okay everything worth doing is hard and the more worth doing it is the harder it is the greater the payoff the greater the hardship if it's hard good it means no one else will do it more for you I think a lot of Entrepreneurship and even personal growth is training yourself on how you respond to hard because in the early days hard was ooh stop this isn't good I should I should this is a warning sign this is a red flag I should slow down or I should stop you know I should pivot but the more I think about it as a competitive landscape as I'm clear on what this path is supposed to look like and these rocks and these dragons are things that I'm going to have to slay along the way to get the princess or get the treasure I get happier about the harder it is because I know that no one else will follow it's a selection effect and I think if you can if you can shift from this is hard to no one else will be able to do this then it it's it flips from being this thing that you're like oh poor me to oh poor everyone else who's going to have to [ __ ] try and I think that is so much more motivating as a frame for the exact same circumstance yeah that's awesome I was thinking a lot about the lonely chapter that we talked about last time that was the best most powerful idea I think that we came up with and if you see there basically being no shortcuts toward getting the thing that you want there are ways to be more and less efficient and there are ways to do things with more and less of a positive disposition which can actually make the journey feel an awful lot easier but ultimately if you assume that largely everyone needs to go through the same challenges that you're going through every single difficult thing that you do is kind of like a mass wall that you need to get over and you go wow [ __ ] I'm so glad that I've got over that wall and think about how many people are going to be selected out it's like the Hunger Games you know think about how many other people are going to fall that wall there people only root for people who don't need it like the amount of times when I was on my lonely path where I was too different from the friends that I had but not successful enough to be friends with the people that I wanted to be friends with that's when that's when you want people to root for you that's when you want people to support you once you've already won people are like he's amazing he's so good but like that's the time when you need it the least and so you always have to be the person who roots for you before everyone else does and it's usually a single clap in the auditorium for a very long period of time it is a slow clap that's just you rooting for you um and that visual I think is one that you can kind of take because it is people struggle to do things alone and the path of the exceptional person is one of an exception which means that you are not with other people and rather than fighting that or boning it see it as an indicator that you're on the right path because if everyone else were cheering you on then it means you're not in the right place because it means you're just like everyone else and that's not where you want to be it's an interesting Paradox that the energy it requires to start doing something is way more than the energy required to continue doing the thing and that the beginning of doing anything results in the lowest amount of reward both internal and external than when you've been doing it for ages so I think about this a lot with the show that there was this stat that Spotify told us 85% of the listeners of this show found this in 2023 right and I thought at the end of 2022 remembering at that point I'd been on Rogan we were at like 650k we've got you know we've been doing 550 600 episodes deep yeah like I'm I've got it I've done the thing like this is this is me doing if this isn't [ __ ] doing the thing I've moved to Austin Texas I've got an 01 Visa I've got like the all the rest of the stuff Jordan Peterson's been on twice you've been on and yet the what everything up until that point is two months of growth yeah I mean we made we made more money for just from a revenue perspective we made more money and more subs in one month December of last year than we did in the entire first three and a half years of the show so it's this odd Paradox and one of the things that you need to ensure I've had this idea about protect your passion at all costs because if you if you begin to hate the thing that you do you negatively change your trajectory and that means that at the time when you can benefit the most by every single unit of work which is the later that you go presuming that you continue to hit that upper trajectory if you've completely killed any passion or desire to do the work in the early stages because you've you've not protected it appropriately that can be by focusing on the wrong things by not rewarding yourself by not building it with people that care about you by you know just not not celebrating when you hit Milestones all of the things that actually help to keep you going being a character by the time that you get to the stage where each unit of effort allows you to gain a thousand or a million of each of the things that it would have done at the very beginning you've inverted the uh like the passion equation takes way more energy to start a thing than to continue doing a thing and yet in the beginning the rewards are way lower than they are at the end but if you don't protect your passion your motivation is at its lowest when you were at your highest amount of efficiency in terms of returning your time put in I think a hopeful message that anyone can think about who's about who's in that hard period or in that start period is that it won't get harder like this is the hardest part and so if you can just make it through this everything else is downhill it's not that the things that you're the dragons are going to slay aren't going to get bigger they are but you become so much more equipped to slay them back and you have so many more allies you have people on the stands cheering for you you have the audience you have all of these other things that are behind you but in the beginning it's just you with a stick against a bear and arguably that fight is a harder fight to win than beating a dragon when you have a nuclear bomb and Six Nations behind you and so it's not even like the the size of the hardship it's just also the resource and how few of them you have and how so much of the beginning is literally burning the one thing you have which is time because you have no leverage you don't have the money to pay other people to help you you don't have the resources to go like get someone to to you no one can learn it for you it's like there's a lot of the things that that we care about a lot like no one can work out for you doesn't matter how much money you have no one can learn skills for you and so in the early days like it feels so painful because you're like you look around to see who can help you and then you're like [ __ ] it's me again and I think getting comfortable with the idea that each of these things kind of like Slum Dog Millionaire if you've seen that movie where he I'll give you the tldr he goes through his entire life of Randomness and he gets on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire version in India and has 12 questions to make a million dollars and from only 12 random experiences in his life that seemed meaningless at the time was he able to answer all of the questions and then ultimately win the skills that you develop along the way like Steve Jobs learning calligraphy that then became Apple fonts that you know transformed how we type those early days that little trench winning in the weeds often times gives you these huge advantages later on because you have more context than anyone else and so rather than lament them and hate the fact that you're going through it remembering that these will be arrows that you put in the quiver that you're going to be using to slay the future bigger dragons and so expecting it to be easy is what makes it much harder than it ever is I've always loved earning my stripes with the things that I've done whether it was with NTI or running the podcast or doing whatever and I think there's like a degree of nobility to it but functionally that's kind of that's just like it's a nothing like what the where do the is the nobility but I think the reason that you can feel Noble about it and the reason that it gives you a positive reward is you know that you understand every single inch of the things and that if you want to hold a conversation we went out for dinner with our new CFO and and accounts people on Saturday they said you ask a lot of questions most people don't ask very many questions and I also don't care at all about accounts really like I'm not doing this for money but they said you ask a lot of questions I said well I don't ever really want to walk into a room and not be able to hold my own at least just competently if it's to do with something that I care about the same thing goes for this like I I started to learn about focal lengths and frame rates and negative fill reverse contrast lighting and then sure enough two years after we started doing it a bunch of different I sent you the Instagram thing like this really awesome film Instagram that I've been following for ages picked us up for what we were doing and gave us props independent of the talkie thing which is fundamentally what we're here for and we created this entire new industry of like cinematic podcasting which was recognized by as far as I'm aware like the best cinematic it's called film lights at filmlight people can go and see it on Instagram like the best decoder and analyzer of cinematography and two years ago when we started I remember thinking [ __ ] like I love the way that they've broken down what happens in adastra oh my God the whole thing was shot on 35 M each different scene's got two pairings of colors and stuff like that and then but the reason that we were able to get there at least in some part is I can have a conversation with people so each of the things that you do when you not only win in the weeds but live in the weeds then allows you Downstream from that to see the things that other people aren't seeing there's a quote that I love from Dr cash I'll probably butcher it but experts have more ways to win than beginners do and so if an expert goes into any setting that they're expert in they have so many faster feedback loops that reward them in the moment before the ultimate outcome so if you're a master video editor there's so many things that you can do that while editing you make one change and then it looks right you have a positive feedback loop and so I think when you're on the start path you can't look at the outcome as The only positive because you will never make it and so the positive frame that I've always used is sure you can have the external ones of like I like thinking about my first videos had like 13 views and I'm like well if if I had an audience of 13 people I used to spend years pitching you know weight loss stuff to rims of 13 and that was fine and so thinking about that way was helpful but the the most helpful frame was thinking about who I was becoming as the asset that I was building so in real time whenever I finished a Long Day's Work I was becoming more like the type of person who could work for 5 years without reward and that would be part of the story I would someday tell and some some of the biggest reinforces I've had in my life has been futurecasting the story that I would tell about the shitty period that I was in like I remember when I was sleeping on the floor at my gym cuz I didn't have enough money for two rents and I was like I will [ __ ] tell this story and when I lost everything for the first time I like I have the screenshot of the bank account like when I show it people are like oh look there's that thing but they forget that there was a person who screenshotted it to be like this won't [ __ ] happen again and I think having a larger Narrative of where you're ultimately going one gives you the vision of where you're like the ru like knows where he's going but it allows the dragons that you have to slay along the way the hard things that you have to overcome to feed into the larger Narrative of who of the story that you'll someday tell and so like no one ever tells stories about the hero who made it all happen immediately and had no hardships no one cares right like okay you were born to a billionaire is there a story there not really but everyone loves the story because we can see ourselves in the character and how much we hope to be like them and it's the being like them not the having what they have that we usually like and so reframing ourselves as the hero of that narrative in my harder times was what really got me through that and thinking I will tell this story someday have you heard Rogan talk about the be the hero of your own story thing oh dude it his old now I think this is maybe maybe even 10 years old maybe 10 years old um and he's in one of his old old he's in the LA podcast studio and he says imagine that you're in a movie and imagine the movie begins now and you're the hero of the movie yeah what would that guy do yeah what would that guy do right now yeah because you are I just got into business um so actually just made the investment in school um and I was talking to Sam the founder and I said well what sim sam Sim what's Sim Sim that's the way he says his oh yeah um and I was and I was talking to him and I said I want to give you the single easiest razor to predict my behavior and I said whatever will be the most epic story is the thing that I will most likely do and so often times the most epic story is not the shortest outcome to Victory it's the long Saga that results in this big thing later eventually and and I was like if you ever want to know if you're like I'm not sure what he's going to do in this situation just wonder what the most epic story to tell would be and that's usually what I will do and I don't know if that's self-aggrandizing but that's that's genuinely my Razor for even making the like the big decisions about okay I'm going to sell gym launch I'm going to I'm going to marry Lila I'm going to slum it and live at the gym I'm going to fly around and do turnarounds I'm going to start this whole idea of Media company that just gives exclusively like how do like how do I put all these together it's like well what would be the most epic story and I thought of this idea of just like when I think about who that story I want to tell is is this billionaire that documented the entire thing the whole way and just gave because I always thought I was like I wish that Elon Musk and and Warren Buffett and all these guys would have like and Jeff basos like would have just like I would love to have seen 1997 Amazon content and a lot of the content in terms of like it it's getting five views it's like it's okay because when we make it they're going to come back and watch this so I don't need them to watch it today I want them to know that it's here when I do and I think that got me out of the the loop of it I have to win right now and then every one of them is just dropping uh a kernel or a bread comom for future meat to refer back to one of the first places that people are going to go to and I'm going to guess one of the most common questions that you get asked what exercises do I need to be doing yeah all of them bro right yep that's it and then I just walk away and they're like wow that guy's supposed to be smart or something like that but then they see the back of my very shiny head and it makes them happy yes okay which exercises so there is a lot to say about it but you can start with the supposition that it's whatever exercise nominally targets the muscle you want to grow so if you want bigger biceps you know some variation of doing this is probably good and and then to be honest that's maybe 80% of the answer so if a lot of people here's why I'm saying that a lot of people will look at let's say for quads they'll look at hack squats they'll look at leg presses they'll look at lunges and they'll look at regular High bar squats and they'll Vex themselves infinitely over the question of which one of these is superior which is kind of like asking you know I need to get to Austin Texas in a in in two days which airline should I take like you you ask someone who works at the airport like which airline's like really the one I should be taking they're like I mean I don't know all of them really get you there there are subtle differences but at least make sure the ticket says Austin Texas so if the exercise hits that muscle then you're good to go now there are ways of seeing which exercises hit the target muscle that you want a couple of what we RP at RP call proxies for stimulus so this is something like tension the perception of a lot of tension generated or exposed in that muscle so if you're doing chest flies and you feel a crapload of stretch and pulling in the chest that's probably good if you're doing what you think is a chest fly but you misread The Machine's instruction thing and you feel a ton of tension in your biceps or your forearms or your shoulders but you don't really honestly feel anything in the chest on a just pure physics perspective because of the mechanics of the movement your chest has to be getting some exposure but maybe you could be doing better by actually doing the exercise in a way or picking an exercise that really you feel some tension off another clue to if you're stimulating the muscle properly is the burn and that's seen in a medical context when people don't wear proper protection I know that resonates with you personally because of the conversation we had right before this I don't mean to expose you but but Chris you could just be making better choices is what I'm trying to say all theoretical I've never been with a woman as everyone who watches our YouTube knows but on a serious note the burn is in especially higher rep sets when you start feeling the accumul ation of metabolic byproducts in the Target muscle so the chest fly analogy if you're doing High rep PEC flies and at the end of that set your pecs are burning hey that's probably good you're probably getting a good stimulus there on the other hand if it's just your biceps that are burning but your pecs don't really feel much are you getting a stimulus in that exercise oh yeah sure is it guaranteed to be a really robust really good stimulus probably not because you should be feeling some combination of tension and burn and then also there's pump again none of these are mandatory but together they're kind of like puzzle pieces that take what could be a C+ exercise for you and make it an A+ exercise if you're getting all the feelings right on this so another one is pump uh how much after several sets of the workout or of the exercise how filled with fluid is your target muscle so if you're doing peack flies and after a couple of sets you know a girl walks by and you're like and she's like oh my God and she runs away uh I guess that's good even though she ran away but she ran away in a way that she obviously respected your PEC size which is the whole point of the gym but if you do a bunch of sets of something um let's say you're doing PEC flies your shoulders are pumped your biceps are pumped even your forearms look more veiny but we can honestly say your chest has changed in any visible or palpable way no doubt still train your pecs but maybe not that great another one is perturbation uh which kind of presents itself in two forms one is is that Target muscle feeling really weak so let's say you do a few pack exercises you think they're for the chest and then you try to push yourself into your car like push off your steering wheel and you feel like a profound weakness in that pack you're like oh my god um and a really good example is if you're trying to walk downstairs after you hit quads if you think you hit quads but you really hit gluten adductors you can hop skip down the stairs no [ __ ] problem are we allowed to swear in here is that not a good idea sweet um whereas if you're doing this on the handrail yes like desperately cleaning for dear life and and your legs are shaky uh another thing with perturbation is crampy none of this is ired but if your chest cramps hard when you're trying to pose after a few sets of whatever you're doing that whatever you're doing absolutely hit your chest the other thing is weakness too so if I tell you hey this Mega PEC workout what's your best bench and you're like well it's like you know 200 lbs for a set of 10 and I take you through a mega PEC workout after that if we put 200 lbs on there if you bench it for any close to 10 your pecs never got very fatigued which almost certainly means they never got very stimulated so you should see a pretty big repetition strength drop off if you can barely do a push-up after a chest workout oh [ __ ] something happened to your peex for sure especially if you feel like your chest is the kind of onus of weakness in that movement so those are all ways to kind of proxy that and I would say another one again not a huge deal not the deal but a good little additive to the mix is do you feel any kind of weakness or soreness that persists for hours or days after so for example if you do some kind of new uh quad machine at your gym and uh two days later your inner thighs are sore your glutes are physically sore your quads aren't either the way you did it which I'm sure will get to technique or just the exercise itself it says quads but it's really not quads maybe it is to some extent but you would expect if you had a novel stimulus to feel some kind of soreness but if you did something that says quads on it and then the day later you can barely walk and you're sore to the touch man you know you have to have stimulated your quads there is no alternative so all those things are in the plus- side category and any exercise that hits a bunch of those check marks for you man that's a good exercise for you and we're all different so some people respond better to pfly machines some people to dumbbells some people to cables some people to something in between whatever exercise checks those boxes for you really well it's probably good exercise for you at least for the time being we're here in a spooky field with a a car on fire and a full moon in a weird house over the far side yeah have you got any stories that fit this environment I do I do I have a really good one uh from uh out in Utah in the 1970s we don't have the names of the people involved I'm going to call them a man and a woman but you know they this is every bit their story we just don't use their names I think they actually didn't want their names used that's what I recall so back in the 1970s there was this this young guy and young girl who are the main characters of the story and they I think they met in college and they go out on this first date uh they go to a restaurant a diner and they got along fine but there wasn't any magic it was you know kind of a nothing date that they both kind of instinctively knew that this was likely not going to go anywhere Beyond this first date there's no chemistry however they both kind of intuitively noticed it and the the guy towards the end of the date when it's kind of like okay time to wrap things up now he decided to take a chance he figured what's what's what's the worst that can happen I already can tell this isn't going anywhere and he says to the to a state he says you know do you want to do something kind of unexpected you want to like go do something kind of crazy with me right now and the girl was actually like kind of taking it back she okay wa what what do you want to do and he's like well I I often times go for walks out in Provo Canyon this beautiful Canyon that's not near that's nearby it's got this amazing Trail it brings you out to this Overlook with this incredible view of the Stars like it's a really cool spot and I go there you know later in the day and no one's there and it's it's pretty cool but it's you know we're hiking in the woods in the middle of the night you know what I mean and she's like okay let's do it you know it's like suddenly the date went from going nowhere to it's kind of exciting and so now there's there's chemistry that's like they're going into the unknown together and so they they quickly leave the diner they hop in his car and it's a short drive over to the parking lot where provoc Canyon is you know he pulls into the spot there's nobody there they get out and and now there really is they're they're getting along they're kind of laughing telling jokes they're holding hands and they walk right from the parking lot onto this paved trail that goes right into the forest and so it's it's nighttime you know just a very it's a this is a this is a well this is a well-used trail this is not some Goat Trail in the middle of nowhere this is a well-used trail and so they start walking into the the forest and uh after a while and this is something they would say after the fact but we know this is what was happening as they were walking their the the the feel the vibe of the night really changed as soon as they got into the woods you know they're they're excited the states suddenly become exciting and then they get into the forest they're on the trail they're holding hands they're walking and both of them began feeling this really intense dread as they walking in but they don't know each other they just this is their first date they don't have the the background of a relationship to begin touching on something that's hard to point out you know neither of them turned to the other and said I feel uncomfortable instead they just kept their mouth shut and and thought okay I'll just keep on going so they stopped talking they begin walking faster out of this kind of nervous energy they have now they're holding hands and and they're just walking through this Trail because they're trying to get to this Overlook basically get it out of the way and come on back but it's all unspoken they haven't said boy this is anxious they just they're feeling that way and so they're walking on this Trail again surrounded by trees there's nobody else out there and it's pretty dark they don't have a flashlight and as they're basically speed walking at this point in silence at some point they hear a rustling sound kind of off to the side and at the exact same time the guy steps on something that he described as being soft and he stepped on it and he has no idea what he's stepping on no clue it's something soft and he's heard this rustling sound and they're feeling anxious and he immediately stops cuz he stepped on something and the girl she's sensing okay what's going on here and without any communication they turned and walked out didn't even look down they didn't they have no idea what's going on it was like they both knew let's get the [ __ ] out of here I don't know what's going on out here and they practically ran back to their car totally safe they get in their car and now that they're in the safety of their car they kind of began laughing about it like yeah I wonder what that was I stepped on something out there I don't know something moving around maybe there's a big animal I don't know but that was it it was just that was the whole date and actually they wound up getting married because this date was like this kind of amazing thing where they bonded over the fear of being in this this forest and so they get married and 10 years later they're at home and the TV is on it's it's tuned to to like a DAT line type of show like a a true crime show and neither of them are really watching but an an interview comes on and it's it's a journalist talking to a death row inmate it's a very famous death row inmate and he's very near his execution date and he's giving this kind of full-blown interview about you know what he did and at some point the journalist asked him was there ever a time that you almost got caught before you got caught and the serial killer is like yeah there was a time I was out in Provo Canyon and I just killed a girl and I was trying to dispose of her body and I dragged her across the trail and this young couple comes turning around the corner and they stepped on the body and I was maybe a foot away holding her looking up at them in the darkness waiting to see what they were going to do but for some reason the couple didn't look down they didn't look around they just turned and left and so that was it that was the that was the time I was got CAU and so it would turn out the guy or they had come in contact with Ted Bundy like one of the most infamous serial killers of all time who effectively said had he investigated he would have had to kill the couple it's great so they got their first tape was running into Ted Bundy wow yeah oh my God and actually I there if you're if you're interested there's several other close calls with Ted Bundy that if you Google close calls with Ted Bundy he he came close to killing people several times and it's like I don't have the vwb till there was something with the vwb I forget what it was unfortunately I don't remember all the anecdotes but there's quite a few that are that one is the most startling because it's so like visceral what happened but the others were you know this girl who almost went on a date with Ted Bundy but then got a bad feeling about it and cancelled and it like the date later he gets arrested for being Ted Bundy um stuff like or one person who Ted Bundy randomly befriended this this woman and I think they were dating for a while and he was very close with her child and it was I mean he's like in their family while he's killing other people at the same time and then he just broke up with her and moved on like he didn't do anything to her or her family while he's actively killing all these women but there for some reason he just had this normal family happy wholesome relationship with this girl for like a year and she would find out after he was executed that she was actively dating a serial killer so it's just Ted Bundy had all these weird interactions with people that have been documented but that one to me is the most startling how can people become a morning person or learn to get up early more easily and more regularly yeah um three days of pain the rest is easy so it takes about three days to shift the biological mechanisms to uh make you a morning person now if you are a very strongly genetically determined Night Owl that's a thing that's a thing so there are genetic mutations they call them polymorphisms that make some people night owls they feel best psychologically and physically going to sleep at about 1 2 or 3:00 a.m. and waking up somewhere around you know 10 11 a.m. or noon that exists not just during development or teen years but that exists not just for social reasons other people are true morning people they feel absolutely best going to sleep around 8:00 p.m. or 9:00 p.m. 10 p.m. would be late for them and they feel great waking up at 4:00 5 or 6:00 a.m. okay most people feel best going to sleep somewhere between 10: and midnight and waking up somewhere between 6:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m. or so maybe 5:30 to 8: a.m. okay so those are three bins of the Night Owl the morning person and then the more typical schedule but it's heavily weighted toward that typical schedule if you look at the general population so if somebody wants to get up earlier you need to stack the four primary what are called zeit gers or timekeepers so named because some of the early chronobiologists that discovered this stuff and the underlying mechanisms were German as it were so the number one zeit Gaber the number one way to shift your circadian clock which is this cluster of neurons that sits a few centimeters above the roof of your mouth is to view bright light at a time when you want to be awake aka the morning okay so that's why I say get outside look at the sun toward the sun don't force yourself to stare at it don't damage your eyes blink as needed no sunglasses eye glasses corrective lenses and contacts are absolutely fine even if they have UV protection okay however if you combine that with another zit Gaber the second most powerful zeit Gaber is exercise or movement so if you do some jumping jacks you skip some rope or even just take a walk while facing the sun now you're starting to stack different zeit gers and I'll explain the mechanisms in a moment if you then also add caffeine now this spits in the face a little bit of what I said a few minutes ago but if you were to add caffeine you can entrain as it's called the circadian clock to be alert at that time a bit more and I'll be honest if I'm going to exercise first thing in the morning I need caffeine I can't wait that 60 to 90 minutes if I need to jump right into exercise I find it's easiest for me to do 30 minutes after waking 3 hours after waking or 11 hours after waking and a lot of people find that the same but of course exercise when you can because it's that important but if you want to quote unquote optimize your energy levels for exercise typically people will notice that has to do with your temperature Rhythm Okay so we've got sunlight we've got exercise or movement of any kind it could be jumping jacks could be walking you don't have to do a full workout and then caffeine and in some cases food I'm not big on eating first thing in the morning I don't like to eat until 11: a.m. or noon that's when my first meal arrives for me just naturally that's when I get hungry it's all caffeine and hydration prior to that but if you were to eat something first thing in the morning you that's part of the way you entrain your circadian clock to wake up to essentially wake you up earlier and then the fourth one is a social Rhythm if you're interacting with other people you're going to entrain your clock to that as well no way yes so there's a socially there's a social component to circadian entrainment now the pathways for these are from the eye in the case of viewing light to the circadian clock the supermatic nucleus in the case of caffeine it's more General in the case of EXC size there's literally a brain stem to circadian clock connection a big super highway of neuronal connections that then so-called entrains your circadian clock remember your circadian clock generates an intrinsic 24-hour Rhythm such that if we put you into constant dark or constant light you would still sleep for a given bout and then be alert for a given bout with a little bit of a nap it just is what would call free run it would drift a little later each day this is what happens when you go to Vegas this is what happens when you're in an environment without a lot of cues about the dat uh the sunlight uh rising and setting cycle MH sunlight exercise caffeine and eating and social interactions bring your circadian clock into alignment with all of those zit gers so when I said it takes three days if tomorrow you want to start beginning the process of becoming an early riser you'd set your alarm for 5:00 a.m. no matter what time you went to sleep the night before you're going to get up and you're going to do the four things that I described maybe leave out food if you don't want to eat maybe leave out caffeine if you want to delay by 90 minutes it's going to hurt and then by the early afternoon you'll be dragging a bit and you just have to be careful to not overindulge in caffeine which will then cause you to fall asleep later then you want to go to sleep at your now naturally slightly earlier sleep time the next day you'll notice you'll it'll be a little bit easier to do the morning routine I just described and by the third day you ought to be waking up with or before the Alarm by a few minutes or moments because your circadian clock has phase shifted okay it's phase Advanced as we say your circadian clock intrinsic to you generates a 24.2 or a 24.3 hour Rhythm it's not perfectly 24 hours and that we believe we don't know but the just so story is that it's that it's such that that you're able to then shift that clock in in one or the other direction you can phase advance so you wake up earlier and go to sleep earlier you can phase delay how do you phase delay well you're probably doing this already everyone nowadays pretty much qualifies as a shift worker by the strict and not so strict criteria of shift work which is are you doing any kind of cognitive activity after 900 p.m are you viewing any kind of bright lights after 9:30 p.m. most people would say yes so the the Diabolical thing about the Circadian Timing System is that it requires a lot of bright light ideally from sunlight but a lot of bright light early in the day to make you a morning and daytime person but it requires just a little bit of bright light even from an artificial Source after the hours of about 9:30 p.m. till 4 a.m. to quash your melatonin make it difficult to sleep or if you sleep to make that sleep not as effective there's a simple remedy however which is and this is a beautiful study published in science reports in 2022 if you view sunlight in the afternoon even for 5 minutes or so could be late afternoon could be sunset take off your sunglasses look in the direction of the Sun so now looking West you adjust the sensitivity of your retina the neurons in the back of your eye such that bright light later at night doesn't have quite as much effect to suppress melatonin and it reduces the Melatonin suppressive Effects by about 50% or offsets those so I think of this afternoon viewing as well first of all it's nice to look at a sunset if you're indoors in an environment like this even if there are bright lights on get outside for a few minutes before the sun sets this is especially important in Winter even if you can't see the Sun as an object get some sunlight in your eyes and that will at least partially offset the effects of bright light in your eyes at night partially and I refer to this more or less as your Netflix inoculation so that that night you can be on your phone or watch your Netflix and it's not going to disrupt your sleep as much but it will still disrupt your sleep somewhat but let's you know unless like Rick rubin's very diligent about wearing the red lens glasses I've started doing that as well um but if you don't do that you well I'm guessing he also sees the sunset in the evening um he's very attached to for good scientific reasons uh to the sunlight thing but these are little things that take just moments right they're essentially zero cost that can really improve your sleep but that's how you become a morning person if you want to become a night person you do the opposite you view bright light between the hours of 4 P.M and 10 p.m. and there then you will phase delay or phase shift in a delayed way your Circ Ian clock making you want to wake up later the next morning I wonder if dogs count as uh social interaction absolutely and they have all of the same mechanisms we just described so I just thinking how can we stack that everything first thing in the morning morning walk yeah you if you're in a place that's not Iceland or somewhere that's super high North dog yep social interaction moving around and then caffeine if you do or if you don't if you don't but uh if you have a dog that likes to run you're even better off because it'll force you to run you have if you have an English bulldog like I did you'd be lucky if you get out of bed by bit yeah you're in their eyes are droopy they don't and um uh they don't like to move but it is the case that dogs will naturally Orient toward the sun you know and people always ask you know do dogs have the same mechanisms absolutely intrinsically photosensitive retinal gangling cells the one that project to the clock and carry all of this um thing about circadian entrainment to sunlight are present as far as we know in every extent Mamon species every Mamon species that's that's alive today um and you know this is a system that evolved from bacteria that's very similar to the opson the light absorbing molecules that are in the insect eye it's a very primordial system it's organized very differently anatomically in the retina and to me it's actually one of the more beautiful systems in in all of us in fact the one thing that no one can seem to defeat you're never going to biohack away is circadian biology this this you know fluctu 24-hour fluctuation in energy and focus you know some people require less sleep but we we're all um more or less a slave to these mechanisms and you know it's a good thing that we are because it forces us to rest neuroplasticity occurs during sleep it push down adenosine you know it takes us through these natural es and cycles of cognition I'm obsessed by the idea that in sleep you know the conscious mind obviously is not in control the unconscious mind can geyser thoughts the brain is organizing things more in terms of symbols time and space are very uh very organized very differently in dreams and there's a lot of information to be gleaned from dreams it's just that we don't yet understand what the symbols mean the kind of classic Freudian yungan um interpretations are certainly not going to be complete but you know I I'm so grateful that we get this thing called sleep and I think thanks to the great Matt Walker We Now understand that the whole thing of all sleep when I'm dead is a really dumb mindset and you know my team at the the hubman Lab podcast we sometimes joke that we win by sleeping you know when we're in the peak of things we all encourage each other to like get rest you know get rest like we really prioritize sleep it's so essential how have you learned to have a better relationship with yourself the voice inside of your head to be to be kinder if things go badly just smiling I like me I like me um I would buy me a drink I look at me now and I and I see all the warts okay I see all the negatives more than anybody else does I see the positives and over the whole balance of stuff I like me and I can give myself the same Grace if you and I were friends I can give myself the same Grace I can give you because I like me I like me in spite of my understanding and the reality of my weaknesses and my warts and my scars and everything but you know all in all I'm a pretty good dude and uh man you you got to get to that point outside of arrogance arrogance is pride mixed with ignorance all right that that's the definition of arrogance I'm not talking arrogance I'm talking about look as a human being I've failed at this I've succeeded at that I've wrecked this but I've built that and all in all you know I've tried and uh but I like me so I'm going to give me some Grace and as simple as that I would buy me a cigar I wonder how many men can say that not as many as should and wonder how many people can say that how many people say I like me they would give more grace more care more attention more love to somebody else than themselves there's a a statistic around I think on average the likelihood that you are going to complete a course of antibiotics yourself it's about 50% right the likelihood of your dog completing it is 95% yeah so we're literally capable of caring for a pet right nearly double as well as we can for ourselves remembering that if you die no one can after the pet right so in an odd roundabout way serving yourself and serving others from a cup which overflows around your own right uh or the sorcer that sits around your cup is is important uh without and again this sort of tension between being self-serving being narcissistic being egotistical being self-centered yeah but not meaning that right it's this delicate balance and this is what comes with growing up and I think this is why one size fits all flaming sword advice seems to die away as people get a little older yeah you listen to a Joe Rogan and a lot of what he's saying is hedged in some regard it's caveated it's you know it's it's this is what worked for me right not this is how everybody should do it right and uh yeah there's a humility that comes with age right right because there if you turn around and look back with open eyes at your life you see all this cars you know I mean you you can't you can't the only way you cannot be humble in old age is when you refuse to look at the reality of your life up to today I you know that's the only way because nobody's skaing through it perfectly but this is what drives this is what drives my and it's it's to it sounds ludicrous in my ears but my business Endeavors today this is the core of what drives me okay there is no business out there that I can take on there is no monetary Endeavor that I can take on that is worth the gamble of me losing me it took me years of of a lot of grief and pain and work to get to be who I am today in spite of who I was and I don't want to lose that I don't want to lose myself in business I don't want to lose myself in trying to earn a better living in trying to get a name and trying to do this it's like I have turned down I have turned down so much because I've looked at it and I've asked myself who's this going to make me be who's this going to turn me into even a little bit as it's like it's just not worth it it's just not it's not worth it and so I'm right now trying to find the balance in undertaking something that's not going to alter me that I'm not going to lose myself and then not succeeding at something because I was too afraid to try it which has never been an issue with me before I've never been afraid of failure before but now I've got something I don't want to lose and that's myself that I like a me that I actually like um I does that make any sense you 100% okay the person that you have to spend the most time talking to in your life is yourself try not to lose their respect right right and I think you know this was a lesson that I realized toward the end of my 20s where i' accumulated a lot of success and status in maybe the way that modern society tells a young man that he should with freedom and and notoriety and and and women and and stuff like that and that was cool and and like to look back on fun uh but it was beginning to get to the stage where I didn't like me all that much well I had done anything bad but I just felt like there was I was built from more I was built for different built for something else right and I realized I wasn't keeping promises to myself right that if I said I was going to wake up at a certain time the snooze button would be hit three times right if I said that I was going to stick to my diet or go to the gym or do this thing maybe it would happen but it wouldn't happen quite the way that I'd meant it to and there would be some negotiating and some cajoling and some falling short so imagine that you had a friend and every time that you invited this friend out for lunch they showed up an hour late or they didn't show up at all after a while you stop trusting them and stop inviting them out at all right well you are that friend to yourself yeah you know how can you have faith that you're going to go and do all of the things that you want in life when you can't not hit the snooze button right or you can't not cheat on your diet you can't not do you know you are constructed by the tiny decisions that you make every single day and even if you think that nobody else is watching and even if no one is is this little ticker in the back of your mind when you go to bed you know you would you were gentle with yourself when you got agitated right good yeah you were kind with the lady that looked like she was tired at Walmart you said something uh peaceful and and encouraging to her good yeah but you did these things right did something that makes you feel not so proud about yourself right and you know in some ways it's a great correcting mechanism because there is no hiding from it and right you people turn to alcohol and distraction and aggression and and depersonalization in order to deal with the fact that they don't like themselves right but ultimately you need to live with the decisions that you make you need to live with you and right there is this set of scales inside of your mind that's just balancing things all the time and if it you know you know yeah uh people and people don't know how to like themselves I mean people don't know how to like themselves but but it's not complicated tell me how' you like yourself find somebody that you like that you genuinely like and figure out what it is about them you like I like that that's something I like that person is uh they're understanding they're gentle they're hardworking they're honest there this this is this is what I like about that and incorporate that stuff into your own life if that's the stuff you like then incorporate that stuff into who you are and then you like yourself it's not rocket science you know with be there are things there are things that you like as a person that wouldn't mean anything to me there are things that you like in another person that wouldn't mean anything to me there's things that I I like in another person just because of how I'm wired and it wouldn't mean anything to you all right so that is what I like in a person so if I work at taking on those attributes it helps me become a person that I like lots of benefits of improving V2 Max what are take us through the Norwegian 4x4 again and then what else is in there if there was a protocol or a number protocols you were going to design here's a program that you can take away today into your gym and do that will help to improve your V2 Max what would you tell people I would say the Norwegian 4x4 is by far the best and you're going to get the if for the people that are really um determined and committed that would be it that would be the four minutes of the exercise intensity as hard as you can go and maintain it for that entire four minutes so obviously just dig into that what what do you mean as hard as you can go and maintain it what does that mean it means you don't want to go like fall out like like 95% of your your max heart rate um because then you can only last for like a minute you know and so so then you're going to go down you're going to you're going to slow down right so what it means is like you want to go you know it might for some people it might be like 75% max heart rate right so some people might be 80% but you want to go as hard as you can for the four minutes uh without like really slowing down so you kind of have to pace yourself a little bit but you don't want to go too slow right like you definitely can't be talking like you should not be able to talk for sure when you're doing it so it's hard enough that you just absolutely can't talk but it's not all out so four minutes four minutes and then 3 minutes of totally light like you're going all the way this is like you know you're you're like back to like Zone one if you want to call it something if your heart can come come down your heart come down yeah and you're doing that for 3 minutes because you want to give your you want to recover so that you can do it again and it and you repeat it it's a four it's a four-time protocol so you do it once and then you repeat it three times or you just call it the 4x4 I think that's probably one of the the best protocols to improve V2 Max now uh Dr Martin gabala um I've had him on my podcast he's a real expert on these high-intensity interal training protocols he does a lot of research on it at McMaster University um in Ontario Canada and he also says you there you know there there's evidence that a one minute protocol so like just even doing like an interval like one minute interval and then doing that like you know a few times also can improve V2 Max so that's a little easier and ALS it's easier like I like I I do one minute intervals um I'm trying to now incorporate the 4x4 into my routine um which is coaches help with that so um but it I imagine it's a motivation thing which is probably one of the biggest hurdles to get over that just if you've got any program in front of you that isn't the Norwegian 4x4 for the day you go ah maybe it's back in biceps so H maybe I'll just go for a little jug it's like Manana Manana Manana yeah it is it but again like I said you do have to do you try to make it consistent so uh frequency per week well the Norwegian 4x4 would be like one time a week oh okay and that's that's the that's the hard day that's less that's less Mis hard day it is okay is there any benefit to going twice per week probably yeah but it would have been so much better if he said yeah these 50-year-olds did it one time a week for two years and they revers their cardiac structure aging by 20 years um of course they were they were also doing other vigorous intensity exercise it wasn't the torturous Norwegian 4x4 yep you know like so if Norwegian 4x4 is gold standard at the moment for improving V2 Max what would be some examples of other vigorous exercise uh workouts what else is in that bucket well people can do what they enjoy doing so you can go for a run like I often go for a run and you know I'm doing 75 80% my max heart rate uh usually it's like a 20 minute run that I do that you know so like is as as intense as you can maintain for 20 minutes like that's what you want to do you want to kind of get that you get a feeling for that um so if you like runs because there's a lot of benefits to running you're out in nature well I guess some people do it on treadmill I'm not so big on treadmills like I I'll do them like when I go to a gym or something traveling but I like running out in nature I think there's it's just there's lots of benefits to doing that um some people like to get on their bike and cycle so like you can just get on your bike and do a 20 to 30 minute uh 75 80% max heart rate cycle right so what we're aiming for here is 75 to 80% max heart rate for around about 20 minute exposure you can or you can do you could do like a high-intensity interval training so um so high-intensity interval training would be you're going to you're going to go more than 85 80% right you might go you're going to do like more like a sub maximal perhaps U perhaps even a maximal interval so you can go up to 90 95% max heart rate so that would be I mean obviously you can only maintain that for like so long right some people might be 30 second pushes style I do a lot of tatas as well um often times I like to do something every day um most days of the week and it's funny I kind of adopted this this routine when I was I was kind of trying to uh do a little bit like Joe Rogan sober October but it was like every day October I was trying to work out every day and I noticed I was like I could do this I'm doing it for like one month and I don't I wasn't going as hard as like the this guys doing the sober October where they were like competition it was like they were just in the if you do something every ex do something every day so sometimes I'll do like a 10-minute Tabata where I get on there and I just go hard for 10 minutes it's 20 you know it's most of the time I'll do a 45 second on um 15 second off so it's a 3 to1 ratio I really like that one but sometimes I'll do 20 second on 10 10c off so it's like I do both but like even just 10 minutes again I time it around like like I got I'm going to go do work I'm I want to feel motivated I want to feel better I want to be more focused and all my game and I just get on there for the bike for 10 minutes and do it um you know there's there's studies out there um these sort of exercise snacks now 10 minutes is longer than an exercise snack but there's studies out there where uh people are wearing these like wearable devices right and so you can track their their heart rate you can track how how the heart rate's going up and so there's large large studies they're called the vigorous intensity lifestyle activity and um most people are taking advantage of everyday life like they're they have stairs every day to work they Sprint up them they don't walk up them they Sprint they get their heart rate up to like 75% max heart rate 80% max heart rate they they're they're getting intense and people that do this anywhere between one to three minutes a day um I mean these these guys have like a 50% lower cancer related mortality cardiovascular related mortality and this was even true for people that identified themselves as non- exercisers so they aren't these are people that are not going to the gym or doing other like tennis or whatever they don't have Leisure Time physical activity so the benefits were also in people that identified as non-exercisers so my point is that the vigorous intensity these like even short bursts of it just consistently like every day day a little bit like they do add up there's additive effects and they make a difference so that's also I think really something that's very encouraging because some people oh I got to go and work out for 30 it's like you need that motivation right like some people don't have that motivation and so um it's a lot easier to just get up and do something for two minutes it's hard but you can do it and you can do it at your house what apart from running up and downstairs what are some other ways that people can incorporate exercise snacks to take advantage of this body weight squats um are a great one so you just you're just you know doing your squats and you do it for a minute and then rest for whatever 15 seconds and then do another minute I mean those are hard and they get your heart rate up so you can do that for like three minutes uh that's a really good one and then you're going to be really sore if you're not used to it but and then there's the high knees so you do high knees um I mean you could do chair squats you could do plank um the not planks the burpees those burpees so you do like the the plank thing and then you come up and jump and like those are all I think really great examples of just like easy ways to do exercise snacks like even at your desk and um just even breaking up we're talking about improving cognition improving mood breaking up your workday with those like it makes a difference on your mood on your cognition like it it helps you're getting blood flow immediately to your brain so um yeah you would talking you were telling me about um the need for people to break up their sedentary time that there's some very specific risks that people can encounter if they're too sedentary for too long too frequently what's happening there yeah it's interesting um so I never identified myself as sedentary because I've always done something like running or jumping rope or something like going to the gym something I'm where I'm physically active so it's like oh I'm in the Physically Active group I'm not sedentary well it turns out um being sedentary is like what we've been for the past couple of hours we've been sitting here that is sedentary so even when you're even if you you know go to the gym or you go for runs when you are sitting at your desk for a period of hours you are sedentary and sedentary being sedentary itself is an independent risk factor for disease like cancer so now do I think the marathon runner that you know also has a you know desk job where they sit at their desk for eight hours is going to come down with cancer probably not because they're they're they're really putting a lot of effort in and they're they're Physically Active but um I certainly am not the athlete and I am a committed exerciser right so I'm I'm putting in anywhere between you know two to five hours of you know exercise in a week depending on the week right so um for me like I spent a lot of time sitting I spent a lot of time sitting and so that to me was like a big thing it's like oh that's an independent risk factor for breast cancer um which you know a woman's breast cancer risk and just lifetime risk is one in eight it's incredibly high and of course there of course there's lifestyle factors that can sort of increase or decrease that um and just s sedentarism is a independent risk factor for that so again it's it's really and so easy so i' I have started incorporating exercise snacks um I'll get up and I'll start doing some some body weight squats I think that's my my go-to I also like doing um burpees I've been doing some burpees and high knees I'll do um every hour um I think every couple of hours I've been starting to time them around my meals um so that's that's another thing I think being aware of the postprandial glucose response and how it affects my my cognitive function my mood uh and also just knowing that it's healthier and it's so easy to do like just do like two or three minutes of pre food you can do it pre or post food both trying to do burpees post food might be difficult you can do it up to like an hour after right yeah so one of the things that Dr Stu Migel number one back pain specialist on the planet taught me about forever ago and then Mark Bell also popularized this 10-minute walk 50- minute walk post eating because insulin sensitivity because of helping to re um adjust glucose levels within the blood uh also the muscles of the hips uh and the arms cross across the stomach so actually helps with digestion of food a little bit as well like if you had a really big meal and all you want to do is lie down actually probably one of the best things that you can do to make yourself feel better is maybe go for a a walk what would you say here we've got the The postmeal Walking crowd and the postmeal burpees crowd like is there something that that that you're missing from one of those or are you happy with either um well I don't know about the whole arms movement aiding and digestion thing all that um I do know that the more vigorous intensity when you're actually going to start that feeling that burn right when you start to when you start to get up to that okay I'm making some lactate that's what's actually increasing the the Transporters glucose Transporters GL they're called glute four they're in your muscle and they have to like move their way up to the top and glct is what signals them to do that so when I'm just thinking about the glucose and improving blood glucose levels vigorous is better um you're actually chasing that burn you're chasing the burn and there's been studies that have that have compared Walkers to interval Walkers so these are people that are just walking versus the walk pick up the p while they're walking walk slower pick up the pace while they're walking now they're not running but they're just they're interval walking and it's been shown that interval walking improves a variety of metabolic parameters more than just walking and again it it makes sense because when you're picking up the pace you're you're you're working harder you're making lactate and that's one of the big signals for these glucose Transporters to come up to the top of the muscle and let the glucose in so uh I do think from uh mechanistic understanding that and also data showing walking versus interval walking interval walking is better when you can when you can pick up the pace when you can go a little bit more intense it's better all right what about becoming muscled for longevity so that's I'm I'm working on you probably don't I'm not all jacked up but I'm that's that's my that's been my new goal um particularly of of late but for like the past year um I've become more aware of it I've spent more time focusing on it I now have a coach um who's great and coming to with me to focus on that because I feel you know I'll tell you when it really hit me um I had I had someone on the podcast Mark Dr Mark Matson and he I have admired his work for years he's he's like the intermittent fasting King like he's I I've known of his research since he was in M 20s right like he's also done a lot of work on hormesis and I you know I've just I followed his work for so much of my scientific career so um it was very cool to have him on the podcast and talk to him and uh we were talking all about everything under the sun with respect to fasting and hormesis and and we started talking about uh training and he he has been a you know track you know Runner forever big big endurance athlete you know mountain biking everything and he told me he said you know the one thing that I really reg regret um in my life is that I didn't spend more time building muscle mass because he had an accident he had a mountain mountain biking accident and you know basically couldn't walk around and use his muscles for quite a period of time and he said it it really hit them hard and so um that was my first kind of like oh wow like this like I'm I've always focused on endurance I never thought I really needed to focus much on muscle I'm not a bro like I didn't have that incentive to like you know build the muscle and I knew it was important but uh I didn't really I didn't dive in deep enough and and convince myself that it was as important so um that was the first sort of eye opener for me and then I had steuart Phillips on who does a lot of research on resistance training he's the one that like I helped you know identify that the the RDA for protein intake is likely too low um and he he has a really good way of explaining you know muscle mass and this what's called a disability threshold which is what I think everyone that has an older parent or grandparent has seen in action where you're they get older and they experience that you know take where they're they're out for whatever a couple of weeks and then all of a sudden of course they can't gain their muscle back and then it happens again and then again and then all of a sudden it's just downhill and they can't walk they you know and and the trajectory just plummets um and you know it's just not good so in order to sort of you know not let that disability threshold be so devastating you really have to build up your mind muscle mass earlier in life actually it's never too late but if you can do it earlier in life it's better so um training wise like I now um I'm I'm I used to just do I mean really it was like 30 minutes a week or so of like resistance training you know where I'm just doing dumbbells or something and now I'm doing two hours a week maybe a little bit more you say uh the world opens up when you realize you're never going to sort your life out what do you mean I'm glad you brought this up because I think that is in some ways it's like the governing example for a lot of people maybe just kind of neurotic people like me I don't know but uh of the way in which we try to attain a kind of control over our lives that that is not actually open to us as humans so that sense of like it takes different forms right but it could be I'm going to get completely organized I'm going to get so productive that I never need to uh drop a single ball or fail to meet a demand or it's going to be that I'm so talented at what I'm doing that I really feel the confidence of of like knowing what what what what's going on in work in relationships in parenting there's one that you uh never uh feel like you you've got a handle on and I think I'm sort of saying like if if you pursue life with this idea that you're going to get to the point where it's all sorted out you're sort of constantly postponing the meaning of life into the future you actually end up doing less because there's all sorts of things you feel that you can't really fully get involved in until the point at which you've sorted life out and so in some ways this new book I wrote is kind of like a Manifesto for like okay what happens if we just accept that you're never going to get life sorted out other people it's like the news the world is there's too many crises it's just a really anxious time in the headlines I want to wait until that's all calmed down right and it's like what would you what would happen if you abandoned all that and said like no it has to be now has to be now that you do interesting and meaningful and important stuff because this future point of smooth sailing and control is is never coming that's got me thinking about sort of two types of people there's many types of people but here's two a little taxonomy one being uh the people who have not an external locus of control but uh the restrictions on why they can't do things are because of something that's happening out there I how can I sort myself while the climate is still such a mess or while there's these Global conflicts going on or while we've got this person in power I don't like or this person trying to get in power that I don't like and then there's another version of a person who does the exact same thing but all of their restrictions are inside of themselves how can I start doing my life while my to-do list is still all over the place how can I begin to do that when I'm still at 17 18% body fat and I don't know what diet I'm going to follow how can I do this before I you know it's the same psychology that many people that listen to this show and are fans of your work uh probably chastise others for uh the externalized locus of control and it's like you have an internalized externalized locus of control yeah absolutely and that's really well put and it's like if you're if you're waiting there's something sort of fundamentally absurd for any finite human to sort of to wait to really show up in life whatever that means to you until a point at which you have greater sort of yeah like greater control that you've you you're you're in the driving seat of the situation and so yeah just to put examples on it I mean like absolutely one of the things that I get from one portion of people who engage a very friendly way but slightly critically with things I write sometimes or or talk about is is like well it's all very well giving this advice about how to handle too many emails but the problem is that we live in an economy and a society that that puts people in these impossible work situations you can't just choose to to um to ignore your emails because you know you have to pay the rent um and that's sort of true but also you've still got to you know that you've still got to make decisions about what you're going to show up for as a finite human and that might involve neglecting some emails and then yeah on the other side of the equation it's like people who are very very in love with that idea that through any manner of philosophies or personal disciplines or the perfect daily routine they're going to master life on their own and for themselves which feels like a more independent way of living it feels like you're much less um you know indentured to what political part is in power and at what stage late capitalism is at but actually it's still sort of giving all the power to like future you who's going to be so great once you've developed all these habits you're going to develop and um uh you know um put in place all the systems and achieve the financial IND dependence and all the rest of it there's a satra quote where he says I have led a toothless life a toothless life I have never bitten into anything I was waiting I was reserving myself for later on and I have just noticed that my teeth have gone Amazing I've never come across that that line it's it's exactly the point yeah yeah uh yeah ginda Bogle has a similar idea about deferred happiness syndrome that you sort of this sent and it's so it's so common I remember I used to I used to think this when I spent the Summers uh in between school so I played Cricket uh growing up like a good British boy and um the season obviously really ramps up as soon as you get into summertime especially as a youth Cricket player and I always remember that I would think well summer hasn't really started yet and it would be half a week in and then it would be a week and a half in I think while summer really hasn't it still kind of hasn't started yet and then before I knew it I was getting ready to go back to school and I was thinking but summer hadn't really started yet and I think that that is a it's a microcosm for kind of how we see our life it's this sort of common feeling that your life hasn't yet begun and that the reality you're in at the moment is some sort of Prelude to an idilic future it's totally right and I have you know obviously I'm writing about stuff and talking about stuff that I am a a sort of archetypal sufferer of suffer of otherwise wouldn't be wouldn't be interesting uh to me but um I think one other sort of point just to get a bit kind of uh self-referential and meta about it obviously is that it is also possible to to hear all this and there are a few books and gurus who talk along these lines and actually become a sort of a different kind of perfectionistic about seizing the moment and being present right I think what we're talking about here this feeling that real life hasn't quite begun yet is in some sense almost Universal and very very natural because it's kind of a it's a protective mechanism against like doing all the feeling and all the realizing that comes from from being uh from seeing what it really is to be uh a human sort of born on the River of time on route to death you know it's terrifying and I don't think anyone necessarily is sort of fully reconciled to it so it's not that you can sort of snap your fingers and decide okay now I'm just going to show up for my life right now it's more a question in my experience anyway of getting better and better at seeing what you're up to you know seeing what's happening when you get really really invested in some new like habit change project or some new goal setting technique or something not that any of these things are bad but that if what you're doing is really investing in them because you're you're on route to the time when life's really going to matter mhm I think that is a problem there's a life cycle thing to this too right it's like it's a lot easier and more reasonable to think uh that most of life is coming later when you're 19 and kind of a little bit absurd uh I can I can relate when you uh when you're in your 40s right it's like that that's what midlife does to a lot of people it's like oh hang on at a certain point can't carry on claiming that real life is going to be I mean I'm in mid August I can't say that Summer's not not started yet right right one of the other things uh for better or worse that we're both uh familiar with is low mood um what are the things that you do to pull yourself out of a funk or how would you advise people to better deal with depression and anxiety a low mood I really think an out prevention is worth a pound of cure with this so I I try to prophylactically have routines in place that seem to decrease the likelihood including cold exposure which for a long time was prescribed for melancholy right this is this is not new but like Medieval Times uh like 100 200 years ago like it was it was a prescription cold baths for melancholy AKA depression so this is what what is old is now new again uh but but certainly cold exposure I would say without a doubt having a consistent exercise routine and something is better than nothing like the difference the zero to one difference between no movement and some movement is black and white so even if it is just going for a 20 minute walk twice a day if you have a very packed Day schedule your calls around your walks social time time with friends which is where I disagree with some of the very strong denouncements of say alcohol um in the sense that like even one drink is terrible for you that may be true from a strictly biochemical perspective and I'm not advising you go out and get shitfaced five nights a week but for instance if one night a week I pre-schedule a group dinner on a Friday and I'm going to cook with friends and that means we drink wine while we're cooking if that alcohol acts as a super Lu uh social lubricant and helps me connect with my friends I think there's something to it right there there are social effects not just biochemical effects I don't drink very much but uh the group interactions and scheduling those in advance so on a yearly basis I will block out this is very important for me and again not obsessing on the daily routine but thinking about the weekly which we've dis which we've discussed thinking about the annual so I block out multiple weeks every year to take trips with family and friends and I have two that I'm organizing right now these are weekl long trips there will be let's call it 6 to 10 people in each group some will be slightly smaller for Wilderness adventures and those are blocked out for the year in advance and this is really critical for a few reasons it's not just about the experience you have all of the group threads and excitement and training and prep and fantasizing and you know stupid dick meme jokes that guys swap or whatever in the WhatsApp groups that lead up to the trip then you have the trip and then you have all the memories and the shared experiences and the Misadventures and the mishaps there you get so much juice out of these things and those act for me as psychological safety nets you always have something look forward to if you have three or four of these a year that's in big part the podcast I think for me I think we're both kind of the same with this that um the external accountability of someone being there there is a time on the calendar someone is expecting you to be there they are a guest you probably respect them you probably care about what they think about you you probably want to perform well for them and also put them in a great light and and and be a springboard for them and their message because you're interested in what they've got to do all of those things it's like you're not not showing up I've never once I've in my my previous Life as a club promoter I would not show up for events I would not show up for bits and PE because I could always sort of work somebody else to go and do a thing if it was just me that had to do it but as soon as even one other person was involved or 2,000 appearing at a night club I'd be there and I would be there because there was accountability and there was there was this expectation I have never once cancelled a podcast in 750 episodes six and a half yards due to low mood no matter how low the mood is because there's I I I it it gets taken out it it gets eroded away by my excitement to go and do the thing and the same thing is true with a holiday and the same thing is true with uh dinner with a friend the same thing like it's the same reason why a training partner just makes so much sense when you can like I'm every Saturday for instance in Austin I do the same session with Progressive Overlord the same exercises with the same guy we've done this for two years it's one of my favorite days of the week Saturday morning I'm full of caffeine shoulders biceps and triceps starting with coughs best day of the week and I love it and every single Saturday no matter how [ __ ] the week's gone no matter how bad I'm feeling if we're available and we're both in the city we both go and do it so let me build on that and say another piece of managing or mitigating or preventing low mood for me is having some identity diversification which means you're not just doing one thing if you have your podcast your startup your job as the sole uh barometer of your selfworth there's so many factors outside of your control or your Investment Portfolio whatever it might be if you were solely fixated on one thing you're too vulnerable to Black Swan events are simply ups and downs due to variables that are outside of your control so in contrast if you have your Saturday workout or you have your deadlift you have Rock clam you have archery you have whatever it might be in addition to your primary work in addition to drawing in addition to your relationship that you're trying to cultivate and deepen if any one of those things is down just like in a stock portfolio correct if they are somewhat uncorrelated you can still have a good week if you have a terrible week but then you hit a PR on your Saturday workout we did it baby we did it yeah yeah yeah you're hedging you're hedging your identity you're hedging your sort of existential investment yeah exactly and that that is very very very important to me that I have multiple tracks running at the same time so that if if one hits a roadblock that it's it's not just an existential spiral do you have a uh like break glass in case of impending low mood protocol something you just start to see the early warning signs is there a okay I need to pull the pen with these these things yeah I would say I would say one I'll I'll give some that are perhaps more easily Within Reach of of most people and easier to recommend honestly group dinners three to four friends group dinners long group dinners no alcohol if I see low mood coming then no alcohol because of the next day yeah you're borrowing happiness from tomorrow as and there isn't much there isn't going to be much someone put it to me and if you compromise your sleep for me generally low mood if we want to call it depression does not actually it's not a first cause for me I would say it's it's typically some type of anxious rumination worrying about something I compromise my sleep because I have onset insomnia then I consume too much caffeine which further compromises my sleep and then after three or 4 days that's when the low mood slash depressive symptoms show up yeah so anything that compromises sleep I try to avoid in that in that period for all of me saying that people struggle to connect with their emotions a lot of people listening to this show will uh be familiar with the cere horsepower praying at the sort of altar of cognition thing um but there's also still a bunch of emotions that are just kind of less exciting and more Dow that everybody is familiar with anxiety you know this sort of ambient sense of a little bit of fear that's going on it's not full fear it's not gripping you but it's you know uh anxiety worry concern uh insufficiency shame um so we we're connecting with some emotions one subset of them is there a way are you thinking about how they get alchemized or moved around is there a way that you think about this yeah so yeah so if I think about emotional development um the like the end of emotional not end but like kind of like the more mature areas of emotional development is like all those feelings they're be they become hard to distinguish between the two any or between any of them and so um so that's that that's an interesting piece to it the other interesting piece is that a lot of what's happening is repressed emotions so somebody has like chronic anxiet like I've worked with people say with OCD and oftentimes there's an event that started the OCD where they felt deeply out of control over a situation and unsupported out of control and unsupported if they can go and feel and they couldn't feel it at the time it was not possible to feel because Mom was dying dad was dying blah blah blah something the parents were violent whatever there was some way they could not feel if we can go back and feel that emotion that didn't get felt that OCD starts dissipating as an example I know people like oftentimes people super depressed not super like not not depressed like where they're having visions but like a disia level of depression where the negative selft talk is through the roof if they really can feel the anger that they weren't allowed to feel as kids that all went inwards towards themselves that depression starts subsiding so often times the emotional those little emotions that we're living with every day that aren't Joy is because an emotion is stuck because that there's an emotion that wasn't welcome and so Joy can't hang out there when all the emotions are welcome if we can go back and feel those feelings that we're not allowed to be felt and we can welcome them that thus like the welcoming of Abandonment then the patterns change and then we can feel the joy and that Joy can be scary it I have not seen one person when that Joy first [ __ ] shows up that it's not scary for them because it's just alien it's [ __ ] big man Joy is like it's just big like that you're like we know ourselves by our contrast we know ourselves by what we compare ourselves to and enjoy like the comparison the contrast starts going away and so it's like oh you become like a a like a a speck of dust in a notion of Joy when it when it's really yeah it's a very unmar feeling yeah deep levels of Joy yeah it sounds great the the you know again people can use their intellect and rationality as I am right now to go sounds fantastic feel feelings yep understood go back and and hear the thing but you know this what does it look like what does integrating emotions embracing them feel feelings what what does the process of going from cerebral performative artist to actual fully integrated human look like yeah um so yeah so there's different levels depending on like where exactly it got stuck so if you are so we have a a tool called emotional inquiry which is basically like you think about you're if you're like a little kid and you pick up a a um frog and you're like what the hell is going on here and you're like kind of really investigating it you're investigating your emotional experience with that same with that same um level of Wonder so it's just this guided audio that we have and we have a course in the decisions course because it's all about emotional understanding because that's what clarifies decision- making we ask people to do that once or twice a day the transformation is like what can people go if they want to pick up this course um well the course is called Art of accomplishment is the course I think we have a site for you called view. lifeod wisdomwisdom but it'll be in the links I'll find it I'll get it off you and I'll put it in the link yeah yeah yeah um but it's called the Great decisions course um but what that emotional inquiry thing we have for free you can you can there's we have an a podcast where you can look it and it tells you how to use it and then you can go and download it so that's all free and but the but with emotional so emotional inquiry is one way to do it expression is really really good and very critical to actually express your emotions so for instance when people think about expressing anger it's such a weird thing they're so scared of it that whenever we're scared we think about things in a binary way it's like this way or that way so they're so scared of anger typically it's like I'm either gonna hold my anger back or I'm G to get angry at somebody and they never think oh I can just get angry and not at anybody I can just like move my anger and not not get angry at anybody and not do it at somebody meaning that they're you're getting angry at somebody but they're not in the room they're not feeling it they don't have to know about it and so so you can actually just Express the emotions that you have and if you can't figure out how to express them then you can fake it till you make it it's a very slow way to do it we have things in our courses that take you through it but that we can't get for free because it's just we want to make sure we're monitoring people as they go through it um so that's another thing that it looks like the other thing that it looks like is there's this thing that happens where your T your gut tightens you're like and I don't want to feel that and you push it away so my example of this is like we got kicked out of a house at some point when our second was very young and it and every time I drove by the house which I had to do on a weekly basis I would feel like this punch in my gut like and I was like oh so I started driving by the house and I'd sit there and I'd just feel the [ __ ] out of that feeling like what is that what's going on and so there's that other thing when you feel that thing our immediate movement is like oh let's let me move away from that it's like no let's actually attend to that let's actually feel what that is just talk talk to me I think that's a really lovely cue um that that people can probably quite quickly pick up on just take me through that step by step that someone has just like the echo of a a sensation that that continues to come up when it when they they see a person or whatever a situation that they're in just walk me through you feel that tension in your what are you looking for in the body and the mind what what fantastic so everybody will do it a little differently like I was so cerebral when I started doing this I noticed the mental reactions to fear before I actually knew what it felt like in the body but there's some great research that actually shows like through heat maps that there's very similar physical experiences we have with different emotions um but generally the way that I think about it is or the way that I I I talk about it is is that emotions are held in the muscles so if I look at somebody I can tell you pretty quickly and it's like when I coach people people go how do you do that it's because just by looking at somebody's face or whatever I can tell what emotions are being held so like oh that's the critical parent hunch or that's the repressed anger line in the eye or whatever it is you know so you can see how people are holding their emotional experience so it's all held in the muscles so there's a physical Sensation that comes along with an emotional experience and the job is to get really curious about it why am I avoiding that so like if you're lifting weights and you feel that burn and you try to avoid it you're not going to lift weights for as long as if you're like o how do I like really get into that burn it's the exact same experience so you you get that cook and you go okay what is how big is that how round is how thick is that how dense is it how is it moving like what's going on here and so you just put your attention on the sematic experience of of the emotion that's happening so that's like the most basic that's like the most basic way to start getting into it at some point the expression is really necessary because you can't unhold the emotion that like the the musculature holding can't happen until un happen until you've actually done some expression so we do this like weeklong Workshop it's like it's it's off record it's very hard to get it we only do like 36 people a year and it's in groups of 12 and the and like they call it like they people feel like they've had a facelift they literally you can take shots before and after and their face looks different because the emotional holding has changed and so I only coach people whove been through that experience because when they've been through that experience I don't have to justify emotional awareness they know it they know the benefits of it they've seen the other side of it and so so that that's another thing but expression is really important at some point and if you're expressing fear really important to have that with loving attention to not do that alone when you talk about expressing what you mean so anger expresses usually with like a lot of yell anger moving particularly of the chest the um so it's you know like it's because it's closed the a held anger is held in shame and so the opening of the chest is a really important part of the expression of it similarly um fear is done with shaking so if you look at a deer that just has been captured by a mountain lion and then escapes they do this like shake off thing you can notice that like horses are kind of doing it dogs are kind of doing it consistently like they're getting that like lowlevel anxiety off of their system on a regular basis so shriek and shaking is a big part of the of the fear release process sadness and grief different sadness is tears with a lot of gut shaking but the but grief is can like usually flows from all three if you're like in a full grief reliefs I was in this funeral for instance with my friend who had passed and everybody was like sad and sad and sad and you could just feel like the energy was not it was stagnant it was like he wasn't actually fully being griefed and I was like I'm [ __ ] pissed and I got really angry and then other people got angry and then like you could see so much move so much of the grief moved and if you look at those kind of indigenous grief rituals anger is often a part of it you know it's not just sobbing it's like ah it's like hitting the wall it's there's like a there's another part of it so grief is like some sadness with some fear and some and some anger but this is expressing it it doesn't necessarily need to be to a person if you're angry does it need to be to the person that you're angry at no no definitely not I would I I highly recommend not angry at somebody else is an emotional abuse it's like it's it's it's saying I'm going to try to control you with my anger it's horrible um unless you have permission so there would be moments like with Taran I I'm like I really would like to express some anger you know and she'll give me permission or not but the but like with the kids as an example with the kids so I'm making my Sunday pancakes the kids are you know knowing oh this is the time when Dad is like most focused and D so we're gonna ask him like 20 questions and get in a fight you know like the whole thing and I'm like H and it's like perfect timing and I stop everything I jump up and down I'm like I'm angry I'm angry I'm angry I'm angry and my eight-year-old looks at me she goes that was some pretty good anger dad because she knew that I wasn't angry at her like I wasn't I was angry but I don't need to put it on her I can just move that anger and then get back to to being a good parent you know and and and she wasn't scared of it it wasn't like I was the 200 pound man who was like yelling at like a two foot tall kid or three- foot tall kid or whatever how do you think about this sort of relationship between brain and emotions and body and sort of moving out of and and and between those is there a high hierarchy is there an interplay is there a they're all part of the same system I I I make the distinction between head heart and gut in transformation just because it's a good way to figure out if you're holistically achieving it or not but I haven't found anything that makes it so that you're it's better to do one than the other first or anything like that the what I notice is that [Music] um people who are more one way are going to start there like I was more head related you know I thought I everything in my head because of the emotional abuse I was high in my head and so that's where I started um and the people people who are like dancers who are like deeply in their body the sematic work is usually like the first thing that they're going to go to but they're going to believe their stories for a lot longer than I did so it's just like it's where your inclination is people playing to their strengths almost or the typically yeah and it's where they get the lace bang for the buck but it's usually as you said you're going from 100 to 101 as opposed to zero to one yeah exactly yeah the the closest thing is luxury beliefs oh D so a friend Rob Henderson's repop ised this it's not his original invention but he says luxury beliefs are uh beliefs held by the upper classes that bestow status on them but incur costs on people of that's good yeah so defund the police is a perfect example of this another one that's kind of obvious is um two parent households have no advantage or getting married has no Advantage for raising a child so you look at the number of college graduates and people in the upper raal LS of society almost all of them are married in monogamous relationships with a classic nuclear family setup and the lower classes that may believe this particular narrative that's pushed by them are the ones that suffer in the same way as you behind your gated community tweeting yeah we really need to you know these police Aras and we don't we they shouldn't be there and all the rest it's like yeah but you're not a black guy from inner city Chicago yeah exactly I know and it looks good on paper like uh I saw in California they're doing a thing where they're lowering test standards for black kids because they're having trouble in school and I'm like I guess that's nice cuz moral pass but you're [ __ ] them in the future like isn't that way worse there's a huge problem in Illinois at the moment in the schooling system some huge percentage of kids can't read at grade level and then they finish uh high school and they get out and it's just there's not there's nothing there they finish like K through 12 they've math ability is way behind where they should be reading comprehension is way behind where they should be you think what are you learning I know what are you doing I know it's scary you following the Roland frier no oh this is right up your anal baby this is this is Chris all day long I don't want to get too much into it but uh he's a Harvard guy Harvard professor very like the youngest uh black professor at Harvard to get tenure or whatever you call it I don't know brilliant guy from the hood black guy made it to Harvard did it wrote a bunch of books esteemed everybody loves him he started doing studies on police and black uh you know crime and all that and he came out with a study that there's actually way less Black Death from police than we think and they're not actually going after black people as much as we think they are this is his study he couldn't believe the numbers cuz of you know cuz what we've been hearing for years and years so he did it he did it for a year with eight interns working under him he couldn't believe the numbers so he said let's do another year and do it again with eight different people just to make sure we got it and it came out the same way and everybody at Harvard's like don't put this out it'll ruin you which goes back to what I was saying about how I'm okay with the [ __ ] but at least let me acknowledge it they don't even want you to acknowledge it you know so he's like I'm putting this out this is data it's facts they're like it doesn't look good don't put it out they tried to get him fir they tried to ruin him they tried to meet to him they tried all these things he beat everything and he put it out and now he has an armed guard with him all day long because he's getting death threats so he's got his kid at the grocery store with a [ __ ] security guard and the irony of like hey I'm just saying it's not as bad out there for black people as we think to saying that to now needing protection from a cop I mean the whole thing's wacky and I'm not saying he's right or wrong folks don't come after me I'm just saying this is happening in America right now and it's fascinating that's wild I've got a friend uh Carol hooven who wrote a book about testosterone and she when she did Rogan show she cried I think four times when when she did my show she cried at least three times we went we went we went for breakfast in Austin I think she cried twice at breakfast like she's just a very emotional lady and it's in like joy and sadness and stuff too and uh like she'll talk she'll start talking about her son and immediately start welling up she just loves loves her son anyway she uh talks about biological differences between men and women spicy she was at Harvard she had I think it was one of the most popular courses of undergraduates uh in Psychology I think it was like some insane number it might have been 500 people that attended this particular course that she did really interesting course and and after she did the Rogan thing and then the book came out and then she maybe posted a couple of things as well none of her teaching assistants were prepared to work with her so these are postgrads usually doing a PhD or something and they'll be part of some lab but you need your Tas you need the teaching assistant tits an ass cuz sorry sorry ta I'm listening you need you need that to uh help you cuz huge class Maring work and and they kind of assist during the lecturing I've got a few friends in Austin here that work as Tas for their uh professors the head of their labs and [ __ ] and that's like soft cancel she was being pushed out because how can you do your course if no one will work with you of course and then uh there wasn't backup from the dean and there wasn't the rest of it and she's out now she being pushed out I'm pretty sure she had tenure which is supposed to be the protection that need uh and then she was part of this bill Amman thing you know where he called out Claudine gay a couple of months ago but the weird thing there and I spoke to her about this she was basically used as a very fortunate political football to be kicked around see how perfect this is shows that the woke mob are trying to push people out that say things that aren't egregious and no one this is something I haven't really thought of before no one considered what she wanted as a part of this so she's already lost her job good point but just she's a very same with Shane like Shane strikes me as a large Ruddy robust guy yeah and you using him as an example of somebody who went through difficulty with SNL to then sort of come out the other side of it I don't I don't feel that he's taking that as oh you know you re-trigger my PTSD from this awful incident that occurred to me five years ago he didn't strike me but the woman that cried five times on a podcast maybe does right this is you know again do we care about people's feelings or not yes it just comes back to trying to give people a bit more grace yes there you go it's uh we shouldn't be uh boiled down to this one one tweet or one thing we said or one joke we made or or one thing this lady did you know but that's that's what we do and I think we have negativity bias so we go this is the thing [ __ ] you and you're like what about all the good I did and they're like ah forget about that forget about it Shane actually has a great sketch on a oh the [ __ ] the lounge it's horrible food so uh Shane has a great sketch where he's a fireman he saved a bunch of people's lives and the the the guy's like wow did you just save that whole burning building you know the babies the women everything yeah yeah that was me and he goes uh looks like I found some tweets from uh last year and it says this this and that and you know it's gay and whatever and he's like oh yeah why are you pulling that up he's like dude what are you doing to me and it's a nice it's kind of a nice uh microcosm what's going on like this gotcha [ __ ] but the guy just saved a a building full of people so not good enough sorry not good enough yeah but I feel like are we talking about this too much I'm worried that uh no not at all so I've got something I want to teach you about women are loving men who Embrace baby girl Vibe and ditch toxic masculinity delving into the new trend of baby girl following Jacob elordi Timothy Shalom Pedro Pascal and more this includes men carrying purses wearing shorts and sequins and embracing the traditionally feminine aspect a man who is a baby girl comes across a sweet Charming a bit bashful and seemingly in touch with their feminine side ready to talk about their feelings or carry a purse to brunch at any point heterosexual women especially JZ are rusting which means romanticizing and lusting I thought rusting might mean something else after men that they consider to be baby girl this trend signals a sharp departure from The Uber masculine sex symbols of previous generations a lady explained to the post and Men outside the Limelight are taking note think the definition of what is masculine is changing uh the director torify matchmaking service told the PO some traditional masculine Norms shifting masculinity today is not about being a tough guy but about being honest respectful protective and emotionally expressive about 31% of American men have actively changed their behavior to become more vulnerable and open with people they are dating according to bumble's 2024 dating Trends report well I think this is nothing new you know like like Mick Jagger David Boe they they all went through this like uh what what do you call that when you're you're kind of feminine and mascul androgynous androgynous like I think this is you know in the 60s guys grew their hair long and every dad was like you [ __ ] homo look at these get a haircut [ __ ] and I think uh that was crazy then you know having long hair or tight pants or whatever so I think this is just this just another swing of this and masculinity is the norm so we got to go against the norm and then eventually baby girl whatever will be the norm and then being masculine will be weird so that'll be in so I think it just it just flip everyone's attracted by whatever looks novel yes hey that's a better way to concise way to say it I've been me and my housemate have been thinking a lot about things that a [ __ ] that you don't realize a [ __ ] so trying to pick up a moving pingpong ball no that's a great one very [ __ ] starting a stopped bicycle oh yeah that kind of awkward I got one you know when you close the door and it doesn't close the car door it doesn't doesn't latch all the way and you got to give her that booty bump I hate the booty bump but you got to do it these are great this could be like a Tik Tock uh running series uh wearing as a man wearing a towel wrapped around your upper chest rather than wrapped around your was oh I got another one you standing like this is very masculine but if you just rotate it like that it's so much gayer what is that why it's just the same hand same hip but if you flip it you look you look so much more feminine doing that thing when you wash your hands you know the interlace of the finger from behind that's that's pretty [ __ ] um turning he has Zach has one which is turning around ever so if you walk past the entrance to somewhere you're going around the block and coming back in cuz if you go and then turn around like that's pretty [ __ ] he had one at dinner the other evening which we were sat outside and the receipt blew off the front of the table and we've been talking about things that a [ __ ] that you don't realize a [ __ ] for 6 months now this is gold we've accumulated this huge big long list of I could go for the rest of the podcast and I was watching that and we hadn't come up with chasing a receipt blown in the wind and I was watching it happen and sure enough the wind picked up and he sort of you know you bend over and you that and then it goes away again and I was and he came back over and he went this is adding this is being added to the list isn't it that's a great one it's getting added to the list I would say applying chapstick can be pretty bad eating a banana banana classic oh oh a heavy door you ever you ever have a door where you're like oh it takes all the manly confidence out of you when the door's too heavy uh sleeping in a blanket with your arms all the way under as opposed to having your arms out oh interesting I think that's pretty [ __ ] um holding a coffee mug with both hands yes that's a great one massively [Laughter] [ __ ] my uh wife she says if I see a guy with flip-flops the vagina is just just sewn up like the the those ones the tongue it's the idea of that thing between the toe that really freaks her out she's like it's slides I'll do a slide but the tongue is what gets you which is interesting because Crocs are obviously the most sexually arousing type of foot wre that are that are available you know what my favorite thing about Crocs are that that flap that little ankle holder y if you put that up it's called sport mode Y which to me is like what are we kidding no that's SP this is that the look I just sport what are you going to go run a mile with that you going to play football someone's there is a Croc Marathon come on record really yep there's a Croc Mile and there's a Croc Marathon record people can go and look this look this up online I will yeah I'm sure it's a elite athlete thank you very much for tuning in if you haven't already hit subscribe then press right here it's the only way you can ensure that you won't miss episodes when they go live and the next couple of months I've got some of the biggest guests in modern wisdom history joining us and it supports the show and it 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