Latest / The LIVING Room Podcast | Inside The WNDR Lab / Chris Williamson's Take On ‘Optimization Culture’; Longevity Lessons from 1100 episodes of Modern Wisdom

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Chris Williamson's Take On ‘Optimization Culture’; Longevity Lessons from 1100 episodes of Modern Wisdom · The LIVING Room Podcast | Inside The WNDR Lab

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: There's no such thing as not drilling a habit.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: Even in action is a habit.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_02: There's no impartial decision.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_02: Not making a decision is still a decision.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: Like I started off in the productivity world.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_02: I did a big essay on my YouTube channel talking about my thoughts on optimization culture.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Which of what we're being told is bullshit and which is actually very high yielding.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I think if we can help them discern that signal from noise and then say, look, you're fine doing 10-20 minutes a day as long as you do it every day.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: So find something that works for you that you can stick to with consistency.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: What do you like?
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: What do you enjoy to do?
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Do more of it.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: So you have already achieved the goals that you said would make you happy.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: You said it would be when you got a new car, and then your happiness faded.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: You said it would be when you got a job promotion and then your happiness faded.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: If not now, then when?
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: You spent many years talking to people about how to optimize for your health and then you get this diagnosis.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: You can do everything right.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: And and still get smashed in the face by reality, yeah.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: How did you manage to continue working?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_02: With difficulty.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: I basically kind of shut down my life outside of I had two jobs, fix myself and run the show.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: You've obviously been exposed to a lot of these things.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: You've tried probably nearly everything.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: If you had to remove all of them except three, what would you keep?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: This is actually a little bit weird for me.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll tell you why.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: 90% of the guests that we have on are scientists who are on our council, or like physicians or thought leaders within a very narrow vertical.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: Didn't you have Robert Downey Jr.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: on?
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Chris, let's cut that out.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna go on to say, aside from a few members, right?
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so um these are people that have been through the experience and are ambassadors, all right?
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: You're you're not Robert Downey Jr.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: or the scientist.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think you're probably one of very few people in the world, if not a single person in the world that's spoken to the most amount of experts that sit within that other category.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: So you're almost the mirror.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_02: Do I feel like a rival to your level of exposure and expertise to the greatest clinicians on the world?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the only difference between us is the four and a half million YouTube subscribers and more than a billion views.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's we other than that, yeah.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh-huh.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's very competitive.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: You've been doing this for nine years now.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Nine years ago, when you set out to do this, was the ambition to build a top ten podcast and focus specifically on how to like help people to optimize their health?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Or is that something that you like just grew into over 100, 200 episodes?
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean nine years ago I was still running nightclubs in the northeast of the UK.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, from a very working class town, uh state primary, state secondary, state sixth form college, first person in my family to complete university, did two degrees at Newcastle.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, within the first week or so of being in uni, I had spent all my money on Freshers Week, getting drunk, yeah, like a good northern boy.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so my rite of passage was completed.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_02: I needed to get a job.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: I started flyering for nightclubs, running nightclubs, running events, got a franchise, started working with Luke Betts, who's co-founder of Newtonic.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: And um He's here somewhere.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: He's hiding in the background.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: And altogether that meant I I really got into business, but I started to fall out of love with the world of nightlife toward the end of my twenties.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: I think a lot of guys do that.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: They find something that's kind of their initial obsession as an adult.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe they were obsessed with a sport.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: I was obsessed with cricket as a kid, and I played a lot to a high level, and then I had another obsession, and that was business.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: And oh, this might be my thing for life.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: And some people they find that thing early on, but I have this idea called the manopause, and this is a period toward the end of a guy's twenties where he sort of grows up against the shell of this structure that he's made for himself, like the modes of reward and fulfillment and status and acclaim that he used to have.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: They're not quite functioning the same way, they're not giving him the same sort of return that he was used to, and that happened to me.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I started the pod.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: I was listening to a lot of Rogan and Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson and Alandi Boton from the School of Life, you know, getting into Ben Greenfield, you know, early stage biohacking, uh Timu Arena that wrote the biohackers handbook back back back in the day.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_02: I've still got a copy of that somewhere.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, oh, it'd be cool.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: If I if I started my own show, I could talk to these people, and then maybe I'd get to ask them the questions I want to know.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_02: Because sometimes people ask what I want to know, but other times I have an idea about what I would have said on the podcast.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_02: You're shouting at this.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, no, no, don't ask him about that.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and yeah, I launched it.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: It took about six months to come up with the name.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: I had Divine Intervention for Modern Wisdom.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: And then start of 2018 began the pod.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: At that point, I was doing a lot of CrossFit.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: So I think my fourth, fourth, and fifth episodes were with Dave Castro, uh director of the CrossFit Games, and Dan Bailey, like 10 times CrossFit Games a competitor.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: So that was really fun.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: And then I the show has basically been one thinly veiled autobiography.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's slowly tracking my interests over time.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: So a lot of productivity in the first 200 episodes, David Allen's getting things done is GTD method for productivity, Tiago Forte's second brain, um, how to remember things, like the the anki space repetition, ebbing house forgetting curves.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_02: And then I moved on to I'm gonna do a bit more training.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: So a lot of bodybuilding, like tons of bodybuilding and uh a lot of crossfit in there.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so health and fitness has always been a part of my life, but I've just indulged, shamelessly indulged my own interests, and that's kind of moved with me.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: So if you want to know what's happening in my personal life, just look at the broad themes in the podcast over the last 50 episodes, and like that's that's the thing.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's what's going on with me.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: It must be unusual for you to see how this space has exploded, right?
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like back in 2018-19, there's what a handful of people doing it with any degree of popularity, I suspect.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: But now you know the terms biohacking and health optimization have taken on an altogether different meaning, and there's so many different perspectives, many of them conflicting, many of them overreaching.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, how has your perspective on this as a field changed over that time, knowing that the field itself has changed so much, but also you have changed as a person?
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the velocity of inbound information is tough, even as an audience member who gets to choose when they want to tune in and not.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: So being on the front lines and the vanguard of speaking to people, uh, you do need to use a lot of discernment.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: And it's I I understand why there is a degree of skepticism and scrutiny and and sometimes nihilism or cynicism about the sort of health advice space specifically coming out of the podcast world, because it feels like for every person telling you to go high carb, low fat, there's someone telling you to go meat only, and there's someone else saying Mediterranean diets, and blue zones are great, but apparently blue zones are just because of the way that people's passports were registered and birth records and so you uh just I I I give up, right?
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: And you don't want to get people to the point where they say I give up.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_02: So for me, a degree of discernment has been really important.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: But you're right.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the the word biohacking was the hot, sexy thing.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like for me, Ben Greenfield, Timu Arena, like these were the guys who are at the forefront.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: And then we get to sort of 2021, Huberman comes along, uh Peter Atier, Rhonda Patrick, you know, people that are much more evidence-based in how they're going about things, people that are proper MDs, you know, practicing physicians in that sort of a way.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and the clock begins to roll forward a little bit more.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: And then we have like a Brian Johnson, you know, somebody who's much more experimental with what he's doing very quick.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: He's like basically a re-resurrection of what used to be called the quantified self movement.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know whether you remember that from forever ago.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: Quantified self, people trying to track everything in their life.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: And now we have AI, and AI is coming.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: So it's confusing, and I get it, but the right experts, at least as far as I've found, have a degree of playfulness with stuff that's uh cutting edge.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: And as yeah, well, this is interesting.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's showing interest at the moment.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the the term that I use is uh bros broscience, which is a great way to get out of saying this might be bullshit, but I think I'm going in the right direction.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: But no, the the way that academics do, I learned this from academics, they said it's directionally correct.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_02: That's how they refer to it as which is basically the specifics, the specifics are uncertain, but the action seems to go in this way.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like it's directionally correct.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_02: It seems like fasting has some effects other than just calorie restriction.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: We're unsure what they are yet.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: They appear in animal models and we're not too sure what they are.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_02: And you're like, okay, the problem is that's not very sexy.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: So your sexiest commentators will be ardent.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: This is what we this is the carnivore diet, is exactly this is why it happens.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: Meat and fruit, you can't have fructose.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: So you can make sure you don't have tubers, tubers are gonna be too and the people that come in and are ardent, I think you should be highly suspicious of, unless it's a well-researched piece of of science.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: Because otherwise, almost everybody is gonna say, I'm sorry it's not sexy, but we don't know.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: How do you tow that line, you know, between something that is sexy and something that is true?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, mercifully for me, because I'm not the expert, I get to be the idiot in every room.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_02: I've I've made a career out of being the most stupid person in every conversation.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's brilliant.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I basically get to ask the questions at a level of ignorance that I think sometimes is disarming.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not great, I'm not like Louis Thoreau.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: Louis Thoreau's, you know, sort of the master of this kind of a thing.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: But the there's a level of ignorance which can be disarming to people.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_02: And it actually, you know, just as a piece of advice generally for asking people questions, the simpler the question, there is no such thing as too stupid of a question.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_02: Asking for the definition of a word that somebody just used.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: Asking for like, well, why do you think that's the case?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: Or what what what's the best evidence for that?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: Simple questions, right?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: That is actually kind of what you want to know.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um, can often cause people who have a degree of expertise to falter a little bit because they haven't been asked a question that's that basic in so long.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: They haven't been in a room with someone that's as ignorant as I am for quite a while.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: And if you're prepared to own your ignorance, for a long time, I felt like I I had to have this sort of dick measuring competition between me and the guests and it wasn't a dick measuring competition because they're the expert, but I wanted to like show I've read the book, I promise I've read the book.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I really know, like I respect your time, and because I respect your time, I've done all of this research and the blah blah blah.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_02: As opposed to now, like even if I do know all of the things, I'm like, yeah, but like I don't understand, I don't understand why inflammation's a bad thing.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I just don't get it, or whatever.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: And being the voice of the audience.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: To a degree, but also like the voice of the most stupid parts of part of myself or the most uninformed part of myself.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, everybody says just drill the basics over and over, and yet many people in an audience will get fatigued or feel like, why are we going back?
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_02: We know cold, dark, quiet for sleep, right?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like what we we don't need to go back over this.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, all right, well, if we don't need to go back over it, why aren't you doing it?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like if this advice that is the mainstay of one particular area, which is supposed to be very important, no distractions, turn notifications off, no phone after 9 p.m., no phone before 8 in the morning, blah, blah, blah.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, we've heard that before.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, all right, are you doing it?
• 11:41
  unknown: No.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, okay, well, you need to hear it again then.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like, because I or from a different angle or with more justification.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so yeah, I like to like have to be.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh, because I just mentioned that in the lift that I don't do it.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, no.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: I would never do that to you, Chris.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: I would never do that to you.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Can I ask you about you know, you you reference about being the most ignorant person in the room?
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, by very definition, that's not the case anymore because you've spent so much time with so many brilliant people, you can't not have absorbed so much of their wisdom.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: Do you do you feel like and I'm speaking because I feel like this at times, like the less you know sometimes is there is a bliss to that ignorance early on.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_02: Massively.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: Do you feel like that has made things more difficult the more you know?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh there was certainly a uh like valley of despair that I went through.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I think relinquishing the oh my god, there's so much that I don't know, and there's so much that I do, and that means it's complex, letting go of that kind of self-enforced pressure is an art form.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, you should.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's kind of like I think about it like um a version of Pandora's box.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: So imagine that you have a room, and in that room there's a box, and in the box are a ton of children's toys and plugs and just like brick-a-brack stuff.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: And if you decide to open that box, all the lights in that room are gonna get switched off and everything's gonna go everywhere.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: And for the rest of your life, you're gonna have to go around stepping on stuff that hurts, picking it up and slowly putting it back in the box.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: So you need to kind of make the decision if I'm going to do this thing, if I'm going to learn to understand myself and the world around me, which is what the tagline for modern wisdom has been for a long time.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_02: Life is hard.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: This podcast this podcast will help uh and understand yourself and the world around you.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to understand yourself and the world around you, if you get halfway in and try to reverse back out, you're left with all of the questions that were generated by the beginning of your knowledge and none of the answers that would be done by attaining something that looks like content mastery, or at least like full awareness of whatever it is.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: And um, that's not for me to say that I've managed to complete anything really, but I have got myself to a much better level of peace.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I think AI, uh uncertain geopolitical climate, what's happening with the future?
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: Am I going to have a job?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: That uncertainty that people have in of what's going down the pike is causing people to really lean away from overwhelm of information.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: So I think a lot of it is about simplicity.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: And now what I'm doing on the show is trying to have much more of a laugh.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's much more parasocial.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: I've got a lot of the Andrew Hubbin came on with his cousin, who's a world-famous comedian, and one of my friends who's another world famous comedian.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: And we just we talked, it was like hearing the lads in the pub just talk shit around a table for three hours.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: And it was brilliant.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: And that to me, you will leave those episodes now, which you wouldn't have done in 2018.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_02: People just, what does caffeine do?
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_02: How does the adenosine system work?
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: Tell me what, like, how why does it impact my sleep?
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas now people have I've learned that, and I think a lot more it's sort of uh sneaking learning in underneath the guise of just enjoying something.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: All the best nonfiction books at the moment are stories.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: Morgan Halsell's Psychology of Money is 23 stories back to back.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's a book about money, but it's actually just a book, it's a list of real stories that give you a lesson about money, and it sneaks them in.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: W when you look back over, I mean 1100 episodes.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: Is that right?
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's insane.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: When you look back over all of those episodes, there must be examples because I already feel this way, and uh, you know, we've done 30 episodes, 25 published episodes, and you know, I will look back it's a very steep learning curve, I would say.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_02: The noob gains are real, yeah.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but the thing I've also noticed is you know, I don't always agree with the things that I said even three months ago.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: When you look back that far back, there must be episodes where A, you've thought, why did I say that and I don't believe that now, and also had guests that did the same.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, uh there's a lot of that's not a critique, by the way.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, I mean it's it's having that humility of well, something that I was pretty ardent about or was prepared to say on a podcast five years ago, I'm not now, reminds you that the position that you hold now is probably going to be pretty malleable moving forward as well.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: So strong opinions but quite loosely held is a good a good way to think about it.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's it's funny.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, I brought up Naval.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: The first question that I this this guy, for the people that don't know, he's the guy that founded Angel List, which is the platform that a lot of investing and angel investing is done on, sort of half philosopher, half tech bro, half Revicamp.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yeah, like half-investing wizard.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um and this first thing that I brought up with him, I said uh I read him one of his quotes not that long ago, and his the first words out of his mouth on a podcast I'd planned for forever, and his my my favorite episode that I've done, uh one of them at least, uh, was I don't I basically don't fully believe with that thing.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_02: That was said at a very specific point in time for a very specific reason, and I'm not sure that I agree.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, he's a person that I admire hugely from an intellectual humility standpoint.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_02: He said, Often I disagree with myself, and uh yeah, for especially when you start something new, you're gonna have some priors coming in that are very quickly going to be dismissed.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like you're gonna have an idea about how a conversation is supposed to go, or about how much you're supposed to talk or not talk, or about the way that you're supposed to spend time with the guest beforehand, whatever.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_02: And then very quickly, even if you believe it, and then you're gonna learn something, and you'll be like, oh, that's my new hill that I'm going to plant my flag of self, of podcasting self around, or of training self-arround, or of dietary self around, because that's the thing that got you a little bit of the way there.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: And then there's this next bit, and it's again all it's a permanent journey of unlearning.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: That's what it is.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think specifically for this field as well, there's science evolves, right?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: The pendulum swings, the way we were doing things even six months ago is not the way that we're doing them necessarily today.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I suspect that moves even quicker.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_02: How would you, from your perspective, uh what have been the biggest uh broad wind cultural changes inside of the longevity field, a priority a prioritization of something, a deprioritization of something else that previously would have been the other way around?
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: Have there been some big sort of trend swings that you've noticed?
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I mean sleep for certain, but you know, we go back ten years, we weren't uh we weren't taking sleep seriously.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: Matthew, actually, who we spoke about earlier, I think his book really set uh that off in motion.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: He's saved, I I said this all the time.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: His episode on Rogan, 1109, I think it was, uh m changed my because I was a club promoter, staying up until two, three, four in the morning, multiple nights, but we're driving back from Manchester to Newcastle, sometimes getting in at 5 30, 6 in the morning after having run.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, just wrecked, absolutely ruined.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_02: And um he told me that the World Health Organization classes any type of shift work as a health risk.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_02: Any type, like being a nurse, being a firefighter, uh uh working a night shift in a a petrol station, any of that stuff.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, oh, I'm this is unsustainable long term.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: I can't I can't do this to myself long term.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_02: His book I think has probably saved a few million years of human lifespan when you think about that.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_02: How many people listened to him on shows and l and read that book and decided to make a change to their suboptimal sleep patterns and that he will have added on to like multiple tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people's lives for many years.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: Crazy.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's crazy.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_02: Do you sleep well?
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's up and down.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I'm currently going through a uh ENT assessment.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: So both of my parents are loud snorers, and uh I haven't inherited that, but uh double deviated septum and some like turbinate uh swelling stuff, so I might have to look at a more uh invasive solution for that in order to fix train out.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, to fix that.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's lovely on the outside.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's good.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, it's like a fast car that's horrible to drive.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: Have you you know, given how many of these conversations you've had, are there things that are through lines that seem to be, you know, um agreed upon by everyone?
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: That I can think of a couple for health?
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for health.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: Are there like a number of things that you think every longevity scientist specialist agree on?
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_02: Sleep is probably the universal, that it it kind of is the fundamental.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: I do wonder sometimes whether the more adventurous uh longevity biohacking people uh use sleep as their well, C, I do follow the science in that one area, and then I totally discard it when it comes to supplementation or peptides or enhancement or whatever the fuck.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um sleep's always been there.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: Uh ones that have changed uh for me looking at the difference between uh low and slow zone two to VO2 max top end work, like Norwegian four by four style training, which is four minutes on, three minutes off, four rounds at a really high heart rate.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's horrible.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: What are you doing there?
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's the assault bike.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: That's the assault bike.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's how I do it.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I think the main study for that said one session a week for two years or two sessions a week for one year reversed ten years of heart aging in like the seminal study that that did.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_02: And it was a pretty good sized group of s untrained or relatively untrained individuals.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_02: Really great.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: But zone two was the The hot new goal in school, go low and slow, go slow to go fast, you know, all of these sexy taglines.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_02: So that was that's been a big swing.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I would say another big change, uh, muscular training, like bodybuilding stuff, or uh muscle-based medicine, which uh Dr.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_02: Gabrielle Lyons promoting at the moment.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um certainly when I started, far fewer people were talking about muscle for longevity.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_02: It was the thing that you did for aesthetics, it was the thing that you did for mental health, it was a training preference that you had.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, something I haven't seen, which I'm kind of surprised by, and maybe it's just because people don't have as easy of an outlet, is more of the uh stuff that I just did with you guys, the sort of hand-eye coordination cognitive function stuff.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that hasn't really hit the mainstream.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: I wonder whether it just feels a bit specialized.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_02: Why am I a Formula One driver?
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: Do I really need to do that?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: Ascendancy of coal plunge, and then the fall-off of coal plunge must be studied.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, it's kind of kind of crazy.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it came on, everyone loved it.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so awake.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: I this is gonna do everything.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: And now it's like if you like it, it's good, and it will give you a uh state change, but it's not gonna give you a trait change, it it seems like the evidence is like pretty mixed on that.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: There's some good stuff about the last 30 seconds of your shower being cold, and it reduces the likelihood of you getting uh cold, like the flu each year, which is pretty fun.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh sauna, that's ramped up a ton.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_02: Like the people of Finland kind of you know passed that on to us, I suppose.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_02: And then but yeah, lots of stuff's changed.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: Sleep's been a through line, training's wobbled a lot, diet has gone protein, wasn't that much of a consideration.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: Protein is everything, to now we're probably overcooking it, even by it's more than the recommended daily allowance from the whatever FDA, the the US government, but it's not as much as people think in order for optimal health.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like one gram per pound is for most people, even people that are trained individuals, too much.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's like one gram per kilo is probably closer to where you can be.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: And oh well, maybe we're looking at micronutrients more.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: But like listen to this, like litany, you know, this this this war zone strewn of bodies that at one time were the answer to your health and fitness problems.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_02: And uh yeah, I'm just this guy like dragging this cart behind me with a ton of corpses of of dead modalities.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: Let me ask you then about the things that have survived those conversations, you know.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe in fact, walk us through what does a typical day look like for you when it comes to health interventions?
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_02: Cool.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_02: So up around about seven, I use a I wake up, this is not a health intervention at all.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: I wake up to NPR.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_02: And the reason I wake up to NPR is I found that my mind was unusually permeable first thing in the morning if I listen to music.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_02: And if I listen to a song, I can't get it out of my head for ages.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that this has got something to do with the flow state theta wave stuff, delta theta stuff that um if you actually want to get into a flow state relatively quickly for a writing task, you can just go to sleep.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: And as soon as you get up, jump into it, and you're not far away within 30 seconds, 30 to 90 seconds.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: This is Stephen Cotler from the Flow Research Collectives thing, which is pretty fun.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_02: So, anyway, get up.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I use these glasses called AO glasses.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I've got some.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: So a lot of people will have seen uh seasonal effective disorder lamps, and they are great, but you need to be looking at the lamp.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um this guy that runs the company just put the same technology from the Phillips light and put it on a pair of glasses over the top.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: You kind of look a bit like a cyborg.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: So I throw those on because sometimes I'm up before the sun in in Austin, Texas.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Element in water, short walk.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_02: Element is in the electrolytes.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: Elementy, um the orange flavor is fantastic.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh short walk, come back, and then at the moment I'm going to train.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_02: I used to have a very elaborate morning routine for a long time, and it was uh highly opulent and unnecessary.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: They've gone out of fashion too.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: The morning routine thing, it has, and I think that that's because people's time is being squeezed.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_02: But if you look at where lots of time people's time is being squeezed, it's being squeezed by the fact that they're wasting so much of it.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like the reason you don't have time is because you're being frivolous with much of it.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like lots of people, kids, job, two jobs, all the rest like uh obligations.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: But for a lot of the people that were in that world, it's just, dude, you're scrolling too much.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: Are you just wasting your time?
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_02: So anyway, walk, train.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there's a bunch of James and Austin that are fantastic.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_02: What else will I do that's interesting when I get back?
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_02: Flossing, something that I just got told over and over and over again.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_02: I still don't fully understand the science, but uh a water pick has been good.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: Do you see Dyson just released their new toothbrush?
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: The cameron.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: I'm told.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_02: Have you seen this?
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: Dyson released James Dyson released a toothbrush that flosses at the same time.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: Any danger, James, of sending us a couple of samples?
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_02: They're sold out.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_02: You can't even get the crap colours.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um there's one of them that's a really nice, uh like rose, like pink colour.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's a little girly, but it's fine.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_02: I'm comfortable with my sexuality.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds right.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_02: I I I I was trying to buy one of these things, so that's fun.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_02: So I'll be looking forward to that.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, interesting other interventions that I use.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Newtonic, which is the uh drink that I've co-founded with Luke Betts, James Smith, and a couple of other guys.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that is my daily driver for cognitive health.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a science-based blend of choline, rhodiolarosea, panics ginseng, L-theanine, some natural caffeine, B vitamins that are all methylated, like natural folate, blah, blah, blah.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like we really, really went through it's the most science-backed way to improve your cognitive health in the moment.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_02: And over time, it compounds as well.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: So hooray for that.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_02: That's new tonic.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, what else will I do?
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's fun.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_02: Really loving red light beds at the moment, really enjoying those.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, it's hard to find one that's good.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: Unfortunately, most of the things that are on Amazon are probably just red LEDs pointed at you.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_02: But if you can go to a place that has a unit, uh, you need to be between like four and six inches from it.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_02: So you can't actually be that far.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't work, you can't just put it on the far side.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: It might do some stuff for ocular health.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_02: You can't just put it on the far side of the room and hope for the best.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: Red light H bot.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_02: I very, very fortunately, a hyperbaric uh facility in Austin closed down, and in between that and finding the new place, the owner just gave me his oxygen unit and the a hard shell tank.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: Hyperbaric oxygen therapy for me is one of the best interventions.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_02: I understand why it's not very popular because it takes two hours, it's a bit expensive, and it's highly inconvenient, but it is so good.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_02: Breathing O2 for 20 minutes on, five minutes off inside of this tank at high pressure seems to really improve cellular energy.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_02: And for me, I I feel great after doing that.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_02: There'll usually be a sauna in there, no cold, not that bothered.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I'll try and hit my 10,000 steps, I'll try and get as much sunlight as possible.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_02: Grounding, that's something else that I know I probably should do more of.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_02: I kind of feel good when I run on grass or sand, but Austin is, especially in the summer, is not the most outdoor-friendly place.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh other stuff that's in there.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_02: Before I record a podcast, I'll tend to do a little bit of uh HRV resonance breathing.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_02: Like all of this is this is typically not all in one day.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: This is like across a week.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um little bit of resonance breathing is quite nice, makes can sort of make you feel a lot more present.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a lamp called an ohm.health lamp, and it's a how'd you spell it?
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_02: Ohm.health is the website.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's a beautiful looking lamp, about that big.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a stone on the top of it, and it's got a hundred hertz FDA uh certified heart rate sensor, and as you hold the stone in your hand, it's reading your heart rate and your HRV, and then you breathe in time with the stone vibrating and the light going up and down, and it maximizes that arrhythmia, so it gives you the biggest, and this is arrhythmia is the the gap between the uh height of your heart rate BPM and the depth of it, because across the the entirety of a minute, your 60 beats are not perfectly dissected by one second each.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_02: They speed up as you breathe in, and then they slow down as you breathe out.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_02: And by manipulating using an algorithm and the Wi-Fi, uh by manipulating the pace that you breathe at, you can make these huge swings in your heart rate.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_02: So you can go from like 61 to 72, 63, 70, 61, 71.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_02: And you do that for uh 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and it is one, it is so good it can't, it can kind of space you out for a little bit, but it's really lovely, and again, breath work, something that's is kind of fun to do.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um on a nighttime, uh the usual try and get off screens when I can, usually horrendous at it, like you.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um caffeine, I'm a really slow metabolizer of caffeine, so even if I'm having a new tonic uh with 400 milligrams of L Thenine in, I can't do that usually after about 3 p.m.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_02: I'm asking for trouble.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_02: If I do it after 3 p.m., I'm really asking for trouble.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_02: And reading in bed, that's like the for me, a good fiction series like just helps to put my brain into some other mode.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's really hard to go back into thinking about that message on Slack that pissed you off if you're in the middle of a space battle or something.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: So uh interestingly enough, always fiction?
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh on a nighttime, yeah.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: If I try and read like some personal development stuff, uh real world fiction or history might be fine, but if I try and read something that's too executive functioning adjacent, I go to bed like thinking about all of the ways I've now been inspired to use that in my life.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_02: And it's too much.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_02: I don't need more of that on a night.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, uh reading fiction on a nighttime is great.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: Do you do you use a like a real book or a Kindle?
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_02: I use a Kindle.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um here's another one.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_02: Uh blue light at night.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, not great, but it seems like most of the effect that people were worried about from uh using phones to impact people's sleep quality is more from the content that people are using on their phone than it is the amount of blue light coming from the phone.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_02: So especially if you get one of the slightly nicer Kindles, or probably any of the modern ones, mine are kind of old, um, you can make them warmer.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_02: So you can make the light pretty warm and you can make it pretty dim.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_02: You've got control over the brightness.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: And that for me, the problem being like if you want to read a real book, you need to have a light on.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_02: And the light needs to be bright enough to be able to illuminate the pages of the book.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, oh well, if I'm trying to make my bedroom a bit dark, yeah.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, this feels a little bit like going against myself.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, uh, Kendall earplugs, big fan of earplugs, big fan of uh Manta eye masks, they're great, they're the best, best eye masks on the planet, as far as I'm concerned.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh that's it.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I've done so much, dude.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_02: I've done intrafemoral lines, uh, hemo hyperoxygenation therapies in Vienna.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_02: I've gone and had an intrajugul line put in and lived in a hospital in Tijuana for four days and gone through like a seraph 100 filter, lots of things.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_02: But when it comes down to it, it's like get up early, get some sunlight, train, see some friends, try to hydrate a good bit.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_02: Don't eat that much shit.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, uh walk, 10-minute walk after food where possible.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like just one of my favorite health hacks of all time, by the way.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's the different when you start, it's kind of a little bit like uh people everyone that's got a Japanese toilet won't fucking shut up about it.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, all right, okay, I know that you've got them next door.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_02: And uh everyone that gets everyone that gets a Japanese toilet just will not shut up about it.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_02: And it's kind of the same if you start doing a a walk after each meal.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_02: First off, if you have three meals a day, 30 minutes is probably 5,000 steps.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_02: So that's you've got 50% of your way to getting the walk-in.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, the way that your the contralateral movement of your arms and your legs work means that the muscles that cross your uh digestion actually help to get some of that like food moving a little bit or the the it gets your digestion moving a little bit.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh regulates blood sugar, it's it's great.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_02: And also, if you've just been for dinner with somebody, it's a nice way to wind it down and to walk away.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I uh that's that's another one of my my again, Austin Hot.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes I'm busy, I want to get back on my laptop, or I can't bear to leave arguing with somebody on the internet or whatever.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but yeah, those are those are some.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: Hey Chris, I think people listening will feel like that's a lot, right?
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like you've obviously been exposed to a lot of these things, you've tried probably nearly everything.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um if you had to remove all of them except three, what would you keep?
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_02: Morning light, which ideally you don't even need the glasses for if you live somewhere that's got sunlight.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: That it's so I wish it wasn't so much of a meme around Kubimen because it is so important and it is so good, it is such a hack.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I for me, if I do get that, the likelihood of my day going well is so much higher, and if I don't, the likelihood of it going badly is so much higher.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, that would be one some form of training, and I would say the 10-minute walk after meals, at least at the moment, right?
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like all of this stuff, this big well, this cathedral of bullshit that I've architected for myself of like health things, right?
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: That's not, I'm not doing that every day.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_02: I'm probably not even doing that every month, but I will go through periods where I'll say, okay, I'm gonna try and do a lot of HBot sessions, I'm gonna build those up, and then I'll have a bit of a break.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna do a some time where I really focus on like my wake time and then uh but maybe I'm a bit busy, or maybe I'm like put going out with my friends, I'm going to shows or something.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_02: So my sleep pattern's a little bit off.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but yeah, for me, if I was just to do three things, I think there's a gap in the market for a company that makes uh curtains that retract in time with an alarm.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: I think if you made an alarm that opened the curtains to your house, I mean it's usually easy for you to do it too.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_02: That must exist already.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_02: It has to, but just it I haven't seen it popularized.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I just think if you're already being smashed in the face by sunlight, and you can get sunrise alarm clocks, they're they're not bad, I know, but still you're it's artificial light and you're indoors or whatever.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, train in whatever form it is that you like, uh sun in the morning and 10 minute walk after meals.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_02: Those for me, three biggest movers.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um what's the one bit of guidance, advice that you've heard of from one or more of your guests that you bought into straight away, but you really struggle still to adhere to.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because you know, I referenced to you earlier you can tell me to not take my phone to bed a thousand times in a row and I still do it.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_02: I think that would be up there for me.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um, not the taking it to bed, the using it in the morning.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so Oh, you mean like reaching for it straight away?
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_02: When I yeah, it's I sleeping with my phone outside my bedroom is that's the hack for that.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_02: Like just put the charging cable outside of your bedroom.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you don't want to wake up with no charge.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_02: So eventually, either your fatigue or the phone's battery is going to beat you, and you're gonna need to go and plug it in and then go back into bed and fall asleep, hopefully.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: I did it for three days last week, and I was pretty proud of myself.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then I crumbled.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you basically feel like a saint if you've done that.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, congratulations.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_02: You should be knighted.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh not using phone early in the morning is is a uh a tough one for me.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_02: The morning sunlight as well, dude.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_02: Like mornings have been uh challenging, so I've been all over the place and time zones and stuff, so that's been rough.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_02: To be I probably the number one for me is uh junk food, processed food stuff.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I've got a big appetite, I have a sweet tooth, I like eating tasty things.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_02: I've probably got uh heathens palate.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like I just such a basic bitch when it comes to like the food that I like.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's so many good options.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_02: There's always a good dinner happening in Austin, Texas.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_02: There's always an amazing restaurant that's got a lemon meringue something dessert at the end, or the like salt glazed bread at the start.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's you that's your kryptonite.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_02: To a degree, yeah.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_02: And um, you know, trying to dial continually dial diet in while not feeling like you're whipping yourself.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, here's another area that I need to unload some willpower into because I've had to keep myself off the internet all day as I've been trying to do my work of whatever kind.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_02: I've not let myself watch TV at night because I'm terrified that the blue light's gonna ruin my sleep.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm not using it when I get up in the morning.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_02: I've got to lift these things in the gym that are heavy and I don't want to lift and all this stuff.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_02: And now you tell me when I go out to dinner that I've got to say no to this.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's this permanent onslaught from the world of temptations.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I think this is why people are to bring it full circle, pushing back against this sense of homework.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_02: Like, God, I'm so laden down with obligations from real life, and now you're telling me I've got all of this other stuff to do, and if I don't do it, I'm not a good person, and I want to be a good person, I don't want to do it for myself.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_02: I'm kind of fucking exhausted, and I really don't want to do this thing anymore.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how do you feel about this pushback against over-optimization that we're seeing right now?
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_02: I uh wholeheartedly agree with it, to be honest.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_02: I think um the overwhelm of optimization, part of which I was absolutely am part of that community.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_02: Like I started off in the productivity world.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, um, I think it's I think it's needed to sort of balance things out.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it is going to swing too far, and it's already you will see it swing too far.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_02: Like guys are finishing triathlons and like ripping sigs.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, look, one cigarette's not going to kill you, but reliably, one cigarette doesn't just stick at one cigarette, it does turn into a habit to some degree.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe you've got the if you've done a triathlon, maybe you've got the willpower to be able to be like that.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_02: One and done.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm sweet.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_02: I'll just do it after triathlons, whatever.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_02: Like a cigarette after sex or something.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think it's it's quite timely, but I think it's part of a broader trend, which is like health, fitness, optimization, culture, productivity.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_02: It was this wild west where we could do all of this exciting stuff for a long time, and now we've realized it's a bit overwhelming, and much of it might have been spurious in terms of how effective it was.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I just don't have that much time, bro.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like, give me a break.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I did a big essay on my YouTube channel talking about my thoughts on optimization culture, and I broke down my previously very opulent morning routine with breath work and reading and and and journaling and gratitude and meditation and yin yoga and prepping my food and the salt and water, all this stuff.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_02: And um, I understand that from the outside that looks and sounds kind of ridiculous, but I do think that there is value to condensing a period of hyper optimization to kind of just pay your dues.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_02: Like you can make a ton of progress in the gym if you don't do anything else for six months.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_02: But if you take 50% of that intensity in the gym and do it for a year, you don't make the same amount of progress.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_02: There is something about like really funneling all of your attention onto one thing and locking in for a good period of time.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: I I watched you, it may well have been on Modern Wisdom, talking about paying your debt or paying off a debt, and I thought that was that really resonated.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think everyone falls on this spectrum somewhere where you know some people love tracking every single data point about their biology, and then some hate it.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_01: I don't love wearing a wearable, for example, because it I get this like um sort of baseline feeling of anxiety when I see my data's not as good as it should be, or or it doesn't represent how I feel, right?
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then I by definition feel worse.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: But I do think that there is real value in you know, the the people that are not doing anywhere close to the things that we already know to work, we have this great corpus of evidence to prove it out.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: If you're in that camp and you're not doing anywhere near enough, you don't really have any business talking about or critiquing over over your over optimization.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_02: My brother, you've had four hours sleep for the last week.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so yeah, there's there's definitely two groups of people.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_02: One is the people turning themselves inside out trying to optimize, and then exhausted and overwhelmed that they feel like they have to do more, and they're the ones in the anti-optimization group, and then there's the other group of people who get all of the prestige of now the wind swinging back in their direction of yeah, I told you the optimization stuff was pointless.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, dude, your blood pressure is in the 160s, like there is work to be done.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and both sides aren't talking to themselves, they're using the example of the other as sort of justification.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_02: But I I have this idea called advice hyper responders.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_02: Like uh advice doesn't distribute like medicine, it distributes like alcohol.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_02: The people that are most that most at risk of overdose on it already take too much and then take more.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_02: So uh if you're the sort of person that is already nervous going up to women, then the advice don't be pushy with women will really land with you.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I knew I knew I was too much.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_02: Meanwhile, the dude that was blowing through boundaries and me too was.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: All about just coasts past the advice unheard unseen.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the person that hears the advice, fuck your feelings, just work harder, is already the one.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_02: The person that takes that to heart is already the one that is turning themselves inside out, desperately trying to squeeze every drop out of every day.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas the dude that's lying on his couch and actually needs to hear David Goggins screaming in his face to get up and go harder, he doesn't even notice it.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_02: So, because of this, the people that are already in the industry get overwhelmed with it and feel like they're getting peppered with more, while there is an audience of people who still need it.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_02: And that might be like the median American might need to hear that.
• 44:39
  unknown: Right?
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_02: The median American's overweight.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: How how do we reconcile for that?
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, how do you get through to them?
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it it's Because I don't think that we need to be told, I don't think even those people need to be told how important exercise is or sleep is, but they're still not doing it.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, interventions aren't my aren't my uh strong suit.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_02: Certainly, one thing that I would say is that you need different voices from different angles because the podcasting industry, the world of health and fitness, everybody's kind of got their audience now.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_02: Most of the territories have been captured, I think.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_02: And that means that everyone has kind of heard.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_02: I think that you need to do it from a new angle, yeah, is the point.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like you can't try to emulate what's already been.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_02: So okay, what's going to be new?
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_02: What's going to be different?
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_02: How am I gonna how am I gonna adapt this thing?
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and passing this sort of democratizing this kind of information so that it's out on 60 minutes, so that it's out on Dr.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_02: Phil, you know, that is where you will make the big impact because the blue ocean, for if you're thinking, okay, how do we move the country or the world's health the most?
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_02: So, okay, where are the people who aren't listening?
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_02: Not only that are not tuning into this type of podcast, and there's a new angle on it that brings them in, but aren't listening to don't even know what the Spotify podcast app is.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_02: That aren't using Apple Podcasts, that aren't subscribed to people on YouTube, and the middle America, like software.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_01: Which I would wager is more than the people that are.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_01: Bingo.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_02: Bingo, by a huge margin.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_01: I I think I think the way to make that more accessible, approachable is to really lower the barrier for entry.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: And when we think about the things that we know to work, I think people's understanding of the you know what's the minimum viable amount, I think they they the the concept uh the um understanding is that that bar is much higher than it is, right?
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: If if people were to do you know 10, 20 minutes a day of these things, but do them forever, they would get a much higher yield than trying to cram in two, three hours a day, three or four days a week.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's much more likely that they'll adhere to it with consistency, it won't suck the fun out of life, it'll be easier, less frictitious, and they may well enjoy doing it.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so I do think if we can really get clear on what we are being told, which of which of what we're being told is bullshit and which is actually very high yielding.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, most of the things, uh in fact, all of the things that you mentioned, there's evidence that they work for a lot of people a lot of the time, but then some of the things work for everyone every time.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I think if we can help them discern that signal from noise and then say, look, you're you're fine doing 10, 20 minutes a day as long as you do it every day.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: So find something that works for you that you can stick to with consistency.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_01: What do you like?
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_01: What do you enjoy to do?
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: Do more of it.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_02: Go to bed at the same time if you can.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_02: Wake up at the same time, like, don't have too much more than half an hour of swing either way.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like, there's not really any researcher that I've ever heard who said regularity and duration for sleep are not as important as people are saying.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like, even that is something that everyone will happily harp on about an over-eg and over egg, because they know that the gap between impact and adherence is light years apart.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: Sadly.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: On that note, are there things that you have been told by any number of guests that you know you've been told time and time and again there's great evidence for this.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: You've then looked into and there is great evidence.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: You've then tried it and you're like, this just doesn't work for me.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_02: Hmm.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_02: What didn't I like?
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh keto really do not do well with high fat.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_02: I just I don't enjoy it.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_02: My palate isn't a massive fan of it.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_02: I don't like the foods that I need to eat in order to be able to get there.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_02: Uh meat and fruit, interestingly enough, I found fine.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_02: The problem, so high protein, low everything else, sweet.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_02: But the high fat thing was really just it didn't make me feel good.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_02: It made I I couldn't regulate my appetite particularly well, even though I know that the evidence for keto for uh performance, uh especially for me, being worried about cognition or caring about cognition as much as I do, I should have been a poster child for it.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but that that just was not my bag at all.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I, you know, Tim Ferris, who's a good friend, is ardent about uh keto for brain function and mental health and mood stability and things.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_02: And my I'm sorry, my brother, I just can't do it.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_02: So that was that was one.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I couldn't get into low and slow training for a while, and now I've done it, and now apparently I need to unlearn it and start doing hit instead.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_02: So we'll see where the research goes next, and I'll have to I'll be doing like boxer size or something before Pilates.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh that's those that's the big one that comes to mind for me.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_01: W when you think about all these different verticals, to me, nutrition feels like the one that there's the most amount of discord still.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_01: Agreed.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_01: Even in high science.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_01: Do you agree with that?
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_01: And if so, what would you say is the one I I mean, look, I don't I don't love the idea of us having some nutrition religion, but do you have a specific nutrition plan that you follow that has worked well for you?
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, so interestingly, I guess from my entire adult life, because I've been such a bro lifter, as a lot of dudes have, it's just I've optimized protein for my entire life.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_02: So that's like good.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_02: I in some ways close my eyes through the dart of the dartboard and hit something close to like oh, this is gonna be evidence-based in a decade.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_02: Fun.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like, and it's just that bodybuilders got there first.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, hooray for that.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_01: I love the weight training, has turned out to be the yeah, brilliant.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like I just thought I just thought I was getting girls.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um one of the challenges of that was that I lived through the uh if it fits your macros era.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_02: And this was a a world where macronutrients, protein, carbs, fats, were all that matters.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_02: And if you hit your carbs through Haribo and your protein through shakes and your fats through avocado, it is the same functionally as if you'd had it through three home-cooked meals that were well balanced with you know micronutrients and fiber and stuff like that.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_02: Turns out that the bodybuilders might have just been living like extended adolescence there.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um when it comes to sort of the new world of this, I just had a really fantastic conversation, Harvard researcher on, and he was taking me through, I think he'd tried the 10 most popular diets ever.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_02: And he'd done ones I hadn't even heard of.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_02: Uh is it the sprint diet or something which is high carb, low protein?
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, what even is that?
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_02: What it's like is including some sugars as well in there.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_02: Like, actually, you can get a ton of sugar.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, well, how does that how's that given that the opposite is being sort of touted around?
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_02: And he did everything, he did pescatarian, he did vegan, he did carnivore, he did uh uh uh blue zone, adjacent Mediterranean.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_02: Look, if I'm gonna take from like all of the people that I've spoken to the most common approach, I would say Mediterranean cranking the protein a tiny bit, like just pushing protein a little bit, because I do think that some of the pushback against protein has been overdone now.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, because it's in everything, it's in your nacho chips and it's in your cereal and it's in your seat of the car that you drive and stuff.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_02: You gotta pick a bit of that off and chew on it.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um I would say across everything, Mediterranean adjacent diet with probably a little bit more protein than they would typically eat.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_02: But for me personally, skipping breakfast is just such a great way for me to get keep calories under control, uh, backload calories and especially carbs later in the day where insulin sensitivity is adjusted somewhat.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and it it does keep me a little bit sharper, especially up until and then if I can do the same thing.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_02: There used to be do you remember carb backloading from back in the day?
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so this is this idea that because insulin sensitivity changes over time, if you push your carbs toward later in the day, there is something to do with nutrient shuttling that means that you're going to be less likely to use that as fat, more likely to do it.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_02: I don't really know how the science figured out in that.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_02: What I do know is that if I I don't ever cheat with a Mars bar for breakfast, I cheat with a Mars bar for supper, dinner.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_01: I do the set I I mean, I just think it feels easier to stick to, right?
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like I find it easier to not eat in the morning.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_01: I've never been a huge breakfast guy, um, and then just condense that window of eating.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_02: Push it toward the back end of the day.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_02: And then if you do if you do the same thing again, you can kind of double cheat this, or at least I've found this to be a really effective way, and this is kind of how I've eaten for most of my adult life now.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_02: If I miss breakfast, if I train, I do have a protein shake.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_02: The intra workout window kind of thing seems the science seems to be a bit dodgy on that.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_02: But whatever, like it's just good to go, okay.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_02: I trained, I'll put 30 grams of protein in me, 40 grams of protein, like hooray for that.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_02: Fantastic.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then if your lunch, if you can manage to avoid largely avoid carbs for that, by the time that you're in the middle of the afternoon, you've got a little bit of adrenaline.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_02: So you need to be comfortable with that, which I quite like because that makes me feel, especially because I record at two in the afternoon.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_02: If I've had maybe You record at the same time every day.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_02: Every day, yeah.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_02: Two o'clock.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_02: Two o'clock for me is it's when you peak.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's I'm pretty dialed.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_02: I've had enough time in the morning to do some stuff for me, to lock in for the guest.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_02: I've eaten a bit of calories, but like maybe some eggs with some berries, maybe some some vegetables on the side, some like kale or something like that.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_02: And then going to the episode, and then like if I was doing macro tracking, I'm like, I've got 220 grams of carbs, 250 grams of carbs left for the day.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_02: I haven't touched them, haven't done anything.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't this great?
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_02: I can go through or I can have a big dinner and I'm not gonna feel guilty about it.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_02: I can feel satisfied as I go to bed.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_02: So for me, backloading, not just pushing like calorie uh uh distribution, but also um the way that I discriminate different macronutrients throughout the day and keeping the carbs for the end of the day, it makes me feel full, it makes me sleep better, all that stuff.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, have you seen this um what's it called?
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_02: Double, double star uh resistant starch?
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_02: Is that it?
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_02: So it's when you cook potatoes, oh yeah, you cool them, yeah, yeah.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_02: And then you cook them again and you cool them again, yeah, and you eat them when they're cooled, and it's supposed to be really good for gut health.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_02: I think there is some truth to that.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_02: I've seen this, this is picking up speed.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_02: So if I was to lick my finger and put it in the air, I think that we're through the protein revolution.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's done.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's still in everything, but it's it's not cutting edge.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_02: I think the creatine revolution is at its peak.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_02: I think the fiber and gut health revolution just beginning is on the ascendancy.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the other stuff that people are going to be paying attention to, water quality, uh, so something like an aqua true, like a reverse osmosis or a Berkey, um, air quality.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_02: So something like a Jasper, uh being worried about mold, so the mold co do great uh testing and stuff like that for mold.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and then light quality, so flicker of LED bulbs, how that impacts people's health.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_02: All of this is like I'm getting a bit more exploratory.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_01: No, look, I I agree with you.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_01: Environmental, like home health.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_01: I we we do a lot, we do a very deep diagnostics assessment in members' homes.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_01: Where we'll send in a bunch of scientists to go and analyze water, air, particulates, mold exposure, EMF toxins.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, and it's extremely in-depth.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_01: This will be something that becomes much more scalable and affordable.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_01: The thing I love about those as interventions and tests is that they don't require the person to do anything, right?
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_01: So you remove all the friction, you could be away from the home for the weekend, you come home, and those changes have been made to improve the whole family's health.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the things that are going to gain lots of traction over the coming years are the ones that can yield us a return without adding more to our plate.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_02: Pivot from plastic containers and Tupperware to glass, yeah.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_02: A pivot from classic nonstick pans to like hex clad or something like that, or a steel uh pan or um iron uh cast iron pans, stuff like that.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_01: But we just don't we don't know what we don't know, right?
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so this is where I think it's it's such a challenge for a consumer.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_01: All of the trends you just mentioned, when they were trendy, we were being told how important and efficacious they were by people who are really compelling, right?
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it's so difficult, even as people that work in the field who get to have the opportunity to speak to the experts, if they are great communicators of science, it's pretty compelling, right?
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it's very difficult to discern whether they're just a great communicator or whether they're doing great science.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, uh, I mean, this is true in every area of the world that we mistake conviction and fluency for truthfulness and expertise.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_01: How do you how do you determine that with the guests?
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_02: Usually I'll look at their back catalogue, their history, you know, what are their credentials like, what do I know about them?
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_02: And then I've got a good sense now of where the science is at, an all right sense for a normie, right?
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_02: I've got okay radar.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I'll just poke.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_02: I'll poke enough.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_02: So if there's something that I know that I I should really quiz a guest on because they had this claim that they made in the past, and I'm like, well, okay, I I understand that you're very excited about this new thing, but it wasn't that long ago that this happened.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_02: So what can you explain?
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_02: How do you know?
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_02: Because I want you to be right, and I want to be right, and I want to learn from you, but I gotta say, you it it sets the sort of amber alarms off a little bit when I think, well, there was this thing from the past, and now how do you know that you're not just repeating the same mistake you made previously?
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_02: Little pokes here and there, but you're right.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, this whole world, this is the whole thing uh with the mold co as a good example.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um it is to try and work out is there mold in my house?
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_02: Have uh is it affecting me and my physiology and how do I get rid of it?
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_02: It is so difficult to do, it is uh arduous and and and uh it takes forever.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's so long to detox from mold, you're just binding, taking cholesterolamine or charcoal or cholseverin multiple times a day, having to move your food around to avoid that from happening for months, months.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_02: And you went through this.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_02: I did, yeah.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_01: Can we can we talk about this?
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you spent many years talking to people about how to optimize for your health, and then you get this diagnosis, right?
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_01: How did maybe if you would explain what that was and then how that sat with you for someone who is you know, I think the the high-level message that I think is worth sharing is like you can do everything right, right?
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_02: And and still get smashed in the face by reality, yeah.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, America is a wonderful country, but it's water and it's air and its building materials are trying to kill everybody that lives in it, and the food as well.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um that's that's kind of that's kind of the summation.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_02: Look, I I moved to America four years ago.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, a lot of immigrants have this issue, a lot of Mexican immigrants do too, that uh they'll have digestive trouble because they're not used to a lot of the additives, uh uh the the just the raw foundation of what an American diet, even if you're trying to eat relatively clean, which I I always have done.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and uh about two and a half years ago, I noticed that I was being more tired, didn't have the same kind of energy, I was being a bit forgetful, and my mood was low.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, well, I've had each of these things individually, you know, if I'm sleep deprived or if I'm having a stressful time emotionally or whatever.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_02: And like this just feels different and heavier, and it just kept getting worse and kept getting worse and kept getting worse.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_02: And then the start of 2024, it's like, oh, I'm there's really, really something wrong.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I don't feel good at all.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_02: And it turned out that the house I was living in had uh a lot of mold, toxic mold, three of the top four uh strains that you do not want at very, very high levels.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_02: And subsequent genetic testing that I did, you can have a polymorphism or a number of polymorphisms that mean you have poor detox pathways.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_02: So that's how I lived in the house, the same house as another housemate of mine.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_02: And he was like ripping cigs, going to bed at three in the morning, and just loving life.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_02: Meanwhile, I felt like I was living on Jupiter with gravity that was 10 times what it should be.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but all of this was found out, and this is for anybody that's dealing with uh chronic complex illness, I really, really feel for you because there's this weird game of Sherlock Holmes, like, guess who?
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, oh, maybe it's the BPAs because they're out of whack.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_02: Oh maybe it's the CMV, or maybe it's the EBV, or maybe it's you've got some Lyme disease, but it's like IgG, not IgN.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_02: So, like, really it's not active.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_02: Why would you be why would that be causing this?
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, well, maybe maybe it's your nervous system, or maybe there's something going on.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe let's have a look at your B le vitamin B levels.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you do have the MT and you're playing this game of guess who?
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_02: What is causing me to feel bad?
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_02: And if you run enough tests on people, you will find loads of things that are out that are in the red, they're even extreme, but you don't know which one of those or which few of those are causing you to feel this way.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's the same as people that got bad backs, you can do uh an MRI of someone's lower back and it can look fucked and they don't have any pain, they operate perfectly.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_02: And you can do an MRI of someone who's in chronic pain and you're like, spine looks great.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, the same applies on the other side, right?
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_01: You can do lots of things to optimize for your health.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's very difficult to pinpoint which of those things is working.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_01: Bingo.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_01: Or which lever is actually causing the improvement in cognition or physiology or something.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_02: So you end up this is how people end up with this sort of weird ritualistic rain dance that they have to do.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's almost it almost becomes more uh uh superstitious than it is an effective strategy because I don't know what's gonna be like a baseball player, they do the glove, I do the glove, I tap the foot, I tap the foot, I shake the helmet, and then it's uh Then you can't not do it.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_01: There's also a huge placebo effect both ways.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_02: So anyway, I uh I I go on this journey of trying to fix myself.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_02: Of uh, okay, what is it that's been the big I got the vaccine, I got three because I was in the UK when it happened and had to.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_02: You did um 98% compliance with the first and 90% 96% with the second, 92% with the third, I think, something like that.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_02: And um, yeah, th there's okay, so I got that and I didn't really notice anything, but then I got COVID twice, and the second time was part of what kicked this off.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, I go on this huge journey for ages.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_02: I must have done hundreds of IVs, you know, like tests, thousands, tens of thousands of supplements, uh binders and and phosphatetylcholine and all of this stuff, like just trying to counteract what's going on, and and uh then you're left with this period of time where you think, well, I'm supposed to, I'm young, I'm doing all of this stuff for my health.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_02: Like I'm not being I was uh adventurous in my twenties, but I was never like flippant or dangerous with my health.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and I like to party and stuff, but I wasn't insane.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_02: And now there is absolutely some dude in fucking Nebraska, right, who doesn't even know that Andrew Huberman exists, that can't find Brian Johnson on a map.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_02: Perfect health, absolutely lives in a house with mold that just does not care.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_02: And he's totally fine, could deadlift for 450 without even thinking about it.
• 1:05:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like, just great.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_02: And then you go, okay, how much and this is where the finger gets pointed.
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_02: The reason that you're ill is because of your obsession.
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_02: Oh you have somehow psychogenically created this, and you go, uh, it's a fucking wonderful way to victim blame someone who can't remember how to tie their shoes, which was a period I went through.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_02: Look down at my feet, and I was like, I don't know how to do those laces.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like, if you're telling me that I've managed to psychosomatically hate the smell of water, hate the smell of cut grass, forget how to tie my shoes, like sleep for 12 hours and wake up feeling more tired than when I went to bed, I'm sorry, I just don't.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_02: Think I'm that sophisticated.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_01: How did you manage to continue working?
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_01: With difficulty.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I lived in a hotel for hotels for like four months because my house was being remediated to people that have got mould in their house.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_02: The it is very, very difficult to remediate.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_02: I'm my my recommendation is strongly in like 99 out of 100.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_02: Move.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_02: Move.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_02: Move.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_02: Especially if you've got a landlord, they cannot keep you in there.
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_02: You can neuter the rent, find yourself a long-term stay, and you know, for now it'll be good.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_02: The changeover of like you've got to clean everything twice with special fluid, like prove that it's all work.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_02: I had to throw out everything, all my possessions.
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_02: Lived in a hotel for ages.
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but yeah, I basically kind of shut down my life outside of I had two jobs, fix myself and run the show.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I I stopped my life outside of that.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't do anything else.
• 1:06:57
  SPEAKER_01: Can I ask you a personal question?
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_01: For someone who spends so much of their time and energy, you know, optimizing to improve the way that they feel, and I am one of these people, if I don't if I'm unable to work out or do the things that I know make me feel good, it impacts my mental health.
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_01: Did you have a period there where it was a bit dark?
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, it's it's not nice to spend a long time building yourself into the sort of person you're proud of to then have that taken away through what feels like no action of your own.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like, hang on, so you're telling me I worked really hard to become a thing that I value from something that I didn't so much, and my hard-won self-esteem is now being insulted, and I didn't I I don't even get the reward of being able to oh well yeah, at least I you know I did four months on blow in Vegas, like wasn't that fun.
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_02: Like, at least I got to like own my shortcoming.
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's that being it's a difference between being in a car crash with any other driver and being hit by a reckless driver, and you're like, like I didn't even I didn't even choose this to happen.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and um, yeah, it's it's rough, dude.
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's really it's given me a pharmaceutical grade dose of humility, like it really has, but and you know, I'd say this to anybody that's gone through a a tough period with with their health.
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_02: First off, you are still in there, but there's no depth of health damage that I have seen from stuff like this.
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, there's extremes, there's no degree of health damage from complex illness where somebody hasn't been able to, once they're out of it and fix themselves, become themselves again, right?
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_02: Like this is this fear, I lost who I was, like I'm not me anymore.
• 1:08:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh that's not something that at least in and I've been exposed to lots of people that have reached out to me after I talked about my story online, but the people that are still in it are still in it, but the people that are out of it are like I'm I'm out.
• 1:09:04
  SPEAKER_02: That being said, there is a kind of humility that especially men, I think, only get access to when they've been in a situation where they literally didn't know if they were going to get better.
• 1:09:21
  SPEAKER_02: That's the difference between going through a hard time that everyone goes through and really, really hitting rock bottom because it imbues you with this like inescapable amount of empathy.
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_02: If you go, God, like I was in so much shit.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_02: How can I judge this other person?
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_02: If somebody had seen me from the outside, dude, stop whining.
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_02: You look fine, you're in great condition.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_02: What are you talking about?
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_02: You're still running the party.
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_02: Like, just because somebody carries a weight doesn't mean it isn't heavy.
• 1:09:52
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 1:09:52
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you can't see how much somebody is bearing inside, and that has been as a only child, self-starter, you know, agency, highly sovereign personal, like determination person.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I there was a I had a degree of flippancy, I think, around the challenges that other people were facing.
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_02: And um it's impossible, it is simply impossible, and that's painful.
• 1:10:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know, this is you walk through New York and for all that it's an amazing city that I absolutely love.
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of homeless people, and I think if you fully take in the like uh human misfortune of that situation, you'd probably be crying most of your way to work.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I agree.
• 1:10:34
  SPEAKER_02: Like you actually need to you wall yourself off against this stuff because there's so much exposure to like extreme uh situations and misery.
• 1:10:43
  SPEAKER_02: And you go, Oh god, I I can't even operate if I try and do this thing.
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um and this is this has been a really unchosen but probably quite useful reminder of humility for me.
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's easy to forget as well that so much of our success, failure, health, ill health is half chance.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_01: Right, and that those things can happen, you know, we're one diagnosis away from a completely different life.
• 1:11:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and you can do everything right and be ill.
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_02: You can do absolutely everything right and still be ill.
• 1:11:16
  SPEAKER_01: Chris, is that what is that for you a good example of a lesson that you needed to be taught that you couldn't be taught through anything other than experience?
• 1:11:27
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely, yeah.
• 1:11:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_01: I've heard you talk about that in the past.
• 1:11:30
  SPEAKER_01: Unteachable lessons.
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Unteachable lessons.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_02: They're uh this unique category of insights that we can't learn other than through experience.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's annoying, isn't it?
• 1:11:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's highly annoying.
• 1:11:41
  SPEAKER_02: What's that line?
• 1:11:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, any idiot can learn from experience.
• 1:11:44
  SPEAKER_02: I prefer to learn from the experience of others.
• 1:11:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:11:46
  SPEAKER_02: But there's this category like money won't make you happy, fame won't fix your self-worth, you don't love that pretty girl, she's just hot and difficult to get.
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you should see your parents more, you won't regret working less.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_02: Lying in a hammock is never a waste of time.
• 1:12:02
  SPEAKER_02: Like all of these things sound like basic bitch cliche insights, and people sort of roll their eyes at how trite they are.
• 1:12:08
  SPEAKER_02: But the reason that that's the case is that they are well-worn ruts in the ground from the millions of people that have come before you.
• 1:12:17
  SPEAKER_02: We basically all think some version of I can disregard the most well-repeated wisdom of the ages from mythology, media, literature, cinema, popular culture, music.
• 1:12:32
  SPEAKER_02: And instead, we think some version of, yeah, that might be true for them, but not for me.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna dance through this minefield, avoid all of the tripwires, and I'll make it out the other side fine.
• 1:12:41
  SPEAKER_02: And then you kick one, and you're now part of this illustrious club of a few million, billion other people who all learned the same thing.
• 1:12:48
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't it interesting?
• 1:12:49
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, oh, they were right as well.
• 1:12:51
  SPEAKER_02: Wouldn't you get some of the scars?
• 1:12:53
  SPEAKER_02: There's one of two things that are happening.
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_02: Either it's true, or every person that becomes rich or famous or gets a hot goal or spends not enough time in a hammock or whatever, comes to the same realization, secretly contacts everyone else that's done it, gets inducted into this weird cartel cult and goes, let's pull the ladder up after everybody else.
• 1:13:15
  SPEAKER_02: Let's pull the ladder up and actually try and prove to them that money is the thing that will make you happy, that fame will fix your self-worth, that that crazy girl is the one that's that you should stick with.
• 1:13:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like that's not it, there is not enough coordination on planet Earth to be able to do that.
• 1:13:31
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not, it's just that people arrive there and they realize external success won't fill the internal void, right?
• 1:13:37
  SPEAKER_02: But there is a one thing I've been thinking about a lot recently is this idea.
• 1:13:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's called the fading affect bias.
• 1:13:43
  SPEAKER_02: So uh good memories and bad memories fade with time, but bad bad memories fade faster.
• 1:13:48
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes bad memories become funny after long enough.
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_02: What this means is that we forget the pain that we went through, but we often remember the reward.
• 1:14:00
  SPEAKER_02: So somebody that works at a very high-powered job and is close to burnout and leaves, 12 months later, they're actually like, Well, I missed the status.
• 1:14:08
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't that bad.
• 1:14:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's the it wasn't that bad muscle.
• 1:14:11
  SPEAKER_02: The same thing happens for someone that's got a gambling or a drug, uh, alcohol addiction.
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_02: They think, you know, at the time they remembered the visceral shame, the mornings waking up feeling like they need to make excuses for themselves.
• 1:14:24
  SPEAKER_02: And then 18 months later, they're like, you know.
• 1:14:26
  SPEAKER_02: And then they relapse.
• 1:14:27
  SPEAKER_02: And the same thing happens with budgeting and finance, that someone who's dragged themselves out of debt by working the double shift, and then that new car payment, it doesn't look so bad because they don't remember the pain in the same way that they can recall the pleasure.
• 1:14:42
  SPEAKER_02: And the same thing goes for health and illness.
• 1:14:45
  SPEAKER_02: But people basically progress just destroys the receipts that were why the progress was needed in the first place.
• 1:14:55
  SPEAKER_02: It gets rid of the pain that motivated you to begin that particular path.
• 1:15:01
  SPEAKER_02: And this is how someone stops taking the medicine or gets off their diet or decides that they're not gonna stick to their workout regime or whatever it is.
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_02: And this isn't to say that one or 10 or fucking a hundred days of not hitting your thing is going to be the end of you.
• 1:15:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but we're always paying into a ledger.
• 1:15:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's no such thing as not drilling a habit.
• 1:15:24
  SPEAKER_02: Even in action is a habit.
• 1:15:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's no impartial decision.
• 1:15:28
  SPEAKER_02: Not making a decision is still a decision.
• 1:15:30
  SPEAKER_02: You're drilling the I don't make a decision muscle.
• 1:15:32
  SPEAKER_02: So, okay, what are you going to pay into?
• 1:15:34
  SPEAKER_02: And you don't need to do it every single day.
• 1:15:36
  SPEAKER_02: You don't need to castigate yourself, prostrate yourself on the altar of progress and development and optimization every single day.
• 1:15:44
  SPEAKER_02: But especially if you've ripped yourself out of a bad situation, it is kind of good to revisit that pain every so often to go, oh, I do not want to go back there.
• 1:15:53
  SPEAKER_02: You know, for me, I'm if I want to move into a new place, it's going to be so arduous for me to do the level of testing I need to make sure it's not mold.
• 1:16:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I speak to you.
• 1:16:02
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but now that your friend, it's much easier.
• 1:16:06
  SPEAKER_02: If I forget just how bad it was when I was at peak mold and I looked down at my shoes and couldn't remember them, or I forgot my friend's name while I was looking at him.
• 1:16:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I that's the motivation.
• 1:16:16
  SPEAKER_02: That's why I did it.
• 1:16:17
  SPEAKER_02: So I I should stick to that.
• 1:16:19
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, fading affect bias explains why people who were motivated to do a thing in the past have forgotten the reason that they were motivated to do it now in the future.
• 1:16:28
  SPEAKER_01: We could do a whole episode on that.
• 1:16:29
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 1:16:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna unpack that.
• 1:16:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's one of my favorite new insights.
• 1:16:33
  SPEAKER_01: One comment I will add though, actually, is that I think something that we are missing almost entirely in this space is self-compassion.
• 1:16:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:16:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, where you know, we go through these cyclical periods of adhering to whatever protocol we we're doing in the moment, and then we fail, and then we beat ourselves up that we fail, and then we're like, well, that didn't work, I'm not gonna do it again.
• 1:16:57
  SPEAKER_01: But the people who seem to succeed in the long term are the ones that dust themselves off, give it another go, fail again, do it again, and just continue on that cyclical nature until they find something that fits and works.
• 1:17:11
  SPEAKER_02: I I love that idea about compassion, I think it's so good.
• 1:17:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, what's really, really cool and very difficult, but a lot of the people that feel like they're always the uh negative parent inside of their own mind, that's a lovely little exercise that you can do.
• 1:17:26
  SPEAKER_02: Try to have compassion for the thing that you did and try to have compassion for the part of you that's judging you as well.
• 1:17:32
  SPEAKER_02: One of the things you realize on the judging you as well bit is that the judge is really trying to help.
• 1:17:38
  SPEAKER_02: The reason you're judging yourself is you want to do something good for you.
• 1:17:41
  SPEAKER_02: You know it's important.
• 1:17:42
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it makes me think, you know, those roombas, the little robot vacuum cleaners.
• 1:17:47
  SPEAKER_02: I envision my own sort of bastard inner voice.
• 1:17:51
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, a little bit like a overzealous but quite crap Roomba.
• 1:17:56
  SPEAKER_02: And he like gets stuck underneath the chair and he's cleaning a corner that's been cleaned all the time, like it's so much, and he's going around like trying to whisk things up and he doesn't need to, and he needs a recharge.
• 1:18:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, he really just wants to do it well.
• 1:18:08
  SPEAKER_02: Like he really just wants me to be good and and healthy and happy and and respected and liked by people, and like fuck, man, like just come here, like I appreciate you.
• 1:18:20
  SPEAKER_02: Now's not the time for you.
• 1:18:21
  SPEAKER_02: I'm at dinner with my friends, but I really appreciate you being there.
• 1:18:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like, thank you for being there.
• 1:18:29
  SPEAKER_02: Just not now, all right?
• 1:18:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that degree of compassion for the thing you did and compassion for the judging is you can get like three, four, five degrees of separation of compassion if you need to.
• 1:18:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but that's a nice place to start.
• 1:18:43
  SPEAKER_02: And if you do feel like, God, I've got this like overoptimization guilt, and now I have shame about my guilt, and now I have anxiety about my shame about my guilt, yeah.
• 1:18:51
  SPEAKER_02: This infinite regress of you judging yourself.
• 1:18:54
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, you can just say, well, why is it there?
• 1:18:56
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's there because I really like I want to look out for myself and I felt powerless as a kid, or people didn't seem to care about me, so I want it to be really impressive, or I was ill in the past, I'm worried that it's gonna happen again, or I saw my parents not take care of their health, and I saw what it did to them.
• 1:19:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm I think that fear is a good solution for that.
• 1:19:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's like all of those things are noble, like straight up noble reasons.
• 1:19:18
  SPEAKER_02: Noble reasons to do it.
• 1:19:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like, thank you for being there, thank you for looking out for me.
• 1:19:23
  SPEAKER_02: Let me give you a hug.
• 1:19:25
  SPEAKER_02: Not now.
• 1:19:25
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know, I don't, I don't quite need you now.
• 1:19:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that level of self-compassion is is much more accessible to people than they might think.
• 1:19:33
  SPEAKER_01: Can we touch on the big price of success?
• 1:19:38
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason I say that there's two questions I have here.
• 1:19:44
  SPEAKER_01: One was how long did it take you to realize that money wouldn't buy you happiness?
• 1:19:50
  SPEAKER_01: And the second one is specifically about the lonely chapter that you talk about.
• 1:19:57
  SPEAKER_02: Alright, yeah.
• 1:19:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the money doesn't buy you happiness thing.
• 1:20:00
  SPEAKER_02: I think for me it was closer to probably success or like a claim won't buy you happiness.
• 1:20:05
  SPEAKER_02: Money isn't my affliction.
• 1:20:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I I was not from money, never really had it, don't entirely know what you knew that early then.
• 1:20:14
  SPEAKER_02: So I just didn't know what to do with it.
• 1:20:16
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't materialism, isn't my like drug of choice, but respect by people that I respect, like that feels much more compelling to me.
• 1:20:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and status.
• 1:20:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:20:28
  SPEAKER_02: Degree of status and renown and and recognition and stuff.
• 1:20:31
  SPEAKER_02: And um how long did it take?
• 1:20:35
  SPEAKER_02: I think the the question that I asked after a while was like, all right, if not now, then when?
• 1:20:41
  SPEAKER_02: Like if it's not after you've been on all of the podcasts that you've wanted to and you've not because you forced them into it, but because they saw something, maybe you forgazied them, but like you s they saw something in you that was like they really seem to like you, actually.
• 1:20:59
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a big enough sample size to suggest that some of them at least are telling the truth.
• 1:21:03
  SPEAKER_02: Like, if not, now if if you're still looking for external validation, yeah.
• 1:21:08
  SPEAKER_02: Like you've already achieved the goals you said would make you happy, you've already become friends with the people you said would give you self-worth.
• 1:21:14
  SPEAKER_02: You've already, you know, it's just all the way, it's just this never-ending thing.
• 1:21:19
  SPEAKER_02: And also the pursuit is good, right?
• 1:21:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's enjoyable.
• 1:21:21
  SPEAKER_02: So that's like the that's the the first part of that.
• 1:21:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but it took a good while.
• 1:21:26
  SPEAKER_02: It's like the the dose was not zero.
• 1:21:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, I m have to move to another country, upend my entire life at 34, um, like go on a bunch of like huge podcasts in a desperate attempt to be like, okay, can I hold it together in this situation?
• 1:21:41
  SPEAKER_02: Can I stand on stage at the eventum Apollo in London in front of three and a half thousand people and not shit myself with just a mic in front of me for protection?
• 1:21:48
  SPEAKER_02: Like, can I do that?
• 1:21:49
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I can.
• 1:21:50
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, well, if not, then oh, is it the O2?
• 1:21:52
  SPEAKER_02: Because if it's then it's gonna be Wembley, then it's gonna be, you know, what it's whatever.
• 1:21:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like, it is what it is.
• 1:21:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the lonely chapter is this idea that I saw among me and a lot of my friends from the UK that was when you become so developed that you don't resonate with your old set of friends, but you're not yet sufficiently developed that you've built your new set of friends.
• 1:22:13
  SPEAKER_02: Martha Beck calls it the empty elevator.
• 1:22:15
  SPEAKER_02: She's talking about you moving between floors and there's no one else in it.
• 1:22:18
  SPEAKER_02: So, this this lonely chapter idea really resonated with people online.
• 1:22:22
  SPEAKER_02: I think it resonates with a particular kind of highly self-determined personal development, self-grother who wants to be integrated socially, but maybe grew up in the sort of place where there aren't a ton of role models like the person they wanted to be like.
• 1:22:38
  SPEAKER_02: And that meant that they kind of had to dismiss or or throw away pushback against the uh direction of travel of most of the people around them, and they felt like they had to kind of go into a headwind or or kind of exit the jet stream entirely to make a change in their life.
• 1:22:58
  SPEAKER_02: They want to go sober, but all of their friends go to the pub on a weekend, and now that they're not drinking, they're like, oh, what are you doing?
• 1:23:03
  SPEAKER_02: What are you doing that for?
• 1:23:05
  SPEAKER_02: Like, oh, not drinking again.
• 1:23:06
  SPEAKER_02: Are we?
• 1:23:07
  SPEAKER_02: We'll see how long this one lasts.
• 1:23:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 1:23:09
  SPEAKER_02: And you alcohol is a big one of these because it's such a social cohesion thing, but cleaning up your diet, uh, making a change with your with your mindset, saying, I'm not gonna speak badly of other people behind their back anymore.
• 1:23:21
  SPEAKER_02: But that's how you and all of your family bonded.
• 1:23:24
  SPEAKER_02: That was what a dinner table was that your mum and dad would talk about that the Jones is next door.
• 1:23:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:23:29
  SPEAKER_02: I I don't I don't want to talk like that anymore.
• 1:23:32
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, you think you're too good for us, or just you're not a part of us anymore.
• 1:23:36
  SPEAKER_02: So this is why people retreat and they do the introversion thing or the isolation thing to do the improvement thing, and that's noble in many ways, but then you need to do the reintegration thing, and that becomes really hard because you're now someone new and you're incongruent.
• 1:23:52
  SPEAKER_02: So what you think and who you are and what you want to do, you're you don't have the uh mastery that you used to, at least in the past when you were an idiot and you didn't know what you were doing with your life, and your friends were all people you didn't want to be around, but you didn't know that you didn't want to be around them, and you didn't know that the habits that you were doing weren't ones that were good for you, and you didn't know that you cared about improving your life or changing yourself in this way or losing weight, whatever it is.
• 1:24:15
  SPEAKER_02: You were in congruence, it was shitty congruence, but like it was congruent, and now you you've got all of this self-doubt inside of you, which is what tarnishes this lonely chapter, because you don't even have the confirmation, the promise of any glory on the other side of it.
• 1:24:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, doing all of these things, trying all of this stuff, you're getting it wrong.
• 1:24:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's the hardest period it's ever gonna be trying to rip this thing, like cold bar deadlifting this rocket ship off the floor, trying to get to escape velocity, and we have no idea if it's gonna work.
• 1:24:46
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, like this is supposed to be my rocky cutscene, it's three and a half minutes in the movie, but it's been four years for me.
• 1:24:50
  SPEAKER_02: What the fuck is going on?
• 1:24:52
  SPEAKER_02: And that sense of I don't know if I'm doing it right.
• 1:24:56
  SPEAKER_02: I'm tempted to go back to the old habits, comfortable modes of recognition, uh support from my friends, like it's also typically the easiest solution.
• 1:25:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and I don't even know, and then you get there, and this is the most ruthless thing.
• 1:25:12
  SPEAKER_02: If you're a person that grows a lot and makes changes throughout your life, it's likely that you'll go through the lonely chapter.
• 1:25:18
  SPEAKER_02: But if you make a lot of changes, you might go through it more than once.
• 1:25:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:25:21
  SPEAKER_02: And when you've arrived and you're like, oh, I thought I found my people, and now you're telling me I have to do it again.
• 1:25:28
  SPEAKER_02: I have to do it again.
• 1:25:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, how do the people that are, you know, going through multiple versions of that or any version of that ensure that they don't just become lonely?
• 1:25:39
  SPEAKER_02: It is there is definitely a degree of like, who do you think you are?
• 1:25:44
  SPEAKER_02: Even internally.
• 1:25:45
  SPEAKER_02: Who do I think I am?
• 1:25:47
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think I'm better than these.
• 1:25:49
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not saying that any of these changes make you a better or worse or more worthy, more valuable person than someone else.
• 1:25:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's just about are you following what you think you're supposed to do with your life?
• 1:26:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like what's and and I think for a lot of people as well, like what's the alternative?
• 1:26:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you don't do this, then what?
• 1:26:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, uh you need to push against something.
• 1:26:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the sort of people that listen to podcasts like yours and mine, that they've got problem solving brains.
• 1:26:18
  SPEAKER_02: They sort of they're always turning a Rubik's cube in their head, like trying to fix something or solve a problem.
• 1:26:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's kind of fascinating, it's really enjoyable.
• 1:26:25
  SPEAKER_02: But the thing is, problem solving brains don't switch off when they don't have good problems to solve, they just start solving shitty problems.
• 1:26:35
  SPEAKER_02: And this is how people become obsessed with politics or porn or that X.
• 1:26:39
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, hey, if you've got a problem-solving brain, if you're Com T double A, right, you're not going to switch that fucking thing off.
• 1:26:45
  SPEAKER_02: At least for me, COMT is a genetic uh variant, it's like the classic warrior overachiever.
• 1:26:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it's a dopamine, catecholamine baseline thing in the brain.
• 1:26:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there's many other reasons why I'm a warrior as well, but uh that's blame it on the genes.
• 1:27:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it is.
• 1:27:01
  SPEAKER_02: I'll blame it on the that's the easiest way for me to go.
• 1:27:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's got nothing to do with me.
• 1:27:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, uh, like that's that's for me, it's literally in every cell in my entire body for me to behave in that kind of a way.
• 1:27:15
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, let's just give me good problems to solve.
• 1:27:18
  SPEAKER_02: Point me in the right direction.
• 1:27:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm gonna I've got this thing, right?
• 1:27:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like you've got, let's say that you're the sort of person that's got tons of energy.
• 1:27:26
  SPEAKER_02: So, okay, direct the energy towards something because it's going to go.
• 1:27:30
  SPEAKER_02: So, okay, I I really, really love meeting people.
• 1:27:35
  SPEAKER_02: Cool.
• 1:27:36
  SPEAKER_02: How can you use that in a way that you think is really like pro social and is is in line with your value, as opposed to like, I'm gonna start a fucking gang.
• 1:27:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:27:44
  SPEAKER_02: Like, because you're gonna meet people, wouldn't that be great?
• 1:27:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like some of them will have guns pointed at you, but like you're gonna meet them.
• 1:27:50
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, the the people that are going through the lonely chapter, it's it's difficult.
• 1:27:53
  SPEAKER_02: And the reason that it's difficult is why it's worthy.
• 1:27:56
  SPEAKER_02: There isn't a single person I know of that's gone from a place they want to be.
• 1:28:01
  SPEAKER_02: Gone to a place they want to be from one that they're not happy with without having to go through this.
• 1:28:05
  SPEAKER_02: Because the likelihood of you being around a big enough cohort of people who are in the place that you want to, going to the place you want to, growing at the pace that you are is basically zero.
• 1:28:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's so rare.
• 1:28:16
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, they're good, you and you're gonna know them, and they're gonna be available, and they're gonna want they're gonna like you and be your age range, whatever, have your availability, speak your language.
• 1:28:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's so rare.
• 1:28:26
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so I'm gonna have to put my head down, and at some point in the not too distant future, I'm gonna get to poke it back up and I'm gonna be this newly transformed individual.
• 1:28:35
  SPEAKER_02: Again, just know in the same way the unteachable lessons thing, you are in incredibly good company, even if it feels like you're on your own.
• 1:28:43
  SPEAKER_02: Incredibly good company.
• 1:28:44
  SPEAKER_02: There are millions and millions of people around the planet going through their own version of a lonely chapter, trying to outstrip the environment, the local cultural norms that they grew up in, where people are born, live, and die within the same radius, but that's not what they feel is right for them, or these people that have a particular worldview or religious belief or cultural perspective or whatever.
• 1:29:06
  SPEAKER_02: Like all of these people like they're not gonna go with you.
• 1:29:11
  SPEAKER_02: So do you want to stay or do you want to keep pushing through?
• 1:29:13
  SPEAKER_02: And it's I love this idea of mundane successes and boring victories.
• 1:29:18
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like, you know, we think that we sort of arrive on stage having just completed something that's grand to fanfare and accolade, but a lot of the time it's much more private than that.
• 1:29:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's so much more about like, fuck, like I lost 10 pounds.
• 1:29:35
  SPEAKER_02: I lost 10 pounds, and no one supported me.
• 1:29:38
  SPEAKER_02: No one's celebrating that.
• 1:29:39
  SPEAKER_02: No, no one, it's like it's so small.
• 1:29:41
  SPEAKER_02: It almost feels like uh diminutive or or like shameful to celebrate it.
• 1:29:48
  SPEAKER_02: Like I I did 30 days without smoking.
• 1:29:51
  SPEAKER_01: And to you that was that was the object.
• 1:29:54
  SPEAKER_02: Like, yes, congrat and and yes, that's the pebble at the top of the avalanche that's like, oh, I can do things.
• 1:29:59
  SPEAKER_02: Fuck, I can do things.
• 1:30:01
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna fix that relationship with my mum.
• 1:30:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like, she doesn't think I don't we haven't spoken for 18 months, and I'm gonna fix that relationship with my mum.
• 1:30:09
  SPEAKER_02: And then you do it, and it's like, who is congratulating you for fixing the relationship or beating your materialism?
• 1:30:15
  SPEAKER_02: Like something like really that's typically shameful and seems like a luxury problem.
• 1:30:19
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, oh, I shop too much.
• 1:30:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like when I when I have spare money, I shop too much, and like that's that's your release or whatever, and you beat it.
• 1:30:28
  SPEAKER_02: There's no applause.
• 1:30:29
  SPEAKER_02: No one is gonna congratulate it's so normal.
• 1:30:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no one can even think about that as like a dude, there's people that are starving on the street or that have got this problem and got the oh, you're sorry, you didn't go and buy yourself and you dress for six months.
• 1:30:42
  SPEAKER_01: Your problems are still your problems though, right?
• 1:30:44
  SPEAKER_02: Like that's yeah, you know, that's it's just I love that idea of of boring victories, mundane successes, and I think that we should all we should lower the threshold for what constitutes something celebration worthy, uh, like internally, and be like, I fucking did it.
• 1:31:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, like me and Luke got up this morning and we went and I wanted to cycle Central Park, is one of my favorite things to do when I'm in New York.
• 1:31:07
  SPEAKER_02: Got up, nabbed an e-bike, and did you know 10 miles or whatever from the bottom of Manhattan up through Central Park and back down on an e-bike though?
• 1:31:16
  SPEAKER_02: On an e-bike, that's true, but still give me give me a break.
• 1:31:19
  SPEAKER_02: I had four hours sleep yesterday.
• 1:31:20
  SPEAKER_02: I was on a plane from New York.
• 1:31:21
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, such a lovely morning.
• 1:31:24
  SPEAKER_02: But when I woke up, it felt like dragging a dead body out of a lake.
• 1:31:27
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, all right, oh my god.
• 1:31:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I could have texted him and said, let's go back to bed, but I know there is this little bit of me that's like, yes, like I got to win the day.
• 1:31:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I got to win the day.
• 1:31:39
  SPEAKER_02: Do the hard thing and like the it's reinforcing the anti-ridium mid-singular cortex to like teach you that you can do difficult, all the rest of it.
• 1:31:45
  SPEAKER_02: But more than that, it was just like there was something in front of me that I could have easily said no to.
• 1:31:52
  SPEAKER_02: Like the the devil this morning offered me a fist bump, and like I gave him a different signal.
• 1:31:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm like, all right, that's cool.
• 1:31:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I just and now the rest of my day is like, huh.
• 1:32:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm kind of the man.
• 1:32:02
  SPEAKER_01: Those little wins are important, yes, boring victories.
• 1:32:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:32:06
  SPEAKER_01: Chris, I'm mindful of time.
• 1:32:08
  SPEAKER_01: I know you're extremely busy.
• 1:32:09
  SPEAKER_01: There's so much more I want to ask you.
• 1:32:11
  SPEAKER_01: Let's run it back.
• 1:32:11
  SPEAKER_01: Let's do it again next time.
• 1:32:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, wait, I'm not finished yet.
• 1:32:14
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, that wasn't yours queue to go.
• 1:32:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's two more things I want to talk to you about.
• 1:32:18
  SPEAKER_01: One is this shift that you have made to the different side of the table now with entrepreneurship.
• 1:32:26
  SPEAKER_01: I know running a podcast, launching a brand is very much uh uh synonymous as with startup life.
• 1:32:33
  SPEAKER_01: Correct, yeah, but now you know you're raising capital, talking about distribution and SKUs and a whole different language altogether.
• 1:32:42
  SPEAKER_01: How's that been that shift been for you?
• 1:32:44
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, huge congrats.
• 1:32:46
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much.
• 1:32:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:32:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so I ran nightclubs for a long time, which uh served a particular type of liquid, and now I run an evidence-based, nootropic, smarter energy drink, uh, which gives people a different, another different type of liquid.
• 1:33:02
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I love it.
• 1:33:04
  SPEAKER_02: I I've always considered myself a businessman ever since I've been an adult because I was from the age of 18.
• 1:33:08
  SPEAKER_02: My first ever seminar, I sat down next to someone and was like, I'm skinned, I think I might be fucked.
• 1:33:13
  SPEAKER_02: And he was like, Do you want to come and hand out flyers for this nightclub?
• 1:33:16
  SPEAKER_02: Cool.
• 1:33:16
  SPEAKER_02: Sold.
• 1:33:17
  SPEAKER_02: Did that and was like, oh, I'm I'm good at this.
• 1:33:19
  SPEAKER_02: There was progress.
• 1:33:20
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it was it was very linear.
• 1:33:22
  SPEAKER_02: If you work hard at a thing and you become diligent, you learn how it works, you can get better.
• 1:33:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I love, I've always loved brand.
• 1:33:29
  SPEAKER_02: I'm very good with words.
• 1:33:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's one of the things that I've actually been gifted with.
• 1:33:32
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not bad with language.
• 1:33:33
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm like, okay, when it comes to the copy on the side of the can, when it comes to the particular tagline that we're gonna launch as we go into Walmart or Target or CVS or Sainsbury's in the UK, or there's this subway ad or there's a new trend that's happening, or our next Black Friday thing.
• 1:33:49
  SPEAKER_02: I fucking love it.
• 1:33:50
  SPEAKER_02: And like there's certain things I don't want to do.
• 1:33:51
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to deal with logistics.
• 1:33:53
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry, I don't want to see the finances.
• 1:33:54
  SPEAKER_02: The CFO is amazing.
• 1:33:56
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I don't want to do recruitment and HR.
• 1:33:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I'm not good at hiring and firing.
• 1:33:59
  SPEAKER_02: That's not my bag.
• 1:34:00
  SPEAKER_02: Put me in front of a blanking cursor and tell me to come up with some pithy captions.
• 1:34:04
  SPEAKER_02: I'll rip that all day.
• 1:34:05
  SPEAKER_02: Tell me to look at a CAN design and tell you about what I think needs to change aesthetically to give off a particular uh uh trend, a particular theme.
• 1:34:12
  SPEAKER_02: Make it pop.
• 1:34:13
  SPEAKER_02: So loving it, like really, really loving it.
• 1:34:15
  SPEAKER_02: I think we've got just such a wonderful brand with this eyeball.
• 1:34:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we're on the AIX racing Formula 2 and Formula 3 cars for the rest of the year, which means like this big eyeball.
• 1:34:25
  SPEAKER_02: We got P2 at uh not Monza at the Madrid F1 uh last weekend at Monza.
• 1:34:31
  SPEAKER_02: We came P4 in the F3.
• 1:34:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's like this is sick.
• 1:34:34
  SPEAKER_02: My the brand, like the eyeball that me and my friends, my idiot friends, came up with four years ago is on the side of a car racing around Monza.
• 1:34:44
  SPEAKER_02: Unreal.
• 1:34:44
  SPEAKER_02: And yo, now we're talking to the biggest distributors and retailers in America.
• 1:34:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I'm gonna go and speak at a very, very, very large supermarket chain head office meeting with like 3,000 store store managers are going to be there.
• 1:35:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, this is sick.
• 1:35:04
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm not there as this is Chris Williamson who like said some stuff on the internet in a British accent and isn't he cool?
• 1:35:10
  SPEAKER_02: I'm there because we made a brand from scratch that is seen by people who supposedly know what they're doing as actually pretty good.
• 1:35:19
  SPEAKER_02: I got to meet the uh uh is it Ron, the CEO of Costco, the guy he started off as a janitor and worked his way up every single bit.
• 1:35:28
  SPEAKER_02: I think his salary annually is like$100 million, and he donates 95% of it back into the employee pool.
• 1:35:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, just like I'm meeting really cool people that I respect now in a different world, and I'm getting to sit down and have meetings with like Jeffrey Katzenberg's come on my podcast as a guest, but now I get to talk to him about something else.
• 1:35:49
  SPEAKER_02: I get to talk to him about you know what's happening with the trends in the energy drink and the like adaptogen market.
• 1:35:54
  SPEAKER_02: But huh, well, this is fun and respected for another reason, and it's a new challenge.
• 1:35:58
  SPEAKER_02: The same as doing the live show.
• 1:36:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like we what we went into Oakbury, which is this SIE ball place, and it's the first time I've ever seen one of our cans in New York.
• 1:36:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I felt emotional.
• 1:36:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I took a video of it, and it's so silly.
• 1:36:09
  SPEAKER_02: What a boring victory, what a mundane success.
• 1:36:11
  SPEAKER_02: You saw your can.
• 1:36:12
  SPEAKER_02: No, it's not free.
• 1:36:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's this is something that and I love this so much about entrepreneurs and founders and scrappy startups, is like you make this thing out of nothing, and then it's something.
• 1:36:23
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:36:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then you get to be proud of it, and then you get to share it with everyone else.
• 1:36:27
  SPEAKER_01: When you can stand behind the science, when you can stand behind the people involved and the brand, there's nothing better.
• 1:36:32
  SPEAKER_02: Unover-reviewed hundred-page formulation decks looking at every different compound and adaptogen that we could use to improve cognitive health.
• 1:36:38
  SPEAKER_02: And we've dropped it down to these ones, regardless of how expensive it is, regardless of how hard it is to cover the bitterness profile.
• 1:36:44
  SPEAKER_02: And then you get to the point where you're in midtown Manhattan on 35th Street in an Oakbury going, that's my can.
• 1:36:49
  SPEAKER_02: And then someone on the internet will go, must be nice.
• 1:36:53
  SPEAKER_02: You know that's all right, all right.
• 1:36:55
  SPEAKER_02: I give up.
• 1:36:56
  SPEAKER_02: I give up, I give up.
• 1:36:57
  SPEAKER_01: Chris, I'm gonna ask you to finish to answer some audience questions.
• 1:37:01
  SPEAKER_01: Wonderful.
• 1:37:01
  SPEAKER_01: How do you feel about that?
• 1:37:02
  SPEAKER_01: Exciting.
• 1:37:02
  SPEAKER_02: They're printed on card.
• 1:37:03
  SPEAKER_02: I have nothing.
• 1:37:06
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have card.
• 1:37:07
  SPEAKER_01: Nope.
• 1:37:09
  SPEAKER_01: A quick rejection.
• 1:37:10
  SPEAKER_01: You've done over a thousand of these.
• 1:37:12
  SPEAKER_01: What's the first thing you notice about a guest in the first 60 seconds?
• 1:37:16
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's a wonderful question.
• 1:37:17
  SPEAKER_02: I've never been asked that before.
• 1:37:18
  SPEAKER_02: Congratulations to whoever said that.
• 1:37:21
  SPEAKER_02: What is the first thing I notice?
• 1:37:23
  SPEAKER_02: I'll have listened to them already, so speaking cadence will be the first thing.
• 1:37:27
  SPEAKER_02: After that, probably notice their body language.
• 1:37:30
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not like something conscious.
• 1:37:32
  SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm just like in the moment, but there's certainly some people that just sit down and they're so comfortable, and they're like, you know, and then there's other people that are a bit more tense, and sometimes that can make me feel a little tense.
• 1:37:42
  SPEAKER_02: And it's my job as the host to be like, okay, I'm gonna just mass, I mean, a little giggle, like some crap joke, like try and just ease them in a little bit.
• 1:37:51
  SPEAKER_02: So, like, where where are their eyes looking?
• 1:37:53
  SPEAKER_02: What's their body language like?
• 1:37:54
  SPEAKER_02: And again, it's not I'm not consciously doing this.
• 1:37:56
  SPEAKER_02: You do that when you sit down with somebody at a coffee shop or whatever.
• 1:37:59
  SPEAKER_02: But now I'm I'm trying to get something out of them, which is like, I want you to be comfortable and I want you to like rock.
• 1:38:04
  SPEAKER_02: I want you to absolutely rock today.
• 1:38:05
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, how do I make that happen?
• 1:38:06
  SPEAKER_02: Do you ever get nervous in your podcast?
• 1:38:08
  SPEAKER_02: Rogan is the final boss of my social anxiety, is the one that he's still the one that makes my bum hole do this.
• 1:38:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um that that's because you're nervous.
• 1:38:18
  SPEAKER_02: Because I'm nervous, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:38:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's not an advertisement for him.
• 1:38:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um and desperately, desperately trying to chill myself out.
• 1:38:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and that must be that must be weird-ish for you.
• 1:38:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he is the the biggest podcaster of all time.
• 1:38:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I said it was a bit weird for me to begin with, because I was acutely aware when we started rolling the cameras that I feel like I already knew you because I've watched a lot of you on podcasts, not in just randomly.
• 1:38:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, CCC.
• 1:38:51
  SPEAKER_01: But that you have but you don't know me.
• 1:38:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:38:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was weird because all of my previous guests I've known.
• 1:38:55
  SPEAKER_02: But that's a skill as well, to be able to make someone feel like they do know you, even though they don't.
• 1:39:00
  SPEAKER_02: And Joe's Joe's kind of a king at that.
• 1:39:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:39:02
  SPEAKER_01: I ironically, I listened to your podcast with Andrew Huberman last night and couldn't sleep because I was up too late listening to it.
• 1:39:11
  SPEAKER_01: Ah, apologies.
• 1:39:12
  SPEAKER_01: So thanks for that.
• 1:39:14
  SPEAKER_01: Of everyone you've ever interviewed on longevity and performance, whose daily routine would you actually never adopt, even if the science checks out?
• 1:39:24
  SPEAKER_02: BJ, big Brian.
• 1:39:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh lovely guy, he's a sweetie, we got on super well, he's a good friend.
• 1:39:31
  SPEAKER_02: I just I can't not eat after 1 pm.
• 1:39:35
  SPEAKER_02: I can't do that many pills, I can't not have red meat.
• 1:39:39
  SPEAKER_02: I don't care if my mTOR's on.
• 1:39:42
  SPEAKER_02: I want a fucking fillet steak, please.
• 1:39:45
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 1:39:46
  SPEAKER_02: With some salt on the side, some kosher salt.
• 1:39:48
  SPEAKER_02: That's what I would like.
• 1:39:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I look, I love the fact that we have him as a scout going out and like, you know, peering over this dangerous precipice and doing all of this experimentation and then coming back and telling us what he learned.
• 1:40:01
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, you can you you I'm gonna be here with the sirloin and you can be with the with the fish oil capsules.
• 1:40:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:40:09
  SPEAKER_01: What's the biggest myth uh in the longevity space?
• 1:40:13
  SPEAKER_02: At least at the moment, there is any quick fix.
• 1:40:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh there is no single intervention that is going to do anything.
• 1:40:22
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know whether this is even a myth.
• 1:40:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's such it's such a cliche that I don't think anybody would even call it that.
• 1:40:27
  SPEAKER_02: Another one would be that you can uh out creatine bad sleep.
• 1:40:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's like maybe you can get it done for a day, but I would love to see somebody that like newborn parents, a new newborn child parent five, six, seven days into a really bad teething period.
• 1:40:43
  SPEAKER_02: We're like, brother, just have 20 grams of creatine, you'll be fine.
• 1:40:46
  SPEAKER_02: Double the dose.
• 1:40:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no.
• 1:40:49
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's not still very I think the research is kind of early there as well, just for any cognitive improvements.
• 1:40:55
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 1:40:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean, it makes sense that it would work, but I don't know if we have enough robust yet.
• 1:41:02
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think the most underestimated longevity?
• 1:41:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's still sleep.
• 1:41:06
  SPEAKER_01: Sleep.
• 1:41:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's still sleep, even though it's probably the one that's spoken about most.
• 1:41:10
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's still the one that people are like, you just don't know.
• 1:41:14
  SPEAKER_02: And as again, for me, doing my little investigation, big investigation into how come I'm not as rested as I might like.
• 1:41:21
  SPEAKER_02: I've got my AHI index is quite high.
• 1:41:23
  SPEAKER_02: I've got a lot of actigraphy.
• 1:41:24
  SPEAKER_02: Basically, I'm like shadow boxing somebody in my sleep, and my breathing drops my O2 a good bit from using a sleep image ring.
• 1:41:31
  SPEAKER_02: And um, like, why is that?
• 1:41:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, oh, because your your airways are like 90% blocked.
• 1:41:38
  SPEAKER_02: Got 90% reduction in like nasal passage.
• 1:41:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, oh, that's you'll feel that.
• 1:41:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's like basically somebody like putting a clothes peg on your nose as you go to sleep.
• 1:41:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um even all of that, all all that together, like sleep is still it's still king.
• 1:41:55
  SPEAKER_02: It is still king.
• 1:41:56
  SPEAKER_02: And people don't like to hear it because they all everybody knows that they don't sleep enough.
• 1:41:59
  SPEAKER_01: What's one question that you never get asked on a podcast but you wish the host would ask?
• 1:42:06
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think that you should be doing that you know that you're not?
• 1:42:12
  SPEAKER_02: Is kind of an interesting one.
• 1:42:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um but I think that's it's always interesting to me.
• 1:42:19
  SPEAKER_02: I love to ask authors the question, um, what's the insight from your book you think that most people gloss over but they actually need to pay more attention to?
• 1:42:26
  SPEAKER_02: And this is basically the same question about yourself.
• 1:42:29
  SPEAKER_02: Like what is it that you know that you should be paying more attention to, but you aren't doing it?
• 1:42:34
  SPEAKER_02: And interestingly for me, I think the answer to that would actually be uh doing more of the middle finger thing that I did this morning, like forgetting how I feel.
• 1:42:45
  SPEAKER_02: I did a lot of emotions work for the last two years.
• 1:42:47
  SPEAKER_02: I've like really tried to get below the neck, and that's I mean, like male normative alexithymia is a thing.
• 1:42:54
  SPEAKER_02: Male normative alexithymia inability to feel emotions is a thing.
• 1:42:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's so common that it's fucking normative now among men.
• 1:43:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um maybe forever it's been that way.
• 1:43:05
  SPEAKER_02: So I dip into emotions and I'm like, oh, I'm gonna feel things, and isn't this gonna be interesting?
• 1:43:09
  SPEAKER_02: And then it means that when I want to try and disregard how I feel to go and act, I have more to disregard.
• 1:43:17
  SPEAKER_02: If you're relatively numb below the neck, which most guys are, and I am still, again, massively, like my my success has been only somewhat.
• 1:43:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, when it means that you need to put how you feel to one side to just get stuck in, that well uh there's less of a burden for me to do.
• 1:43:34
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas now, like, but how I feel about my thing.
• 1:43:37
  SPEAKER_02: I gotta, and I'm not very skillful with it, and I'm crying way more all the time.
• 1:43:42
  SPEAKER_02: I just see my if I open my explore page on Instagram now, my explore page is exclusively golden retriever videos that make me cry.
• 1:43:50
  SPEAKER_02: I knew you were gonna say that.
• 1:43:51
  SPEAKER_02: Fucking golden retriever videos that make me cry.
• 1:43:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's the whole thing.
• 1:43:54
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, why am I I can't open Instagram?
• 1:43:56
  SPEAKER_02: I can't open my explore page in public anymore.
• 1:43:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so that's that that would be it.
• 1:44:01
  SPEAKER_02: Like, get used to now, now that you've done the move your feelings to one side and just work.
• 1:44:07
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, that that comes with its own side dish of challenges.
• 1:44:10
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna learn to feel the thing.
• 1:44:12
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, now you need to reintegrate the first lesson of like I'm gonna get things done in an embodied way, you know, like kind of holistic way.
• 1:44:21
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I need to relearn a lesson that I've already learned once, but we're in a new in a new uh landscape, I suppose.
• 1:44:29
  SPEAKER_00: Last question for you, cool.
• 1:44:32
  SPEAKER_00: There are so many hugely popular clips of you delivering heavy online.
• 1:44:46
  SPEAKER_00: What's your what's your number one quote of all time that's impacted your life the most?
• 1:44:52
  SPEAKER_02: You two build from the same friend.
• 1:44:55
  SPEAKER_02: The first one is one that you've already heard, which is you have already achieved the goals that you said would make you happy.
• 1:45:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it's just a a really wonderful reminder of what you said it would be when you got a new car, and then your happiness faded.
• 1:45:10
  SPEAKER_02: You said it would be when you got a job promotion, and then your happiness faded.
• 1:45:12
  SPEAKER_02: If not now, then when.
• 1:45:15
  SPEAKER_02: And that's fine.
• 1:45:15
  SPEAKER_02: You can literally say, okay, that the when is not now, it's at some point in the future, but like you have to define a when.
• 1:45:23
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and the other one from Alex is you don't build confidence by shouting affirmations in the mirror, but by having a stack of undeniable proof that you are who you say you are.
• 1:45:35
  SPEAKER_02: Outwork your self-doubt.
• 1:45:38
  SPEAKER_02: Outwork your self-doubt.
• 1:45:39
  SPEAKER_02: Like I'm the poster child for imposter syndrome.
• 1:45:42
  SPEAKER_02: Again, you know, come from a background that I shouldn't be here.
• 1:45:45
  SPEAKER_02: I shouldn't be, and maybe you shouldn't either.
• 1:45:47
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe everyone in this room shouldn't.
• 1:45:48
  SPEAKER_02: Like I agree.
• 1:45:48
  SPEAKER_02: Shouldn't be in the middle of Manhattan, like talking about building a billion-dollar drinks brand and and uh speaking to like turning down world leaders on my pocket.
• 1:45:57
  SPEAKER_02: Who the who am I to turn these people down?
• 1:45:59
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, like I just got to this stage where I the weight of evidence for someone who is very imposter syndrome was so great that like my identity dysmorphia was unable to withstand the like crushing volume of evidence.
• 1:46:17
  SPEAKER_02: And you go, ah, cool.
• 1:46:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm sure I'm still miles behind, I could be way more confident than I am.
• 1:46:22
  SPEAKER_02: The American affliction is bullshit, but the British affliction is cynicism.
• 1:46:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that means that like we could probably both of us afford to believe in ourselves a little bit more.
• 1:46:31
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, I did I did good, and I I I won that that little battle against myself.
• 1:46:37
  SPEAKER_01: Chris, thank you so much for for coming on.
• 1:46:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm acutely aware that you didn't have to, and uh, and I really appreciate carving your own.
• 1:46:46
  SPEAKER_01: You're a real pro.
• 1:46:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the little boy versions of us would be very proud of sitting here right now.
• 1:46:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they think we were cool.
• 1:46:54
  SPEAKER_02: They think we were cool.
• 1:46:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think I was cool.
• 1:46:56
  SPEAKER_01: They think I was cool.
• 1:46:57
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever.
• 1:46:58
  SPEAKER_01: No, they think you were cool.
• 1:46:59
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever, whatever.
• 1:46:59
  SPEAKER_01: They think we're both cool.
• 1:47:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 1:47:01
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, are we cool?