0:00:04 What advice would you give me to make sure that my relationship stays fresh and new and spicy?
0:00:10 Actually, there’s a great study that when people, the sexual desire for the partner, goes up.
0:00:16 Dr. Tally Sherrod, he’s a neuroscientist, author of one of the world’s leading researchers on
0:00:20 emotion, decision-making, and how to change our brains for the better.
0:00:23 This is negatively affecting your life, and you don’t know it.
0:00:27 We have a study where we ask people what was your favorite part on your vacation,
0:00:32 and we found the peak of enjoyment was 43 hours into the vacation.
0:00:36 And people used one word more than any other word, and it was the word first.
0:00:39 The first view of the ocean, the first cocktail.
0:00:42 And then the joy goes down and down and down.
0:00:45 Why? It’s because the input into your neurons is constant.
0:00:49 And when things are not changing, our brain just stops responding.
0:00:54 And the problem is that even if you’re living your absolute best life,
0:00:58 a great relationship, a good job, comfortable home, after a while,
0:01:01 those things don’t bring us the joy that they should.
0:01:06 Because when something is always in front of you, you stop attending to it.
0:01:09 That’s true also for the not-so-great thing around us.
0:01:12 Sexism, racism, cracks in our relationships.
0:01:15 After a while, we don’t notice them, and if we don’t notice them, we don’t change them.
0:01:22 One reason why happiness is low in midlife is because things are a little bit more routine.
0:01:24 The problem is we really don’t like risk taking.
0:01:26 So how do we change that?
0:01:28 Two main things. One is…
0:01:40 Tally, welcome back.
0:01:42 Thank you for having me back.
0:01:47 For those people that aren’t familiar with your career,
0:01:51 can you give us a little bit of an overview of your academic background?
0:01:55 But really, I guess, the summary of the mission that you’re on and the work that you’ve done,
0:01:56 what are you trying to understand?
0:01:59 What is it that you’re trying to do with your professional life?
0:02:03 So in very general terms, I’m trying to understand human behavior.
0:02:05 Why do people do what they do?
0:02:07 Why do they feel the way that they do?
0:02:11 And I use a lot of different methods to try to understand that.
0:02:14 So I use neuroscience method.
0:02:16 I really kind of try to look inside people’s brains.
0:02:21 Also, I look at behaviors. I’m kind of combining psychology, brain science.
0:02:27 I also combine economics to try to understand motives, to try to understand needs,
0:02:33 and hopefully use that not only for us to understand human brains better,
0:02:37 but also to make our life better, perhaps make better decisions.
0:02:42 For anyone that’s listening to this right now, that has a vision of who they want to become.
0:02:46 And it’s different from who they currently are in some way.
0:02:48 Habits, behaviors they want to adopt.
0:02:49 Is step one awareness?
0:02:55 Is that step one awareness of your own cycles and thoughts and patterns?
0:03:02 One thing you should concentrate on and be aware of is what is already good about yourself, right?
0:03:06 So not only what do I want to become, which I’m not,
0:03:08 but what am I, which is great.
0:03:14 What already great skills I have, personality traits I have,
0:03:17 because those are things that you can build on, right?
0:03:20 And so look at it not only in this kind of negative way,
0:03:21 but look at it in a positive way.
0:03:26 And so once you’ve done that, yes, then we can say, okay, this is my goal, right?
0:03:30 And the next thing is how do I go from where I am to this goal?
0:03:33 And if you have a specific plan,
0:03:37 and you’re not necessarily going to follow that exact plan, right?
0:03:41 But if you have a plan and you kind of really think through the details,
0:03:45 what happens is that if you can imagine that vividly,
0:03:50 that will then create your belief that it’s more likely to happen, right?
0:03:54 If we have a specific plan concrete that makes us feel it’s more likely to happen,
0:03:59 and if we think it’s more likely to happen, we’re more likely to follow through.
0:04:04 And then there’s a lot of little tricks of how to get us to follow through.
0:04:09 One really important one is looking at your progress.
0:04:11 So say you want to go to the gym.
0:04:15 And at the first week, you only go once a week.
0:04:16 And then the next week, you go twice a week.
0:04:19 Or maybe when you go, the first time you go,
0:04:22 you’re only running on the treadmill for 10 minutes, right?
0:04:24 And then the next time, 20 minutes.
0:04:27 But put down those numbers so you can actually see them.
0:04:30 Because when people can actually see their progress,
0:04:32 that is extremely motivating, right?
0:04:36 You always want to be a little bit above from where you were.
0:04:39 So that’s one thing that’s hugely important.
0:04:43 Is there sort of scientific research that supports this idea that
0:04:47 progress has a very sort of motivational impact on people?
0:04:48 Yes, absolutely.
0:04:49 There are great studies.
0:04:56 One study that I’m thinking of was where people had to do a task,
0:04:58 which required them to learn the rules.
0:05:02 And they would get money, rewards for doing it well.
0:05:06 And every so often, they ask people, how are you feeling right now?
0:05:08 What they found is, yes, when people got rewards,
0:05:10 when they got money, they were feeling good.
0:05:14 But it turns out that they felt the best when they learned something new, right?
0:05:16 When they progressed.
0:05:19 That’s when they were really feeling the best.
0:05:23 And there’s another study in which people could play one of two games.
0:05:26 One game, all the rules were clear.
0:05:29 It was really easy for them to do the best that they could do.
0:05:33 In another game, there was a bit of uncertainty.
0:05:34 They had to learn.
0:05:35 It wasn’t clear, right?
0:05:37 It was challenging to some respect.
0:05:39 And they could play those two games.
0:05:43 And then every few minutes, they said, okay, you could stay in this game
0:05:44 or you can move to the other game.
0:05:48 What they found is people liked to play the game where they had to learn,
0:05:49 where there was uncertainty.
0:05:52 They did not like to play the game where they always did well,
0:05:54 where they were not progressing, where there was nothing to learn.
0:05:58 So progress is really something that we strive for.
0:06:04 And when it happens, that really makes us feel better, right?
0:06:07 It makes us feel like we are moving forward.
0:06:11 We don’t like to stay, even if where you are is great, right?
0:06:12 Really, really great.
0:06:16 After a while, it’s not enough, right?
0:06:17 You want to expand.
0:06:18 You want to progress.
0:06:21 Those subject matters appear in your new book, Look Again,
0:06:24 when you’re talking about the importance of variety in our lives.
0:06:27 And it really shows up in all aspects of our lives,
0:06:30 this need for variety, which you’re kind of talking about there.
0:06:32 People want to try something new.
0:06:33 They want to learn something new.
0:06:35 They want to be stimulated in some way.
0:06:36 It’s very true in work.
0:06:37 You talk about that a lot.
0:06:40 And as an employer, it really kind of hit me that
0:06:46 one of the most effective things I could do to keep my team members motivated
0:06:48 would probably be to change their jobs quite often,
0:06:52 or at least add new elements to their responsibilities quite often.
0:06:55 Yeah.
0:06:57 What the book is about is about habituation.
0:07:00 And habituation is basically the phenomena,
0:07:03 which governs basically every part of our brain,
0:07:06 which is we don’t respond to things that don’t change.
0:07:09 When things are constant, where they’re not changing,
0:07:11 our brain just stops responding.
0:07:14 And once you do change things around, even a little bit,
0:07:16 then we start responding again.
0:07:22 And at work, it’s often the case in big companies, for example,
0:07:25 that people will take employees and we’ll let them
0:07:28 rotate through different provisions once in a while, right?
0:07:30 Because if you’re staying at the same place,
0:07:34 doing the same thing over and over and over and over again,
0:07:37 you become complacent to some extent, right?
0:07:40 But once you change, you’re now talking to maybe a little different people.
0:07:44 Maybe the projects are a little bit different.
0:07:48 Then you start encoding again.
0:07:51 It also enhances your creativity.
0:07:53 The word habituation is quite a long word.
0:07:56 I’m sure most people won’t be familiar with the word,
0:07:57 probably never heard it before.
0:08:00 I didn’t hear about habituation until I was doing a lot of research.
0:08:03 I had it for my book and came across a lot of your research.
0:08:09 But a really interesting way to illustrate what habituation is
0:08:10 is with images like this.
0:08:14 Now, tell me what’s going on here.
0:08:15 We’re going to put this image on the screen.
0:08:18 And also, for those of you that are listening on audio,
0:08:22 there will be a link to this image in the description of this episode.
0:08:24 But essentially, when you look at this image,
0:08:27 in the center of this image for 30 seconds,
0:08:29 especially when you’re looking at it on a computer screen,
0:08:33 all of the colors disappear if you stay focused on that black
0:08:36 dot in the middle of this image for 30 seconds.
0:08:42 So this was a discovery by an Austrian physician in 1804.
0:08:46 What he discovered is that if you look, you have to not move your eyes.
0:08:50 So fixate on the black cross and don’t move your eyes.
0:08:55 The colors fade away, they become gray.
0:08:56 And if you’re really good at this–
0:08:59 so I’ve done this a few times and I was able to do this–
0:09:01 actually, the gray goes away and the whole thing just becomes white.
0:09:03 Why is that?
0:09:06 It’s because the input into your neurons,
0:09:09 if you’re not moving your eyes, is constant.
0:09:11 So the neurons are just getting the same input,
0:09:12 so they stop responding.
0:09:14 They’re like, well, there’s nothing new here.
0:09:17 You know, let’s save our resources for something else
0:09:18 that’s going to come along.
0:09:21 So you stop noticing the color all together.
0:09:23 And that is a situation.
0:09:27 Now, once you move your eyes, color comes back.
0:09:28 Or if anything moves in the background.
0:09:30 Yeah, well, yeah.
0:09:33 So then if you’re moving your eyes,
0:09:36 then the input into different neurons change.
0:09:39 And then you consciously perceive the colors again.
0:09:41 And I think it’s the same in our life.
0:09:44 If everything is constant, we don’t perceive the goods
0:09:45 and we don’t perceive the bad.
0:09:49 But if we move our eyes enough, you know, metaphorically,
0:09:53 then we’ll start noticing and feeling again.
0:09:56 Do all animals do this habituation thing?
0:09:58 Yeah, so it’s something really fundamental.
0:10:01 You see this in every living creature.
0:10:07 And I think to me, that’s what’s so interesting about this, right?
0:10:13 Because something that seems to affect every part of our life
0:10:17 from our relationships to our mental health
0:10:21 to our ability to innovate, you can actually track it down.
0:10:26 And you can see it’s in every living animal.
0:10:28 There’s this habituation.
0:10:30 The fact that neurons respond less and less
0:10:31 to things that don’t change, right?
0:10:36 And that’s true for things just like sound.
0:10:38 If you hear the same sound again and again and again
0:10:40 and again, you’re no longer conscious of it.
0:10:42 You’re no longer responding to it.
0:10:44 So that’s just perceptual habituation.
0:10:46 But habituation is also true
0:10:50 for the fundamental things in our life that we really care about.
0:10:54 And this is why people can have really great things in their life.
0:10:55 I’m sure you do, right?
0:10:59 Maybe like a great relationship, a good job or a comfortable home.
0:11:02 But what’s interesting is that after a while,
0:11:06 those things don’t bring us the daily joy that they should.
0:11:09 Because we kind of habituated to it.
0:11:13 Sort of like what is thrilling on Monday becomes boring on Friday.
0:11:18 And the interesting thing is that’s true also for the not so great thing around us.
0:11:23 So there might be bad things around us like sexism, racism,
0:11:25 cracks in our relationships or inefficiencies at work.
0:11:28 But if they’re there all the time after a while,
0:11:29 we don’t notice them.
0:11:32 And if we don’t notice them, we don’t try to change them.
0:11:33 Where does this come from?
0:11:37 This idea that once we’re exposed to something,
0:11:40 we kind of phase it out and can’t see it anymore.
0:11:45 It’s because if something is in front of us for a while,
0:11:48 and we’re still alive, nothing bad happened, right?
0:11:52 Then the brain doesn’t really need to respond to it anymore.
0:11:54 Because the brain’s trying to conserve resources.
0:11:55 Right, right.
0:12:00 We need the resources to be ready for the new thing that is coming your way, right?
0:12:01 Which can be threatening.
0:12:04 Or it could also be really great, like, you know,
0:12:07 food or something that you should grab.
0:12:12 And that’s basically why we stop responding.
0:12:14 Of course, if something is hurting you,
0:12:16 right, you will continue responding to that.
0:12:20 Which is why it’s a little bit difficult to habituate to pain.
0:12:22 That’s one to pain, yeah.
0:12:27 What are some of your favourite examples of everyday habituation?
0:12:30 Of everyday habituation.
0:12:31 Yeah, like things that, yeah.
0:12:34 I told you mine before we started recording,
0:12:37 which was if I go to the gym and then I come home,
0:12:39 I can no longer smell myself.
0:12:43 Because I can smell myself for maybe a couple of minutes when I’m working out.
0:12:44 That I’m like getting hot and sweaty.
0:12:47 But then once I’m around myself for like 10 minutes,
0:12:50 I guess my brain is just no longer sending the signal from my armpits
0:12:53 through my nasal receptors to my brain.
0:12:56 Yeah, so smell is really a good one,
0:12:59 because that happens really, really fast, right?
0:13:02 So if you put a perfume in yourself, it really smells strongly,
0:13:04 but then you put the same perfume a day later,
0:13:07 you don’t smell it as much a week later, you don’t smell it that much.
0:13:11 So those are really easy to see around us.
0:13:14 But I think to me the more interesting ones
0:13:19 are habituating to things that we enjoy a lot,
0:13:21 and then we enjoy less and less and less.
0:13:24 And things that are really bad, but we stop noticing.
0:13:26 So for example, there’s a great study
0:13:30 in which people were asked to think about a song that they like.
0:13:33 Tell me a song that you like, or even an artist that you like.
0:13:34 Oh gosh, there’s one I’m listening to at the moment.
0:13:38 “House Gospel Choir Angels Watching Over Me”.
0:13:42 Okay, would you prefer to hear that song from beginning to end,
0:13:45 no interruptions, or would you prefer to hear it with breaks?
0:13:47 With breaks?
0:13:48 Yeah.
0:13:49 I don’t want to hear it with breaks.
0:13:51 Okay, you want to hear it the full thing.
0:13:53 Right, and you think you would enjoy it more, correct?
0:13:54 Yeah.
0:13:57 Okay, 99% of people say exactly what you say, right?
0:13:59 I’m going to enjoy the song more if I just hear,
0:14:01 I listen to it continuously with no breaks.
0:14:06 But counter-intuitively, when the study was conducted,
0:14:11 it was shown that people actually end up enjoying a song more if there are breaks.
0:14:14 By breaks, you mean they just put gaps in it?
0:14:17 Gaps in it, and in fact, what’s more interesting is,
0:14:20 not only did they put gaps, for different groups of people,
0:14:21 they did different things doing the gaps.
0:14:23 Maybe there’s quiet, maybe there’s annoying noise,
0:14:25 and it didn’t matter what they did in the gaps.
0:14:28 When you had gaps in the song, people enjoyed it more,
0:14:30 which is really counter-intuitive, right?
0:14:35 And they were willing to pay twice as much to hear that song in concert.
0:14:37 So why is that?
0:14:41 So if you hear a song that you really like, it’s really joyful,
0:14:43 but it turns out that over the whatever,
0:14:45 two minutes, three minutes, four minutes of the song,
0:14:46 the joy kind of goes down.
0:14:48 You habituate a little bit, right?
0:14:52 If you have a break, the joy is quite high,
0:14:54 and then it starts going down, there’s a break,
0:14:57 and so then you go back up, right?
0:14:58 Right.
0:15:00 And so you habituate a little bit,
0:15:01 but then you go back up.
0:15:04 So overall, you’re enjoying the music more,
0:15:06 and they did the same with massages.
0:15:08 So what do you prefer?
0:15:12 A one-hour massage or 20-minute massage break,
0:15:14 20-minute massage break, 20-minute massage break?
0:15:15 The one-hour massage, why would it work?
0:15:18 Right, again, everyone says I prefer the one-hour massage,
0:15:21 but again, when they did the study and they asked people,
0:15:22 “How much did you enjoy it?”
0:15:25 The group who had breaks ended up enjoying it more.
0:15:28 So what you’re saying is we need to put more bloody adverts in this podcast.
0:15:31 So that’s exactly what I was thinking.
0:15:33 This was exactly what I was thinking.
0:15:34 People are loving the adverts.
0:15:37 Because you think, intellectually, you think,
0:15:38 “Oh, these adverts are annoying,”
0:15:40 but I think what’s happening,
0:15:43 and no one’s actually done this exact experiment,
0:15:46 but they should, I think that, in fact,
0:15:49 people may enjoy your podcast more with the ads,
0:15:51 even if they go through it like that.
0:15:53 It’s a little gap.
0:15:55 It is possible, and that was my thought, exactly.
0:15:56 All the comments now are like,
0:15:57 “We fucking don’t want anymore.”
0:16:00 That’s so interesting.
0:16:03 And one of my favorite examples is actually vacation,
0:16:05 so holidays.
0:16:11 I was working on this project with a big tourism company in the UK,
0:16:16 and they wanted to know what makes people enjoy holidays the most.
0:16:20 When do they enjoy the holiday the most and why?
0:16:24 So we did surveys and we went on these resorts to interview people,
0:16:26 and we found two interesting things.
0:16:33 The first was that the peak of enjoyment was 43 hours into the vacation,
0:16:36 and why is that?
0:16:39 Well, we think the reason is that first you get to the resort
0:16:42 and then you have to unpack all of that,
0:16:44 and then you start really enjoying it,
0:16:48 and then the joy goes down and down and down over time.
0:16:50 You’re still enjoying your holiday a lot,
0:16:53 but the peak is within 43 hours.
0:16:58 And then the related second bit of data that we saw is that
0:17:01 when we asked people what was your favorite part of the vacation,
0:17:04 people used one word more than any other word,
0:17:05 and it was the word “first.”
0:17:09 So they said the first view of the ocean,
0:17:12 the first dip in the water, first cocktail.
0:17:16 They enjoyed the second time they went into the pool,
0:17:18 the first time, but they enjoyed the first the most,
0:17:22 because firsts are kind of novel, right?
0:17:24 And then you habituate the second time you enjoyed a little bit less
0:17:25 than the first time in July.
0:17:29 You’re still enjoying it, but not as much as the first time.
0:17:31 So does that mean that for holidays?
0:17:32 I think you argue this point in the book,
0:17:36 you do, yeah, about instead of doing four-week holidays,
0:17:39 it’s much better to do weekend breaks,
0:17:42 because if it’s 42 hours or so, that’s optimal enjoyment.
0:17:44 Right. So you’re trying to think about,
0:17:46 how can I maximize my enjoyment, right?
0:17:48 And when it comes to vacation,
0:17:52 maybe one good idea is instead of going for a two-week vacation,
0:17:57 during the year, maybe have a few long weekends vacations.
0:17:59 Now, of course, if you’re flying somewhere far,
0:18:02 then you might not be able to do it, it’s a cost and so on.
0:18:06 But you might consider instead of going to this far away vacation for two weeks,
0:18:09 maybe you want to go somewhere closer to home,
0:18:12 but have more of them, because then you get more firsts.
0:18:15 You also get more afterglows.
0:18:17 So that’s when you’re coming back from vacation
0:18:20 and you’re still happy because you were just on vacation.
0:18:23 And you’re also getting more of the anticipation of the vacation,
0:18:27 which is hugely beneficial for your well-being,
0:18:33 the anticipation part before you’re actually even there at the resort,
0:18:34 or wherever you’re going.
0:18:37 I mean, this begs the question about the other thing we habituate to,
0:18:38 which a lot of us don’t want to admit,
0:18:44 which is our partners and our sex lives.
0:18:47 Two things I’ve talked a lot on this podcast about,
0:18:49 as it relates to things that we kind of get used to,
0:18:52 and then no longer can get the same level of,
0:18:56 I don’t know, pleasure, happiness, appreciation, gratitude from.
0:18:59 Does it apply to relationships and sex?
0:19:00 Yeah. So I think it does.
0:19:03 And I think the solution is very similar, breaks.
0:19:06 And I don’t mean like a relationship break.
0:19:07 Right.
0:19:10 What I mean is have an evening for yourself,
0:19:14 go on a weekend, perhaps, on your own.
0:19:17 And then when you come back, everything kind of re-sparkles.
0:19:18 Is there any data to prove this?
0:19:21 Because it’s a feeling, it’s something that we all know intuitively.
0:19:24 Like me and my partner both know that when we’re spending time apart,
0:19:26 it’s good for our relationship.
0:19:27 Every relationship knows that.
0:19:28 It’s good for our sex life.
0:19:32 It’s good for our appreciation of each other.
0:19:34 But is there any data that supports this?
0:19:36 Yes. And I’ll tell you what the data is,
0:19:38 which is so obvious, you think,
0:19:40 is like, why do people even do a study about this?
0:19:45 But there’s one study, and it simply shows that when people are away from their partner,
0:19:48 their desire, their sexual desire for the partner goes up.
0:19:52 What is it about our partner going away that makes us want them more?
0:19:54 It’s related to habituation, right?
0:19:57 But it’s also related to where your attention is.
0:19:59 When something is always in front of you,
0:20:04 you sort of stop attending to it because it’s always there.
0:20:08 And so your brain then goes, okay, what else do I need to get?
0:20:14 Right. But if they’re not there, then your attention can go back to them.
0:20:19 And then there is a more basic level of how pleasure works.
0:20:24 There’s this great quote by the economist, Tiber Skitowsky,
0:20:27 and he says that pleasure results from incomplete
0:20:30 and intermittent satisfaction of desires, right?
0:20:32 Incomplete.
0:20:36 Yes. So the idea is that you always wanting a little bit more.
0:20:36 Okay.
0:20:38 Right, intermittent, meaning there’s breaks.
0:20:43 And then you always, and it’s incomplete because you always want a little bit more.
0:20:49 And I think that quote is you can apply it to almost everything, right?
0:20:50 Even to food.
0:20:55 There’s another fun experiment where they have two groups,
0:20:58 and one group was given mac and cheese to eat,
0:21:02 which they really liked every day for a few weeks.
0:21:03 And of course, they liked the mac and cheese of the first day.
0:21:04 They liked it in the second day.
0:21:08 But after a while, they couldn’t see mac and cheese anymore.
0:21:09 They really did not want mac and cheese.
0:21:12 While the other group got mac and cheese just once a week,
0:21:15 and they enjoyed the mac and cheese much more, right?
0:21:18 And so it’s true for food.
0:21:20 It’s true for music.
0:21:22 It’s true for our relationships.
0:21:23 It’s true for vacations.
0:21:24 What’s that type?
0:21:27 What’s that restaurant where the chef brings you,
0:21:30 I don’t know, like 13 different courses of food?
0:21:31 Oh, that’s too much.
0:21:32 So that’s not good.
0:21:33 Okay.
0:21:35 So here’s what I think about choices.
0:21:41 You, first of all, you don’t want to give people no choice at all, right?
0:21:44 So if there’s a restaurant where you get no choice at all,
0:21:46 I don’t think that is overall a good idea.
0:21:49 I mean, what you could do, for example, if you want,
0:21:52 if you want to have a restaurant where there’s an option
0:21:55 that the chef decides, still make it a choice, right?
0:21:58 So you can have on the menu chef’s choice,
0:22:01 but I’m still sitting there and deciding,
0:22:04 okay, the chef is going to choose for me, but that’s still my choice.
0:22:06 What does that matter?
0:22:09 Because it is well known that first,
0:22:14 having a choice is really important for people’s sense of control
0:22:15 and for their enjoyment.
0:22:17 And once they choose something,
0:22:21 they like it better than if someone else chooses for them.
0:22:24 They really, you know, one thing that we really don’t like humans,
0:22:27 really don’t like, and actually other animals as well,
0:22:30 is having no agency, having no choice.
0:22:32 That causes anxiety.
0:22:36 So we do want to make sure that people have a choice.
0:22:41 At the same time, you don’t want to have too many options
0:22:43 because that can be overwhelming, right?
0:22:48 There’s the famous experiment where people are given an option
0:22:49 to choose between 60 different jams,
0:22:52 and some people are so overwhelmed,
0:22:55 they just leave the store empty-handed.
0:22:58 So you don’t want to go to, right, too much choice,
0:23:01 which that could be just overwhelming because there’s,
0:23:04 you know, for like too much cognitive resources, right?
0:23:10 Anything that we do that requires an amount of cognitive resources
0:23:14 that is above some kind of threshold can feel aversive, right?
0:23:17 So having a choice where you have to choose too many things,
0:23:18 that’s not good.
0:23:22 On the other hand, not being able to choose anything,
0:23:24 that’s not good either.
0:23:27 So you want to be somewhere in the middle.
0:23:30 Going back to this subject matter of relationships,
0:23:32 what advice would you give me based on everything you know
0:23:38 about habituation to make sure that my relationship stays spicy
0:23:40 and we go the long term?
0:23:42 What things can I, you know,
0:23:42 what do I need to be aware of?
0:23:44 What things can I do?
0:23:47 Okay, so just thinking about like habituation-related things,
0:23:49 I would say two main things.
0:23:56 One is breaks, meaning having some distance once in a while, right?
0:23:57 Okay.
0:24:00 And the second is doing new things together.
0:24:00 Okay.
0:24:04 Right, because if you’re always doing the same thing
0:24:06 over and over and over, which couples sometimes do,
0:24:09 there are like a few things that they like to do, right?
0:24:13 Because it’s hard because each person has their own preferences
0:24:15 of what they like, and then you find an overlap.
0:24:18 And that overlap is not necessarily huge.
0:24:21 So then you just, you know, do the same thing over and over.
0:24:24 So I think as a couple, it is good to explore.
0:24:26 And I don’t don’t necessarily mean like sexually,
0:24:29 but just everything, like what type of movies you’re going to watch
0:24:32 and, you know, what type of activities.
0:24:37 And that can also expand your experiences together, right?
0:24:39 On the point of sex, so I do think sex can get boring
0:24:41 if you don’t constantly try new things.
0:24:44 It’s just, if you plan to be with someone for 50 years,
0:24:50 finding new things to try is work, to be honest.
0:24:53 And I guess life is work, so it’s work worth doing.
0:24:56 You know, I’m almost five years into my relationship
0:24:58 with a little bit of a gap in between.
0:25:01 And it’s a conversation we’ve had a lot,
0:25:05 which is how do we keep things fresh and new and interesting
0:25:05 and spicy?
0:25:08 Because like any couple or like any people,
0:25:12 you fall into, as you say, like comfort habits.
0:25:15 We go to this restaurant because we know it and they know us.
0:25:17 You know, you go to this place because you know the place
0:25:20 and you there’s your favorite restaurant there or whatever.
0:25:22 You watch this thing on TV.
0:25:26 You follow this, okay, this cycle of Monday to Monday to Sunday.
0:25:29 Monday we do this, then Saturday and Sunday we do this.
0:25:34 You know, the monotony can seem to take a joy out of life, right?
0:25:37 Yes, and I think you want a little bit of balance.
0:25:40 So some of this kind of routine and things you’re familiar with,
0:25:44 there’s something nice about that as well, right?
0:25:48 So it’s not, I’m not saying every weekend do something completely new, right?
0:25:52 But just so you have your kind of routines and then, you know,
0:25:56 you insert some novel activities or something new.
0:26:00 So it’s kind of a balance between exploring new things,
0:26:03 but also exploiting the things that you enjoy.
0:26:06 Do you think there’s a, because I was thinking about it
0:26:08 as you were speaking about men and women,
0:26:11 if there’s a difference in their ability to habituate.
0:26:15 And in my experience, maybe that’s just because
0:26:17 I’ve always been the man in the situation.
0:26:21 I’m less likely to seek spontaneity, I think,
0:26:25 in terms of like coming up with new ideas for places us to go.
0:26:29 But my girlfriend, she’s so like, let’s go to this flower thing,
0:26:31 let’s go to this, then let’s go to this plant, let’s go over here.
0:26:33 She’s very explorative.
0:26:35 So I was just wondering if there was a variance you’d ever seen
0:26:39 in any research about a man’s ability to habituate versus a woman’s?
0:26:41 No, I haven’t.
0:26:43 So I don’t necessarily think there is,
0:26:46 and I don’t necessarily think that it is a case that men are more
0:26:54 explorative or more exploring, but, and this is not based on data.
0:26:56 This is just my observation.
0:26:59 I often hear that people say, I like to explore,
0:27:03 but my partner likes to do the same,
0:27:05 or I like to just do the same all the time,
0:27:06 but my partner likes to explore.
0:27:09 I hear this again and again, it’s true in my own relationship.
0:27:12 My co-author, Cass Einstein, who wrote the book with me,
0:27:14 he also says exactly the same, right?
0:27:19 So for him, he likes to exploit, and his wife likes to explore.
0:27:22 For me, it’s like, I like to explore, my husband likes to exploit,
0:27:23 and I hear this again and again.
0:27:26 And that makes me think that it is not a coincidence.
0:27:32 That is perhaps the case that people who like to explore
0:27:34 end up with people who like to exploit,
0:27:39 because to do the best that we can in life, we need to do both.
0:27:44 So maybe it is, you know, this balance to individuals,
0:27:47 because if you’re left on your own and just exploring all the time,
0:27:50 you might not get to the optimal balance in life.
0:27:53 If you’re exploiting all the time,
0:27:56 then you’re unlikely to find these new things, right?
0:27:58 That will actually be great for you.
0:28:01 You will learn, gain your pleasure and so on.
0:28:04 So it may not be a coincidence.
0:28:06 And I think in a lot of these traits,
0:28:10 almost every psychological trait that you can think of,
0:28:11 they are individual differences.
0:28:14 You can go all the way from one extreme to the other extreme, right?
0:28:17 If we’re talking about optimism, all the way to pessimism,
0:28:19 exploration, all the way to exploitation, right?
0:28:20 And everything in the business.
0:28:22 Normally, it’s kind of a bell curve of sorts.
0:28:25 And I think it’s not a coincidence, right?
0:28:28 Because if you think about a society, a group,
0:28:32 a team working together, you do need these variations
0:28:36 for people to push each other in different directions,
0:28:41 such that as a team, we get to the best that we can get.
0:28:43 We talked about learning a little bit earlier on
0:28:47 and about the importance of change and novelty.
0:28:51 I’m someone that’s just fallen back into the habit of reading books again
0:28:52 and writing about them.
0:28:55 And it’s brought a huge amount of lost joy to my life.
0:28:58 And I had almost lost sight of it.
0:29:00 Becoming so busy in my professional life,
0:29:03 I’d lost the joy of learning new things.
0:29:05 And because I do this podcast as well,
0:29:08 and it seems to, I learn so much from speaking to the people I speak to.
0:29:10 But just recently, getting back into reading books again,
0:29:13 has brought this new sort of excitement to my life.
0:29:16 And your book provides a lot of evidence as to why that might be.
0:29:22 Yeah, I think it is a case that probably in recent years,
0:29:24 people are reading less, right?
0:29:27 And we kind of forget the joy of reading,
0:29:29 whether it is fiction or nonfiction.
0:29:33 I think the difference between reading a book
0:29:36 then watching a video is when you read a book,
0:29:39 there’s an extra mental activity that you’re doing,
0:29:43 which is you’re imagining, you’re visualizing, right?
0:29:45 It’s also in your own pace.
0:29:48 So you read something and maybe that elicit triggers
0:29:51 some kind of association in your mind, right?
0:29:54 So you might like stop for a little bit and then continue.
0:29:56 So there’s so much more going on.
0:30:00 And I think because of that, when you read a book,
0:30:04 you can relate that more to yourself and to your own life, right?
0:30:06 Versus, I mean, watching, I mean, films of that,
0:30:08 that’s great as well.
0:30:10 But that is a difference, right?
0:30:14 It’s more about you and your inner experiences
0:30:16 and memories coming more alive.
0:30:19 And then it also ties to what you already know.
0:30:23 The midlife crisis, is this a real thing?
0:30:24 Yeah, absolutely.
0:30:31 It is well known that stress is the peaks in your midlife
0:30:35 and happiness goes down in your midlife.
0:30:40 Suicide, for example, peaks, especially for male in midlife.
0:30:44 Definitely like something that we should think of and notice.
0:30:47 And we don’t really know for sure why it happens.
0:30:49 But one thing that happens in midlife
0:30:51 is that you have a lot of stressors coming your way.
0:30:55 So we’re talking about 40s and 50s.
0:30:59 So you might need, you have little kids that you need to take care of
0:31:01 and maybe have elderly parents that you’re worried about.
0:31:05 Professional life has a lot of stressors in midlife.
0:31:09 So that’s really a time where we see the midlife crisis.
0:31:12 But one thing that we think is that perhaps this is also a time
0:31:16 that you’re not progressing as much, right?
0:31:20 So kind of in your 20s and so on, you learn a lot.
0:31:22 You gain skills.
0:31:25 You get to perhaps a good position.
0:31:29 And then it’s sort of plateauing, right?
0:31:32 For a lot of people, it can kind of plateau in midlife.
0:31:34 Perhaps they have a good job, right?
0:31:36 But they’re kind of stuck.
0:31:38 They’re not really moving as much.
0:31:40 They’re not learning as much.
0:31:41 Less variety, right?
0:31:43 Things are a little bit more routine.
0:31:50 And that could be one reason why happiness is relatively low in midlife.
0:31:55 It’s also hard to see like what is next sometimes, right?
0:31:58 While you’re climbing up, it’s you’re kind of, well, this is my goal.
0:32:02 But once you get there, it’s a little bit disappointing to some extent,
0:32:04 even if you’ve done really well, right?
0:32:05 Because as we talked about before,
0:32:07 one thing that is really important for our happiness
0:32:11 is kind of us believing that we have something to gain,
0:32:13 something to go forward to.
0:32:17 Now, why does then happiness go back up after midlife, right?
0:32:19 So we don’t know.
0:32:22 But here is one speculation that at a certain point in time,
0:32:28 maybe you’re retiring, then actually life changes again.
0:32:29 Right?
0:32:33 In an odd way, there can actually be more variety and change in learning.
0:32:35 You need to learn how to live life again
0:32:39 with this new context of not going to work every day.
0:32:42 And you might make decisions,
0:32:45 all sorts of decisions of what to do with your time,
0:32:48 which will require you to learn again.
0:32:52 When you get to sort of say 40, 50 years old,
0:32:55 you’re probably in a relationship.
0:32:57 Which you’ve been in for a while.
0:32:59 There’s not that pursuit.
0:33:01 Your job, your career, your profession, your identity,
0:33:04 your geography, your house, friendship circles
0:33:06 are probably all well established at that point.
0:33:11 And your hypothesis is that the lack of forward motion
0:33:14 and the abundance of routine
0:33:18 means that you lose something in life.
0:33:21 Yeah, so things are less new, right?
0:33:21 New.
0:33:23 It’s kind of same, same, same.
0:33:25 Imagine the best day of your life.
0:33:28 You wake up in the morning
0:33:30 and you eat like the best breakfast that you can think of, right?
0:33:31 Choose a right.
0:33:34 And then you interact with the people that you love the most
0:33:37 and you go do the best activity like what you want.
0:33:38 And you see your favorite movie.
0:33:42 So the whole day is your favorite, favorite, favorite, favorite things.
0:33:43 Really great.
0:33:46 And then you wake up the same the next day and you do the same.
0:33:49 And then you wake up the next day and you do the same, right?
0:33:53 A weekend, a few weeks in, the best day of your life
0:33:56 just doesn’t elicit as much joy, right?
0:33:58 And also there’s nothing to learn anymore.
0:34:02 So even if you’re living your absolute best life,
0:34:06 if it is the same again and again and again and again,
0:34:12 it will eventually be a little bit even depressing, I would say.
0:34:14 So that’s by definition not our best life.
0:34:16 Right.
0:34:19 So then it is what is our best life?
0:34:23 So I think when people think about what my best life is,
0:34:24 what they’re thinking about is,
0:34:26 oh, I want that great house, right?
0:34:27 I want that great partner.
0:34:31 I want money or, you know, and then you can get all of these things.
0:34:36 But if they remain constant, that’s just not going to be your best life.
0:34:37 And you can engineer this.
0:34:40 I mean, even if it’s like midlife and everything is set
0:34:43 and you’re in one house and so on, for example,
0:34:47 you can go take a course, learn something new, right?
0:34:49 A new field that is not your own.
0:34:52 You can go a new sport, right?
0:34:54 There’s things that you could do.
0:34:56 Go visit places that you haven’t been.
0:35:00 Try to make connections with people that are a bit different
0:35:04 from your regular crowd that you’re interacting with.
0:35:06 It’s a little bit hard to do because it’s going to require effort.
0:35:08 The easiest thing to do is just continue.
0:35:09 Same, same, same, same.
0:35:13 We assume that happiness will be derived from us.
0:35:19 I almost don’t know how to say this, like from us being on autopilot.
0:35:20 Like if we do what society said,
0:35:23 you work a job, you get a partner, you create a house,
0:35:26 we assume that will lead to happiness.
0:35:28 But what you’re saying is the research shows
0:35:31 that we actually need to keep almost dismantling
0:35:37 or disrupting our own experience to find happiness or to be happy.
0:35:40 I guess we can’t find happiness, we be happy.
0:35:42 Yeah, did a whole bunch of surveys to figure out
0:35:45 what are the factors that are most associated with people’s happiness.
0:35:48 And the number one was meaning, right?
0:35:51 People who could say I have meaning in my life, that was number one.
0:35:52 Number two was control.
0:35:55 People who felt they have control over their life.
0:35:59 And I don’t remember what number income was,
0:36:01 but it wasn’t especially high or I think social.
0:36:04 So social connections was really high as well, right?
0:36:07 So a lot of these things were these psychological things,
0:36:13 not necessarily material things that really induced people’s happiness
0:36:16 and satisfaction from their life.
0:36:18 Somewhat linked to that.
0:36:19 Studies show that after getting married,
0:36:22 people report to being happier on average.
0:36:24 Yeah, about two years after their honeymoon period,
0:36:29 happiness levels tend to be the same as their pre-marriage levels.
0:36:32 Yeah, so this is a well-known what’s called the hedonic treadmill.
0:36:38 So the hedonic treadmill means that we sort of have a baseline level of happiness,
0:36:41 which is determined, a lot is genetic.
0:36:45 It might be determined by early childhood experiences.
0:36:47 And we can move from that baseline.
0:36:50 We can go up if something good happens.
0:36:53 Maybe you have a good relationship, marriage, you get a promotion.
0:36:56 It can go down if something bad happens, even bereavement.
0:37:00 But it turns out that in most cases,
0:37:04 you climb back to your baseline level of happiness.
0:37:09 So these things, they can go up and they can down and then you kind of adapt, right?
0:37:17 And you end up trying, and this goes back to this idea that we’re trying to get all these things.
0:37:21 We think, oh, once I get this promotion, then I’ll be really happy.
0:37:22 And then you get the promotion and it’s great.
0:37:24 But then after a while, you just go back to your baseline.
0:37:32 Now, on one hand, this actually is not a bad thing because imagine you get your first entry-level job
0:37:36 and people are really happy with their first entry-level job.
0:37:41 Great. But imagine I just continue being really happy with my first entry-level job, right?
0:37:44 I won’t be motivated to move forward, right?
0:37:53 So this is why habituation is there because it’s moving us forward as an individual and as a society.
0:37:56 On the other hand, it also reduces our joy.
0:38:00 And it also sometimes causes us not to see some of the bad things around us
0:38:03 because we habituate to that as well.
0:38:08 Another reason why habituation is important is for your mental health, right?
0:38:12 And that’s kind of related to what we just talked about, where bad things happen
0:38:16 and slowly, slowly, slowly we adapt and we go back to baseline.
0:38:18 We are able to recover, right?
0:38:26 It’s kind of our superpower, our immense ability to just bounce back for most individuals.
0:38:32 And what’s interesting is that you actually see that people with depression, they habituate much slower.
0:38:37 So there’s a great study that was conducted in the University of Florida by Professor Aaron Heller,
0:38:44 where he had students who just got exam results and he asked them how they were feeling.
0:38:48 And then he asked them how they were feeling after every 45 minutes for the whole day.
0:38:53 And what he found is when people got bad results, they were feeling bad, right?
0:38:54 They’re not happy.
0:38:58 And that’s true for people who never had depression episodes in their life
0:39:01 and people who were experiencing depression or had depression before.
0:39:03 So everyone was feeling bad at the beginning.
0:39:06 Those people who did not have any history of depression,
0:39:10 they slowly, slowly, slowly started feeling better from this bad grade.
0:39:15 Those with depression also started feeling better, but much slower, right?
0:39:22 So in other words, depression is related to slower habituations,
0:39:25 slower recovery from negative events in your life.
0:39:33 And one reason we think this is is because depression is related to going over these bad
0:39:36 events in your mind again and again, not letting go, right?
0:39:39 You’re kind of like chewing over them again and again and again.
0:39:44 And that is something that is preventing you from recovering
0:39:49 and bouncing back from these aversive events.
0:39:59 If habituation causes us to lose the joy of our current situation,
0:40:03 then how come, as you say in chapter two, the chapter about variety,
0:40:08 you say that up to 40% of employees resigned within the first six months of their new job,
0:40:12 you’d think their new job would bring them joy because it was different.
0:40:16 But up to 40% of employees resigned within the first six months.
0:40:20 So new things can bring us joy because they’re different.
0:40:24 However, at the same time, and this kind of goes back to the vacation example that I gave you,
0:40:28 which was people are not the happiest when they just get to the resort.
0:40:29 It takes them time, right?
0:40:32 It takes them 43 hours to get to the peak joy.
0:40:33 Why?
0:40:35 Because they still need the time to adapt, right?
0:40:38 They need to unpack, they need to get used to this new routine.
0:40:41 Same thing with a new job, for example.
0:40:45 So on one hand, getting a new job, you’re going to learn things,
0:40:48 and that’s great, and eventually it will get you joy.
0:40:52 But when you’re there for the first day or the first few days,
0:40:55 there’s a lot of getting used to things around you, right?
0:40:57 You need to figure who’s who, right?
0:40:58 Who’s on top?
0:40:59 Who’s in the bottom?
0:41:01 Where is the cafeteria?
0:41:02 What am I going to eat?
0:41:05 There’s so many different things that you need to figure out.
0:41:06 It can be stressful.
0:41:07 It can be overwhelming.
0:41:12 And you often want to just run back to your old life,
0:41:15 run back to your new job, and do a U-turn.
0:41:19 And the problem is that often people don’t predict this.
0:41:21 They can’t see ahead, right?
0:41:25 They think it’s like, well, I’m unhappy with my new job
0:41:27 on my first day or my second day or even the first week.
0:41:29 That means that this is not a good job for me.
0:41:30 Perhaps it’s not a good job for you,
0:41:34 or perhaps you just need to allow it some time to adapt.
0:41:39 So my recommendation is whatever it is that you’re trying that’s new,
0:41:42 it can also be something like a new relationship, right?
0:41:46 Give it some time, because you’re going to have to get used
0:41:48 to the things that are also not great.
0:41:51 You will also get used to things that are great,
0:41:53 but you have to get used to those things that are not great.
0:41:56 And then after a while, you won’t see them anymore, right?
0:41:57 So it’s not going to affect you as much.
0:41:58 So give it time.
0:42:02 Now, if you gave it time and still you’re unhappy, sure.
0:42:04 Yeah, make a change.
0:42:07 There’s a clear message in here for managers, employees,
0:42:12 CEOs, founders about how to keep their team motivated and engaged.
0:42:14 And the message that I’m hearing is the importance
0:42:16 in creating variety in their work.
0:42:19 Because I always think in businesses I’m involved in,
0:42:21 if someone’s doing the same thing for like 12 months,
0:42:25 we’re going to have to have a conversation within the next three months,
0:42:28 because they will typically come to me and say like,
0:42:30 something’s not right.
0:42:33 And it’s typically that people need a bit of variety in their work.
0:42:37 I guess because that gives it a little kick of meaning again.
0:42:40 You know, I think I’ve always hypothesized
0:42:43 that people need like five things to really like their jobs.
0:42:46 Number one is a sense of forward motion towards a goal.
0:42:48 So that’s progress, I guess.
0:42:50 Feeling like you’re making forward motion.
0:42:52 Number two, challenge.
0:42:54 They need to be like sufficiently challenged.
0:42:56 Not too challenged because then there’s lots of issues.
0:42:58 Under-challenged lots of issues.
0:42:59 Lose motivation.
0:43:00 Like in game psychology.
0:43:02 Number three is control and autonomy.
0:43:04 So feeling like you’ve got control over your life, your work.
0:43:07 Number four is meaning in the work you’re doing.
0:43:08 Subjective meaning.
0:43:10 Jack’s reason for doing this podcast
0:43:13 will be entirely different from someone else in the team, for example.
0:43:17 And then the last one is working in like a supportive group of people.
0:43:18 There’s a lot of studies about this.
0:43:22 That you want a situation where you’re learning something,
0:43:26 because if you’re learning nothing, people are not engaged, right?
0:43:30 But if it’s like so difficult that you can’t learn, right?
0:43:31 People aren’t happy as well.
0:43:34 So you have to be like in the spot in the middle, right?
0:43:35 That’s a sweet spot.
0:43:37 And again, it’s different for everyone, right?
0:43:40 Where it’s not too easy, but it’s not too difficult.
0:43:42 So you have something to learn, but you’re still progressing.
0:43:43 And that’s very important.
0:43:47 There’s a great study showing that if you put people in a room,
0:43:51 and there’s absolutely nothing for them to do except to shock themselves,
0:43:53 they will shock themselves.
0:43:54 Like little shock, I don’t mean, you know.
0:43:58 This paper was actually in science a few years ago.
0:44:04 So meaning that boredom can be so aversive to people,
0:44:09 that would actually prefer physical pain than to just not do anything at all.
0:44:11 So that’s on the one hand.
0:44:12 And then, of course, on the other hand,
0:44:16 is when you’re sitting in a class or you’re listening to a lecture,
0:44:18 and you have no idea what’s, it’s too much, right?
0:44:19 Because you haven’t gotten there.
0:44:22 Maybe you’ll take the steps, eventually you’ll get there.
0:44:26 But you started off by saying, for employees,
0:44:27 you need to kind of change, right?
0:44:29 Give them different projects and so on.
0:44:33 And what’s interesting, not only will they enjoy it more,
0:44:36 they’re more likely to get to creative solutions.
0:44:39 Start with the fact that what has been found
0:44:43 is that people who habituate slower are more creative.
0:44:47 So there’s different ways to measure how fast you habituate.
0:44:52 What they did in this study is that they had a sound,
0:44:53 the same sound again and again and again,
0:44:56 and they measured king conductance, which shows,
0:44:59 so it is how aroused you are.
0:45:01 When you’re aroused, you sweat more.
0:45:02 Okay.
0:45:05 And that is measured by the skin conductance, right?
0:45:07 And so when there’s like a sound, there’s a response.
0:45:10 So if a sound is the same sound again and again and again,
0:45:12 most people habituate, there’s no longer response,
0:45:14 you know, long skin conductance.
0:45:17 But for some people, they continue responding, right?
0:45:18 Because they’re not habituating.
0:45:21 And what was found is those, those people who continue responding,
0:45:26 those were the people who already showed creativity in their life.
0:45:28 They had a patent under their name.
0:45:31 They had an exhibition in an art gallery.
0:45:33 They had a book that they wrote.
0:45:37 They had got prizes for innovative work.
0:45:39 And the question is, why is that?
0:45:43 And I think the reason is that because of habituation,
0:45:45 we filter a lot of information, right?
0:45:47 And, you know, it makes sense.
0:45:48 Information is not important.
0:45:50 But if you don’t habituate,
0:45:53 you’re going to have a lot of bits of information in your mind simmering,
0:45:57 objects, sounds, bits and pieces of knowledge
0:45:59 that are not important on their own.
0:46:01 But they’re just going to stay in your mind.
0:46:02 They’re going to simmer.
0:46:06 And once in a while, they will create something new.
0:46:08 And that’s where innovation comes in.
0:46:13 And really, if you think about the most creative solutions that people come up with,
0:46:16 it’s usually they take something from one field,
0:46:20 something really boring, unimportant, mundane.
0:46:24 And that bit of mundane piece of information
0:46:27 then solves a problem in this other completely different field.
0:46:34 And/or there’s like this part of knowledge here that is boring.
0:46:36 And this other part of knowledge in this other field
0:46:37 that also seems very mundane.
0:46:41 But you put them together and suddenly you create something
0:46:44 that is really, really interesting and creative, right?
0:46:46 I mean, often you see, for example,
0:46:49 people taking what they know from biology,
0:46:53 which, you know, on its own doesn’t seem so important.
0:46:59 But then they take that and they use it to solve a problem in a different field.
0:47:01 Technology, for example, right?
0:47:04 That is like the most creative solutions.
0:47:06 So how do we facilitate that?
0:47:11 How do we facilitate disabituation in order to enhance creativity?
0:47:15 And the answer is change, changing your environment.
0:47:18 And it could be simple things or studies showing that
0:47:20 if you just change your environment,
0:47:21 let’s say you’re working in the office for a few hours
0:47:24 and you go work in a coffee shop for a few hours, right?
0:47:27 That change can actually also enhance creativity.
0:47:31 You’re sitting and working and then you’re going out and walking
0:47:32 or going out for a run.
0:47:35 Studies show for the first six minutes,
0:47:38 you’re going to be more creative and also vice versa.
0:47:40 So if you were out walking, out running,
0:47:43 and then you come back and you sit in your office,
0:47:45 for the next six minutes, you’re going to be more creative.
0:47:48 Now, six minutes may sound like that’s not a lot of time,
0:47:53 but sometimes there’s just enough for you to get the aha moment.
0:47:57 I can remember those instances where I came up with an idea
0:48:00 that would then change my course of research for a long time.
0:48:02 Those ideas that were really important.
0:48:04 So if I think about these examples,
0:48:08 like one example was I was in the office trying to solve this problem
0:48:09 and I couldn’t find a solution.
0:48:10 So I decided to go to the gym.
0:48:13 And then so I walked to the gym and then before,
0:48:15 while I was walking, while I was getting to the gym,
0:48:18 that’s when the solution came about.
0:48:20 And I remember calling my student and sharing that
0:48:24 and that would then change years of what we were going to do.
0:48:28 So just all I did was changed my physical activity,
0:48:30 changed just my physical surrounding.
0:48:32 And that’s exactly what these studies show.
0:48:37 Or another example was again, I was in my office
0:48:41 and I took a break and I was reading the New York Times science section.
0:48:43 So not hugely different, but still different.
0:48:47 And then I read something about monkeys and I do humans.
0:48:51 And that again, that was, ooh, that an idea came about
0:48:55 by taking a break and doing something that was a little bit different.
0:48:58 And I think every single example of this, it’s always like that.
0:49:02 It’s never me trying to think of something new,
0:49:04 me trying to find a solution.
0:49:08 It’s always doing something else, which then something unusual,
0:49:12 not something that I do like 90% of the time in a day.
0:49:17 And that doing those times is when these kind of new ideas came about.
0:49:21 You know the brain generally, having spent so much time studying it,
0:49:25 what are the fundamental surprises you’ve come to learn about humans
0:49:28 that you think most people just don’t understand or agree with?
0:49:31 Like the things that we don’t want to believe about ourselves
0:49:33 that are unfortunately true.
0:49:37 Things that are unfortunately true.
0:49:38 I see this, I read this throughout your work,
0:49:43 things where you go, humans wouldn’t say they’re like that if you ask them,
0:49:45 but clearly they are because of the research.
0:49:49 Right. Yeah, I mean, it is true that we’re not conscious
0:49:53 of most of these kind of systematic mistakes that we make
0:49:54 and the biases that we have.
0:49:59 For example, I mean, maybe our belief system is a great example
0:50:02 of why we believe what we believe.
0:50:07 I think that if you’d ask people, why do you believe a certain thing,
0:50:11 they would probably give you some kind of rational explanation.
0:50:17 I believe this thing because here’s all the evidence and so forth.
0:50:20 But in fact, most of the times, the reason we believe something
0:50:24 is that we were brought up in an environment where that belief was a popular one
0:50:28 or people around us believe it or we’ve heard it again and again.
0:50:33 One interesting thing is this is a huge effect where people are not aware of it.
0:50:39 As long as you hear something repeatedly, even twice, the likelihood that you believe it
0:50:43 goes way up versus something that you hear once.
0:50:45 It’s called the illusory truth effect.
0:50:47 You just, there’s so many studies showing this.
0:50:51 You let people, you tell people something twice,
0:50:52 they don’t remember that they’ve heard it twice.
0:50:56 And they’re going to believe it way more than something that they just heard once.
0:51:00 The reason for this is that the brain process information
0:51:02 that it’s heard before less.
0:51:09 Okay, so let’s say I tell you that a shrimp’s heart is in its head.
0:51:12 So when you hear that, that sounds really surprising
0:51:16 and your brain takes a lot of resources to process this.
0:51:18 You might think about the last time I ate a shrimp
0:51:22 or just imagine the shrimp’s heart is in its head.
0:51:27 But the second time I’m going to tell you this, a shrimp’s heart is in its head,
0:51:29 your brain’s not going to process this as much.
0:51:31 In the third time, it’s not going to process it at all.
0:51:36 Now, when your brain takes less effort in processing things,
0:51:40 that causes a signal of familiarity.
0:51:44 And as a result, we’re more likely to believe something.
0:51:50 When something requires less effort and less energy to process, we believe it more.
0:51:55 So anything that you hear again and again and again, as you hear it more and more and more,
0:51:57 it takes less energy to process.
0:51:59 And if it takes less energy to process,
0:52:02 our brain then concludes that this is likely true.
0:52:06 And for good reason, because most of the time when you hear something again and again and again,
0:52:07 most of the time it’s true.
0:52:11 So if you heard something from your aunt and then you heard it from your friend
0:52:12 and then you heard it from your doctor,
0:52:15 why do all the people tell you all these things?
0:52:19 Because on average, it’s true, but sometimes it’s not going to be true.
0:52:20 It’s going to be false beliefs.
0:52:27 And even things like it takes you less energy to process a large font,
0:52:29 14 font, bold.
0:52:32 It takes us less energy to process it versus small font.
0:52:35 Yeah, we see that across the board in all of our marketing companies is that
0:52:38 if we just make the font a little bit bigger, we get more clicks.
0:52:41 So it turns out, yeah, not only are people more attentive,
0:52:42 they’re going to believe it more.
0:52:45 So there’s studies showing that you show people two sentences.
0:52:49 One is in big fonts, bold, and one is in small.
0:52:52 And you ask them, how likely is this to be true?
0:52:53 How likely is that to be true?
0:52:56 Those sentences that are in big, bold fonts,
0:52:58 people are more likely to believe they’re true
0:53:02 because the brain requires less energy to process it,
0:53:06 which then makes us conclude that it’s likely to be true.
0:53:08 And it’s true for example, if you do it with red color,
0:53:12 anything that makes it easier for us to process.
0:53:15 If we hear things more clearly, we’re more likely to believe that’s true
0:53:17 than if you put a little bit of noise.
0:53:20 People are less likely to believe things are true
0:53:22 anytime that it’s hard for us to process.
0:53:25 So what that means is if you want people to,
0:53:28 if you want to help them believe what you’re saying,
0:53:30 take on your recommendations,
0:53:32 you want to make it easier for them to process it.
0:53:36 So you could do that visually, big fonts, rent, and so on.
0:53:38 But the other things you can do is you can relate it
0:53:42 to things that they already believe in, what we call priors.
0:53:45 So if I want to convince you of something,
0:53:48 it might be a good idea for me to think about
0:53:52 what do you already believe and then try to tie that
0:53:53 to what you already believe
0:53:55 because that will require less processing.
0:53:59 Or I could tell you something twice or three times.
0:54:01 Now, of course, it’s not like I’m going to tell you something
0:54:02 really, really crazy, right?
0:54:05 The earth is flat three times and you’re going to believe me, right?
0:54:08 But I’m talking about these things where it could be true, right?
0:54:09 And so I tell you that a few times,
0:54:12 and then eventually you’re more likely to believe it.
0:54:15 And you don’t know it’s because you’ve heard it a few times.
0:54:22 So if I said salad and sugar are good for you versus just sugar is good for you.
0:54:26 Maybe more people are more likely to believe the first sentence
0:54:30 because I’ve included a statement that you know from prior knowledge is true,
0:54:31 which is cabbage is good for you.
0:54:33 Yeah, that is a great example.
0:54:36 That is a great example because our brain goes,
0:54:37 yeah, salad is good for you.
0:54:41 And then by the time we get to sugar, we’re like, okay, that could be true.
0:54:44 And also it makes you be more believable.
0:54:46 And just to say, you need a little bit of sugar.
0:54:47 Sugar is not only bad.
0:54:48 Yeah, a little bit.
0:54:52 So you talked to them about dehabituating our lives.
0:54:57 Why and where do we need to dehabituate our lives?
0:55:01 Where do we need to change things and introduce novelty?
0:55:06 I’m almost wanting to come away with a little bit of a checklist for my own life here.
0:55:09 I feel like I understand the part and relationships,
0:55:13 which is take breaks from my partner, try new things with them, you said as well.
0:55:16 So go to new restaurants, go to new places, do new things on the weekend.
0:55:20 In work, quit my job, I guess, that’s what you’re saying.
0:55:23 No, absolutely not.
0:55:24 No, do not quit your job.
0:55:28 Change role, add new responsibilities.
0:55:31 But try, it could even be something as…
0:55:34 I mean, you don’t have to completely change what you’re doing,
0:55:37 but you could at the same time try something new.
0:55:44 And in fact, I’m sure you do that because you have different things that you’re doing, right?
0:55:47 And so that means you have variety in your day because you do your podcast,
0:55:50 but then you also have your companies and your companies are different, right?
0:55:53 So this is a good example, but not everyone has that, right?
0:55:55 A lot of people just have the one job.
0:55:59 But if you can take on, you know, learn something new, right?
0:56:05 Induce variety into your day in that way, that is great.
0:56:09 That will cause you to start being on kind of a learning mode, right?
0:56:13 I take also from that, that as an employer, it’s really important that we have all of our
0:56:21 team members on a personal development plan, which means making sure that they’ve got
0:56:24 intellectual forward motion in their lives.
0:56:25 They’re always learning something new.
0:56:27 They’re always striving for something new.
0:56:29 And that every team member in my company should have
0:56:34 something they’re currently learning about outside of their core responsibilities.
0:56:38 Right. So sometimes it would look like they’re going sideways, right?
0:56:43 So sometimes it doesn’t look like the path is just progressing forward.
0:56:47 But sometimes perhaps the plan is to go a little bit sideways.
0:56:49 Between the sideways.
0:56:53 Which means like it’s not the obvious thing that they’re going to learn, right?
0:56:54 For their role.
0:56:54 Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:56:59 You see, Jack’s not going to become a better editor or producer or whatever.
0:57:01 He’s going to learn music.
0:57:06 Almost anything different that you learn is probably going to feed back, right?
0:57:07 Yeah, yeah.
0:57:13 I guess it comes right down to even the route you cycle on the way to work in the morning or
0:57:14 small things, right?
0:57:17 Small decisions you make, hotels you stay at, the airline you choose to use.
0:57:21 Is there any other ways that you’ve dehabituated in your life having learned about this?
0:57:24 Yes, but I want to just say something about,
0:57:27 you said use different airlines and so on.
0:57:33 So on one hand, yes, but on the other hand, if something is not super enjoyable,
0:57:35 but you still have to do it.
0:57:39 So for example, maybe flying, maybe travel, like when you’re traveling for business,
0:57:42 it can be painful, right?
0:57:47 So in those cases, in fact, you want to do the same thing again and again.
0:57:47 Why?
0:57:52 Because you habituate to the negative, you see?
0:57:54 So if you think about things that you don’t like to do,
0:58:00 you may actually want to do it in the same way over and over, right?
0:58:04 Because I mean, unless you think like you get on a plane and you’re super enjoying it,
0:58:07 but like, you know, for me, I just like want it to be over with, right?
0:58:12 So it’s easier actually to use the same airline to do the same thing.
0:58:16 So in some parts of life, actually you want to choose to do the same thing.
0:58:23 And in fact, in some parts of life, you want to do these things that you don’t enjoy in one chunk.
0:58:25 You know how we talked about the good things you chop up?
0:58:29 The bad things you want to swallow whole.
0:58:31 So if you think about things that you don’t like to do,
0:58:34 but you really need to do like, I don’t know, I need to grade papers.
0:58:36 I need to do household chores.
0:58:42 When you ask people like, would you rather do this thing that you need to do,
0:58:46 but you don’t like, would you just get it over with in one go?
0:58:49 Or do you want breaks in between for a breather?
0:58:52 People like breaks for a breather, right?
0:58:57 If it is not, I don’t know, washing the floor or whatever they are doing their taxes,
0:58:58 they want the breaks.
0:59:03 But in fact, they suffer less if they just get it over with,
0:59:05 because then they habituate to the negative.
0:59:09 Yeah, that makes sense.
0:59:12 So for the positive, you want variety and so on.
0:59:15 And but the things that you’re not going to learn a lot from,
0:59:17 you just need to get them over and done with,
0:59:20 just get them over and done with and even do it exactly the same way
0:59:22 that you’ve always done it.
0:59:26 Is social media going to make me vicariously habituate?
0:59:30 I through looking at other people’s lives and experiences they’re having,
0:59:36 it’s moving my bar up, like my own perception of expectations in my life
0:59:38 up in an unpleasant way.
0:59:42 So that when I go to that same place that Jenny went to on Instagram,
0:59:45 it’s less enjoyable for me because I’ve already kind of experienced it
0:59:49 through the lens of Jenny’s Instagram stories.
0:59:53 Right, so this has a lot to do with what do we expect from life
0:59:56 and how do those expectations impact us?
1:00:04 So I think obviously social media is causing us to have unrealistic expectations.
1:00:08 We always, I don’t know, for most of us, we feel kind of disappointed with ourselves.
1:00:11 We go online is because, of course, a lot of people go online
1:00:13 and the post the good things, right?
1:00:14 Oh, I’m on vacation, I got this award.
1:00:16 And then you go online and you’re like, oh, all the people,
1:00:19 all of this good things are happening constantly.
1:00:21 And so you feel disappointed about your own life.
1:00:24 You have unrealistic expectations.
1:00:28 And it shifts what we call adaptation level.
1:00:34 So basically, we adapt to our daily life and then things that are better
1:00:37 than our daily life, we feel good and things are worse, we feel worse.
1:00:42 But sometimes our adaptation level can shift not based on our reality,
1:00:50 but what we expect maybe will happen and also what we see other people are doing.
1:00:52 So let’s talk about expecting what will happen.
1:00:58 So there’s a study showing that when prisoners are about to be released,
1:01:01 they are still in prison.
1:01:05 But in their mind, they’re already like thinking about the release, which is great.
1:01:12 And so now their expectations are kind of higher and that makes them feel worse, right?
1:01:14 So they’re actually very close to release.
1:01:22 But in fact, they’re feeling really bad because their daily life is much worse
1:01:25 from what they expect their daily life to be.
1:01:26 That’s kind of like social media, isn’t it?
1:01:28 You’re sat in your house looking out at people
1:01:31 partying in some hot sunny country, having the time of their lives.
1:01:33 You feel like you’re in prison.
1:01:36 Your expectations are being raised because you’re watching them have the time of their life.
1:01:40 So suddenly your house feels like a prison.
1:01:43 Yeah, so your expectations can be based on what you just expect for yourself
1:01:44 and also what other people are doing.
1:01:50 Now, I’m not saying that high expectations are bad, right?
1:01:53 Because there’s two things happening at the same time.
1:01:59 One thing is when the outcomes, so this is related to dopamine neurons.
1:02:03 So basically, dopamine neurons in your brain are firing all the time, right?
1:02:09 And then when outcomes are better than expected, they fire even more, burst more, right?
1:02:16 So you expect to get this amount of salary, you get a higher salary, dopamine goes up.
1:02:18 You expect the steak to taste quite good.
1:02:19 It tastes even better.
1:02:20 They fire more.
1:02:27 And when things are worse than expected, they start quieting down, right?
1:02:30 So they’re quieting down when things are worse than expected.
1:02:32 And that is highly correlated with your mood.
1:02:35 When there’s big bursts of dopamine, you feel good.
1:02:38 When the dopamine is quiet, you’re feeling bad.
1:02:46 But that quiet is important because that quiet says things are not as good as I expected them to be.
1:02:50 And it signals to your brain, I need to learn something.
1:02:51 I need to change this, right?
1:02:53 There’s two things you can change.
1:02:54 You can change your expectations.
1:02:56 You can lower them.
1:02:58 Or you can change the reality, right?
1:03:03 And so this negative mood that is associated with outcomes not being
1:03:08 as good as you expected them can actually lead to progress.
1:03:11 So it’s a bit of a delicate kind of balance, right?
1:03:15 And so often, I mean, there’s this really counterintuitive finding which is
1:03:20 when people don’t have certain things in their life.
1:03:25 For example, in countries where the healthcare system is quite bad,
1:03:31 the healthcare system doesn’t affect people’s daily happiness as much as in countries
1:03:33 where the healthcare system is good.
1:03:36 So when the healthcare system is good, you expect it to be good.
1:03:40 So then any variation can impact your kind of satisfaction.
1:03:44 But if you’re living in a country where like, well, I know the healthcare system is bad,
1:03:46 it’s not going to even affect how I’m feeling, right?
1:03:51 You have no expectations and you’re kind of that’s not going to impact your happiness.
1:03:54 I remember you had a TED Talk, didn’t you?
1:03:57 Which did 15 million views on how to motivate yourself to change your behavior.
1:03:59 Okay, yeah.
1:04:05 What can I take from that TED Talk to achieve my new year, new me goals?
1:04:10 Okay, so I talk about a few principles there.
1:04:15 And one is a lot of times our goals are in the future.
1:04:19 So I want to go to the gym because eventually I want to lose weight.
1:04:22 I’m not going to lose weight that very second, right?
1:04:24 I’m not going to like get into my genes that very day.
1:04:28 Eventually I know that if I go to the gym, I will become healthier, right?
1:04:31 So it’s a lot of times about the future or you say, I want to get a promotion.
1:04:35 So I’m going to work really hard today so I can get promotion in the future.
1:04:41 The problem is that it’s really hard to motivate yourself to do something immediate
1:04:45 for a reward that’s going to come a long time from now.
1:04:50 So what you need to do is you need to figure out, what can I get now?
1:04:55 I’m going to the gym because I want to be healthier and thinner or whatever in the future.
1:04:57 But is there anything that I can get at the very moment?
1:05:02 I’ve heard people tell me that the way that they motivate themselves to get to the gym
1:05:06 is they say, when I get to the gym and I get on the treadmill,
1:05:11 I’m going to allow myself to watch some trash TV or read like a magazine
1:05:13 that I don’t always allow myself to read.
1:05:15 So that’s one thing, right?
1:05:19 Think about what the immediate rewards that you can give yourself
1:05:22 or someone else, maybe you’re helping someone else to achieve their goals.
1:05:26 What can we get immediately, not only in the future?
1:05:29 For example, another person told me that their husband,
1:05:31 they really wanted their husband to go to the gym.
1:05:36 And so the husband went to the gym and they got back and the wife said to the husband,
1:05:37 ooh, I can feel you’re like, I can see your muscles, right?
1:05:39 So it was immediate, right?
1:05:41 They gave him like immediate rewards.
1:05:45 So try to think about, I call it like bridge the temporal gap
1:05:49 because there’s an action happening today and there’s this like goal in the future.
1:05:53 But you have to bridge the temporal gap to try to think about,
1:05:54 okay, what can I also get now?
1:05:56 It could be an emotional response, right?
1:06:01 I mean, a lot of times when we do something like we work hard, we solve a problem,
1:06:03 we go to the gym, we feel good.
1:06:05 It could be the emotional response.
1:06:09 So maybe one way you can do is make that salient, right?
1:06:12 Maybe like track your emotions, track your mood.
1:06:15 And you can say, okay, this is what I did today, right?
1:06:18 I went to the gym today, this is how I was feeling, right?
1:06:21 And so that’s also an immediate reward.
1:06:25 I was thinking about this idea of discipline and what creates discipline.
1:06:30 And I was hypothesizing if there were to be a discipline equation,
1:06:31 what it might look like.
1:06:35 And I kind of concluded that there’s three parts to the things and areas in my life
1:06:38 where I’ve been able to maintain discipline.
1:06:39 And the equation looks something like this.
1:06:42 The start of the equation would be the why.
1:06:46 Like however much I valued that goal.
1:06:47 So it could be going to the gym or whatever.
1:06:54 Plus the reward that I got from the pursuit of the goal.
1:06:56 So the perceived reward I got from the pursuit of the goal.
1:07:01 So that’s actually like going to the gym, doing the exercise, being on the treadmill,
1:07:06 the feeling after, walking home, like the, you know, and then minus
1:07:08 the cost of the pursuit of the goal.
1:07:11 So that’s like having to like leave the house, get in the Uber,
1:07:16 put my shoes on, travel for 45 minutes, wait, you know, lose two hours.
1:07:18 And if you want to be disciplined in any area of your life,
1:07:23 you need to therefore increase the why in whatever way you can.
1:07:24 Get really, really clear on why that matters.
1:07:28 And in your case, create those packs like a social pack, financial pack,
1:07:30 whatever, to make it really important to you.
1:07:34 Do whatever you can to make the reward of the pursuit of the goal more enjoyable.
1:07:37 Might be going with a friend or something going to a gym that’s closer.
1:07:38 I don’t know.
1:07:41 And then do everything you can to reduce the cost of the pursuit of the goal.
1:07:42 So.
1:07:42 Right.
1:07:45 And the problem is that the costs are often immediate.
1:07:46 Yeah.
1:07:46 Right.
1:07:48 And then we fall into what’s called the present bias,
1:07:51 or sometimes it’s called temporal discounting,
1:07:55 which is that often we value what’s happening in the moment
1:07:59 more than the same thing if it was to happen in the future.
1:07:59 Right.
1:08:03 And that’s true for both like bad things and good things,
1:08:04 things that are just happening now.
1:08:09 Our brain is like, Oh, I’m going to decide what to do based on this immediate thing.
1:08:11 And the problem is that the costs are often immediate.
1:08:12 Right.
1:08:13 To go to the gym.
1:08:14 Yeah.
1:08:14 They come first.
1:08:14 Right.
1:08:16 So you have to overcome those costs.
1:08:18 And I think when, and as you’re saying,
1:08:22 one thing you could do is to try to get those rewards closer in time.
1:08:22 Right.
1:08:24 So if I go to, to the gym, I have to like walk to the gym.
1:08:28 I might tell myself, okay, I can listen to a podcast while I’m walking.
1:08:28 So that’s enjoyable.
1:08:29 See how it’s going.
1:08:30 Exactly.
1:08:30 Exactly.
1:08:32 While I’m running.
1:08:32 Yeah.
1:08:34 Simon Sinek threw a really, when I was at his house talking to him about this,
1:08:36 he threw an objection at me.
1:08:42 He was like, yeah, but this morning in LA, I got out of bed and went and emptied the bins
1:08:45 at 7am because I knew if I didn’t, and there’d be repercussions.
1:08:48 So I ran that through this framework and I was like, well, your why was strong
1:08:52 because the repercussions of you not getting out of bed are the bin overflows.
1:08:54 You probably get fined by the local council.
1:08:57 The reward of the pursuit of the goal really wasn’t there.
1:09:00 And the cost fortunately was lower than the why.
1:09:02 So discipline occurred.
1:09:02 Right.
1:09:05 And that’s because we’re a sophisticated creatures, right?
1:09:07 We’re not only driven.
1:09:11 I mean, those things immediately are strong, but we’re not only driven by them.
1:09:13 We have these frontal lobes, right?
1:09:14 We’re a sophisticated creature.
1:09:17 We can value things that are in the future.
1:09:20 So when I’m saying, and I say, you know, immediate is important.
1:09:23 I’m not saying future isn’t important for us and we don’t use that.
1:09:23 We do, right?
1:09:25 And we’re able to do that.
1:09:31 Another thing that people do is they actually put in artificial costs
1:09:32 for not doing the right thing.
1:09:33 Interesting.
1:09:37 Like a social pact is one where if I’ve announced it to the world
1:09:40 on my Instagram that I’m going to do it, then there’s a reputational cost if I don’t.
1:09:41 Right.
1:09:42 Right.
1:09:45 And for example, you know, there’s silly things where people say,
1:09:50 I’ve heard this when for writers and they tell, I tell the friends, you know,
1:09:54 I’m going to send you my chapter Monday at 7 a.m.
1:09:57 And first of all, that’s a pact, right?
1:09:59 I mean, I have to send it because I told you,
1:10:00 not because you’re even going to read it, right?
1:10:05 But if I don’t, then I am, you know, $100 is going to come into your account.
1:10:09 Like maybe you even already put it, you know, as like a future thing, which you can stop, right?
1:10:10 So there’s a cost.
1:10:14 You put a cost to what will happen if you don’t do that immediate thing.
1:10:19 Just goes to show, I think, fundamentally that we’re just driven by incentives.
1:10:24 You know, we think it’s something else, but really at the very fundamental level,
1:10:27 everything just seems to be about incentives in business and work and relationships in life.
1:10:29 Absolutely.
1:10:33 I mean, every decision, every action, conscious or unconscious,
1:10:35 is very much about incentives, right?
1:10:36 The good and the bad.
1:10:41 I think what’s interesting to me is that those incentives are quite variable.
1:10:43 They can be money.
1:10:45 They can be food.
1:10:48 They can be like social interaction, right?
1:10:49 – They can be variety.
1:10:50 – They can be variety.
1:10:50 Yeah.
1:10:53 So what the incentives are is very variable.
1:10:58 What, you know, what the good that I’m getting also that the bad, right?
1:11:01 What feels bad, a lot of different things can feel bad.
1:11:03 So interesting.
1:11:07 So if you go, if you go down to like creatures low in the evolutionary scale,
1:11:10 I think for them, things are more basic, right?
1:11:13 For them, it’s just like food, temperature, right?
1:11:16 Things like that that are really about survival.
1:11:19 But as we go up and up and up the ladder and we get to humans,
1:11:25 for us, there’s a lot of different things that can be incentivizing.
1:11:30 I was saying to one of my colleagues the other day in a business that I’m like an investor in,
1:11:34 he was telling me about one of his team members who was like just a bit,
1:11:36 had lost the love of her work.
1:11:41 And he told me the list of reasons she’d said in the like exit interview
1:11:43 as to why she wasn’t enjoying her work.
1:11:47 And I looked at the list of things and intuitively it felt like
1:11:53 the person didn’t actually know why they weren’t enjoying their work anymore.
1:11:56 And so I had a conversation with this person who was leaving this company.
1:11:59 And we got to the very bottom of it.
1:12:02 And at the very heart of it was just a loss of meaning in the job they were doing.
1:12:06 They couldn’t answer why it mattered anymore.
1:12:08 They thought the work they were doing no longer mattered.
1:12:11 And when you’d ask them, they would have said a lot of other things.
1:12:14 You know, they would point to small little things in this and that and the office
1:12:17 and whatever else and the music that’s playing in there.
1:12:19 But at the very heart of it was actually just an absence of meaning.
1:12:23 And people aren’t, I don’t think very good at understanding that they’ve lost meaning.
1:12:25 Or that meaning is so important, or that what it is.
1:12:28 Yeah. And that goes back to the survey that I mentioned,
1:12:33 where they found that the number one thing that was important for people’s happiness was meaning.
1:12:34 And what does meaning mean?
1:12:43 I guess is that what you’re doing is valuable, right?
1:12:46 Yeah, too. So that’s a good question.
1:12:48 I think it’s probably beyond yourself.
1:12:54 I don’t know. Maybe it is even something about immortality, right?
1:13:00 Wanting to feel that what I’m doing is going to change something beyond myself.
1:13:07 And it’s not necessarily about generosity, although generosity could be part of it.
1:13:10 But it’s more about making a difference, right?
1:13:16 Steve Jobs had this saying that he said something like a dent in the universe, right?
1:13:18 Making a dent in the universe.
1:13:20 I think a lot of people want to do that.
1:13:24 And it, you know, it don’t have to invent the Mac to do that.
1:13:30 It could also be how you affect your family, how you raise your children, right?
1:13:36 And that thing, that there’s a kind of things that can continue to be even when you’re not there.
1:13:38 I’ve noticed this trend.
1:13:44 Gen Z and the younger millennials are the change the world generation.
1:13:50 And what I mean by that, hear me out, is that I have so many young kids coming up to me,
1:13:52 especially over the last sort of 10 years generally,
1:13:56 that would say to me, I want to change the world.
1:13:58 And you’d ask them, like, what do you mean?
1:14:00 They’d say, like, I want to change the world.
1:14:03 They can’t tell you necessarily what they want to change about it,
1:14:08 but they want to be the person that had that impact on the world.
1:14:12 And I think that sits in contrast to what my father would have said
1:14:15 as a 65 year old man, if you’d asked him at 20 years old,
1:14:16 what do you want to do in your job?
1:14:19 I don’t think my dad would have said, change the world.
1:14:21 I think he would have said, I want to be a structural engineer.
1:14:22 You know what I mean?
1:14:28 And I think that going back to your point about habituation and people’s desire to like,
1:14:33 I don’t know, for immortality, is it plausible that because of social media,
1:14:38 because we’ve seen a lot of world changes, we’ve adjusted our own, I don’t know,
1:14:44 expectations of what our own contributions to now that this young generation,
1:14:49 if they’re not changing the world, or if they’re not having such a profound impact on things,
1:14:55 they don’t have the level of meaning has habituated to now the base minimum of impact
1:14:56 they need to have is to change the world.
1:14:57 You know what I mean?
1:14:59 They can’t just get a job.
1:15:01 Right. And when I said about a dent in the world,
1:15:07 I did not mean, as I said before, I don’t mean like inventing the Mac.
1:15:12 It could just be making a nice meal that people enjoy or something.
1:15:15 It could be things that are quite small.
1:15:20 And thinking about your father, he wants to be an engineer, but he wanted to be an engineer.
1:15:21 But why?
1:15:25 Right? He said that’s what he wanted to do, but why did he want that?
1:15:30 So he probably, I don’t know, but maybe he wanted to be that because
1:15:33 that would enable him to create new things.
1:15:38 Right. And so in just creating new things, you’re changing the world.
1:15:41 So I think I think I don’t think he was aiming at that though.
1:15:44 Whereas the young kids that come up to me, they’re like aiming at that.
1:15:48 So they want to like, they want to change the world and they haven’t figured out how.
1:15:52 Whereas my dad wants to be like an engineer and the consequences he ends up changing the world.
1:15:55 Yes, but he probably wants to be an engineer for some reason.
1:15:56 Right. I could guess.
1:16:00 And I think he doesn’t, you know, people don’t think about it.
1:16:06 I mean, it’s just, we’re using the same words, but I think these perhaps different generations
1:16:13 have different aspirations, right? Because changing the world, when we say those,
1:16:17 when I say the words, I don’t mean like changing the world, right?
1:16:22 I’m just saying, saying, doing something that creates a change in your world.
1:16:25 I mean, maybe that’s a better way to do it, a better way to say it.
1:16:27 Some kind of change in your world.
1:16:30 Not necessarily I’m doing global change, like Steve Jobs.
1:16:33 But in some way, this is a luxury.
1:16:38 That’s true also, even for your father’s generation and for this new generation, right?
1:16:45 Wanting to have meaning is a luxury that we have because we have our basic needs, right?
1:16:54 Because we have food and shelter and, you know, just like safety, the very, very basic,
1:16:57 we can then start thinking about meaning.
1:16:58 But on the other hand, you can say, well,
1:17:06 just being able to care for my family and keeping them safe, that also has meaning.
1:17:14 Risk. In order to change our lives, we have to sort of lean into risk in key areas.
1:17:17 For those people that are, you know, thinking about changing their lives,
1:17:20 but they’re looking forward into uncertainty and they’re seeing risk.
1:17:23 And what advice would you give them based on what you know about habituation,
1:17:25 but more broadly from the brain?
1:17:31 That’s going to encourage them to take that step into the unknown, where they believe risk lives.
1:17:36 Yeah. So we quote the rock climber, Alex Honold, in the book.
1:17:41 And what he says is that he has a comfort zone, which is kind of a bubble around him.
1:17:47 And as he tries more and more things, that bubble just becomes bigger and bigger and bigger.
1:17:48 He pushes those boundaries.
1:17:54 And what happens is that those things that seemed crazy to him, absolutely crazy,
1:17:58 then suddenly become within the realm of possibility, right?
1:18:05 I think the takeaway here is you have to start. You have to try.
1:18:12 And what is helpful to know is that even if you try small, so let’s say there’s,
1:18:15 their goal is quite up there. It’s like a huge risk, right?
1:18:23 Yes, but just try small, right? And then suddenly the next step wouldn’t seem so crazy, right?
1:18:32 And so on and so forth. We see that risk habituates and it helps us explore different things.
1:18:36 It helps us try new things. It can also go in a bad direction, right?
1:18:39 Because of risk habituation. What is risk habituation?
1:18:43 And risk habituation is you do risky things. What we find is that when people do risky things,
1:18:49 let’s say gamble, we have a study where we let people gamble without letting them know
1:18:52 if they won or lost. They just gamble, gamble, gamble. We tell them at the end, okay?
1:18:57 They gamble. They start gambling just a little bit and then they, the next, they gamble more
1:19:03 and more and more and more, right? They feel more comfortable with gambling, less anxious,
1:19:07 right? They also feel less excited. So they need to gamble more.
1:19:15 And so risk really escalates because our emotions in response to risk habituate,
1:19:20 so would risk escalate. So that’s financial. And I mean, that could be a bad thing, right?
1:19:24 So it’s again, it’s like both things are at the same time because you might take
1:19:31 huge risks because that you shouldn’t really take. We do this with virtual risk as well.
1:19:37 So we want to put, what we wanted to do is test people’s physical risk taking.
1:19:41 But of course we can’t put them in danger. So what we did is we use virtual reality.
1:19:48 And what we did is we use this game where you put the headset on and then you go up the elevator
1:19:54 to a skyscraper and you walk on a plank up, up, up, up in the air, right? It’s all virtual.
1:19:57 Have you done this? I have. Yes. I did it in New York City. It was terrifying.
1:20:03 Okay. Yeah. It’s terrifying. It’s such a positive. It’s really interesting experience because
1:20:07 you know that you are on the ground, right? I know that I’m in my office. I know that I’m safe.
1:20:14 But at the same time, my brain is completely tricked. It’s such, you know, it really makes
1:20:19 you feel quite humble at how easy it is to trick your brain. You’re feeling really scared.
1:20:23 And when we let people do that, they start off by maybe taking one little step
1:20:28 and two little steps, right? And then the more they do it, they feel more comfortable with it,
1:20:31 right? They walk more and more and more, take more virtual risk until, you know,
1:20:37 ten trials in, they’re jumping, right? And we actually measure their anxiety when
1:20:41 measures can conduct this response. And the more they do it, the less anxious they feel,
1:20:46 so they take more risk. And the less excited they feel, so they need more risk to take,
1:20:52 to feel, you know, the same level of excitement. Yeah. I mean, on one hand, they’re exploring more.
1:20:56 In some cases, it could be dangerous for you.
1:20:59 And you said in the book that people later in their careers are more likely to
1:21:04 have accidents, right? I think you said athletes later in their career
1:21:10 have accidents more in people on construction sites, have more accidents later on in the
1:21:13 project than at the start of the project, because they start to take more of those risks.
1:21:16 It made me think about, you know, the study you talked about where you get people to gamble,
1:21:20 but they can’t see the results yet of their reckless behaviour. There’s many areas of
1:21:26 all of our lives where we’re gambling with something, but we can’t yet see the results
1:21:31 of that behaviour, whether it’s like with our health or whether it’s habits we have like smoking.
1:21:38 I’m smoking. I’m eating this, this junk crap over here. And because I haven’t yet had the
1:21:41 results come in, the doctor hasn’t yet called me and told me there’s a problem,
1:21:47 I just keep going. And my behaviour can escalate in those departments until I get that phone call,
1:21:51 which is like, you’ve lost all your money or your health is, you know, you’ve got something bad
1:21:56 that’s happened. Yeah, with long term investments, right? A lot of the investments, financial investments
1:22:01 that we make are long term, right? So we may start small and then we grow, grow, grow, grow,
1:22:08 and we don’t know the outcomes until years later. What do you want people to come away from this
1:22:15 conversation with? What is the key takeaway? A lot of time people may not feel so much joy in their
1:22:21 life. And then they look around them and they conclude that maybe I’m not feeling so much joy
1:22:27 because my relationship isn’t that good or, you know, my job isn’t that good. And, you know, maybe
1:22:33 it is, but maybe they are good, but they’ve just been the same for a while. So we have to be really
1:22:37 careful, right? And one way, as, you know, we mentioned what you could do is just like spice
1:22:42 it up a little bit, shake it up a little bit, right? And see what happens. And vice versa,
1:22:50 a lot of times they are things that are negatively affecting your life and you don’t know it because
1:22:55 they’re always there. Social media is one example that you might, you might, a lot of people may
1:23:00 suspect that social media, Instagram, Twitter is causing them a little bit of anxiety, a little bit
1:23:06 of stress, but they don’t really know for sure. You can’t measure it until you take a break,
1:23:11 right? It’s a bit like the AC noise looming in the background. You don’t notice it, but when you
1:23:16 stop, when you turn it off, you’re suddenly, oh, that’s so much better. I didn’t even realize
1:23:21 that this thing is causing me anxiety. So I think, you know, experiments, I think, you know,
1:23:27 the last chapter in a book, we call it experiments in living. Experiment in living because it’s
1:23:31 really hard to know what are the things that are caught that are really good in your life and
1:23:36 what are the things that are not so good in life until you make some changes. Take a break
1:23:40 from social media for a few weeks, do something different for you, and then you will see.
1:23:42 You write about people taking a break from social media, don’t you?
1:23:47 Yes, yes. There’s a great experiment that was conducted by the economist Hunt Alcott,
1:23:53 where he took 1,000 people, he gave them $100 to get off Facebook for a month,
1:23:57 and he took another 1,000 individuals and then he gave them $100 to just continue what they’re
1:24:03 doing. At the end of the month, he came and he measured their well-being. On every single measure
1:24:09 that he had, those people who quit for a month were happier. They were less anxious, less depressed,
1:24:14 less sad. In every measure, they were in a better state. They were surprised. They had no idea that
1:24:18 this was going to have such a huge effect on them, but here’s the even bigger surprise.
1:24:23 They said that they were happier. They fully admitted it, but most of them,
1:24:30 straight away at the end of the month, went back to Facebook, which is really interesting because
1:24:34 you acknowledge that the thing is causing a negative effect on your health. One,
1:24:38 do you go back? I think there’s two reasons. One is you gain information and knowledge.
1:24:44 That knowledge may not make you feel good, but we value knowledge and information,
1:24:50 and that’s perhaps one reason why the people went back. It could also be something like addiction.
1:24:55 I mean, a lot of things in life that you’re addicted to, you kind of know they’re not good
1:25:00 for you. You know they’re not causing you happy, but there’s need, right? There’s something pushing
1:25:06 you. There was this crazy start I read in your book about the impact that leaving social media
1:25:12 had had on people equated to getting a $30,000 pay rise at work, something like that.
1:25:21 Yeah. It was a study that was conducted by an Italian scientist, and what he did, he noticed
1:25:27 that when Facebook first started in 2004, it just started at Harvard, right? And then a while later,
1:25:34 they went on to a lot of Ivy League universities one by one very slowly. And then 2008,
1:25:39 they opened up to the world. And what he found is that in every university that Facebook was
1:25:44 introduced, mental health went down. The reason he could do the study is that the university
1:25:49 had measures of people’s well-being, because they actually measure it quite often. And he
1:25:55 can see in every university, mental health went down, every university. And then in the population,
1:26:02 Facebook was introduced in 2008, and the next 10 years, the depression episodes were increased by
1:26:09 80%. Now, you don’t know causation. None of this tells you causation. It is only correlational,
1:26:17 right? Interesting. So he’s claiming that using statistical methods, he estimates that potentially
1:26:26 a quarter of this decline in mental health can be due to social media. Again, this is why the
1:26:31 other experiment is a little bit better, because the other experiment I’ll call it manipulated
1:26:36 whether people were online or not. So he could actually do a control experiment and measure it,
1:26:44 right? So he could show causation. This other study that suggests 25% of mental health decline
1:26:51 was caused due to social media, that’s a correlational result. But there could be some
1:26:55 truth in it. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question
1:26:59 for the next guest, not knowing who they’re leaving it for. And the question left few is,
1:27:06 what is one thing that people who are listening could do that you know
1:27:17 about that would improve their lives? How about something simple? How about people just now email,
1:27:24 call, turn to someone and tell them they love them? It would not, you know,
1:27:29 doesn’t completely change your life, but you will change your feelings at that very moment.
1:27:37 Tally, thank you. Really enjoyed the conversation and I’m so fascinated by your work and it’s a
1:27:41 real service to humanity what you do. So thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you.
1:27:48 Do you need a podcast to listen to next? We’ve discovered that people who liked this episode
1:27:54 also tend to absolutely love another recent episode we’ve done. So I’ve linked that episode
1:28:05 in the description below. I know you’ll enjoy it.

0:00:02 People don’t understand their capacity.
0:00:05 You don’t need to hit rock bottom to be the best version of yourself.
0:00:07 What you just have to do is…
0:00:13 When you look at the body of work you’ve produced
0:00:17 and you look specifically at the writing, the content
0:00:19 that you’ve put out into the world,
0:00:22 what mission are you on?
0:00:24 What is it you’re trying to do?
0:00:27 What effect are you trying to have on society at large?
0:00:30 I think the mission is really
0:00:32 hoping to raise self-awareness around the fact that
0:00:35 healing and letting go are possible.
0:00:38 So I got into this world really early on.
0:00:43 I think it was 2011 when I started realizing that healing was even possible.
0:00:46 And this was before wellness was even a giant,
0:00:49 sort of this giant world that it is today.
0:00:52 And to me it was a shock.
0:00:56 You know, when I grew up I thought that
0:01:00 if you were sick physically or mentally in some manner,
0:01:01 you just had to deal with that for the rest of your life.
0:01:04 You couldn’t really fix that in any way.
0:01:07 And when I started changing my habits,
0:01:08 when I started changing what I was eating,
0:01:11 when I started reassessing my friend group,
0:01:13 and then eventually when I started meditating,
0:01:16 the changes were so massive that I was so shocked by them
0:01:21 that I wanted to really check in with myself and see that
0:01:23 is this real and it was real.
0:01:26 So that just kind of pushed me into writing
0:01:29 where I felt this sort of creative pull
0:01:32 to share the little bit that I know.
0:01:35 You know, and it was interesting because I know that
0:01:37 I don’t know everything. I’m not fully healed.
0:01:40 I’m not fully wise. I have a long way to go.
0:01:43 But hopefully some of the things that I’m reflecting on
0:01:47 could inspire other people to do this serious work as well.
0:01:49 And why? Why does it matter that we heal?
0:01:51 Why does it matter?
0:01:54 I think it’s because it’s pretty necessary to live a better life.
0:01:58 Like, I think whether you’ve experienced serious trauma or not,
0:02:00 you’ve definitely had hard moments in your life.
0:02:04 And those hard moments get accumulated into the mind.
0:02:08 They literally, you know, the times when you react very intensely
0:02:11 with anger, with sadness, with whatever emotion it is,
0:02:13 that reaction gets accumulated in your mind
0:02:16 and predisposes you to feeling that same thing again.
0:02:19 And oftentimes we don’t quite realize
0:02:23 that we’re sort of like trapped in this tight little bubble by our past.
0:02:26 And we’re thinking the same things, saying the same things,
0:02:28 making the same actions.
0:02:30 And it keeps us in a loop.
0:02:34 But if you start healing, you can basically get access to your freedom.
0:02:37 So thinking about what you said there about your own healing journey
0:02:41 where you couldn’t believe the results were real and true.
0:02:44 What did you heal from?
0:02:48 I think a lot of it was anxiety and stress.
0:02:51 And this sort of scarcity mindset.
0:02:55 So I was born in Ecuador in this city called Guayaquil.
0:02:59 I came to the United States when I was about four years old with my parents.
0:03:02 When we got to the United States, it was incredibly difficult.
0:03:05 Like, we were stuck in the classic American poverty trap.
0:03:08 My mom, she worked cleaning houses.
0:03:12 My dad, he worked at a supermarket.
0:03:15 So there was no upward mobility for us.
0:03:16 They didn’t know English.
0:03:21 You know, we went through a really difficult time.
0:03:24 So as I was growing up,
0:03:27 I didn’t notice how that was affecting me until I got to college.
0:03:30 Where, you know, I had so much anxiety and stress about,
0:03:33 you know, I would see my parents fight constantly
0:03:35 about how they were going to pay the rent,
0:03:37 how they were going to get more groceries.
0:03:41 I experienced multiple times where I was, you know, eight-year-old child
0:03:43 and I’m so hungry because there wasn’t enough food in the fridge.
0:03:46 And this all got accumulated over time
0:03:49 and never really properly processed.
0:03:52 You know, like, I didn’t have access to a therapist back then.
0:03:53 No meditating back then.
0:03:56 It was sort of just, you know, coping mechanisms.
0:04:00 And when I got to university,
0:04:05 I hit this breaking point where I didn’t want to admit to myself
0:04:06 that I didn’t feel good.
0:04:11 I was constantly trying to cope myself in pleasure
0:04:15 by drinking as much as possible, smoking as much as possible,
0:04:17 always with friends, never alone.
0:04:22 And I ended up just, like, building all these bad habits
0:04:25 where I was partying constantly, doing tons of drugs,
0:04:28 and eventually hit that breaking point in the summer of 2011
0:04:31 where I almost lost my life.
0:04:34 I talked to a doctor afterwards and described to them what happened.
0:04:36 And they were like, “Oh, yeah, that sounds like a mild heart attack.”
0:04:39 Where I had just taken way too many drugs one night,
0:04:42 was on the floor crying, basically, you know,
0:04:43 praying, begging for my life.
0:04:47 Um, ’cause I didn’t want to go out like that.
0:04:51 And going through that experience and then basically
0:04:54 taking a different route into the life that I have now,
0:04:57 I think I’m really grateful that I had that strength
0:05:00 and I want other people to know that they have that strength, too.
0:05:03 -Suming on that moment, then, when you go off to college,
0:05:06 you, you know, find yourself in addictive cycles
0:05:09 with drugs and alcohol and cocaine, I believe.
0:05:12 -Yeah. -Um, you have that miniature heart attack.
0:05:14 -Yeah. -And then, at that point, you make a decision
0:05:15 that you’re not going to let this thing kill you.
0:05:17 -Yeah. -What is the next step
0:05:19 in your journey towards healing?
0:05:22 -Walking. -Walking.
0:05:27 -Walking. Something’s, I mean, I was incredibly unhealthy, right?
0:05:29 I was definitely overweight at the time,
0:05:32 but, um, but internally, right?
0:05:35 I had an exercise probably in, like, four years, four or five years.
0:05:41 And, um, so, I knew I took the drugs, threw them away, um, you know,
0:05:45 I’m home, and I’m like, “Okay, how do I, like, revamp my life?”
0:05:49 And I remember seeing some YouTube video or stumble upon,
0:05:53 or I saw something back then, where, um,
0:05:55 it was talking about how important it is to have more nutrition.
0:05:59 So, I ended up buying a, like, huge tub of barley grass.
0:06:02 You know, back, barley grass used to be, like, really hip back then,
0:06:06 and, um, I needed some type of superfood, because I knew, um, you know,
0:06:09 every day I’m just eating, you know, rice and meat, rice and meat,
0:06:12 just, like, a very, like, South American diet.
0:06:14 And I was like, “Okay, let me get some nutrition.
0:06:16 Let me get this barley grass stuff.
0:06:18 I can put it in my orange juice and just knock it back.”
0:06:20 And I was like, “I gotta do something.
0:06:23 Like, I have to go outside,” and I just started walking.
0:06:27 And I remember I was so unhealthy, started walking, lightly jogging,
0:06:29 that I got the worst shin splints.
0:06:33 Like, I, literally, my legs hurt so bad
0:06:35 that I was having trouble going up the stairs,
0:06:37 but I kept going, and I kept going.
0:06:39 And, like, you know, even this morning, this morning,
0:06:41 I ran four miles, no problem.
0:06:46 And thinking about that time, it’s, yeah, I’ve come, come a long way.
0:06:50 I was, I was thinking, as you were speaking about…
0:06:51 Yeah.
0:06:53 …the catalyst of change in people’s lives.
0:06:56 Like, that moment where they hit rock bottom and they say,
0:06:57 “Enough is enough.”
0:07:01 And what it takes for them to make a meaningful, sustained change
0:07:03 in any element of their life, whether it’s their relationships,
0:07:06 and leaving and going, finding a better situation or a job,
0:07:08 or just life in general, like you’re describing,
0:07:10 where you realise you’re on the wrong track
0:07:15 and you make the decision to go in a new direction.
0:07:16 Two questions there.
0:07:18 What do you think it is that, from your experience,
0:07:22 that starts that journey of change for people?
0:07:26 And the second thing is, when we often speak to people who’ve changed,
0:07:29 the process seems to be really linear and quick.
0:07:32 Like, I made the decision to change, then I changed.
0:07:35 I think people doubt their power, honestly, man.
0:07:38 I’ve seen that happen time and time again,
0:07:42 where people don’t quite understand their capacity,
0:07:44 and especially when the situation gets severe.
0:07:47 And of course, like, you know, not everybody makes it.
0:07:52 Like, some people get destroyed by the process of hitting rock bottom.
0:07:53 But other people stand up.
0:07:54 It’s almost like a phoenix.
0:07:57 I remember writing a poem called Phoenix in my first book, Inward.
0:08:03 And I think that, you know, it’s pretty personalised.
0:08:05 Like, I really don’t think everybody has to hit rock bottom.
0:08:07 And I think, I like having that point of view,
0:08:11 because I think people want to, like, go to extremes often
0:08:12 and kind of dramatise things,
0:08:14 but you don’t need to hit rock bottom
0:08:16 to be the best version of yourself.
0:08:20 I think that’s kind of the situation that I was personally in.
0:08:22 But for me, man, I remember when I was on the floor
0:08:24 and I kept thinking about, I was like,
0:08:29 “Man, I feel my life, like, you know, it’s running out.”
0:08:30 Like, I felt it running out.
0:08:33 And I kept thinking about my parents.
0:08:35 And I was like, “They worked so hard.
0:08:39 Like, you know, they, I wasn’t even mad at them.
0:08:42 They didn’t have time for me because I knew their struggle.
0:08:43 Like, I understood, like, I got it.
0:08:46 You, they rolled the dice by coming to the United States
0:08:49 because everybody doesn’t win here.
0:08:52 The other major, major, major thing.
0:08:55 Like, when I, you know, the few days after
0:08:57 where I almost lost my life,
0:09:02 I remember sitting in my room at my mom and dad’s house.
0:09:04 And this was, you know, I had just graduated from college.
0:09:07 It was 2011. The economy was pretty bad.
0:09:09 It was hard to get a job at the time.
0:09:12 And I remember sitting in the room and I was like,
0:09:14 “Okay, I was like, “What’s the problem here? Like, what?
0:09:16 Like, how did this almost happen?”
0:09:17 And it hit me. It was like,
0:09:20 “Oh, is it because you didn’t want to admit
0:09:22 that you didn’t feel good?”
0:09:25 Now, if that’s what got you here,
0:09:27 what can get you out of this?
0:09:29 And it’s, “Oh, it’s telling yourself the truth.”
0:09:32 And this was, you know, before I had learned how to meditate
0:09:35 or anything, but I would just sit in my bed
0:09:39 and I would challenge myself to stay with the feelings
0:09:40 that I used to run away from.
0:09:43 So, like, I like to call it radical honesty with yourself.
0:09:44 Like, it’s not, it’s not really about other people,
0:09:46 but it’s between you and yourself.
0:09:49 And when those heavy emotions would come up,
0:09:51 normally I would just roll a joint, smoke,
0:09:54 and just, you know, it’d help cover whatever was there.
0:09:57 But when the anxiety would arise, when the stress would arise,
0:10:00 when those feelings of worthlessness would arise,
0:10:03 I would just sit with them.
0:10:06 And, you know, first it was a few minutes, then 10 minutes,
0:10:09 15 minutes, and I was like, “Okay.”
0:10:10 Like, and I learned a lot.
0:10:14 You know, I learned that these little storms that come up,
0:10:17 like, they don’t need to blow you over.
0:10:19 They don’t need to totally overwhelm you.
0:10:20 They don’t even need to govern your actions.
0:10:23 If you just sit there and feel them,
0:10:26 you realize they’re totally temporary
0:10:28 and it’s going to be okay, you know?
0:10:30 And I didn’t know that before
0:10:33 until I started challenging myself to just be with that.
0:10:35 And I don’t really know where that came from, you know?
0:10:39 Like, I hadn’t really, I hadn’t really read
0:10:42 self-improvement books or seeing these things online
0:10:44 or anything like that, but I think instinctually
0:10:48 I was like, “Okay, if you were lying to yourself before,
0:10:49 now tell yourself the truth.”
0:10:50 And what does that look like?
0:10:53 A lot of the time, it looks like feeling your emotions
0:10:54 and not running from them.
0:10:57 -We don’t do that, do we? -(LAUGHS)
0:11:01 -We, um, we distract ourselves. -Constantly.
0:11:03 Constantly. Yeah.
0:11:05 I was just thinking, then, how many of us
0:11:06 really know how we’re feeling?
0:11:08 Like, how many of us really know
0:11:12 how we, ourselves, are feeling?
0:11:14 Truly, like, when was the last time,
0:11:16 I think for most people listening to this,
0:11:19 have you really sat there on the end of your bed or wherever
0:11:21 and asked yourself how you’re actually feeling?
0:11:24 All things considered, what’s out of balance?
0:11:28 It’s rare, but I think it’s becoming more popular.
0:11:31 I’m pretty inspired by what’s happening now.
0:11:36 I’ve, um, I’ve been watching this whole wellness world
0:11:40 brew and grow and develop, and obviously it has its downs.
0:11:43 It has a lot of consumerism around it,
0:11:44 but there are a lot of positives.
0:11:48 And there are just millions and millions of people
0:11:50 who are seeing therapists now.
0:11:53 There’s millions and millions of people who are meditating.
0:11:56 And there are millions and millions more
0:11:58 journaling, reflecting, building self-awareness,
0:12:01 building language around these, you know, newer ideas.
0:12:04 Um, I mean, actually, old ideas, but that have, you know,
0:12:06 come back around, um…
0:12:09 -Is that also slightly concerning? -What do you mean?
0:12:13 Because it’s, it’s a sign that there is
0:12:18 a increasing demand potentially for, you know what I mean?
0:12:21 If it’s, if there’s more fire extinguishers being sold.
0:12:23 -Right, right, right, right. -There’s more fires.
0:12:26 Oh, it’s totally concerning. I think, um, it’s concerning,
0:12:30 but I think to me it gives, it gives me hope, honestly,
0:12:33 because, of course, the world is incredibly challenging.
0:12:37 You know, the advent of technology, especially with social media,
0:12:40 the increases in loneliness, like, we know, we know.
0:12:44 Like, the cause and effect, they’re very clear, right?
0:12:48 But these tools have been around for, like, you know,
0:12:52 the Western tools of therapy, what, 100, 150 years,
0:12:55 the Eastern tools of different forms of meditation,
0:12:57 indigenous healing practices, these things have been around
0:13:00 for millennia. And now that the world is globalized,
0:13:03 people in major cities especially have access to them.
0:13:07 Like, you can type in, like, what can, what, what can I do
0:13:11 to deal with my anxiety? And you have, like, you know,
0:13:14 things from, from psychiatrists, like, you know,
0:13:16 you can go to your, like, local meditation center.
0:13:18 There are tons of things that you can do now.
0:13:21 And what you just have to do is find something
0:13:23 that meets you where you’re at.
0:13:25 So, you do see these two things rise together,
0:13:28 where the demand for your attention is through the roof now,
0:13:31 from the media, from tech, from everything that’s happening
0:13:34 around you, family and friends, but at the same time,
0:13:37 here are a bunch of tools for you to get your mind right,
0:13:40 so that you can not be overwhelmed by these demands.
0:13:45 I am certainly guilty of using screens and other means
0:13:47 to distract myself from how I’m feeling.
0:13:51 In fact, you know, when I’m feeling tired or, you know,
0:13:53 bothered in some way or a little bit agitated
0:13:55 and whatever way it might be,
0:13:58 my way of dealing with that is to pick up a screen.
0:14:00 -Yeah. -That’s good to be honest.
0:14:05 Pick up a screen and either watch something on YouTube,
0:14:07 distract myself from the feeling,
0:14:11 maybe watch some football, or something else, you know?
0:14:14 Something else that’s probably not so good for me.
0:14:17 And I think that, you know, scrolling on my phone, for example,
0:14:19 I think that represents the majority of people.
0:14:23 We use distraction as a way to avoid confronting how we’re feeling,
0:14:27 because confronting how we’re feeling is, can be uncomfortable.
0:14:30 Absolutely. I mean, confronting how you’re feeling
0:14:33 for a lot of us, that’s the gateway to growth, right?
0:14:37 So, if you’re going to be there and stand with your emotions,
0:14:41 you either see so much that you want to keep running,
0:14:43 or you’re like, “Okay, I’m going to accept this challenge,
0:14:46 and let’s see how I should grow next.”
0:14:47 So, it is quite difficult.
0:14:52 -Is it called vipinsana? -Vipassana.
0:14:55 Vipassana, vipassana, there’s a bunch of ways to say it.
0:14:59 -What is that? -It’s a meditation that’s been around,
0:15:03 that originated from the Buddhist teaching, so 2600 years,
0:15:09 where you basically do your best to see reality as it really is.
0:15:14 And it’s very different from how we normally see reality, right?
0:15:16 You and I are hanging out, we’re talking,
0:15:19 we’re having this conversation, it feels like it’s two individuals speaking,
0:15:22 but let’s ask ourselves what’s happening at the ultimate level,
0:15:28 where, well, Diego and Steven were basically just these bundles of atoms
0:15:32 that are changing so incredibly rapidly, trillions of times,
0:15:36 and at the same time, it’s just mental and physical phenomena interlocking
0:15:40 at incredibly high speeds that makes the illusion that we’re here.
0:15:45 But in reality, are we real? No, not really.
0:15:49 Why is that an important or valuable exercise?
0:15:51 It’s quite valuable. I think the sense of self,
0:15:57 when it becomes overgrown, when it becomes highly traumatized,
0:16:00 it creates a barrier to happiness.
0:16:03 So what I found through Vipassana meditation was that
0:16:06 as I was observing the truth of impermanence,
0:16:08 literally within the framework of the body,
0:16:12 when you start learning that everything that arises ultimately passes away,
0:16:15 and you start understanding that change is,
0:16:19 it exists within the fabric of every single thing in this universe,
0:16:22 you start loosening up your identity.
0:16:24 It’s not as rigid as it was before.
0:16:27 It’s not like Diego always reads science fiction
0:16:29 and he always loves blueberries.
0:16:31 Actually, it’s not true. Sometimes I love watermelon.
0:16:33 Sometimes I love reading fiction.
0:16:38 So it allows this understanding of change
0:16:41 to help you loosen up and really evolve.
0:16:46 And I have found that quite beneficial to my personal joy and happiness
0:16:48 and definitely in my relationships,
0:16:51 because if you embrace change, you’re not going to be as attached.
0:16:55 It’s not going to be like, “I want you to do this this way all the time.”
0:16:57 In fact, you’re going to understand,
0:17:00 “Oh, no, different conditions create different situations.”
0:17:04 So yes, I can have goals, but if they don’t come about,
0:17:07 I’m not going to be crying on the floor. I’m just going to try again.
0:17:09 (upbeat music)
0:17:12 (upbeat music)

0:00:04 What on earth have you given me that is how you can measure your nighttime erections
0:00:09 It’s unbelievable in ways. It improves health and wellness
0:00:17 Brian Johnson is back the billionaire who’s spending two million dollars a year to stay young forever through algorithmic precision
0:00:23 This is the most impactful humanitarian project ever trying to find the very best side to the world how you can extend your life
0:00:29 Honestly, I’m in the absolute peak performance of my entire life
0:00:38 I’ve extended my lifespan over 30% reduce my age by 12 years increased muscle and strength and now six months of
0:00:42 Perfect sleep. I have accomplished the best sleep score in history a
0:00:48 Demonstration of human ability because if I can do it everyone else can do it too every second of every day
0:00:51 We’re all trying not to die. That’s what we’re doing as society right now
0:00:53 It’s not working very well
0:00:58 but if an algorithm could manage your health and wellness for you and achieve near perfect health
0:01:04 Would you opt into that because we found it, but what can the average person do one thing that works is?
0:01:09 You really yeah, it’s like the super of superfoods. There you go
0:01:13 Not how you meant to have that
0:01:18 And what comes next the best is yet to come Kate. Hello, Kate. Will you come on out?
0:01:26 So you’re the first woman on earth to follow Brian’s lifestyle, that’s right. What’s been the biggest sacrifice?
0:01:28 Brian
0:01:40 You’re now coming up on
0:01:45 Almost three years since you started blueprint, which is your sort of anti-aging
0:01:49 Life-extending longevity protocol. Is that accurate? That’s accurate
0:01:53 give me a
0:01:56 Overview of the benefits you’ve been able to achieve in those three years. I
0:02:01 Legitimately have never been happier in my entire life
0:02:09 What it’s like when you have a series of bad nights of sleep and you like you’re eating poorly and you sleep poorly
0:02:12 In a week or two, you just normalize to that new norm
0:02:13 You don’t realize what you’ve lost
0:02:18 It just becomes invisible to you and then when you bounce back after a really great night’s sleep and you take care of yourself
0:02:22 You make the observation. This is the most remarkable thing ever
0:02:24 I wish I could exist like this all the time and
0:02:31 I’ve hit that state where I’m in the absolute peak performance of my entire life. I’ve never been as well-rested
0:02:35 I’ve never been as clear with greater clarity of mind. I’ve never
0:02:41 Been more calm emotionally. Yeah, I’m not provoked. I’m not irritable
0:02:44 Things are that I struggled with before
0:02:49 It’s true that you don’t know how bad you felt until you feel good
0:02:54 I can relate it’s dealing with oneself is
0:03:01 The most challenging thing and this is from my experience the most challenging thing in my existence is understanding my own self like a
0:03:07 Trying to map out where I’m self-aware and where I’m unaware where my self-awareness ends and
0:03:15 What I’ve normalized to and couldn’t longer see what status quo hides from me what biases I have in my brain what blind spots
0:03:16 I have I’m
0:03:23 Blind to so much of reality and I just have no idea and the brain plays these tricks on us
0:03:27 Where we believe with confidence that we have we’re the master of our reality that we see all things
0:03:30 We feel all things that if something’s missing we’re going to note it
0:03:35 But really my life has become trying to find out what’s invisible to me
0:03:39 What are some of those psychological biases that you think most people still don’t realize?
0:03:43 Man, it’s like my most favorite topic because
0:03:50 We are fooled into thinking that we truly understand
0:04:00 Our situation our reality and there’s so many easy tricks one can play even something simple like if you prime somebody with words like
0:04:05 Grandma grandmother or grandfather or like things that trigger
0:04:10 Thoughts of old age or being slow and you ask the person to walk down the hallway
0:04:17 To do a task those who’ve been primed with old sounding were old really associated words and young
0:04:20 the old associated walk more slowly and
0:04:27 The young watch clock quicker we incorporate all these things into the way we act and the way we think and what we
0:04:29 internally
0:04:31 Generate and we just it’s beyond our awareness
0:04:38 So for people that don’t know what the word priming means essentially if you just say those words to somebody if you say grandmother or grandfather or old
0:04:42 Associated elderly associated words to somebody in studies. They then walk slower
0:04:45 I’m really interested in the behavioral stuff because I think
0:04:52 Most of us are governed by a set of stories that we’ve come to like believe about ourselves that we’ve probably learned from
0:04:55 False evidence along the way and we’re now living our lives in accordance with that
0:05:01 False instruction manual like there’s a puppet master pulling the strings telling me that I am a
0:05:05 Entrepreneur that does a podcast in that I am I’m unorganized and I’m not you know whatever
0:05:10 How does one go about understanding that those words are governing our lives?
0:05:15 But then also more importantly getting rid of the power that they’re exerting over us
0:05:22 there’s a few things I do on a daily basis to help me one I read a book by Gary Becker the economics of life when I was
0:05:24 24 years old and
0:05:28 He would take any given topic like poverty something that would be non
0:05:32 You wouldn’t think that this thing relates to math and economics
0:05:38 It’s just like this social phenomena that I would have previously heard someone tell me a story about and he would break them down
0:05:44 Using economics, and I thought that’s unreal a world understood
0:05:48 Through numbers and graphs and models not through stories. No one’s gonna tell me any story
0:05:51 They’re just gonna lay this out and I realize that there are limitations
0:05:54 Of course those things like stories are embedded in those to some extent
0:06:00 however from the world I came from where it was dominant on on story to see that the world could be
0:06:03 Objectively measured
0:06:08 Understood and quantified changed my reality. And so now when I look at a given situation
0:06:13 I try to identify what is the numerical representation of this thing?
0:06:14 What is the mathematical formula?
0:06:21 What is the graph that explains this phenomena not through a story lens, but like what actually are what systems are at play?
0:06:27 So try to parse through all the all the decoys that would otherwise take me down a different path and then secondarily is
0:06:34 Example of that. What’s an example? I mean so like what determines whether I have high-quality sleep and
0:06:38 Most of the time in my previous in my life my sleep
0:06:42 Quality was something like a random. I would go to sleep and I would have no idea
0:06:44 What was impacting?
0:06:49 Why I would get high quality sleep or not and then I could numerically back out
0:06:50 That’s what I’ve done in the past few years
0:06:57 It’s what elements contribute to and how those biological processes function and then what happens when and you can map out the entirety of
0:06:59 that process
0:07:03 Last time we’d spoken. I think you were on four months of perfect sleep
0:07:09 Where are you at now? I completed six months of perfect sleep
0:07:18 And what does perfect sleep 100% sleep score and that’s judged by my wearable by whoop. Okay, and so before I did this
0:07:22 Nobody had achieved that
0:07:30 Series of 100% scores and many people who who’ve had a device like that for over a year have never once achieved a
0:07:36 100% sleep score and what I was trying to do was something akin to like a four-minute mile or
0:07:41 Emilia Earhart flying to plane across the Atlantic or you know someone climbing Everest
0:07:43 it was basically a
0:07:50 Demonstration of human ability that people didn’t think was possible and then once one person demonstrates it
0:07:55 It opens it up for everyone else because if I can do it everyone else knows they can do it too
0:07:58 And so I wanted to show that reliable
0:08:06 High-quality sleep is achievable and that if you do that it could potentially give you the best
0:08:13 Cognitive and emotional performance of your life. Do you think there’s a human being an adult human being on planet Earth?
0:08:16 That’s slept better than you for the last six months
0:08:20 There’s currently no one that has shared data
0:08:26 That has achieved that so if we’re just looking at the data alone, which is not an entire representation
0:08:30 Then yeah, I I’ve accomplished the best sleep score in history
0:08:38 Impressive and for just to recap so I’m clear cuz I know we discussed this last time you go to bed at like 8 8 p.m. Right?
0:08:42 8 30 8 30 and your last meal of the day is
0:08:48 Before midday yeah, that’s right 11 a.m. 8 30 and you’re still doing that. You’re still going to bed 8 30 every day. That’s right
0:08:52 people are I feel like this their sleep is getting worse and worse in society with
0:08:58 Stimulants that we consume the way we live our lives devices destroy sleep
0:09:05 Do you think sleep is really the foundation of daily performance
0:09:10 Would you would you aim at that first if you were someone that was trying to start your journey to live a
0:09:14 life more in line with your long-term goals
0:09:20 Sleep is the single most important thing any human does on any given day
0:09:22 If you look at it from a cultural identity
0:09:28 Standpoint people like you and me who work hard at an entrepreneurial endeavor
0:09:34 There’s this mythology that if you sleep under your desk or you go days without sleep
0:09:39 You’re a hero that people will tell stories about you. It’s like the old
0:09:44 Like I guess Viking mythology where you you have these stories told about your great deeds
0:09:47 And so it’s almost like if you’re a great entrepreneur
0:09:53 And if you want to be respected by your peers and if you want to achieve mythology like status
0:09:56 You do that sleep deprivation thing
0:09:59 And so it’s built so far into our cultural identity
0:10:07 So when people I know when my friends who I act as a therapist for many people who go through this thing or there
0:10:12 They don’t realize why they actually can’t prioritize sleep. And then when we dig deep is that they have these
0:10:20 Imaginations of the kind of person they want to become and how they want others to view them and they feel trapped
0:10:22 that if they don’t
0:10:24 complete the mythology lore
0:10:31 That they’ll somehow be less than and they won’t achieve their ranking among the social group and it’s all backwards the
0:10:35 the shift that’s appropriate is
0:10:42 And it’s happening actually right now is that the person who prioritizes sleep is going to be higher performing
0:10:48 They’ll be more lucid. They’ll be they’ll have better ideas that people who don’t sleep are
0:10:53 Literally half dead. They’re actually intoxicated. They’re impaired
0:10:59 Physiologically physiologically they’re impaired explain that when you are sleep deprived
0:11:05 To a certain degree it is equal to being intoxicated by alcohol. You’re inebriated
0:11:13 And so these are the people who are leading organizations. There are groups of a large number of individuals that are
0:11:19 Expecting them to make high quality decisions on behalf of the entire group
0:11:24 And it’s those very people who are not sleeping well and who are impaired in their judgment
0:11:31 It’s backwards. And so this is it’s a it’s a good note to make and this goes back to the first conversation of
0:11:39 What am I not aware of if you’re playing the script of social norms of doing what people say and you’re not questioning them
0:11:42 then you’re living a
0:11:49 You’re living in a pat in the past of antiquated ideas that are hurtful to you
0:11:53 Like here’s one more example. I was at a conference the day and
0:12:00 The gentleman who was interviewing me said hey who here thinks that you can live forever and there’s like two people were like
0:12:08 Who who here thinks you’re going to die and like everyone’s hand shut up and I was commenting to them that
0:12:11 When when you read history
0:12:19 Who in a historical moment actually understood what was happening in that time and place
0:12:24 You’re 99% of people are living in the past
0:12:28 They repeat the things that people in the past had said the future had already arrived
0:12:33 So if it’s like the year 1634 the future already arrived in 1634
0:12:37 It’s just the people that are living during that time frame. Don’t know it. They hadn’t seen it yet
0:12:40 They hadn’t been exposed to or they maybe they exposed to it
0:12:42 But they thought it was crazy or the person was a quack
0:12:47 And so you’re always people are always living in the past and so the same is true right now
0:12:53 We are living in the past the future is already here the ideas and technologies are out there
0:12:57 Maybe you and I’ve seen it. Maybe we can’t maybe we encounter it. Maybe we believe it
0:13:04 We don’t but it’s definitely here right now and sleep is one of those things where the future is already here and people who are
0:13:08 Playing the mythology of no sleep and are the desk and everything else. They’re living in the past
0:13:11 I think a lot of people listening who do struggle with sleep
0:13:16 Do you believe in the importance of sleep at least if you ask them they’d say they did but
0:13:21 For whatever reason, you know, they might have sleep related difficulties. They might have insomnia
0:13:27 They might lay in bed all night and just feel anxious whatever else and it’s those people that I
0:13:29 Want to offer some advice to
0:13:32 the people that
0:13:37 Yeah, they work hard and stuff, but they just struggle with sleep. Yeah, there’s a difference between
0:13:43 The acknowledgement that sleep may be good for you and like you say, yeah, I’m on board a good sleep
0:13:50 It’s an entirely different situation when you prioritize your life around that which means if somebody’s like, hey, let’s grab a drink
0:13:53 sorry, can’t my bedtime’s at blank or
0:13:55 if
0:14:01 You’re if you find that you sleep better by having earlier meals and then you’re in a social event
0:14:02 I’m gonna eat anyways
0:14:09 So it forces you to make really hard decisions on your actual lifestyle, which it does it pitch you against social norms
0:14:13 Which are uncomfortable. We want to fit in we want to have friends. We want to be part of the tribe
0:14:21 So it does really invite but that every person who makes the gesture who does it makes the tribe stronger
0:14:23 So when one person’s brave enough to say
0:14:30 Actually, I’m gonna hit the sack guys and think oh man, you’re you’re such a wuss while you’re doing that hang out man
0:14:35 Like what’s wrong with you? What you like they they jokingly try to belittle a little bit
0:14:39 It’s kind of serious and kind of not but every time somebody does that and has the courage
0:14:42 There’s several others in that group or like damn I
0:14:47 Now feel empowered that I can say something and that’s the norm that’s shifting
0:14:50 But this it’s the same social dynamics in whatever time you’re in
0:14:54 It’s just understanding that and not being owned by it
0:15:00 And then I guess the other the other exception potentially is parents that don’t have yeah
0:15:02 childcare
0:15:06 Because yes, I mean I’ve when I speak to parents they always tell me they like Steve listen when you have a kid
0:15:12 You can forget your no meetings before 11 a.m. The rule and your whoop HRV competition
0:15:19 Yeah, because when that baby cries at 3 a.m. You know and then at 4 a.m. And then 5 a.m.. You’re just gonna be dragged through the mud with them
0:15:25 So yeah, that’s true and having raised three kids. I can attest that that’s true also
0:15:30 You can definitely establish a sleep culture in your family
0:15:36 Where you can make it understandable that once the child goes to sleep at whatever age
0:15:40 The expectation is they’re in their bedroom for that entire duration of time
0:15:43 absent something a
0:15:48 Fire or them feeling threatened for their life if it’s because they lost their play their toy car under their bed
0:15:54 Or it’s because they can’t find their blankie. None of that justifies leaving the room and entering, you know
0:15:57 The parents bedroom so there’s definitely things that can be done
0:16:02 You’re not entirely powerless and you can make meaningful improvements by setting the standard for the entire family
0:16:07 That starts with the parents like what what hygiene do they maintain and what do they pass on to children?
0:16:09 But it’s not entirely hopeless based on the way you live your life now
0:16:13 You must look at people and see a whole lot of excuses and a whole lack of
0:16:19 Responsibility everywhere you go every tweet you get every comment you see it must just to you reek of low
0:16:25 Responsibility because you’re someone that as you said last time has kind of given up control of yourself to this
0:16:28 Blueprint which really is the essence of
0:16:31 Discipline is completely surrendering to that
0:16:34 Do you think people are?
0:16:40 Lacking in responsibility and follow excuses about their lives. I mean who of us are
0:16:42 not that
0:16:45 And like any of us who would dare say
0:16:51 Otherwise are deceiving ourselves and this is again as self-awareness is we all are
0:16:57 Self-deception machines and anyone who doesn’t believe that is self-deceiving
0:17:06 Do you still self-deceive? Absolutely. What are you still self-deceiving yourself? I suspect I wouldn’t trust myself in my own pantry
0:17:08 With a bunch of junk food
0:17:15 That’s why in my house I can have I I’ve eliminated all self-harm. There’s just nothing I can do because I don’t trust myself
0:17:18 That’s not like I you know
0:17:24 I feel like I’ve created so much discipline and confidence to like put it in front of me and I won’t do it even though
0:17:29 I do on a daily basis where I’m in social situations. I don’t put myself in that environment, but yeah, I mean I
0:17:37 My goal is to find where I’m in error in thought and action
0:17:40 constantly
0:17:46 That’s it that’s the gym that’s a treasure chest is finding out where you’ve missed
0:17:50 But you can know you’ve missed it somewhere. I think about areas in my life where I go
0:17:55 I know what the right thing to do is but for whatever reason I keep not doing the right thing
0:17:57 Yeah, and I keep getting the feedback. Yeah, okay
0:18:01 You mess that up Steve and then you know weak passes and I might do the same thing again
0:18:07 The one game we all humans play every human on the planet is playing is don’t die
0:18:10 Every second of every day
0:18:14 We’re all trying not die not to die. So we look both ways before we cross the street
0:18:20 We have carbon monoxide detectors. We don’t seek out. We don’t drink poison, you know on purpose
0:18:23 Like we do all these things to not die now
0:18:28 The weird thing though is I can look both ways before I cross the street and also be smoking a cigarette
0:18:32 And that’s just the nuances of the human mind
0:18:37 But what I wanted to do with blueprint is I wanted to say, okay, if you really take do don’t die to the absolute extreme
0:18:43 I’m going to measure every biological process in my body and find out where every cell is aging
0:18:49 like where basically where dying is happening and then I’m going to identify all those behaviors and I’m going to go
0:18:51 To try to eliminate every behavior
0:18:57 That contributes to don’t dying. So what is possible in 2023 for the ultimate?
0:19:01 effort of don’t die on every front and that means
0:19:07 No excuses ever for anything. So a six month sleep score like you basically have to say
0:19:09 This is in stone
0:19:15 It’s not going to be change under any circumstance because I’m trying to prove a point of what could be done with the science in this moment
0:19:20 So when you said about the cigarette example, you’ll cross the road
0:19:22 You’ll look both ways to make sure you don’t get hit by a truck
0:19:26 We’ll be smoking the way that I interpreted that is okay. We don’t want to die and
0:19:31 What we will want to sign up to don’t die, but none of us want to sign up to don’t live
0:19:35 Yeah, with with living
0:19:42 You’re mapping that to like some sensorial pleasure. Just some kind of yeah
0:19:49 Yeah, some kind of pleasure whether it’s having a couple of cocktails. Yeah staying up late and watching Netflix or whatever it might be
0:19:55 Yeah, yeah, and you’re trying to find the things that create the stimuli that you you care about
0:19:58 Yeah, I think most people want to extend their life
0:20:03 but I I think they only want to extend it as long as they can live within that extension and
0:20:09 Obviously what you’ve chosen to do is to extend your life and make
0:20:13 Bigger sacrifices than the average Joe would be prepared to make
0:20:20 Yeah, the the argument I’m making is in any other time as a Homo sapien. I
0:20:24 Completely understand that thought process do your thing
0:20:29 The difference right now is we’re baby steps away from superintelligence
0:20:34 Which means for the first time in the history of Homo sapiens we may not die
0:20:38 And so I’m arguing that only in this moment doesn’t make sense
0:20:44 To take these extreme measures because before you can easily say look, I’m willing to trade
0:20:50 10 years of end life for this version of life now reasonable understandable sure
0:20:53 But in this moment
0:20:59 You may miss out on the most spectacular existence in all of history. So why why do that for some cheap?
0:21:03 Thrill, what’s that spectacular existence? I might miss on
0:21:06 It’s complicated
0:21:11 Definitely complicated to be human when you look at the capabilities of AI as it’s emerging
0:21:14 There’s reason to believe that
0:21:19 We are acquiring the ability to engineer
0:21:22 reality
0:21:25 We can physically
0:21:29 Engineer atoms molecules organisms we can create
0:21:38 Experiences with with certain chemicals we can program physical we can program visual digital realities
0:21:42 We have our fingers on the ability
0:21:47 To engineer and program the entirety of our reality increasingly
0:21:50 that
0:21:57 Opens up an expanse of opportunity that is so far beyond our imagination. We can’t even begin to pretend
0:21:59 Like we understand
0:22:02 Okay, this is something I’ve never mentioned before in
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0:23:18 What are the
0:23:20 Concerns though if everybody gets older
0:23:27 Isn’t there going to be like huge disparities in like wealth and stuff because I read some stats that the global share of wealth held by
0:23:30 people over the age of 65 is
0:23:36 Increasing in 2020 people age 65 and older held 35% of global wealth by
0:23:40 2050 they’re projected to hold almost 50% of global wealth
0:23:43 Isn’t it going to be the case that if we’re all living longer
0:23:46 You’d imagine like think about some of the richest people in the world now
0:23:50 They would just accrue more and more wealth older generations would have more wealth and younger generations would
0:23:56 Would have very little there’d be this kind of disparity within society the 250 year olds will all be like billionaires
0:24:01 Yeah, that’s just an engineering problem. It’s society’s public policy
0:24:06 So do you believe in like a universal basic income where we’d hand money to people?
0:24:10 I mean, I don’t think it’s not a reason to not want the future. It’s not a reason to not want longevity
0:24:13 It’s not a reason why we shouldn’t extend life. It’s not a reason why somebody should be deprived
0:24:16 It’s not like if you’re wealthy and you’re old you should die
0:24:19 You know, it’s like it’s everyone’s got this opportunity for life
0:24:24 And if there’s a very large disparity, it’s getting worse. It’s a public policy problem
0:24:31 Do you not think from like a philosophical standpoint that death is part of life? I if you look at any sort of animal kingdom
0:24:37 Death is part of the sort of a natural attrition that creates new offspring new mutations new
0:24:39 energy new ideas, I guess
0:24:44 It has been the system of intelligence that produced us
0:24:51 We have now taken the reins and we are now the new system of intelligence this creating life going forward
0:24:56 When did we take the reins when we started learning how to engineer biology?
0:25:03 When we when we this is what I spent the past 10 years doing is my observation was after selling brain tree Venmo
0:25:06 It’s amazing that we have been able to create
0:25:13 The capability set in the digital world you take a problem that can be solved by people sitting down at a computer encoding
0:25:15 software
0:25:18 We can as a species we’re extraordinarily good at it
0:25:22 Millions and millions of people that can do it and solve problems very quickly
0:25:26 If you take a problem in the physical world, like we say the coral reef is dying around the world
0:25:29 Which is creating a major problem in these in oceans
0:25:35 How do you make a coral reef that is more robust to heat or to?
0:25:42 Big deviations you need to have the same programmability of programming of building a new coral reef
0:25:45 They can do that sort of thing if that’s an approach to the problem
0:25:48 We need to have those abilities and so the goal I had was
0:25:56 We need this foundational technology so that any problem in the physical world whether it be our health the health of the oceans
0:26:03 Anything you know building a global a boy a biological immune system. We need to have these physical abilities and so once you have that
0:26:07 You can program physical reality including
0:26:13 Conscious states including the earth health including our health and wellness all things become possibilities. Do you are you talking about colonel?
0:26:19 No, my I had a venture fund. Okay. Yeah, what is colonel? What are you doing with colonel?
0:26:26 Colonel is a way for us to use science and data to build our best
0:26:33 Cognitive existence so like for example, it’s easy for each of us to to get on a scale and see our weight and
0:26:35 When we see weight is climbing very quickly
0:26:42 You know, we think that’s not a good situation because that leads to bad health outcomes. I don’t feel great. And so there’s like a
0:26:46 It’s a good feedback mechanism for how am I doing with my health with my weight
0:26:52 We don’t have the same equivalent for our brains. You can get an MRI or you can get a PET scan
0:26:55 They’re great, but they’re hard to get
0:26:59 They are expensive. It’s very laborious to actually do it
0:27:04 We need to be able to acquire information about our brains as easy as it is to step on a scale and get our weight
0:27:11 And that’s what we built a colonel is the bike helmet you put on your head and you find out important information about your brain
0:27:17 I had my brain scanned last week. Have you seen your brain? Of course you’ve seen your brain. Yeah, did you find out anything about your brain?
0:27:19 I did we well
0:27:22 I wanted to demonstrate that you could ask a question
0:27:26 What happens when and then take a given thing about the brain like what happens when I do a psychedelic?
0:27:28 What happens when I play a game what happens when I don’t sleep?
0:27:31 Well, what happens when and all the things we do that affects our brain and in this case
0:27:33 I was a pilot participant for ketamine
0:27:38 So we run a 15-person ketamine study ketamine is a anesthetic
0:27:44 also used to tranquilize horses also a party drug and so I received a dose of
0:27:49 ketamine in my arm and then I was in that experience for 45 minutes and
0:27:56 What we saw was interesting and that I had my brain measured for 10 minutes a day for five days before during the ketamine experience and then five then
0:28:02 14 days afterwards and I think those the most interesting thing is my brain patterns like if you think about the patterns
0:28:08 I can imagine you’re looking at planet earth and there’s airports all over the earth and you’re seeing traffic patterns between each airport
0:28:12 So between Tokyo and New York, there’s a lot of traffic London New York a lot of traffic
0:28:17 But between, you know smaller cities you have just a few planes here and there there’s big traffic patterns in our brains of
0:28:24 Where activities happening and those patterns tell you things about yourself like sounds like you had some analysis done
0:28:30 And when I did get it when I did the five days of measurement my patterns on my brain were stable every single day
0:28:36 They were the same the same traffic from the same place to and from and then when I did ketamine it
0:28:39 scrambled all of my patterns
0:28:42 It’s like you took the globe and you just like
0:28:48 remapped where all the airports were and like okay planes start flying and then over
0:28:54 On day three four my patterns started forming again back in a similar way
0:29:00 And so there was that two to like one to three day therapeutic window where I was very open to
0:29:07 New pattern creation and it was there’s this joke among my colleagues where we were walking from one meeting to another and
0:29:10 There was a wall that it was in front of us
0:29:15 And I this is day two after I took ketamine and I thought I’m gonna jump over the wall like that seemed like a fun idea
0:29:20 Why not so I just spontaneously jumped over the wall and then all my colleagues were like
0:29:24 What are you doing? We’re in a work environment. We don’t jump over walls
0:29:27 And I hadn’t thought about it in that frame
0:29:29 But I wonder if in that moment
0:29:33 I was open to doing something different and unique that I normally wouldn’t have done because I had this opening
0:29:35 But it was cool to see my patterns
0:29:42 Where they were how they change and how they reformed and some kind of window that opened up as how I could remap my own experience
0:29:47 I mean, that’s probably a pretty compelling case for psychedelics as it relates to mental health
0:29:55 And you know, if we think of met some mental health disorders as being stuck in patterns patterns of thinking patterns of belief patterns of behavior
0:29:58 There’s been quite
0:30:03 Incredible clinical studies done to show the impact. That’s something like psilocybin
0:30:06 Well, I begin to have on addiction or depression
0:30:09 What’s your view on psychedelics?
0:30:10 They’re powerful
0:30:13 Yeah, and I hope that colonel
0:30:19 accelerates their progress because most of the the measurements are done through questionnaires
0:30:24 You’re asking the person how they felt how they felt and their perspective
0:30:27 But we know that our subjective experiences are not terribly reliable
0:30:32 Like when I after I had ketamine if I were to use words to explain what I experienced
0:30:35 I don’t know if I’m asked on day three how I felt in day one
0:30:39 It’s hard to remember now you can journal to try to make more detailed notes
0:30:41 but it’s really hard to
0:30:43 subjectively
0:30:47 account for your brain and so having a a system that tracks the data
0:30:51 Remove some of that challenge and it could help usher in
0:30:54 psychedelics for
0:31:00 Much broader adoption much faster because you’ve got data to support what you’re trying to demonstrate. Have you tried all the psychedelics?
0:31:07 Are you asking?
0:31:09 I’ve had some experiences
0:31:11 mushrooms
0:31:13 I’ve done mushrooms
0:31:19 What’d you think really interesting experience? Did it did it change your?
0:31:25 Your opinion or your perspective of your own mind
0:31:28 Yes, yes
0:31:31 I was
0:31:36 Overseas I think I was in Peru or something and I was at a mushroom ceremony whatever and I’d taken the
0:31:43 treatment at the Charmin or whatever had given me and I didn’t think it was working so I went over and sat down on my laptop
0:31:46 Yeah, really fucking bad idea
0:31:49 For whatever reason and this is so on me
0:31:53 I clicked on like Netflix because everyone was over there and they were all having their experience
0:31:56 I thought I’ll just I’ll just watch something on Netflix and I don’t watch I didn’t even watch Netflix
0:31:59 I click something on Netflix and as I’m watching it
0:32:02 It’s like some I don’t know some
0:32:08 Reality TV thing and it just becomes really apparent to me that these people’s values that I’m watching are like really bad
0:32:12 They’re all like bitching about each other and they’re all being mean to each other
0:32:18 And at that very moment the world started to just spin and shake and I put the laptop away and went and joined the gang
0:32:20 wrote about 35 notes of
0:32:28 Handwriting again, I never write with my hands about connection and in that moment I learned that like my perception on reality so fragile
0:32:34 Mm-hmm. And so what do I believe? Mm-hmm. You know if this experience that I’m having with you now this
0:32:41 Asception of reality is that fragile that one little capsule that I can just shake it all then Jesus is
0:32:44 I can’t trust much. Can I I?
0:32:47 Love that so much
0:32:51 That’s so beautiful
0:32:57 Like what do we really know about anything and like you said like
0:32:59 There’s one little plant and
0:33:09 You eat it you ingest it and then somehow your reality is absolutely transformed into something that you never imagined was possible
0:33:17 But then you come right back you do and this is also this is the frame around like don’t die so I understand
0:33:24 Before our time in place right now like in the 19th century sure do your thing because you’re gonna die and that’s fine
0:33:26 but right now
0:33:29 It gets three with your your mushroom experience
0:33:33 Do you feel open to the idea?
0:33:37 that we may acquire new capabilities of
0:33:44 conscious experience creation that could make your reality more interesting and
0:33:48 More worthwhile like whatever then anything you could ever imagine
0:33:54 Yes, but it also could not sure because I just don’t know so again. It goes back to like
0:33:57 It’s hard for people to bet on uncertainty in their lives
0:34:04 Yes, people don’t know who wants to bet on I don’t know interesting. Are you basically impartial?
0:34:13 I’m kind of good with what life’s like now. I think life’s quite cool now. I think I think I still feel like I’m bending
0:34:20 Reality by the way that I like live my life and the things I’ve achieved and I still feel like I’ve got more mountains to climb in my life and
0:34:23 higher peaks to see so
0:34:30 You see what I’m saying? Yeah, so it’s not really about a dissatisfaction so much now as the driver. It’s that
0:34:34 The possibilities are a motivator that you if you say
0:34:39 It’s just the possibility some
0:34:44 Something you’ve not experienced a new reality you could experience like some
0:34:47 We’re walking into the cradle of super intelligence
0:34:52 Okay, so let’s define super intelligence just in case it’s someone’s lost us along the way
0:34:58 Okay, when you say super intelligence you’re talking about like artificial intelligence and computers that are
0:35:04 You know infinitely more intelligent than we are and how we can interface with that intelligence to bring
0:35:09 Make our lives and our decisions and our capabilities better. That’s right like the
0:35:14 Computational intelligence on near future timelines
0:35:22 Are going to be far superior to our form of intelligence like how and when and what forms no one knows
0:35:25 But if you look at the trajectory of the speed
0:35:29 It’s fast. It’s faster than our minds can comprehend
0:35:35 And so if we whatever comparison you want to make like whether you know an ant relative to us or
0:35:41 Whatever the version is or a homo rectus to us. I don’t we don’t know those details on what their experience is
0:35:48 But if you just try to think about the scale of intelligence and what that experience may be like even though we don’t know
0:35:51 but it’s interesting your response is
0:35:56 Informative for me. I have a bias and this goes back to my blindness. I
0:36:00 think this idea of walking to the cradle of
0:36:09 Artificial super intelligence and the ability to engineer all of reality is the coolest opportunity
0:36:15 Maybe in the known galaxy. What’s the most compelling argument you’ve heard
0:36:18 Against your do not die position
0:36:25 The one that troubles you the most I’m entirely unconvinced by any argument that I’ve ever heard about it
0:36:32 Are you entirely convinced by the do not die argument
0:36:39 I’m convinced through the thought experiment. I did if I if I try to transport myself to the 25th century
0:36:45 And of course they have a sober a detached cold
0:36:49 Soberness objective soberness looking back to the 21st century that we don’t
0:36:55 Just like we look back in history and we can see with clarity what we’re so caught up in this moment
0:37:01 We’re blinded by so many of these realities and they would look but I’m convinced by my father experiment that they look back and be like
0:37:04 of course in the early 21st century
0:37:12 Homo sapiens figured out that they had developed the technology to continually expand their life and that
0:37:19 So they call like the homo sapien culture shifted to the preservation of life
0:37:24 Whereas right now we’re all on the death track and then we play all the fun games along the death track
0:37:28 But it’s we just you have to shift the entire zeitgeist
0:37:34 Well, we we do the exact opposite of what we’re doing today and instead of embracing and celebrating death rituals
0:37:41 We move entirely to life extension rituals. Do you think like living forever is possible or even reverse reversing age?
0:37:46 Yeah, I mean I so like basically with all the arguments. I come down to this idea
0:37:54 This is akin to us to us interviewing homo erectus a million years ago and
0:38:01 Asking homo erectus to make observations on what it’s going to be like to be
0:38:07 Homo sapiens a million years later have our kind of cognition have our technology
0:38:12 Homo erectus would have nothing like almost nothing useful to say
0:38:21 Do we care what they want or don’t want what they’re scared of do we value it in any way like it’s interesting from
0:38:30 Just an observational perspective, but do we really think that homo erectus has wisdom of some sort that would allow us to
0:38:35 Yeah, to step into this existence, that’s why I think that we’re at now is like we’re basically
0:38:40 we’re sufficiently primitive in our thought I
0:38:48 Don’t believe in anything we say as it relates to the to the future because the intelligence we’re walking into is so far superior to ours
0:38:54 Why would we even begin to imagine that we can express an opinion that is meaningful
0:39:01 Do you see it almost like we’re walking into a different species of human entirely? I mean unquestionably that’s happening
0:39:05 One of the really interesting things that’s going on is this thing called CRISPR
0:39:09 genetic engineering
0:39:10 What is what is that?
0:39:14 CRISPR genetic engineering. I know you did you did some kind of
0:39:18 DNA therapy, didn’t you I did I did my first gene therapy gene therapy
0:39:24 Yeah, what is what is all of that and what’s the promise that it holds for us CRISPR genetic engineering
0:39:27 And what was your gene therapy? Yeah, currently there’s a ceiling on human lifespan
0:39:34 You know like 120 or so that if you if you live a life a certain way and you’re given a genetic
0:39:41 Lottery, then you can do that but to punch through 120 is very difficult through lifestyle and diet and exercise
0:39:47 And so to to really punch through this ceiling you need to start working at the genetic level
0:39:51 And so whether you’re doing there’s gene therapy whether you’re doing CRISPR
0:39:55 There’s a variety of ways you can start modifying
0:40:04 Your genetic code and this has the power of potential to punch through the ceiling so explain that to an idiot
0:40:06 gene therapy is
0:40:11 Injecting genes into you someone else’s genes genes that have been made in a laboratory
0:40:18 Oh, yeah, so this one is I just got two injections on either side in my obliques here and
0:40:22 What it does is it expresses the protein
0:40:28 Fullest that and so basically I before I have a certain level
0:40:33 I like I’m like eight or nine and once you get the therapy you’re higher like 20 30s 40s
0:40:37 And so it’s just increasing it’s increasing the amount of full of statin in my body
0:40:41 And so like one way to understand this is when you work out
0:40:43 mild statin
0:40:49 Lessons the amount of muscle growth that can happen full statin suppresses mild statin
0:40:52 So you have more muscle mass, but it has a whole bunch of other effects as well
0:40:56 This gene therapy didn’t change my actual genes
0:41:01 It just increases the expression of full statin in my body and how do you know if it works?
0:41:06 Measure them. So yeah, I do routine. Well, so there’s a few things we’re doing
0:41:08 We’re measuring this via my blood
0:41:14 What are my full statin levels before and after and then we’re also measuring my body with MRI and so because I’m the most measured person in
0:41:21 History, we have this interesting vantage point where we can see across my entire body from my muscle and my
0:41:29 My fat and bone and speed and DNA methylation patterns from my speed of aging to my brain health like working at
0:41:37 hundreds and hundreds of data points to see what effect it has and have you found an effect yet our first results are coming back next week
0:41:41 Someone like me who is you know on the high street per se
0:41:49 What are the supplements that are on the high street that that do actually work for anti-aging because people talk about NAD plus and stuff
0:41:54 And they there’s all these clinics now popping up all over London where you can sit in the chair for two hours and have the little
0:42:00 Drip in your arm and stuff and I did it once because my friend had opened a place and I had a very hot chest
0:42:04 Yeah, like a burning feeling in my chest. I don’t know if it’s done anything for me
0:42:09 So I’ve just got it goes back to what I said earlier. You’re just gonna kind of believe in it or not like a religion
0:42:15 Yeah, I mean, it’s best to measure it. So you’re trying to change your
0:42:20 Intracellular NAD. I’m sure other people don’t measure it though. So does it work?
0:42:27 The the drips don’t the drips don’t why you want sustained levels of NAD?
0:42:32 And so we yeah, so I mean we extensively measure my NAD levels and we’ve tested NMN
0:42:38 We’ve tested NR. We’ve looked at all the different modalities. You want sustained levels. So my levels when I first started
0:42:40 I think they were
0:42:43 equivalent of something like 47 years of age and
0:42:49 Now they’re reliably age 18. Like I have that much I have age 18 levels of NAD
0:42:54 interestingly NAD and we dialed that dosage in because I was able to measure it and
0:43:00 The challenge of course is when you do these things that hazardly get a drip or whatever
0:43:02 It’s what you’re saying. It’s a story
0:43:07 It’s a market clever marketing. It’s happy faces. It’s what your friends are doing
0:43:12 But it’s not based on any reality. You need to see it working in your body. Otherwise, you know
0:43:17 Be careful when you’re when you’re doing it. So the only reason it doesn’t work is because it’s not sustained
0:43:22 But it would work if it was sustained. So if I did that every week, then it would work
0:43:27 You have a lot to consider the half-life. Okay. I don’t know all the data on the drip
0:43:32 I know the data much better on NMN and NR but those things then you take them orally
0:43:38 Yeah, orally every day twice a day. Yeah twice a day and those things work. Yeah. Yeah, they reliably
0:43:43 Maintain my NAD my IC NAD levels at an 18 year old level
0:43:46 What are some of those big?
0:43:49 anti-aging therapies or
0:43:58 Businesses or supplements that most people have just thrown themselves into or habits in terms of longevity habits that are just a
0:44:02 Load of BS. I mean most everything
0:44:05 Really? Yeah
0:44:10 Yeah, give me some examples. We I mean everything listed on the the blooper website is
0:44:16 Three years of our effort to try to figure out what has scientific evidence
0:44:20 What can we do in me and measure it and then communicate that out?
0:44:23 Yeah, cuz I want to make sure I avoid
0:44:28 False advertising. That’s right. I got suckered down to do that bloody NAD drip thinking I was gonna be an 18 year old
0:44:31 That’s right. So I don’t want to do that again. Yeah, what do I need to avoid?
0:44:34 I mean, for example, one thing that works is extra virgin olive oil
0:44:37 Well, here’s what I brought with me
0:44:45 Yeah, so you sent me this I did I sent you that in the post. Yeah, I mean so we we tried to
0:44:47 I
0:44:52 Can’t see I’ve got a black bottle of extra virgin olive oil that Brian had sent me about a month ago
0:44:56 It says on the front blueprint Brian Johnson ultra premium
0:45:01 Extra virgin olive oil completely all black bottle. It looks like a wine bottle or on the back of it. It says
0:45:04 with the goal of slowing
0:45:09 His speed of aging Brian Johnson allocates 15% of his precise daily
0:45:13 calorific budget to this extra virgin olive oil
0:45:22 It is rich in polyphenols which studies show can potentially safeguard against various cancers cardiovascular diseases diabetes and
0:45:26 neurodegenerative conditions by providing better reduction of
0:45:29 oxidized LDL than regular Evo
0:45:33 extra virgin olive oil interesting
0:45:35 So that’s the question, you know, if you
0:45:43 What things can I do in my life that are easy and actionable and have a high impact extra virgin olive oil is very close to number one
0:45:45 You really mm-hmm. Why?
0:45:49 Because all the things it says on the back. Yeah, when you there you go
0:45:53 Well, it’s not how you meant to have that
0:46:00 It’s spicy. Yeah, you put some pepper in there. It that’s what premium olive oil tastes like
0:46:03 it’s it’s
0:46:06 It’s good oil. It’s good all virgin olive oil, but nobody should
0:46:09 It’s not nice to drink extra. Oh, it feels quick
0:46:13 It’s very it’s quite thick and smooth
0:46:20 Interesting yeah peppery and smooth if you look at the evidence we we just shared about what this does
0:46:28 It’s unbelievable in the ways it improves health and wellness. It’s better than ozampic
0:46:36 Really it is okay. So explaining what exam exam pick is that’s a diabetes drug that people are using to lose weight
0:46:38 Yeah, so it’s like ozampic is like the fire alarm
0:46:45 And so for example, there’s a study where people lost five point two pounds
0:46:50 Taking evo because I mean evo for nine weeks
0:46:55 In addition to what they’re currently eating yeah
0:46:59 Yep, and when you say taking what do you mean to sprinkling on top of my food or yeah
0:47:03 that the I think the quantity for that study was I think
0:47:06 45 ml daily or something like that it’s between
0:47:10 45 and between 30 and 60 ml daily
0:47:15 But there’s things for example like it it reduces by over 60 percent
0:47:25 invasive breast cancer it reduces your your blood sugar levels by 60 percent post a mill and
0:47:31 Your oxidized LDL levels these are the this is the bad thing your body that’s causing damage by 80 percent post a mill
0:47:34 so I have a tablespoon with every single mill and
0:47:38 It’s yeah, it’s it’s like the super of superfoods and
0:47:45 The problem is most of the olive oil the world does not meet the quality thresholds to make it useful
0:47:49 So you think you’re consuming olive oil that’s actually doing it by having health benefits
0:47:53 If it doesn’t meet very specific criteria, it won’t do it for you. So where do we get it?
0:47:56 This is why I’ve tried it. This is why I solved it because like we basically
0:48:03 Trying to find a olive oil that you can verify meets the specs is very challenging
0:48:07 So we we built a supply chain across both
0:48:15 Hemispheres to acquire the best olive oil in the world to make it just easy. You can trust it the data is shared and the health benefits are
0:48:17 supported by evidence
0:48:21 And this is available online. Yeah, everyone can buy this. Yeah
0:48:26 It’s exciting but that’s an easy one to do go to bed on time and drink your olive oil
0:48:33 You’ve got something down there on the floor, but you wouldn’t tell me what it was. What is it? Yeah, I brought you two things today, okay?
0:48:41 One I brought you a test. Okay. What is it this test? Okay? That’s it. It’s your speed of aging test. Oh, shit
0:48:42 So you should
0:48:44 Everybody should know
0:48:46 Three things, you know, how much you weigh
0:48:49 how fast you’re aging and
0:48:53 The duration of your nighttime erections
0:49:01 Is that what the other thing that’s the other dice? Oh, shit. So we basically yeah, so both these are going to give you
0:49:03 a
0:49:05 Good baseline with where you’re at in life
0:49:08 So, how do I how do I do?
0:49:12 How do I do this? I can I can administer. Oh, yeah
0:49:20 I can administer that test for you if you want though. I what it requires is will prick your finger. Yeah, get a little blood. Yeah
0:49:25 Put it on the card. Yeah, and then we’ll send it to the processing to the to the
0:49:34 The center where they’re going to process that you’ll get your results back and it will tell you how fast your aging clock is internally
0:49:37 How does it know that from a prick of blood?
0:49:39 Because your body leaves
0:49:47 Chemical signatures that reveal the data. Okay, and then I can reverse that presumably. Yes. You yes, exactly
0:49:52 So if you let’s say you get a result back and let’s just say it’s one so you’re aging I
0:49:58 Can normal person would average person you could potentially slow your speed of aging to
0:50:00 0.6
0:50:06 Which means while all of your friends are aging at a normal rate, you would get
0:50:10 September October November and December for free. I’d love that. Yeah, how?
0:50:17 Olive oil goes sleep exercise a good diet. It’s the basic stuff the basic stuff
0:50:23 And what is this other contraption that you that is how all you can measure your night corrections? I
0:50:29 Mean where am I gonna put that? Yeah, so you
0:50:32 You put it on your shaft
0:50:37 And just gently out there go gently pull that and so you put there you go
0:50:40 Put on the mic
0:50:42 Yeah
0:50:49 Yep, and then you put it on the on the base and
0:50:55 You put on and you you think you presume that it’s gonna be an irritation
0:50:59 It’s gonna bother you you’re gonna fill it once you put it on and you go to sleep
0:51:02 You can’t fill it. You know, what does it do like vibrate in the night or something? So yeah
0:51:10 There’s no vibration, but you you have erections throughout the night. Yeah, and when you can correct
0:51:17 The expansion of your penis will be captured by that device and it will show
0:51:22 how many erections you had and for what duration and what strength and I
0:51:30 Have got you so you put your you put your you go to sleep you put your penis inside it like like that and then
0:51:35 When you have an erection during the night it’ll expand and log it
0:51:38 Yes, I’ll keep logging every time you have an erection in the night
0:51:42 That’s right, and then we’ll tell you you had four erections tonight. You know that during that duration of sleep
0:51:49 They were 47 minutes 31 minutes 55 minutes and whatever and of this strain of this quality of erection type
0:51:55 And then this data it’s really important because it represents psychological health sexual health
0:51:57 cardiovascular health it is basically
0:51:59 People are not familiar
0:52:02 Yeah, you go to the gym and build big biceps or whatever
0:52:06 But people are not familiar that nighttime erections are actually a meaningful health indicator
0:52:11 And so you’ve been measuring your nighttime erections have and what have you found out and how have you been able to improve it?
0:52:17 Yeah, my my average right now is two hours and 12 minutes. So you’re erect at night for two hours and 12 minutes. Yes
0:52:26 What are you dreaming about for so the thing is we’re not aware of our erections most of the time and
0:52:35 So by my current erection amount is equal to roughly my chronological age for me to be equal to an 18 year old
0:52:38 I would need three hours and 30 minutes
0:52:43 Interesting of nighttime erections. So that’s the goal. We’re trying to achieve is is we’re basically I mean no one’s ever done this before
0:52:47 We’re trying to figure out can you improve nighttime erection?
0:52:54 Do you put this on your penis every night? No, just in I’ll do it three to five days in a row
0:53:02 So most most nights of the week you’ll put this on your penis. I’m sorry. So I’ll do for example in like oh, okay
0:53:07 One month yeah in like a month or two months. I’ll do if I three to five and it depends on what therapies
0:53:09 We’re doing and so I what I coupled up with that is
0:53:12 We’re trying to
0:53:15 Come on Brian grow up
0:53:22 I’m just playing with it. It’s just interesting. Yeah, oh I coupled this up with
0:53:25 Shockwave focused shockwave therapy
0:53:29 and so there’s this technology you have a wand and
0:53:36 You sit in a chair and then the technician uses the wand and basically shocks your penis
0:53:39 through
0:53:46 Through the acoustic technology and it’s like it does the same thing as workouts doing what you’re creating micro injuries
0:53:52 So then it rebuilds and so this technology is used for all over the entire body
0:53:58 If you’re trying to heal an ACL or you’re trying to reduce the knees or the joints shoulders
0:54:01 So the technology that has a broad range of applications
0:54:07 It’s also used for erectile dysfunction. So while my scores are I have no sexual dysfunction
0:54:10 I’m my score perfect in every category
0:54:14 We’re wondering if you take this therapy this focus up with therapy
0:54:20 And if it will just basically rejuvenate the penis and increase night-time erections. Is there any early evidence that that’s working?
0:54:23 Yes, I’ve been shocked
0:54:27 By the results. I’m now two months in
0:54:31 It’s my subjective experience is it’s as if
0:54:35 My penis has gotten like 15 years younger
0:54:43 So we’re still in the early stages we delete the measure we need data before we’re gonna believe anything
0:54:45 subjectively
0:54:47 I’m in
0:54:53 When you say when you say a shock, do you mean a painful shock or is it like a you know like a the kind of shock you pay for?
0:54:56 I
0:55:00 Tell me more. Is it like a nice feeling is it like a vibration or is it like a
0:55:08 Is it painful? It’s painful. Yeah, you you need to be focused like you need to do pain management. Yes, it’s interesting
0:55:10 It’s a it’s like
0:55:14 Maybe a seven out of ten, but then once you get to the tip
0:55:20 It’s like, oh, no, they want to suck the whole thing. Yeah, it’s like a nine out of ten because you the tip
0:55:26 You have improved sensitivity, so it generates in addition to what we’re trying to do the night-time erections
0:55:27 It also
0:55:28 improves
0:55:30 erection strength and orgasm
0:55:35 Pleasibility so it has all kinds of benefits. I’m trying to figure out physiologically what’s going on there
0:55:42 So you shock the penis you give a big electric shock to the penis and then it rebuilds like a muscle would yes
0:55:47 And that causes it to be more effective going forward. Yeah. Yeah, it’s it’s a
0:55:50 Acoustic technology, so it’s not like an electrical shock. I
0:55:55 this kind of brings I guess this brings me in part to the
0:55:59 Thing you use on your abs the 20k set-up machine thing. I
0:56:02 When I was younger in my house, I think my mum bored in a catalog
0:56:08 She had one of those machines that she put on her abdomen and it gave her an electric shock like and it’s like kind of
0:56:12 Vibrated and I just always thought it was BS. Yeah, I thought the whole industry was just BS
0:56:16 People feel like it’s doing something so they think they’re gonna get abs
0:56:21 But you’ve got like a really extensive impressive machine that does a similar thing. Mm-hmm
0:56:25 Yeah, using electromagnetic frequency. Yeah, and it works. It does. How do you know?
0:56:28 We’ve looked at it for the MRI and
0:56:34 The muscles are being like broken down and regenerated from the electric shock. Yeah. Yeah, we’ve been cheating
0:56:39 So you’ve got have you got a six pack I
0:56:43 Suppose it’s defined to some extent
0:56:46 You’re gonna have to show us
0:56:53 With your permission, of course, because we don’t force people to undress on the show. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don’t know like
0:56:57 Yeah, you’ve got yeah, yeah, I won’t show mine
0:57:02 Not right now. I’ve been in it. Oh, I showed you mine. Yeah, but it’s it’s
0:57:08 You’ve been doing this for three years fine. Yeah, I’m new I’m gonna work my way up with the penis shock thing and then I’ll
0:57:15 Think can you imagine being in a conversation and everyone else knows their erection the nighttime erections
0:57:18 And you don’t like can you imagine the embarrassment you’d feel?
0:57:25 No, I can’t imagine no one I know is how long they’re
0:57:33 I’m playing because it’s like it’s of course, it’s a novel idea. Nobody measures their erections
0:57:36 It’s not part of a social norm, but you can imagine the humor
0:57:40 View finding someone having a car a casual conversation like yeah
0:57:44 I had a really great night sleep last night new peak record on erection duration and
0:57:47 No, it’s gonna become a thing
0:57:53 I know it is because sexual health and sexlessness and relationships and libido are actually a really big topic at the moment for a
0:57:57 Lot of people I I’ve been in relationships where there’s been libido issues and things like that
0:58:02 And I’ve got friends that I’ve got libido issues and sexual health issues and things like that
0:58:07 So it we joke about it, but they’re it’s not a joke for a lot of people and it can lead to
0:58:14 Relationships breaking down and families breaking down and yeah, so I don’t I do think it’s a serious topic
0:58:20 And if it this therapy can help people get their erections back and bring their sex life back
0:58:26 Then that’s an amazing thing. Yeah the yeah, the testimonials of the technology are pretty compelling people with ED
0:58:31 That it’s may it’s causing a significant problem of their own self-confidence of
0:58:38 Their partners. It’s a big deal like when when you can’t get erect. It’s a very big problem
0:58:45 Your penis is 15 years younger you believe. I mean, this is a subjective assessment. It’s just like you know
0:58:52 As you age your body becomes less firm and more saggy right across muscle skin
0:58:58 Penis like you just lose structure across your entire body and it’s
0:59:05 Improved the structure of my penis. Your hair looks like it’s changed as well since we last spoke
0:59:08 You look like you’ve got a full ahead of hair. Hmm
0:59:13 What’s what’s been going on there? The the protocol I have is I do
0:59:16 platelet-rich plasma
0:59:20 Every 30 to 60 days. So that that is the process where you draw blood from a vein
0:59:27 You spin it up and you separate the blood from the plasma and you take the plasma and then we add
0:59:30 acyl and
0:59:33 Deutasteride so it’s a concoction of plasma
0:59:42 acyl deutasteride and it’s a total volume of between 1315 milliliters and then it’s injected
0:59:45 across the entire head or in the areas that would be balding and
0:59:50 Then I also do red light therapy daily, which we spoke about
0:59:55 Where that cap for six minutes and then I have a nightly concoction
1:00:01 That includes a few things like Madox and Minoxidil and a few others. This is all on my website
1:00:06 So the the recipe the protocol is all there for everybody
1:00:13 But yeah, I mean I I started losing my hair in my early 30s and it’s it’s really hard
1:00:17 To as a I mean with my genetics. It’s very very hard for me to maintain hair
1:00:23 So I’ve had to work very hard at it. What is hair loss anyway? Why does our hair recede? What’s going on?
1:00:27 It doesn’t happen in women. Yeah, I know if you typically
1:00:34 Yeah, it’s it’s really quite annoying that is such a big problem. I
1:00:37 Wish I didn’t have to pay attention to it as much as I do
1:00:46 Why I just requires constant attention and it’s a
1:00:48 I
1:00:53 The technology is not that great yet, you know, like you’re you’re basically trying to slow the process
1:00:57 You’re trying to improve follicle strength. You’re trying to prevent future damage
1:01:03 But it’s not like something what I could like a gene therapy where I with two injections. I
1:01:08 You know, let’s go up three or four X my the production of that critical
1:01:12 Biochemical my body
1:01:16 It’s not the case there’s now there’s technology people are working on for cloning
1:01:19 So you take a few of your follicles you clone that and you reimple you put them in
1:01:23 So basically like doing a hair transplant, but you’re cloning you’re doing your own your own hair
1:01:27 So there’s other technologies that are emergent that are promising. There’s not a market yet
1:01:32 So yeah, it’s it’s hard and it’s like being as a man being bald is
1:01:37 A meaningful thing right because it’s a significant psychological situation
1:01:40 So like if you look if you take through the issues of be of like a man
1:01:46 Would really struggle with psychologically, you know being bald not being able to have erections
1:01:50 like those those like two of your top five things and
1:01:53 So as you know, I hope that
1:01:55 The things I talk about publicly
1:02:00 help break the stigma around it so that
1:02:04 People feel hope they can do something about it. They don’t have to hide it
1:02:09 It’s challenging and it’s heavy to deal with it. What do you think about air quality?
1:02:11 I’ve been thinking a lot about this at James Nestor on this podcast
1:02:16 He was talking to me about the harm of like in room co2 and stuff like that
1:02:21 Yeah, I agree my house is I have devices
1:02:27 Around the entire house measuring those things every moment of every day and I have air filters in every room
1:02:33 And so the quality air quality in my house is pristine in Los Angeles the air quality is not great
1:02:36 And so I typically will avoid
1:02:41 Significant outdoor activities on days where the air quality is particularly bad, but I’m always aware of it
1:02:46 So I have monitors in my house that tell me the outdoor air quality and the indoor air quality in every room
1:02:48 What’s the harm that you’re trying to avoid?
1:02:51 It’s damaging. There’s like the the p2
1:02:54 2.5
1:02:59 There’s a few things that are very damaging and they can get lodged for example in your lungs and it’s very hard to get it out
1:03:03 So there’s a lot of sustained damage. That’s just hard to undo
1:03:05 8
1:03:11 Yes, it’s tollo. So honey tollo. Hey tollo. Okay. Will you come on out?
1:03:20 Hey, there’s a 27 year old former fashion strategist and his Brian’s chief marketing officer, but she’s also the first woman to ever
1:03:24 Sign up and follow the blueprint
1:03:27 Way of living
1:03:30 In Cater’s here
1:03:32 Okay, so Brian
1:03:34 Who is hate to you?
1:03:43 Kate had the pioneering spirit
1:03:49 That helped give birth to blueprint. We we began working together at Colonel
1:03:55 we were focused on measuring the brain and how humans could co-evolve with AI and
1:04:00 We started talking about the possibilities of what blueprint could be
1:04:04 we were the project was underway and we’re trying to figure out how we could communicate this and
1:04:10 Kate saw the potential immediately and has been building this with me for several years
1:04:16 Why did you decide to work with Brian and why did you decide to develop blueprint? I
1:04:25 Grew up in a very small town with a very small field of view and as I got more experience in the world that view
1:04:31 opened farther and further and I was in New York and I was working in fashion at the time and I was sitting in a cafe and I’d
1:04:37 Spent the year learning about AI coming to mainstream and what how is the human species going to deal with this and
1:04:46 I felt very strongly the only way to proceed forward as a species would be to latch ourselves onto AI and to merge with AI in some way
1:04:49 and so I was in
1:04:53 This position where I had all of this energy and I was like I want to throw it out there into the world
1:04:57 I don’t want to do anything my own and there weren’t many people talking about this as a problem and
1:05:02 One day I was sitting in a cafe and I got an email in my inbox from Singularity University
1:05:08 And it included a quote from this man Brian Johnson back in 2016 and it a reference merging with AI
1:05:11 And I thought that’s the person that I want to
1:05:19 work with and throw my energy toward and so I reached out to him and across like every medium
1:05:26 So literally his media articles email social media and I never heard back and then year after year
1:05:28 I just kept pinging him and pinging him and then eventually I
1:05:33 Moved out to LA to work with Brian. And what’d you do for Brian?
1:05:35 You say you work with Brian. I
1:05:42 intentionally keep it very vague because we do everything together. We are two peas in a pod and
1:05:46 From the very beginning, you know both at Kernel and our blueprint. We’ve just
1:05:51 Done anything and everything that needs to be done. My background is creative
1:05:57 So I lean more toward that side of things for the marketing and and just general brand design that kind of stuff
1:06:02 But yeah, and you’ve become the first woman to follow the blueprint protocol. That’s right. Yes
1:06:05 I remember hearing about the blueprint protocol
1:06:10 Last time we had this conversation and one of the things that stood out to me is the amount of sacrifice
1:06:13 That goes into living in line with it
1:06:18 things like getting up at a certain time and then going to sleep at a certain time and
1:06:21 Things that you eat. Are you following all of that?
1:06:27 Yes, I’m definitely not as extensive as Brian is because I’ve just started the protocol
1:06:33 But that was a big decision factor for both of us when we’re considering this one is it is incredibly
1:06:37 laborious on our team to bring up another person
1:06:43 But not only that it means completely changing my lifestyle and so when we were contemplating doing this decision
1:06:47 I really gave it a lot of serious thought because I know that the public are going to follow along
1:06:49 You know, it’s a really big decision for my life
1:06:53 It’s a big decision for our team for the resources that get put behind it
1:06:55 And so early on we decided that I was going to do a 30-day trial
1:06:59 Before we made any of this public to make sure that am I capable?
1:07:03 Am I willing? Is this something I actually want to take on and so yeah, I meant completely
1:07:06 redefining what my life
1:07:09 Like and lifestyle is and where are we at now with that 30-day trial?
1:07:14 Yes, so I’ve done my 30-day trial and I’m on about day 90 of blueprints
1:07:20 So I successfully did my first 30 days, which was yeah, really really difficult and your day 90 now. Yes
1:07:21 How long are you gonna do it for?
1:07:28 That’s the thing it’s an algorithm. So that was definitely something I was conscious of this is maybe one of the last decisions
1:07:34 I really made because I was deciding to walk into the unknown like I didn’t know exactly how many pills
1:07:39 I’d be taking what my protocol would be how many blood draws would I be going into it was really
1:07:44 Am I okay revoking my conscious mind from making this decision-making and stepping into the unknown
1:07:47 So what does your life look like now on a day-to-day basis?
1:07:52 So I so this this was establishing, you know, the first 30 days was really just the trial and so
1:08:01 I’m we’re still in the process of figuring out, you know, what I’m we’re still in the process of personalizing essentially to to my data
1:08:04 But what I do is I try and get a hundred percent sleep every single night
1:08:11 I do perfect nutrition. So I eat the same thing as Brian every single day. So that’s 1,700 calories perfectly, you know
1:08:16 mapped out and then I take over 60 supplements every single day and I I
1:08:22 Aimed to get a certain amount of cardio and strength training and exercise in every week
1:08:24 And how’s it been going?
1:08:28 It it was really difficult. It was much more difficult than I expected it to be why
1:08:35 The process of doing blueprint is really about
1:08:38 Measurement intervention the measurement again
1:08:43 So when we did my baseline measurements, there were a couple things became apparent
1:08:47 One is that people observe me from the outside and this is how I observe myself as well
1:08:51 So it’s not common other people but that if things look okay from the outside
1:08:52 Things must be okay on the inside too
1:08:54 And so I had a lot of people like saying to me
1:09:00 Oh, usually must be healthy because you know, you look healthy. So you must be fine my baseline
1:09:06 Fitness testing for example put me on like an average of like age 60 or age 70 just based on my flexibility
1:09:11 my strength my, you know, cardiovascular health all those kinds of things
1:09:13 and then
1:09:17 My blood work for example, you know, a few things came back off
1:09:20 Which is to be expected like my vitamin D my zinc which is easy to fix
1:09:26 But then my oxidized LDL came back high, which is extremely concerning. So I’m only 27 years old and these are the kinds of
1:09:33 Flags that you see early on that can lead to things like stroke or you know a build-up in your arteries
1:09:39 That can lead to really serious health consequences. So there were a couple things and there’s like baseline tests for example that
1:09:43 Had a red flag then throughout the process. I would say that
1:09:50 It’s because all of a sudden you’re given this huge task of looking after yourself to perfection
1:09:54 You come face-to-face with the things that are in the way of your
1:10:01 Better of living a better life. So your self-destructive tendencies. And so for me like day one
1:10:04 I had like three different existential crisis like moments, you know
1:10:11 Where my whole life crumbled down because you come face-to-face with things that are in your way that you had never had to deal with before
1:10:17 Like what so, you know, Brian talks about evening Brian the Brian that you know over eight between 5 and 7 p.m.
1:10:21 Or 10 p.m. Every night for me is priority Kate. I
1:10:25 Didn’t realize before I did blueprint that
1:10:28 My whole life has been structured around
1:10:35 Helping other people and never focusing on myself. It was like I was completely blind to the fact that any opportunity I get I would deflect
1:10:42 For myself and be like, how are you doing? What can I do for you? You know, because I realized that I didn’t have a relationship with self where
1:10:47 If other people couldn’t see it, I just neglected it
1:10:53 So in like little things it meant that I would schedule meetings back-to-back and I wouldn’t make time to you know
1:10:55 Use the restroom or eat or have proper sleep
1:11:01 And then 10 p.m. Would roll around and finish work and the only thing that was left open was McDonald’s and so that’s what I would eat for dinner
1:11:07 Or you know, if a friend if I committed to hang out with him on a weekend. There was no way I was going to you know
1:11:12 Say that I can’t do that anymore just to get enough sleep because you know
1:11:17 Ultimately I cared more about the other people’s perceptions and my my own actual well-being people pleaser. Yes
1:11:24 People please are big time and just do blueprint. It’s sounds like it’s the antithesis of people pleasing
1:11:26 yeah, I would say so and
1:11:34 It’s kind of like that, you know Brian references this but the the airplane example where you want to put your own mask on before you can
1:11:36 Help others so, you know in this process
1:11:42 I’ve slowly learned that I am functioning better and I can actually do more of that people pleasing in a weird way anyway
1:11:46 By looking after myself first what what I have been the
1:11:53 Although it’s just been 90 days. What have you noticed changes so as far as actual like results and data. It was it was very
1:11:57 straightforward everything improved from across the board
1:12:05 so my my restorative sleep increased by 19% in 30 days my flexibility improved my strength improved like my
1:12:12 My leg press one wrap rem wrap one rep max went from 220 pounds to 360 pounds in 30 days
1:12:15 I did via two max testing
1:12:19 So my body’s ability to use oxygen when I first did at the start of 30 days
1:12:21 I was put at the 51st percentile
1:12:24 So if you look at like an age graph, you’d be able to predict exactly what age I am
1:12:27 I was spot-on average and then after 30 days
1:12:35 I had increased into the top 7% of fitness for my age and gender which is huge for me because I am someone who has never excised a day
1:12:41 In my life before this I’d never gone on runs. I hated the gym. I’d never been trained in the gym
1:12:44 It was just something that was like the antithesis of anti-kate, you know
1:12:52 So yeah huge huge changes on my end and my blood work improved. We’re still waiting on my oxidized LDL to come back
1:12:58 But generally everything everything looks really good. What’s your take on that and things that have improved and the changes you’ve seen in her I
1:13:01 think the most interesting and
1:13:07 entertaining was the existential crises where they became so frequent
1:13:13 I would send her messages just like in a joking fashion like hey, like I hope your existential crisis is going well today
1:13:20 How can how can I help? Yeah, but she really was I I applaud her because she jumped in with both feet and
1:13:24 She was willing to share the entirety of her internal experience. So she didn’t try to
1:13:30 Camouflage any of her pain. She didn’t try to be tougher than she was
1:13:35 She was just open and transparent about the entire process and I think that people around us the entire team and
1:13:42 Those observing drew a lot of inspiration because she was open about everything about what she was struggling with internally and
1:13:46 She was willing to step into the problem. Like she she didn’t miss a single day
1:13:53 And that’s hard like there’s a lot of motivation to quit or to take a day off and so I am really pleased that
1:13:57 She gave it a go and
1:14:01 She prevailed it would have been very easy for her to quit
1:14:04 Hey, you’re 27. Yes
1:14:14 Sacrifice yeah, people think of 20 your 20s sacrifice. They think going out partying. Did you do that stuff before?
1:14:17 Did you like day, you know, all that kind of stuff? Yeah, yeah
1:14:22 No, I definitely was a big consideration for me and like the other thing to add is blueprint
1:14:25 especially at the level we’re trying to do this out is a
1:14:29 Full-time endeavor and so you have to fit this into your existing lifestyle
1:14:33 And so it’s really difficult even things like, you know, during that 30-day trial
1:14:37 We travel for work and I remember we got back one day and it was like 6 p.m.
1:14:39 Or something like that and everyone was like
1:14:45 Zonked after being on the road for three days or something like that and I was like, I gotta go exercise now guys and everyone was like what?
1:14:50 But that’s a thing like, you know, my data it demanded it my body demanded it
1:14:54 And so I was gonna do it. It wasn’t about, you know, what I wanted in that moment or not
1:14:58 So it is a very intense thing to commit to
1:15:02 As far as like the socializing and all that kind of stuff
1:15:07 Yeah, I was someone who, you know, would stay up. I mean, I would stay up working a lot of the time
1:15:11 Like I’m a grind culture child. Like I I really did throw myself into it
1:15:16 So I would say that’s probably the thing that changed the most on the socializing thing. Like my friends have been so
1:15:23 Accommodating, you know, I and we’d go out for brunch still and I would bring my blueprint in and just sit at the table
1:15:28 While, you know, other people are having their, you know, maybe their mimosas with orange juice in it
1:15:31 But yeah, I think there have been
1:15:37 Easy ways to make it fit into my life and the people around me have been really accommodating, which is lovely
1:15:39 What’s been the biggest and the hardest sacrifice?
1:15:44 The thing that you, you know, maybe on the difficult days you miss a little bit
1:15:51 You know, it’s just so sad but my the first thing that comes to my mind is milk lattes. Like I was such a typical, you know
1:15:59 Yeah, young person now, but yeah, I you know, there’s like little you you realize you come face to face the fact that a lot of
1:16:05 Life’s small joys are baked into the things that you do on a routine basis
1:16:09 And so it took me a while to remap those things. Um, but now you drink before
1:16:13 No, I mean, I was I was like a normal normal person. Yeah
1:16:17 So drinks on the weekend with friends when you feel a little bit guilty if you quit doing this
1:16:21 After everything the team have invested in you Brian’s faith in you
1:16:25 Does that not feel like a bit of a pressure? Yes, it does. However
1:16:32 This was also you can’t let those things drive you when you’re on blueprints. So for example
1:16:36 I halfway through my my third day period. I
1:16:41 Started to really not feel great and I would watch my heart rate, you know
1:16:44 As you get better exercises exercise your fitness improves
1:16:49 It’s harder to get your heart rate up and I was going against this metric of I need to get my heart rate over
1:16:54 3 beats per minute to hit this vigorous heart rate zone to get my markers
1:17:00 Up and I was pushing myself and pushing myself. I was you know, I documented all this all you know for out
1:17:03 YouTube channel and whatnot, but I was
1:17:07 At this point where I was crying on the weekend. I was like, I don’t know if I can do this
1:17:10 Like I think I have to give up because I just couldn’t get my heart rate up
1:17:15 And it took me a second to realize that priority Kate had snuck in again, but in this really
1:17:22 Subtle, you know backdoor kind of way where I was holding myself to this expectation of I needed to
1:17:26 Do these very intense things so I could prove to the public that I can do this
1:17:29 I’m going to be you know, this blueprint access when in reality
1:17:33 The blueprint way is actually to stop look at the data and if I had done that
1:17:35 I really would have seen that my my hrv was down
1:17:38 My recovery was down like my body was asking for a break
1:17:43 But my conscious mind was stepping in and saying you need to prioritize the viewpoint of others
1:17:48 And how they’re going to think of you and make sure you just hit these goals regardless of what the data says
1:17:50 So I think that to answer your question
1:17:55 If I’m people pleasing in that way, I just get in my own way
1:17:59 But if you stop and look at the data
1:18:02 That’s where actually the insight comes from
1:18:07 Why did prime? Why did you want hate to do this? Did you want her to do it? And if so, why?
1:18:11 I’m
1:18:16 And we talked about this extensively and I told Kate that there was no pressure. No expectation that
1:18:23 It was entirely her decision that she could think through it. Uh, there were other people that could certainly fulfill the role. So
1:18:26 It was Kate’s call to do it and even when she was doing it
1:18:30 It was entirely her decision whether she wanted to continue and so I made it very very clear
1:18:36 There was no pressure. No, uh overriding assumption that was not being explained. Uh, you know communicated
1:18:38 So that’s why I think the
1:18:45 The the shift in transition from growing culture to taking care of one’s health is there’s so many layers
1:18:49 Uh, people are very fast to come up with excuses and reasons why they don’t want to do it
1:18:55 And I think by Kate doing this it was um a transparent reveal of everything she had stacked up that was stopping her from doing that
1:19:01 And uh, I thought it would be interesting because she she understood the intricacies of the endeavor so thoroughly
1:19:05 And she also was aware of how we were communicating to this and she had this vantage point that was really unique
1:19:09 Uh, so I thought it’d be uh, she’d be a perfect candidate to do it. Uh, but again
1:19:13 No obligation entirely her call if she thought this would be a good move for her. Okay
1:19:16 Blink once if you’re being held hostage
1:19:23 Do you want to die
1:19:25 I want
1:19:27 To have the opportunity to live
1:19:32 You want you want to have the opportunity to live that’s very intentional because he said he doesn’t want to die
1:19:34 Yeah, you might have seen on the shirt
1:19:42 Yeah, you want what’s the nuance there? I don’t mind the idea of death, you know, if it happens it happens, but I would love to
1:19:47 Be able to spend each minute living as much as possible. And so that’s what this is for me
1:19:49 I think I’m
1:19:53 I’m on the same page with you. Yeah, I I’m not scared of dying
1:19:58 Um, I don’t think you’re scared of dying. Are you brian? You’re not scared of dying. Um, but
1:20:02 When I like the opportunity to live on I would like the opportunity to live on
1:20:05 But I do also think that what makes life
1:20:09 enjoyable is the scarcity the fact that I’m
1:20:12 Me sitting here now is me choosing
1:20:15 Not to do everything else is why this is so special. Yeah
1:20:21 Totally agree. So also, you know, I find this like idea of the fear of death and people kind of
1:20:26 Like balking at that it’s interesting to me because I think if anything is more rational to fear
1:20:27 I would say it’s death
1:20:30 Like out of all the fears I could have in life fear of death
1:20:34 It’s probably one that I would choose to have, you know, that makes sense to me. I’d love to
1:20:39 To to really want to live every single second of the day
1:20:40 Yeah, same
1:20:46 What how do you think about what we just said that the fact that we are going to die creates the specialness in the life that we have
1:20:49 I don’t think
1:20:51 We know what we’re talking about. Okay fair enough
1:20:58 I know I do understand what you’re saying. I think I lose everybody like, you know, kate is a much more relatable person
1:21:02 Like she you know, she says things that people are like that’s sensible and I understand that and I say something people are like
1:21:04 That’s really weird. I’m not quite sure what to do with that
1:21:07 but I really
1:21:14 And so I really am trying very hard to be more understandable to be more relatable and have these viewpoints, but I
1:21:17 I can’t seem to land this idea
1:21:22 That it’s possible
1:21:29 We are so primitive in our current way of being that we wouldn’t even dare ask ourselves our own opinions about anything
1:21:35 When you talk about this playing it forward into the future and asking future civilizations about us or and then playing it backwards
1:21:39 That does help me understand it because if you’d gone a million years
1:21:44 Backwards and ask them about us. They never would have been able to predict this incredible world
1:21:49 And we’re probably living like four times longer than they did anyway. Yeah, since we’ve since we last spoke
1:21:55 Is there anything that’s been on your mind that you uh, you think is important as an update for the listeners who listened to the last episode?
1:21:59 Yeah, I mean we we it was a
1:22:03 Fun couple months. We had gene therapy. I published a book
1:22:05 and
1:22:06 We kate
1:22:09 completed her 90 days of of first female on blueprint
1:22:12 uh, doing the full program
1:22:17 We made available for free the entirety of the recipes of blueprint. So we basically we’ve made for free
1:22:22 The dietary protocol all the exercises all the supplements
1:22:29 A book like we basically what I hope is we’ve given a blueprint for the future evolution of being human
1:22:32 And we’ve made everything available for free for everyone all over the world
1:22:34 Wow
1:22:36 And what comes next?
1:22:39 The best is yet to come
1:22:42 Yeah, we’ve got a couple fun projects. Just give me one. Uh, let’s see
1:22:50 It’s another gene therapy. Okay. Yeah to do what to extend life
1:22:54 I mean if we really are trying to punch through the ceiling
1:23:00 Then we you can only do so much with diet sleep and exercise and we’ve kind of mastered those things
1:23:02 So now we’re trying to level up on more powerful therapies
1:23:07 Exciting look forward to hearing the question that’s been left for you in the diary is
1:23:10 dnx guest
1:23:12 As you look back on the interview right now
1:23:20 What’s one thing you wish you said or did differently? Yeah, okay
1:23:26 I I don’t know if I did this justice. So I want to I want to communicate
1:23:29 with more clarity that
1:23:36 Regardless of the data and how I feel and all these kinds of things the thing that I always come back to on whether or not
1:23:38 This is the right decision for me as in
1:23:41 blueprint is
1:23:46 And who’s doing a better job of looking after Kate? Is it
1:23:52 Current Kate or past Kate and I would argue that even if it’s only a marginal improvement
1:23:54 It’s worth
1:23:57 Taking this step toward looking after oneself just a little bit better
1:24:01 And so that’s how I feel about this whole process is like no, I know based on the data
1:24:05 I know based on my subjective experience based on any other metric that I’m
1:24:09 Doing a better job now than I was previously. So which Kate’s happier
1:24:12 I think
1:24:15 Kate has no control over her own happiness. And so
1:24:19 I almost never try to optimize her happiness
1:24:22 When Brian sat down, he said I’m the happiest I’ve ever been
1:24:25 Yeah, is this the happiest you’ve ever been? Yes
1:24:30 Yeah, purely go ahead. This Kate’s happier than old Kate. Yes
1:24:33 but I would say that
1:24:34 Kate
1:24:37 Always is biased to saying that Kate is always the happiest
1:24:40 In any given moment Kate is generally a very optimistic and happy person
1:24:44 And it’s the blueprint different for women than it is for men
1:24:47 Because there’s different sort of hormonal and physiological
1:24:52 Elements to men and women. Yeah, that’s what we’re currently in the process of figuring out
1:24:57 So it took Brian like two three years and millions of dollars to get his protocol stabilized
1:25:01 So we’re currently in that process of figuring out how are we tuning it to to my to my
1:25:06 Hormones and levels and tracking my data. So we’re in a very exciting period
1:25:10 Have you kept account of how many millions of dollars it’s cost you to do this?
1:25:12 Uh, yeah at the county. It’s um
1:25:20 Probably three to four at this point. Yeah, the majority of that has been on the measurement protocols. It’s the scientific research
1:25:24 It’s like, uh, yeah trying to get your head around everything. It’s ever been published
1:25:27 Get that structured in a way that’s actionable than doing the measurement
1:25:30 But the actual implementation is very cheap. You’re like, this is the thing is we um
1:25:37 Someone made a comment through the day that this is the the most impactful humanitarian project ever in that
1:25:44 in that the more values being delivered to more people and um, I love the frame that
1:25:49 It’s a species-wide evolutionary plan and
1:25:53 We uh, we’re launching a product. So one of the biggest questions we’ve received
1:25:55 like this is one of the more exciting things we have going on is
1:25:59 When we did blueprint started blueprint, it was never to make money
1:26:02 We never had a commercial plan and we never had like some sneaky idea
1:26:05 It was just like we wanted to pursue the boundaries of science
1:26:09 And then it became a thing and people are like make this easy because I want to do it
1:26:14 But I don’t want to spend the time and so over the past few months. We’ve created a blueprint product stack
1:26:21 And I think that we’ll be ready to launch in 90 days or so. I think it will be competitive with
1:26:24 the most nutritious
1:26:28 product in history
1:26:36 Interesting and it’s a supplement. It’s uh, it’s it’s uh powders and pills food supplement extra virgin olive oil
1:26:43 It’s a whole bunch of stuff. It’s basically I think we’ll be able to deliver to people at a lower cost
1:26:46 You know, whether we’re succeeding this or not, whether we succeeded the number one spot
1:26:49 I like the idea that we’re competing with the best
1:26:51 the best
1:26:57 Most nutritious food product ever built in human history and I like that we are at least competing for that slot
1:26:59 And so I think it would make sense for the un to be
1:27:02 putting blueprint into the hands of people
1:27:09 And uh, then anything else out there and so that’s exciting that it’s we’re just rounding the corner from this novel idea to this
1:27:13 Full-scale humanity-wide
1:27:17 conversation on what can we become and basically trying to
1:27:20 purge from our society
1:27:26 The self-destruction that we’ve embedded within it. Hey, I’ve got one more question few before Brian answers the book question
1:27:32 Yeah, just thought of one go. You want to take it? Um, what can you tell me something that you disagree with Brian on?
1:27:37 Um, that’s actually really really hot because I think we agree on most things
1:27:44 Um, we typically see the world from from pretty different perspectives. We reconcile them ultimately
1:27:47 But we definitely view the world
1:27:49 Uh
1:27:54 Meaningfully different. Yeah. Yeah, I really see myself as an operations manager for
1:27:58 humanity not not because like
1:28:00 I just find that that’s a role that
1:28:07 We have not really tackled as a species yet. You know being able to see the systems that underlie
1:28:12 humanity at this huge scale and so nutrition is one of these things like we
1:28:14 you know
1:28:17 This blueprint stack that we’re working on it’s almost like your
1:28:22 Your mom has packed you a lunchbox and said here’s the basics
1:28:27 Of what your body has requested for today like go out have a great day
1:28:31 You know, you’ve got a budget to go and they have fun in this specific kind of way
1:28:33 But just like here’s what you need at a basic level
1:28:38 I think it’s only a small you can you can change the world with a small
1:28:43 A couple of small changes like that that we just haven’t thought about on that efficient level
1:28:47 If you’re the operations manager of humanity, what is Brian? Brian is the
1:28:55 The visionary behind behind pushing this. I mean when I met there was such a good opportunity to roast me
1:29:11 Okay, so Brian your question then so I will see where can I speak to camera?
1:29:14 Which one?
1:29:16 Okay, great as a
1:29:21 Of last time I was on the podcast. Hi everyone. Nice to see you
1:29:26 You were all so kind to me in the comments on our last video together
1:29:32 And I’ve become accustomed to get pretty beat up about on pretty much everything all the time
1:29:34 and
1:29:40 All of there were so many of you who were so generous and kind and charitable and compassionate and I just really appreciate you
1:29:47 I read all the comments. I find it to be a really informative source about what I’m doing well to communicate what I’m struggling on
1:29:52 And I appreciate your generosity with me as I stumble through
1:29:58 How to communicate ideas that make sense in my mind, but then you know, they don’t land as clearly as others
1:30:03 but I appreciate that you’re willing to entertain the discussion and
1:30:05 Yeah, just a really I was really
1:30:10 Touched by how your your kindness. So you’ve developed a
1:30:13 powerful community
1:30:17 That of highly intelligent compassionate engaging people and I appreciate
1:30:24 Being a member of that because it’s these topics are hard and it’s easy to lob insults and make
1:30:29 derogatory comments. It’s just so easy to try to pick that off as the form of communication
1:30:36 And you know, this community did not they took a different path and it was really encouraging to read
1:30:43 You read every comment. I read most of them. Does that do it? Does any of it ever hurt you?
1:30:46 And maybe you should
1:30:52 Just collected a whole bunch of mean tweets for a youtube video. We have coming out soon
1:30:59 Brian reading mean tweets and honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Brian more happy than reading mean tweets. He absolutely loves it
1:31:02 I did notice that on Twitter. I was like, he really loves
1:31:05 engaging with this stuff
1:31:07 How have you got yourself to that place mentally
1:31:12 Where you can read someone saying some just the worst thing about you and seemingly spin it into a
1:31:14 joke and
1:31:16 Apparently really genuinely not care. Yeah
1:31:21 Not only do I not care. I love it. Why?
1:31:25 I mean, why do I why do I why do I love it?
1:31:29 I mean, it’s really beyond my comprehension. I don’t know
1:31:34 I mean and maybe you know, like in other times in my life, maybe I would have been more sensitive to it
1:31:39 But I mean I people work so hard and making the absolute most cutting
1:31:44 Insult they can generate. I know they they spend a lot of time doing these things
1:31:50 And I appreciate the effort. I mean, you know, like it’s great. I’m not sure why but it does it brings me genuine happiness
1:31:53 I I would wager that Brian
1:31:58 Brian, I love people don’t realize how thoughtful he is every second behind the scenes
1:32:02 He’s constantly thinking about other people and what they’re gonna think
1:32:05 So I feel like you’ve actually explored all of these roasts in your own head
1:32:11 And so to witness them come to life is just like oh fun people having fun with me. Like it’s great
1:32:13 interesting gosh
1:32:16 gosh
1:32:19 I do I do I do think that Brian. I do think that you’re very very thoughtful
1:32:23 I even notice it in the way you answer questions you take a pause often and people don’t typically do that
1:32:26 They just give the answer and then for you to even say to some questions
1:32:28 I don’t know is again a sign of that thoughtfulness
1:32:34 But I always also think people that are that sort of neurotic and thoughtful and always thinking in their head
1:32:38 I think they must be a little bit tortured in some way like it can’t be a pleasant experience to be
1:32:44 That intelligent and thinking about that many things that often because you’re gonna end up thinking about some things that aren’t so great
1:32:48 Yeah, you know what I mean if you can if you have that ability to think
1:32:53 You know, I think that about Elon a little bit as well like he he speaks about being a young man that
1:32:56 had like an existential crisis and
1:33:01 and made him depressed and then he watched hitchhikers guide to the galaxy and that kind of got him out of his depression, but
1:33:06 Being that intelligent and thoughtful comes with a cost now
1:33:10 Yeah, I mean, I I certainly am familiar
1:33:13 with torturing myself
1:33:17 I’ve been in time times in my life like the majority of my life. I actually
1:33:20 vigorously tortured myself
1:33:25 And it’s only been in the past few years in conjunction with blueprint where I have been rid of that torture
1:33:30 And I I think also when people make these biting comments to me
1:33:36 They don’t even compare with the comments. I make to myself. I mean, I am in previous versions of me
1:33:38 I was brutal
1:33:41 To myself in ways and of course, I know all of my
1:33:46 I know the underbelly of you know, so I know how to make the most biting comment to myself
1:33:50 And so I’d say after the experiencing that anyone else trying to
1:33:54 Turn me down just like it’s totally insignificant. It doesn’t mean anything to me
1:33:57 This is the thing like if we
1:34:00 I guess I’ll be sincere for a moment is if
1:34:02 If
1:34:05 How lucky are we to exist
1:34:08 in this moment
1:34:11 And if we’re really trying to figure out how we have the most fulfilling existence
1:34:18 Prioritizing our health and wellness of getting good sleep and eating well and avoiding bad things
1:34:24 Changes your existence. You want different things. You think about different things
1:34:28 You respond differently to people’s comments. You you’re a different human
1:34:32 And this is in in some ways why I don’t trust
1:34:36 So first I don’t trust any of my own responses, but I trust even less
1:34:43 Other people’s responses who are half dead when they’re not sleeping well when they have bad habits
1:34:49 They aren’t thinking clearly. We know this from science that you you become inebriated
1:34:56 And so that’s why when I think about humanity, like do we are we actually of the right mind of clarity?
1:34:59 To say anything about our wants and desires
1:35:05 And I think we’re all just drunk on addiction and we just can’t see our way through this thing
1:35:08 And so when we say I want this or want that or whatever, I don’t believe it
1:35:12 We’re not we’re not our best mind state right now and we don’t trust our own judgment
1:35:16 And this is it’s it’s hard for us to comprehend that because
1:35:21 We have to trust ourselves on a day-to-day basis doing these things and to step take a step back and be like
1:35:25 Could I be wrong about basically everything?
1:35:31 Take so much courage to to even contemplate and it’s offensive to most people’s minds
1:35:35 But really I think it’s where we we are best to be there
1:35:39 To question all these things and and this is how I stumble in these conversations
1:35:43 Like I know even in talking with you today. I know when I say certain things to you
1:35:49 They don’t resonate right you’re like kind of see your point, but like really this this path makes much more sense to me
1:35:54 and uh, yes, I’m really trying to improve at
1:35:57 This game. Uh, it’s a hard one. It’s like
1:36:01 Um, there’s like there’s one story here. I’ll share. Um
1:36:04 It’s my favorite one. So there’s a captain
1:36:10 Navigating the ocean and receives a communication change course 30 degrees north
1:36:18 The captain radials back you change your course 20 degrees south
1:36:25 Gets a radio back. No immediately change 30 degrees north. Now at this point the captain is irritated
1:36:30 His authority their authority has been challenged. So captain radials back
1:36:36 This is fleet commander so-and-so of the battalion so-and-so and whatever change 30 north
1:36:39 And of course, this has always worked for that person
1:36:45 Uh, always use force and authority and bowling to get whatever the objective is and the communication comes back
1:36:48 I’m a lighthouse
1:36:50 Change course 20 south
1:36:53 In this conversation as a species
1:36:58 We are the fleet commander our minds are the fleet commander. We believe we can
1:37:01 Bully our way through any conversation
1:37:07 Is the future worth living? I’ll tell you right now. Do I want this cigarette? I’ll tell you right now
1:37:10 Do I want to sleep versus something else? I’ll tell you our mind
1:37:14 Has an infinite depth of answers and it knows all things
1:37:20 I think the future could potentially be a lighthouse
1:37:26 When we offer up a response about something we want fill think imagine whatever
1:37:31 Our tactic that has always worked for us in the past so we can just bully our way through all things
1:37:34 Is somehow not going to work anymore because it’s a lighthouse
1:37:37 And that’s what the future feels like to me
1:37:41 Is we cannot use the tactics that have worked for us in the past
1:37:45 That the circumstances have changed so radically
1:37:50 The new the old rules don’t apply a new game is coming and like sure
1:37:52 We don’t know what’s going to happen and sure we don’t know if it’s even positive or negative
1:37:55 We don’t even know if we’ll have a conception of positive or negative like maybe those ideas
1:37:59 We even go away like we have no clue whatsoever
1:38:05 What our existence would be like and this is like why purging society of this stuff is interesting to me like
1:38:09 Why would we not wage war right now like wage war on this?
1:38:12 It’s it’s ruining our chances of the future
1:38:17 Like even something like the halloween halloween holiday traditions
1:38:20 Why are we contributing to the dying of our children?
1:38:25 By giving them sugar as they walk around from house to house like how are we this foolish?
1:38:28 Got our halloween sponsor
1:38:38 No, it’s true though, but that’s the way we design society
1:38:45 But I’m hopeful about that because conversations like this and all the podcasts out there that are having these conversations are changing the dial
1:38:48 I’ve seen an evolution in myself over the last 12 months of doing this
1:38:54 The the types of subjects we’re talking about and sugar and ultra processed foods and sleep and all of these things
1:38:58 So if it’s gently nudging me, I’m convinced it’s gently nudging my listeners
1:39:00 And there’s more shows like this all around the world
1:39:06 And we’re all kind of becoming awakened to it because we’re feeling the symptoms the symptoms of that discontent the depression
1:39:14 Inflammations killing everybody and cardiovascular diseases. So I think it feels like there’s a slow but certain uprising
1:39:19 In society. I agree. I I feel that I perceive the same thing
1:39:24 Thank you so much, Brian. Thank you so much. Kate. I really appreciate you sharing that with me
1:39:29 So interesting and I really hope we can have this conversation again when you hit more milestones
1:39:36 Everybody needs to go and get the extra virgin olive oil because as I said, everybody’s been raving about this extra virgin olive oil
1:39:40 But as I said a second ago, I really really trust yours. So that will be the one that I’m stocking in my house
1:39:43 Thank you, Brian. Thanks for having us. Thank you
1:39:49 Do you need a podcast to listen to next we’ve discovered that people who liked this episode
1:39:53 Also tend to absolutely love another recent episode we’ve done
1:39:57 So I’ve linked that episode in the description below. I know you’ll enjoy it
1:40:07 [Music]