This is Jocko podcast number 436 with Echo Charles and me Jocko willing. Good evening Echo. Good evening.
He no longer cared at all.
Exhaustion hunger thirst dirt the fatigue of Perpetual fear weakness from lack of water bruises danger had all taken their toll of him until somewhere within the last few minutes. He had ceased to feel
human.
So much of so many different emotions had been drained from him that his emotional Reservoir was empty.
He just no longer cared much about anything.
This great evil.
Where does it come from?
How did it steal into the world?
What seed what root did it Grow from?
Who's doing this?
Who's killing us?
Robbing us of life and Light.
Mocking us with the sight of what we might have known.
Does our ruin benefit the Earth?
Does it help the grass to grow the sun to shine?
Is this darkness in you too?
Have you passed through this night?
And those are two passages right there one from the book The Thin Red Line and another from the movie The Thin Red Line the books written by James Jones who fought in the bloody Battle of Guadalcanal.
There were John Basilone fought also were Mitchell page file. We just covered a book about that podcast 435 the movie was written and directed by Terrence Malick Malik and both the book in the movie.
Explore as much about who we are as people who we are as human beings as they do about war and the guests I have with us tonight will help us.
And discuss with us who we are as human beings how we become ourselves what choices we have.
And what we can do to steer who we are and what we become from.
Philosophical philosophical perspective from a physiological perspective from a psychological perspective and yes from a neurological perspective.
This would be none other than dr. Andrew huberman back again last on this podcast 332 he's back again.
Andrew thanks for joining us.
Great to be here. Thanks for having me. Guess
this great evil. Where does it come from? It's the last time I was on your podcast or when I was on your podcast. You are asking me questions about
identity my identity and it was weird because I listened to it afterwards and I kind of realized that I missed out on sort of the root question that you were trying to get out. I gave you some pretty
just nonchalant answers.
What when you were asking me?
About my identity and about where I came from. What were you what were you looking
for? So this is something I think a lot about and I think a lot about it more and more every day my understanding based on conversations with some incredible psychologists and psychiatrists people. Like I just had the amazing experience of talking to dr. James Hollis who wrote Under Saturn shadow.
On the healing and Trauma of men. Mmm. He also wrote the Eden project about relationships. It doesn't just write stuff about many myself about stuff for men women everybody on identity and the way he put it I think captures it best. So I want to credit him which is that, you know, we come into this world and we are essentially, you know, there's some genetics of course that play a role body size body shape. I call her all this kind of stuff but that so much.
Of who we become in our early life relates to our parenting and our attachment and then there's this weird phenomenon.
Whereby we either.
Unconsciously or sometimes consciously adopt the patterns of our parents sometimes more from one parent sometimes more from the other single parent home it varies, right but we develop these patterns of thinking certain things valuing certain things believing certain things and then Adolescence in the teen years and the young adult years hit and something really interesting happens. We either internalized those and carry them forward.
Or in some cases we do not something different but we consciously do the exact opposite and it's at that point in our developmental trajectory that we really start to elaborate and change our sense of self and so a different way of putting this is you know, we hear things growing up. We believe things that kind of you know, what got us affection what got us punished those things. We were internalizing them all the time, you know people from go are trying to
get their needs met.
And then at some point we become conscious of like, oh, you know like that doesn't feel good when they do that or that seems to cause conflict between them and other people when they do that, so I'm going to do the exact opposite or you know, we hear the message, you know, you can't trust these kind of people are you can't trust them or you can trust everybody and for some reason we go 180 degrees in the other way and that evolved 's the family line was I mean, just think about it. How amazing is that? We
an evolved or devolve our family line in one generation.
I've talked about talked to a lot of parents and especially when they're going through those teenage years with their kids and the kids start doing things that clearly they're looking for they're looking for conflict with their parents. And I know I did that. I know both my sisters did that it's kind of normal that you're going to have that rebellious phase and what I tell
Terrence's, you know when you're 13 years old you look at your your parents and you say wait, I need to I'm going to need to go out on my own. I need to break away from these people somehow
I need to make that happen.
And so you just start making that happen and usually do a pretty good job of it so that to me that's where a lot of that 180 can come from where you're looking at your parents. So I'm not going to I need to get away from them. I need to break the ties that I have with them.
Em and I need to do that so I can go out on my own and if I still have these ties to them then I'll be stuck here forever.
Yeah, it's amazing because even in animals, there's this thing they call dispersal where the animals hit a certain age and they just start like venturing out from the nest and they do the same thing that kids to have looking back to make sure that it's still there. Right? I have a friend who has spent a lot of years working with kids at like really like Hardscrabble backgrounds gangs like inner cities.
Off and he said that you know those kids like all kids are extremely appreciative of any kind of warmth or kind of nurturance. Like they're not it's not like the movies where they're just always resistant to that. They might not be as trusting immediately for understandable reasons, but that they appreciate and can understand and recognize like real generosity. And so I think we all have that in us we want that. But yeah, there's this age,
Where we just start dispersing we just want to go and I was why pick skateboarding is like my first quote unquote real sport, right? I did other things like play soccer and swimming but I need a ride to those things where I could ride my bike, but the skateboard was a sport and it was also transportation and then when someone got a driver's license and admittedly and don't do this kids, even before they did, you know, we would we start going
places plus soccer is sanctioned. Oh, it's sanctioned by the parents. Right right parents. I've got you in there and you're just kind of playing into the whole thing.
You want to be either on the soccer team you get sliced oranges, right? It's all part of the rights part of the nest. You're in the nest when you're playing soccer when you're playing football when you're doing whatever Sports you're doing at school. Those are all sanctioned and they're all part of the program. Right skateboarding is not part of the
program. No, no and one of the great things about skateboarding, what was that especially back then it was all ages. So you didn't you gotta education and a lot of things for better or worse. I talked about that learned a few things you
No, and it was wild it was wild. You know, I don't care what anybody says, you know, it's like it was wild and it
held when you started hanging out in the streets with
skaters. Yeah, so is this fun? Because basically everybody on my street who is my age like there were all these young guys and we all grew up together and then they all start playing water polo and soccer and sanctioned. Yeah. Yeah, and then it was me and really one.
Guy his name was Paul Swan which we call Mizzou CH cause you gotta have a nickname, right? And he was really good to what was your nickname?
Oh, come on now Q's
cubes. Yeah. Just got out of Not Gonna Roll Out the top. Yeah, some people still call me that but anyway, they're outed Hughes. And we you know, he was one of these guys who was just a natural athlete huh? And so when he went he'd score five goals a game and soccer mom was soccer coach often when we started skateboarding and he could just
He was just so good. You could just call the trick you'd be like, hey, do you like feeble and a backside tailslide and be like, okay, and you just do it like I struggled. Okay. I was not a great skateboarder. But you know, I worked at it and I love the community of it. I loved everything about it. And so he and I started venturing further going up to Embarcadero so-called the MB. So that was I was probably 14 when we first took the 7f bus and started going up there. So but about 1314 and
That's where I saw it. All right the and it's wild because in recent years largely because of the podcast and social media. I'm now close friends with some of the guys that I grew up looking up to as legit Heroes legit Heroes because I was the same age. I'm the same age as like Danny Way who just celebrate Birthday. Happy Birthday Danny Jump The Great Wall of China. He's down here is from Vista, you know, so I saw those guys I was around all of that, but I wasn't I wasn't one of the really good skateboarders so I could hang in there, but I got beef.
The car Watson and all these guys and so I'm reconnected with them over in recent years. But yet Paul actually got a pro model with think pro model with planet Earth. Literally there was the sponsor me tape scented in one of my best friend sends in a tape next thing, you know, he's freaking pull model, you know, so we were like in the community very much so but yeah in recent years it's been amazing because I've gotten to be friends with two people who were legit Heroes for me growing up. And in many ways still are one is Jim Thibault. Very humble guy who runs Spitfire Deluxe Thunder
You'll skateboards the nicest guy. You'll ever meet grew up in Albany, California. He's gonna be really embarrassed. I'm saying this but just the best do and he's played a a absolutely pivotal role in skateboarding. We're both huge fans of rancid. It's big, you know what cocks bar fan and like all you know, so we send each other morning good mornings and music every almost every morning got two shows. We actually went to Rancid show together not that long ago. So Jim growing up was he's four years older than me. It was like generous Jim he would show up in
Market are we give people board stickers Wheels? I'll never forget the first time he gave me my first box of gear and like I was just like, whoa, not gear like gear Gear guys, not injectable gear. We're talking skateboard here. And so yeah, it was it was just amazing. It was it was so free. No parents no regulation, which has its problems. But and then the other guy, you know, because I was always in a from from about 14 gym and this guy Wally so you actually unfortunately is dead now,
Me my first like real punk rock take a stiff low fingers to trim Shrine bands like that and I fell in love with Operation Ivy downfall which eventually rancid Tim at Lars and what used to be Brett announced Brandon and they didn't know me. I didn't know them but I go to all of their shows and then in recent years had this it's kind of wild how life works out. I've been connected to and become very close friends with we probably hang out to three times a week with Tim Armstrong the Tim a
rancid and he's amazing songwriter just an amazing human being and he and I will just go hours and hours talking about history of punk rock music history of anything of that culture. And so yeah what I fell into early on in fellas truly fell in love with and I you and II know also exchange this like think there's a kromaggs show tonight right there or you know, it's for me. It was just that the the home I needed, you know, I think
Scavenging has recently. There's been some interesting call into question about my backstory. But listen, you know, like any one of those guys who's been in the industry for a long long time. They'll say like yeah, I remember they called me Andy back then and I remember Andy but I wasn't one of the main guys and meaning I knew it was clear. I wasn't fated to be a great skateboarder. So that was tough. That was that was God's first lesson in like you're going to get broke off every time you push yourself a little too hard. So it's good lesson and push me into Academia, but make a long story short. I mean if ever there was a community
T to go Farrell into and be a part of those amazing and some of those people became great artists, but it was always adjacent to incredible stuff like what giant was doing with the you know, the obey stuff and like graffiti art and twist and you know, and so skateboarding punk rock music all that and I should just leave it around for a second because we were talking about this a little bit earlier.
podcasting feels so much so much the same way as the early iterations of punk rock in skateboarding where it's like people are doing independent, right use DIY set up some cameras in a room, you know, I'm sure people will see your podcast here your podcast and think like, oh, you must need like this huge Production Studio you need some stuff, but we just started in a tiny room in my house and Topanga when I was, you know, kind of doing a little self-appointed, you know, Retreat to the Southern California during the pandemic and so it's
It's like you set it up you record you edit. You put it out into the world skateboarders. It's 100 DIY. So right now I look at the podcasters and I look at the enormous reach that the podcasters individually, of course Joe being way out in front of everybody else. Who by the way.
Check out how much he works check out how many episodes folks, you know, it's like, you know, it's not a coincidence. I look at that and I go. Oh, yeah, it feels exactly the same. It's exactly the same and people the general public often going like whoa, like this thing feels really cool and it feels kind of big but like kind of scary like, you know, remember like you see somebody with like a bullet belt something like that and like, I mean, I remember in high school this wasn't my thing. I never pierced, you know yours or anything like that, but that was just my personal sure. I remember you saw some with that.
A to and it was like, oh they must be blank or you saw the somebody with a earring. They used to say all sorts of things about then four years later. It's mainstream. Yeah. I remember one year in high school because skateboarders unfortunately had like severe sag one year in the early 90s a 990.
Thankfully I was happy in the military right
small wheels a cassette UI big baggies. And and I remember we got teased so much. It was unbelievable. We got teased like just ridiculed stuff thrown at us course. We were we were like pretty pretty widely.
So we let we'd always get people back. We had I'm not gonna give people ideas but like, you know, you know, it's like high-grade firecrackers and stuff like you could get back at people is fun. But don't do it kids things have changed but next year after the summer come back to school. Everyone's dressing that way and that's when it just clicked and I go. Oh most people don't actually know what they like. They're looking outward to try and figure out what they like and I guess I've either always been blessed or stricken with this thing. Like I
I feel something it's just so cool. And I just feel it like an energy. I'm like, that is cool. That's cool. What they're doing is real and they're doing it themselves. And so like I'm in the I want to jump into music and skating and stuff a little bit. But the what you just talked about so kids are growing up and we are like this is like I say kids you could be 38 years old or 52 years old, which I am right now and you have your perception of who you are and your self-perception.
and
A while ago we did a podcast I was talking about the fact that everyone's insane and why is everyone in saying well it's because the definition of insects every would somewhat insane because the definition the clinical definition of insanity is where your reality doesn't match reality. That's what so it's and and when they're off by a lot you're now definition is insane. Well, guess what my perception of reality is not the same as your perception of reality and neither one of our perceptions of reality.
T is completely accurate we have our own.
Biases and Tents to the lenses that we look at life through so it can be difficult to know what reality is and then of course like you just said like you're a fourteen-year-old skateboarder with baggy pants and people are making fun of you because of that. So now you're getting criticism from the outside world.
How do you know what reality is how do you know that you're not actually wearing stupid pants and or do you think is the reality is that you're a trendsetter that everyone's gonna be imitating in a year?
They might be right. How do you weigh what you're hearing from the world as they tell you because also if I'm jealous that you got a new skateboard. What do I say skateboarding stupid or I'm jealous because the my girlfriend likes you. Well, then the way you dress is stupid and she's an idiot, right? So I'm going to attack you because I'm jealous and that's a problem too. But at the same time it's like reading comments on the interwebs, right?
Rogan classically, right don't read the comments and read your comments. Don't read the comments and we all agree with it. But if you can read the comments and be like, yeah, there's going to be some outliers that think I'm an idiot and some outliers to think. I'm perfect and it's like most people are going to be somewhere in between. That's cool. That's pretty realistic.
How are you judging?
What criticism you're getting at? What what kind of grain of salt do you take it with? Ya sense of self obviously as we were talking about before develops early for some people it's firmer than for others. Right? I mean one of the reasons why for me it was skateboarding and punk rock music and by the way folks, I think a lot of people here like punk rock music. They just think like noise and we're talking like some amazing melodic stuff like all of it. Right? One of the reasons for me. The music piece was so key.
To just who I was I mean if you look at my high school yearbook my graduate everyone else had like a photo or so. I think I would actually made to my senior photo but you have you get to draw the thing in the back - the cover of Operation Ivy energy. I'll be with a few initials of people that helped me out, you know, and I showed him that recently he was like, oh, yeah cool, you know in my PhD which is somewhere online because someone found her saying in my acknowledgements, I acknowledge rancid. They didn't know me but I went to every show I listened them on on stuff. Anyway, like these things are lifelines, you know.
But one of the things is that, you know people here punk rock, they think noise or anger or what there's a there's a place for that but the the real Spirit of it and I think Joe Strummer summarized at the best is like it's about the real Humanity of it. It's about putting it's about your heart. It's about putting your heart into what you do not in a soft way, although sometimes in a soft way, but it's about being true to yourself and one of the things I love about every time I drive by like 924 Gilman Street one of the longest-running punk rock clubs.
World I drive through Berkeley where something like that. I see all the kids out front is just the huge range of styles. Hi hold boots, you know the like bullet belts Pikeville the kid is just wearing his like there's wearing sneakers. You won't even call him a punk rocker, but he's but they're there or you know, get the mod kids and they got off kids and like it's just all the Styles and you just hope you just hope that they're expressing themselves in the way that feels right to them at the time and you know skateboarding.
In for a while did become a little too homogeneous, but the cool thing about skateboarding is especially once we made it up from the South Bay where I lived Embarcadero was like the huge I mean hear a lot about diversity nowadays. I mean Vietnamese kids black kids white kids kids from the inner city Rich Kids poor kids everything in between. There are fewer girls doing it back that now there's some girl said kill on Skate Barn skateboard. I mean, it's like amazing. I mean just unbelievable. I think her name is Rhys Williams.
Have to check it out. But like she skates Tony's ramp down here in San Diego. It's like unbelievable with so much power to not a little not a little girl skating like no like power right? And so what I love is when I see people expressing their uniqueness and they can still be part of a community. I see less of that online although within the podcast Community. I like to think that maybe 90% of the people that watch who maybe comment they feel some resonance.
Like they feel resonance with your 4:30 a.m. Call to action they feel resonance with Jose desire cuz you know, I can never speak for him. How could I but to explore lots of topics from lots of different angles and be kind of fearless about it not kinda delete Fearless, okay or lack still like bring as much love and compassion to things and people will will will spit at him like oh you're just put your kind of like using the softness to try and pretend that what you're showing is and know I know Lex I know him. I know his heart.
He's a close friend of mine. He showed up in my house in times of Crisis and all sorts of like and we've sat down late into the night on and off mic. Like we are close close friends. He has a huge loving heart and a huge curiosity to understand and he'll go where he needs to I think he's in the jungle right now
more. That's right. I saw
so like I know like you can't really you can't the thing about real podcasting or real anything music scheme where you can't fake that it's from the heart.
Art, and when I say that I think some people just say like it sounds soft or something and you know, Tim who's like a big brother to me now, he's always say it's like, you know, there's a couple lyrics and there was like, he's like there's this one there. He goes. I know I wear I wear my heart on my sleeve and what he but he's he's a tough guy to and I think that what you have to understand is that for anything that's new where there's no precedent. There's no like podcast Playbook. Now, you can kind of figure it out and go and but what you find is that
that like people are all in because it's like in their heart it I have to imagine that's like in your hearts to sit down and talk to people perhaps like me and from now and again, but people were like legit Warriors not like playing War but like War where the other team is trying to kill you and talk about that from a place of understanding also sensitivity exploration. You can't make that up right? That's not journalism that's called as like that's real and so for me it was like
You know skateboarding when I first saw that was like wall punk rock music. I was like, whoa, like they're they mean it they mean it and same thing with podcasting and science to when I first got into research science and had that incredible benefit of working with people that just loved the lab and I just loved being in the lab love doing experiments here just like it's you alone there with nature trying to figure out how nature is put together and there's just like there were times. I was like, I can't believe this. I can't believe that this is like a
A real thing and that they like give you a degree to do this and then they eventually paid me to do it. So I don't want to get overly sentimental here. But I think that the sense of self that I hope people are trying to find is like their Essence and Hollis actually said to me yesterday. He said, you know the key to finding this because I said, okay give me the Practical tool, right? And he said, oh that very straightforward. He said you got to get out of stimulus and response you have to be able to sit with yourself for like 10-15 minutes.
And just listen to like what's inside you and what moves you in a positive direction. And it I said, that's it. And he said yeah, but how many people do that every day? How many people get up in the morning and do that? I did this morning after he told me that so how'd it work out? Yeah. I mean like we I think we all have an Essence like it like, you know not to get too spiritual here, but I think we all have an essence of who we're trying to be and what we're trying to put into the world and you mentioned criticism. I think one of the
Hard things about being public-facing and I'm not complaining. It's a great honor to do what we do right to be able to speak our thoughts and our conversations to the world is when people try and take something look at it through a particular lens and then somehow without any clinical training without any basis whatsoever.
Placed it in tension on that like they could understand why you did what you did or what people did you know we're so I see a lot of that people just sort of like projecting intention labels on people and it's you know, the great Joe Strummer. He said there's a great quote. He says, you know, it's time to take Humanity back into the center of the ring. You know, the problem is we've been dehumanized right? I think he said, you know, you know greed and I ain't going anywhere, you know, and put that open a x
Or something like that, you know never met him but I would have loved to but that's true. Like there's a dehumanization when we put a label on somebody and I'm just talking about like a pathology pathologized label where dehumanizing and I see a lot of that on the internet as probably people can tell I'm pretty passionate about this not just from my own experience, but frankly more from the advocacy for others not just podcasters. But like I look at the way people attack one another and I'm just like well first of all on the schoolyard where the
Arkin are or where you come from her you come from and in there, you know, like none of that's gonna fly right because it's going to go to it's going to go to loggerheads and fists quick because that's real life sadly too. But that's kind of how things they got handled in throughout history on the internet. It really is people just loving stuff over walls and the the anonymity is part of the problem, but also the harshness of it. I mean every time I hear about a kid who commits suicide based on online bullying crazy. I'm like whoa, and I'm just like
So what have what what must have been feeling and then what must have the other people been feeling? This is like, I mean, it does break your heart. It's insane and I think that yeah, I mean, I think that we that the humanity is really about what Allah said. It's about knowing who you are touching into that and then having the support hopefully, but just that the guts to just Express Yourself the way you see
yourself and then understand that people are going to make fun of you. They're going to do all sorts of things. But the people that used to get spit on and teased and all that. They're the ones that everyone's mimicking and you know the next year the two years later. It's so wild to see that those are the Fashions. Those are the things that you can count on anything. It's that yeah.
When I think about like growing up, I was really no hardcore music obviously and the some of the things that I think about that I totally they became embedded in my life right there put kind of became part of who I am. No, let me rephrase it. They became part of who I was and who I am and for one thing and you know this you get this crew of friends and they're like your Bros your brothers and and so you get this super tight Brotherhood of friends and your
Just doing stuff together going out. There's there's fights right you just mentioned it like there are fights. And so there's a test right you are going to get tested and you're going to see how you react. You can see how your friends react and the people that react the right way become tighter. They become a tighter element friends and I've actually talked about the fact that I did a lot of dumb stuff when I was a kid based on the fact of I wanted to prove to myself and to my friends that I was like a tough guy.
Why I love Jiu-Jitsu because in Jiu-Jitsu you don't have anything to prove if you want to prove something go the maps and we know exactly where everyone falls in the pecking order and it's all good before Jiu-Jitsu. You don't have that. The only way to do it is like, oh we're going to go get in fights. Oh, it's dumb. But you get that tight group of friends that have now been through something together the whole idea for me of straight edge, which
Was a very radical thing. I mean, this is in
the in the
80s right where I grew up there was just not it was nothing at all like drinking and and smoking pot and doing whatever LSD like that stuff was just kind of the normal way to go through high school. That's what was happening. So the idea of straight edge and for me what I connected to was like, oh I'm going to be strong like I'm going to be strong. I'm gonna be mentally strong.
Only physically strong like we started working out.
It had nothing to do with Echo Charles over here was working out because he wanted to get a little bit more buff. Like I was working out to be stronger so I could be better friend a little better friend to my friends and be strong. So that that became part of my soul of okay, I'm gonna be strong. I'm going to be mentally strong. I'm going to try and be mentally stronger working towards that by the way, it's all I have like the most ridiculous.
I have the most ridiculous writings from when I'm a kid, you know, and I still have them but they're
just
You know, I'm I can't be weak about this. I need to be
stronger need to be better. Like that's what I was writing when I was 14. It's kind of crazy. So I think the way all that stuff landed on me. And by the way, this was all like this was all how it'd be like, you know, they the animals in Australia they kind of became these their own things like kangaroos and what platypus like all these weird animals in Australia. We kind of became this weird sort of
Of offshoot of what we knew what we found our because I've lived in the sticks man. And and so we kind of became our own little offshoot of what we thought this was supposed to be man. The first time I'd hardly Flanagan On the podcast and he and I read his book and he's like, I'm he's doing heroin. I'm he's just off the freaking rails. Yeah, there was there was a segment within hardcore and punk that was like heavy into drugs. There was the straight edge. Yeah, although it was less prominent. It was Ian. Yeah.
Makai those guys. Yeah, so I'm walking but we didn't really know that I thought, you know, listen to the kromaggs and listen to Minor Threat. I thought that okay. This is what this is what it is and I kind of took those couple threads and me and my buddies we made that are thing. This is what we're doing. And so that was
Very instrumental in the way cause I'm going back to this is when you ask me how you know, where'd you get your identity from eyes after the podcast I started when you were coming down. It's like where did what who where did I come from? Another thing that's huge in that music. And in that in that Spirit as you mentioned is like Rebellion, like we're not going to conform with something else just because it's there we're going to do what we think is for lack of a better.
The word the right thing to do, but we're gonna do what we think is the good thing to do and so we kind of developed this hole.
This whole ideology really and part of it was like, oh, yeah, I'm not going to if something doesn't make sense. I'm not going to conform right that's not happening. So then you take that then you have this trying to be really good at what you're doing and I was definitely into that not in school, you know, not in education neither. Oh, but with what we're doing skating like we're gonna do our best to become good at skating good at like trying to work out some things. We're trying to
Good at running to represent well and the hard work idea of the working class ID of like hey, we're working hard and the DUI thing our DIY Thing you already mentioned and that's a huge thing. I mean, why do I have a Publishing Company? Well, because oh you can't publish my book in time calls make my own that's complete from the spirit of my youth. It's the same thing with start a podcast. You don't you can just do this. What do you do? There's no you don't need a producer. You don't need you don't need anything.
All you need is an iPhone and you can start a podcast. So there's a DIY Thing behind that and and then the last thing that I was thinking about was this group of friends that you had that I had.
You didn't want to let your friends down.
You didn't want to be a blood clot. You didn't want to be like a liar or a you don't want to let your friends that you had this sense of Honor, right? It was like we you not going to let your friends down and that had a huge.
A huge impact on me of a it doesn't matter what happens you don't wanna let your friends down. That's a huge thing and then all that stuff right there again me trying to trace my freaking personal identity. Now, I roll into the military and guess what you learn out of the gate going going through SEAL training is you don't let down your swim buddy. You put the team first that's what's going to happen. It does not that it was a perfect cross over for me a perfect cross over me. You don't want to let your friends down. That's what that's what we're doing.
Do you want to put the team first you want to do the right thing?
You have to do the right thing. This is something that again a look. Let's give Ed McKay credit from Minor Threat. Like he was just doing what he thought was right.
And going against everybody and just standing up and doing what he thought was right. Look. I've always listened to Black Flag and Rollins huge huge influence on me.
Black Flag my War side to just listening to that album for a year just that side for a year and a half over and over again. It's like that's going to leave a mark on you. Absolutely. It's going to it's going to etch your neural circuits. There's a there's a black flag live album where Rollins is just yelling the discipline. I am the discipline and here I am I'm probably 13 14 years old that
Mark yeah, he left quite a mark and yet the weird thing is like there was people there wasn't a black flag that were heroin acts heroin addicts, right and here I am going. Oh and I took that and made it into what I thought was the thing. Oh, I understand what he means by that we went kind of like on tour with Rollins band in the late 80s. And so we'd hang around with Rollins
and he would be doing
push-ups and you
No, I'm he's I think he's 10 years older than me. So when I'm 14, he's 24, so he's like a groan dude, and I'm a little kid but it's like okay we're doing push-ups. That's what we're doing. Okay, we're working out. He's getting ready to go onstage. What's he doing? He's working out stretching. Like that's what we're doing. So I took all that stuff and it just made so much sense to me and I formed it into what I thought it was and and some of those just inaccurate.
On you know, I sat down with Harley funding for the first time. I realized man. I was well, I'm glad I was off base. I'm glad I was off base because the direction he was going not too many people survive. He's lucky to be alive. I didn't do that was like,
oh what
what this means is discipline what this means is working hard what this means is supporting your friends and that's as I look at my identity so much of it came from that and then getting in the
team's words. Oh you take care of your your teammate you put the team first you do the right thing.
You got to be tough like the same thing when you're skateboarding you fall down. What do you say? Oh, I'm going to go home. Now know you get up and try again. You will rub dirt and then you get up and you go again. That's the freaking SEAL Teams the SEAL Teams. You're tough like oh you got hurt cool. Keep going. Oh, you got dinged up cool. Keep going don't even say anything about it.
Don't say I'm cold. You don't say I'm tired. You don't say I need a break. You don't say that stuff. You don't say it. I know there's probably a bunch of bad ramifications cause of that. Okay, but when you're 25 years old 21 years old 32 years old. That's what you're doing. You're not you're not taking a break another huge piece of it was in especially now. I'm in the SEAL Teams.
You're not going to be the best at anything. Like there is a guy that is going to be better than you at shooting. There's gonna be someone else's better View and running someone's better you and swimming someone's been so you're not going to be the best anything and you just have to own that you have to be you just get humbled by everyone around you and it keeps you humble and then on top of that combat keeps you humble because when you go to combat, there's all these things that you can't control all these things going to happen and they're going to unfold and you're gonna be looking around and you're going to say, oh I'm
I'm at the whim of what's going on right now, and I got to hang on and try and get it figured out. So it's it's very very humbling to have that happen.
being squared away
Does that mean anything to the civilian sector Echo Charles B squared away? I mean you can imagine but that doesn't that's not like a common thing that everyone's going around saying Andrew squared away.
I mean, I've heard it look done a few scuba Dives her team a team guy on those. Yeah game squared away is that wouldn't just all your shits in order for sure. It's dialed in right there was phrases. I need to bring these phrases back. There's satisfactory, which is sat like that's at or unset which like that's on set. And that was it.
It was a just those two choice of binary choice you either worse at you already your stuff is squared away or it wasn't your onset. So you get this programming where it's the worst thing to do is be on Sat is to be not ready. Oh to show up to a dive and be like, oh, hold on. I don't have my knife or hold on my rigs. I didn't bring this part of my rig or all those things is like you're letting everyone down. You're letting everyone down when you make those mistakes.
There's this weird.
This weird paranoia that I got from that I to this day have a level of paranoia of wanting to be squared away like yep squared away at worst case scenario. Yep. You want to be squared away going?
Going on archery hunt right you're going on archery hunt to show up and not have all of your shit dialed in to me. I would I mean I was so freaking paranoid in the SEAL Teams. Now, it's archery hunting is a 0 check check check recheck recheck recheck get everything dialed in be ready for that operation because I don't want to be the guy that fails and let's down the team.
so
Those things again when I got to the SEAL Teams.
We a group of us. We kind of took the the spirit that we thought was the right thing and we ran with it. I love it. I love it. I you know, the Rebellion piece is something I it's ringing in my mind because what starts off as a rebellion as we talked about a moment ago eventually just becomes mainstream and what's cool and I think is exciting and I'm looking to where this is going to happen in the podcast Community is when Rebellion happens within the rebels so examples from
The important cultures of history that we're talking about are for instance.
Joe Strummer said that one. Oh one other thing starts, excuse me starts the clash Clash is blows up. It's like a worldwide Sensation that I mean should I stay or should I go, you know people here The Clash and they you know, like those are like pop music at that point. He starts bringing in Hip Hop as openers and the punk start booing.
They boom like who are these guys and he's like no, you don't get it. This is the this is the thing. So then he starts to realize the hypocrisy of it all internally. I don't see hypocrisy inside the podcasting committee. That's not what I'm saying. But the moment someone starts a rebellion within the community of rebels, that's cool because what that means is that it's going to evolve skateboarding. This happened in numerous ways the examples that come to mind and there are many Danny Way
Is skateboarder he's getting big vert. He was considered the little kid that could hold up with Tony Hawk. They tried to create this false like competition between them and like it was ridiculous because there are homies and like it did so whatever just do the same thing differently both great Danny start Danny breaks his neck fractured vertebrae surfing I believe it is Newport comes back decides. He's not going to jump motorcycles in the desert and surf as much anymore. He's going to take skateboarding the next level. He's
Building mega ramps and jumping over, you know going 40 miles an hour or something actually a friend of ours who's a photographer our podcast Mike forgive me. I'm a tell the story but I think Mike was set one day to go film that he's been the photographer d.c. For a long time and I think he was supposed to go take a picture of some guy like skateboarding some you know Street thing and I this is the quote I'm paraphrasing. I think Danny got says to him you want to go see someone do like a crooked grind on a knee high ledge. You want to see someone fly through the air 45 miles an hour.
Or 400 feet upside down, you know like Danny was doing it Evel Knievel. What did he do though? He started building that but then the other thing I'll never forget. He's working out. He's training his neck. He's training is training hard. He's doing like he's like Cyclone like like rope ball swings and in skateboarding. If you worked out you were prior to that. You were a jock. That was not considered. Okay, Danny broke the mold. He's taking his body and his health seriously because he keeps getting hurt yet. The next thing think he worked with Paul check also.
I'm getting strong doing all this stuff next thing, you know, he's breaking multiple world record. So he rebelled within the community of Revels and I don't know him super well, but we're we occasionally talk still and he just has this Spirit like it was for him a slider slider slider like skate, like, you know all the time him in the so Red Dragons as long as little gang in skateboarding and I wasn't a part of and
He rebelled within the community of rebels. So then it evolved. Now you got have this whole new dimension of skateboarding X Games mega ramps and all this stuff. So, you know the stuff repeats you see it in science, you know, I used to be you were an anatomist or a physiologist or this or that all of a sudden somebody who's a neurobiologist. There's a woman up it at Stanford who years ago many years ago. 1998 Carla shots decides. I'm going to study the immune system. Everyone says the brain isn't immune privileged organ that is not true by the way, but back then that's what they
thought she starts turning immune neural interactions. It's an entire field. You can probably get a degree in it. Now.
What year was that that joke about
1998 is when she started looking around at immune molecules in the brain. She had already done spectacular work. So, you know, and I'll tell you I know Academia very well and even though my lab is, you know vastly shrunk now, I still have a lab still teach despite what you might read in the internet still a professor at Stanford.
Last time I checked it's just you know a few days ago. They called me still very involved. But the point here is that academics and Academia is very insular why everyone's afraid to Rebel why because Anonymous peer review of your grants and papers biggest fear. You can't get papers published how to get papers publishing you money to fund the product. How do you do it you write grants. Your grants are reviewed by your peers. Everyone is terrified of upsetting each other. So the party line becomes the line very hard to read.
Bill some people get independent funding from other sources and they can be a little bit more adventurous but it is one of the most it didn't used to be this way when funding was more readily available, but it's one of the most like yes communities like yeah, you you go.you go like Rebels are it's not really not really okayed. But you know Carla was in the best sense of the word. She broke the mold multiple times other people have done it to these are just kind of seeing examples then another example from skateboarding that non skateboarders. We'll probably
Rob Dyrdek
Here is a guy who skateboard is great skateboarder. I used to see him around and then he turned to our friend. Mike playback is the photographer my podcast with my closest friends and he is like I want you to start filming me. He's got Mike's not feel more. Never call photographer filmer take photos of me. They he got himself a bodyguard big a bulldog a start a TV show and he became a businessman you weren't supposed to do that. You weren't supposed to be like an athlete businessman. He's like he said, you know, he does a lot of stuff on entrepreneurship. He's a super impressive entrepreneur. So I love it when people are
breaking more gravels rebelling within the community regarding and it seems to me that within the SEAL Teams. It's a little harder to do because there's a like high risk High consequence outcome, if you know situations, right? Um, It's War right so feels like it there's probably less room, but I'm wondering like in Jiu-Jitsu has anyone is it Gordon Ryan who's considered the yeah. Yeah. Yeah actually had the privilege of talking to him recently. He called me about some stuff you have some questions.
Hopefully was able to help him but like I mean, there's a guy like that somebody who just kind of like does it differently or just does it more does it better?
Yes. Yes. And yes. Okay.
Does there you go rebelled against that? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And anyway I'm going long but I guess the point is that like breaking the mold among the mold Breakers is how it evolved and I'm excited to see what's going to happen now in Public Communication podcasting Etc because it's we're all very different but I don't know some I feel like we're on the or on the
On the cusp of something.
Yeah, there's also the whole commercial side coming in to the podcast like that. They're not doing what you're doing and they're not doing what I'm doing. They're doing something different. They're doing something very different which is you
know, massively highly produced shows and do people watch those listen to those. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. They're really popular. Oh, yeah. I mean,
they're some of them are huge. Some of those are huge and they have, you know, huge backing in their own by someone and they get a you know, it's to me it's all good. I mean if that's what people are
Sure, that's cool. Hey, you mentioned the internet and all this kind of stuff. You just kind of you just kind of popped up for the first time with some scrutiny like public scrutiny and article and stuff like this. What was that? What was that all about? What was that? Like? Yeah. I mean we started the podcast
in January 2021 and so that it grew really quickly and honestly, like I didn't know it was going to grow quickly 2020. I was on 2019. I started posting stuff to Instagram 2020.
During the kind of like the peak of the lockdowns I start going on some podcasts no book. No nothing. Just trying to give people Health tools and teach them some science. We launched in January 2021 and just push just kind of took off and got a figure like sooner or later, you know, you start taking, you know, you start getting some criticism. I think the first thing that happened that prior to that was people started to supplements, you know people like oh, it's supplement thing. Yeah. It's kind of obvious you have sponsors that makes the podcast
So that you don't pay wallet. So it's available to everybody. I've been to like supplements a lot. I've been taking them since I was in high school and I benefit from them a lot and I understand that they are different than stuff that is, you know from randomized control trials and oftentimes, there's not a ton of testing of the different things. But anyone who uses the right ones can tell you like, okay, there's something there and they may or may not choose to do. It depends on disposable income interest etcetera, but they're not the foundation of like what we teach in the podcast. It's almost all Behavior.
All tools information. So that was kind of the first wave that kind of hit and when that happened I was gonna like well these people look like they could use a few supplements. Just kidding. What I thought was listen, if you want to take them they can take them if they don't they don't like the informations free allows it be free. Yeah, the the the reason stuff was interesting because it was you know, in many ways. It could have just been titled like, you know, Andrew huberman is a bad person.
Because because it really likes ought to really just like undermine every aspect of like who I am, you know, and who I know myself to be and who my friends and no me to be you know, this idea that like okay my backstory or whatever, you know, it's like listen actually one of the Kyle tell you a brief Story. One of the best things to come out of that was a guy named Steve ruge shougi who no longer smokes a lot of weed doesn't smoke weed at
All but back then when I was a kid, he did he was 14 and and there's a true story that I got pulled out of high school and you know put away and I got one call and I called Steve because he was my friend / team manager for Spitfire Thunder, but I wasn't one of the good skateboarders as I mentioned before it was unclear whether or not I was like on the team or he's just being kind it was a sympathy and I called him and I go sure, you know, like I'm in this place. I don't know what to do and he goes brow. You're the most normal guy. I know.
And and you know as funny as they interviewed him for this piece, they interviewed a lot of people but they they didn't use his peace. But what he did is he wrote to me after the interview he goes. Oh, yeah talk to them and you know what? I told them. I had put you on Thunder and spitfire and go you did and I go Let it go you did I waited 30 years
to know that you were
33 years to know it turns out I was actually on Thunder and spitfire. So I was like, yes, like if nothing else it was totally worth it for that. So in any of that
but three pairs of trucks, it looks
totally
it was purely a surreal. I mean, I went to the Reno Nationals right and do very well. Like listen, I would have cut I would have done anything to be one of the the skateboarders that could really make it but he was actually kind enough at a different point to tell me look he goes bro. You're never going to be one of the big guys in skateboarding and I remember just being so heartbroken but it was a gift right that he told me that because it turns out I need to do something with my mind more than skateboard in any event. Yeah. It was it's weird. I mean, I think when you take a step back and go, okay like
Generates clicks right? It's rarely like oh this podcast is doing really well Time Magazine had done a really nice piece which had balance in it where they, you know, kind of touched on how the podcast was really making an effort to teach science and also health and health and also science. This was not that and it was interesting because I know me I've got fortunately I'm have tons and tons of friends. I'm really close with I'm in contact with some of them less often than
Sirs, and yeah, sometimes I get busy and I don't text back as much but I have people that talk to every single day. I exchanged a good morning text with like four or five people including Armstrong Thibault a few other every single morning. Like we hang out we spend time in person, right? They interviewed an ex-girlfriend of mine who is super awesome. She actually we met here in San Diego and supporting me and then of course, you know, there was an assertion is about me and my character and that's where it gets down to this thing.
thing where it's like luck, I mean
We as humans are complicated. We do some things right we make mistakes but to ascribe at intention to like why people do things like that was the part where I thought like they're like, you know, they sort of tried to tie like dopamine neurobiology to protocols in the podcast to like some diabolical like even the cover photos like diabolical like controlling Master might listen. I'm just trying to get through
Through the
week like I'm better. I'm pretty squared
away on the order of a day or a week. I'm thinking next episode. There's no there was no and there's never been any master plan to do anything except one thing like I genuinely like I know this in my heart is that my desire has always been to put valuable information into the world that people can benefit from and to do it at zero cost and to do that to the best of my ability, right and and also to do the most amount of good in the least amount of harm
In life in all aspects of life, and of course, you know nobody's perfect and I certainly am not and you know, there was if I'm going to just be direct about it. I mean, I think they're a couple things one is first of all like there.
Is no version of me or life where like I'm validating or supporting.
Behavior that is common but not good. Right. I think that was something to kind of be born out of that like, oh, you know, that's six girlfriends. Okay. Look I've had challenges maintaining one girlfriend. Okay. I think we can talk about this a little bit more but this is where it gets to the importance of defining the relationship and what what a relationship you know, that's an important label, right? I mean girlfriends of mine. I'm at my family we spend time together, you know that met their families. We that that's a girlfriend, right? Okay doesn't mean that other people are insignificant.
We cannot just means it's a different nature of relationship, but I would never want to validate or support like cheating. Right? Listen. I've been cheated on it sucks. It sucks. I've cheated on people and a and that sucks and so I would never ever end especially now because I'm saying it want to
Validate or support that as a success right like that that represents failure cheating represents failure not success. That's clear. The other thing that's really important is I think like we have to all all be careful about not pathologizing behavior. And how do we pathologize Behavior? We give people labels we call them sociopaths or we decide or non clinically appointed people to say. Oh that's a narcissist or that's gaslighting or something like that.
I think you know one of the great things about human beings is that we can look at ourselves. We can look at others and we can try and take understanding and accountability and try and do that without you know, self-flagellating or flagellating other people because only then is there a chance of people changing their behavior. So, you know
Those you know that whole thing, you know some of it I just want this like what like, you know being probably one of the most I just had to like literally laugh out loud like that. I doated on my Bulldog excessively. Listen, if you want to know somebody's heart look how they treat their animals, you know, look at I mean is it actually runs counter current to the clinical diagnosis of sociopathy which they also sort of like alluded to write. I love animals so, you know to be criticized or kind of poked out for like
Can show that my Bulldog Costello was tucked in like a like being tucked in with his blanket, you know, and I love seeing them comfortable and I like, you know it like it and it broke my heart to see him cold or like you know, and like I mean, I have only two words for anyone that has a problem with how well I took care of my dog and I'm not going to be you know, I think the scientific explanation is fuck
you.
It had to be weird, you know, I was thinking about this and we are talking about a little bit prior to but and you just mentioned kind of your trajectory to go from a person that I mean will in in 2018. You are just like a working stiff dude, like doing normal working stiff
stuff, right and grants right in papers on advisory boards 2018 driving back from at that time. Oh, no.
I'd move to my place off Piedmont Ave in Oakland. Did you buy in did you own a place there? Yeah, it's a little place out there.
So you were established enough that you owned a
place small place. So when I so I was first a professor at San Diego, so I finished my postdoc at Stanford got hired at UC San Diego. That was very end of 2010 early 2011. I lived in normal heights. Yeah, I was you know, that was the pit of the market. I was able to buy a little Craftsman Home live there.
My Bulldog Costello and talk to him every night talk to me and every night. I'm not love that dog. And then net my you know, then-girlfriend Keegan who was kind enough in that, you know, it was interesting that the these these media things, you know that they there's a data selection in terms of what emphasize but she very, you know, graciously report. We had a we had a pretty awesome relationship of living here. She had a dog shallow pit bull. So his Costello and and Zoe and
We lived there and in normal Heights and then she eventually went up to do some schooling up north. I was going back and forth. And then when I took when I got moved to Stanford meaning I got offered a job at Stanford got tenure at Stanford on entry in 2016 and 2016 and we were living literally in a basement apartment off High Street. It was pretty rough his own back then I think maybe it's a little lighter now but commuting
You know doing that and then I eventually we parted ways and I got my own place off be Bond Ave in Oakland and was commuting and doing the academic then you just weren't traveling the world like working like a Mania. I've always worked like somewhere between like 70 and 80 sometimes 100 hours a week. Sometimes that throttle back now it's you know, the one more segmented but yeah, then, you know 2021 start the podcast and all of a sudden it's like
Wow, like I didn't like when I put stuff out into the world. It's I mean, this is what's also so I think important for people to understand about these online things and media and all this and we can talk about this a lot if you want is that it's like a one-way conversation in many ways, but then you're like catching it back through a firehose, right? So you have to it you do develop a really thick skin, right, you know, you people are going to say stuff. You know, I think that it's very
be different than a one-on-one conversation and and to just also like make sure that I'm rounding the corners and what we were just talking about like I understand that.
You know my podcast isn't for everybody. It's kind of long winded it gets down into the weeds other. We have seemed shorter content coming some 30 minute Audio Only summary type stuff that I'm hoping people will enjoy if the other stuffs too long, but you know, it's I understand because I grew up intentionally doing different looking different acting different because it was what was in my heart.
That people are not going to like it and I also understood that there are people that are going to like it and I also understood that in a couple of years people kind of drift towards it and by then we were already on to the next thing and that frustrates the hell out of everybody. It frustrates the hell out of everybody but we don't do it intentionally right? There isn't again. There's no diabolical plan, you know, as I once saw a quote that of Rogue and I maybe it's accurate. Maybe it's not but he described himself as like the fish that got through the net that
There's no on. You know, he's just being himself. There's something so refreshing to people just being themselves and I think that so for me, I'll put stuff out into the world. I'm not thinking about like are they going to like it or they knocking I'm just doing the best I possibly can. Of course, I make mistakes. Like this is the flying thing like the idea that like I saw some headlines that were kind of derivative headlines or like, you know, the the falling of like, mr. Perfect, like what like anyone that knows me and that's close to me knows like I've
At it before on Lexus part is I'm like, I'm replete with
flaws because I'm a human
being and I'm always trying to do the best I can and if like someone has an issue with me and they want to talk about it one on one. I will absolutely every time I won't do my best to work that out with them. Now when things are getting that it publicly that's a whole different business because now it's a dialogue that you can't control and its people say whatever they want. They can put whatever labels and then you have to understand the incentive schemes to which is that they're trying to sell clicks and
They're trying to get their angst out and and people are resentful or people love you and people hate you and they were talking about this before like here's here's my my thesis these days and I've talked to a couple legitimate psychiatrist psychologist and so far it's you know, three for three.
the internet
and social media in particular is borderline borderline borderline personality disorder bipolar, but borderline borderline means literally weaving back and forth across the line from healthy logical sane to psychotic. It's either projecting at you love and adoration or it's projecting hate and vitriol and you can't control which one it's going to be. So when you get when I go online now, I'm like, okay. I'm going on X which I enjoy
I really like X. I don't know
why they because I like a little bit of a scrap yet in there and it's like it's borderline. You're going to get psychotic stuff. You're going to get saying stuff. There's some smart people. There's some dumb people there's you know, but that's what you're dealing with you're dealing with a borderline organism. And you know, I don't know who said this but you know, the larger the group the lower the level of Consciousness. Somebody said that not me just repeating it. So I think when you when you're out facing or even if you just on the internet, you got to know what you're dealing with young.
No, but I would hope that if you or you ever had an issue with me that you call me up and be like hey, dude, you need to get your ass down to San Diego. We need to have a conversation and actually a team guy that I'm friends with and I end-of-year had to have a long one like a long one where we kind of and yeah, like words were said and tears were shed. That wasn't supposed to rhyme but it did and it fucking hurt it hurt. It hurt hearing that I'd done something. Is that like I wish I hadn't and it hurt.
For me and him like not understanding like dude. We were trying to tell you this and you mmm, you know, and at the end we like got off the phone and he just go pom and I hope that was for the best. Guess what he was at my house recently with his son. We're good we hike yeah, there's still some like stuff there, but he's gone through some stuff recently familywize totally unrelated to and it's like your clothes that's intimacy. That's actually how you bridge a divide and to me like the
Idea that people are going like sling stuff as a way to try and work things out the one person. I've worked things out with purely physically Johnny pharaohs name is funny. We all these knives we call them dagger. He's unfortunately he's dead suicide it out in 2017. You know, that's one thing that pissed me off about that. Right and when people were like, oh these kids that, you know died what listen anyone want to go check like John eikleberry Aaron Curry also named Aaron King at Great graffiti artists him orphan orphan and Johnny Fair 3.
Had kids I grew up with who eventually went the to the graffiti game. Bike messenger, like wild ones. All three of them died in a year. It was fentanyl for John eikleberry. Orphan Aaron King also Curry because he was in a foster home last name Curry stomach cancer. He was in the MoMA San Francisco Moma from a street. Yo before he died and then Johnny Fair sad situation, but raddest kid when we were kids one day we were on the bus. I said something about his mom dumb idea. He's
My size he goes. Well then come come over here and I'm like, why did he come here to me? Hit me Don. Okay, then when are we scrapped? And honestly this kid half my size. He beat me up. He beat me up and guess what? We're best friends after that. So it used to get handled that way nowadays somebody to pull out a gun or a knife and like you but the scrap thing used to work on the internet name-calling is not going to solve it in person. The way you do it you sit down you have a conversation and it hurts and I will say now and for the record and forever, I'm always
A open to having private one-on-one conversations with people to resolve things. If the goal is resolution or people can like keep pain in their hearts and move forward. You don't always get that opportunity and that's sad to
me when you can let that pain out on Twitter.
Yeah, or or you can or you can leverage other things to try and get it out. But I don't know I did anyway the point is this is like I I have certain patterns in me that I'm sure are healthy certain patterns and me that are unhealthy, of course, like I'm always trying to reflect
Like that's just who I am. I'm always trying to reflect on how I can be better and do better. But again, I am replete Look up the word folks with flaws, but I like to think I get certain things done well to anyway, I'm going along here on this. But if we ever have an issue just talked to me first. Hit me
second. Yeah, you you and I were talking about that. We're on the phone. Actually. We're talking about the internet and you you told me about that idea of it being a borderline person and I brought the
In clinical definition of a borderline personality disorder mental health condition in which a person has a long-term patterns of unstable explosive room emotions mood swings extreme. Love to extreme hate of same person all good or all bad inappropriate or intense anger chronic emptiness plunging headfirst into relationships than ending them just as quickly that's the internet.
Don't you love it when people tell you they're going to unfollow you
freaking nail that bro,
so we have to ask Jonathan hate, you know who's out there talking about social media and all that. Yeah.
You had them on here. I have not.
Yeah, I haven't had them on my podcast either but like I mean, I think this social media thing in the internet that we built this thing this creature. I mean, we're now starting to understand like what's the biology and psychology? What's the psychology of this creature that we interact with constantly and that we're a part of its wild is a creature.
It has a personality, right? And it's a split personality support. I'm
my current girlfriend is a she's trained in CS Nai from she has a undergrad and grad degree from Stanford know we didn't meet
at Stanford. This is like a theory on the internet. No, she worked at meta after that and now she's but she teaches a i online. It's awesome. I don't understand most of it should Brainiac she's like it's a brain like the the internet is a brain. It's a nervous system. It's a neural system and it has personality and it has dimensionality to it and it's kind of interesting for the last 15 years. It was all about Neuroscience. Everything is the brain now, it's all about math and AI everyone starting math in AI that the kids coming up.
Do it. I'm trying to learn these large language models what they mean. I mean, I barely understand the top Contour. But yeah, these are it's an organism. It has expression as moods it hallucinates. I know it's been AI has hallucinations and then it gives you the wrong thing and like it's wild and I'm not afraid of it. I'm excited. Like here we go. This is might as well be a skateboarding punk-rock podcasting like it's this is the next iteration. Have you tried? Have you tried
to AI yourself on one of the if you said hey,
Hey, I'm feeling kind of low energy today. What would Andrew huberman advise me to do have you tried
that? I haven't I mean I played around with chat gbt a little bit. We have an AI thing for our podcast my team built it Some people prefer that I'm I'm like, I'm not cautious. I'm just I haven't gotten around to it. I'm a purist. I'm just I'm trying to get back to nature, but you haven't you haven't just tried what I just
said. No so iÃve done it with myself. Okay, because people say it's so awesome. And so I would ask it let's say leadership.
Chicken and what I've found is it's about it's pretty good. It's pretty good, but it's not quite there. Like there's a there's a certain. What's the uncanny valley that Rogan talks about all the time how when you see a picture or you see a i generated person on a TV you like it's not quite right, you know, there's something wrong with it. So the answer is that when there's like obviously large language model of me. It's going to have all my podcasts and it's got all my books.
So it's got a lot of my thoughts that it can capture and what I notice is it gives a very good answer that definitely sounds like it could be me and then there's some little thing that you go. Yeah didn't quite nail it but because it didn't quite nail it it also is great at giving itself an out kind of a caveat. So the end of the answer it says and by the way, all leadership situations are different so you this particular approach may not be appropriate for the situation.
Wasting that you're in. So if I asked it if I asked a I huberman if I said hey, I'm not I'm feeling low energy today. What should I do? It would say. Well you want to make sure that you have woken up and gotten some good sunlight in your eyes. Perhaps do 30 minutes of Zone to cardio. It would give me a list of things to do and then it would say at the end. Of course the human body is a complex organism than these may not be the right answer. So it gives itself an out even after it gives information gives itself an out
amazing. It's pretty clever amazing. Yeah, I mean
My girlfriend's been like trying to encourage me to use more of these tools. Right and I'm listening. You know, I listen. Do you know that and I'm and I'm slowly moving up to to using them because it just it does sound like it can generate also for generating email responses. Mmm. You know, I'm not the quickest on email. I'm not the quickest on text message admittedly, you know, I didn't know what's funny when text messaging first came out. I remember I was a postdoc at
It was probably around 2007 that Facebook was cropping up and I think that a flip phone people still at Sidekicks magnin and and I remember thinking like people are taxing our members thinking myself. This is my thought that this is just call. I thought this is so dumb. This is so dumb. This is like people that passed notes in class who passed notes in class. I was like, I didn't Pat's class, but I need to talk to me or talk to him or I'd wait till after class half the time I wasn't in class. But anyway, that wasn't go to class folks go to.
Class trust me trying to make up for lost time is very very hard. Don't do that skateboard after school skateboard before school do your thing go to class but I remember thinking this is so stupid an indirect and and doesn't make sense and it felt like Whispering like I always, you know my dad because my dad's old school, you know, this kind of goes back to her talking a little bit about before in adopting kind of scripts within your head. My dad's Argentine. Okay, and he's pretty traditional I grew up with a lot of kind of like here.
About a lot of traditional stuff. My parents are diametrically opposed politically there that you know, they end up divorced, you know, they're both happily in other things cool. But you know, you internalize some of those scripts and I remember him telling me when I was a kid because I had a friend over male friend and he whispered to me and my dad goes no no Whispering you want to say something you say and I was like, okay like I met you I can still remember that right? I don't know if that's good or bad. It. Sounds good. We all of these stories of parents being very clear.
Right, but then you know sometimes the things we internalize don't serve us. Well, right because what if you can't say it to somebody or it's like overwhelms you to try and say then like do you not say it like that gets you into trouble that's not good. And so I think you know taking these scripts that that exist like these these like if thence they're worth challenging internally, I'm doing and doing a lot of that lately I do that kind of like, yeah, like what are the scripts in my head? Like, what do I really believe because especially when you start getting feedback that's so different than the way.
Show yourself in that the people close to you know, he said go like oh like I mean, I would hate the idea that that someone would think like I was like unkind even or you know, or you know, so I think we have to address these scripts. And so I think that we're trying to say I think with is a I going to have a way I feel proud guilty hottie, I don't know. It sounds like it will I've asked Harper this my guy, but I'd like to ask her and she's just like, oh, yeah. No, it has feelings that are loose.
Names like it knows and it all makes sense to her because she thinks in math. She's Matt dimensionality and I'm like whoa, and it's scary to me, but it's here to stay. There's no question. It's here to stay. I think we're all going to have told an AI twin where you'll go Jocko. Hey Echo, like what do I need to do today? And it's going to say yeah, you think you're tired, but you're not tired are you know, you think you're you don't need rest, but you need rest like it will know you based on Biometrics better than you know you
Now that's scary. But then again, that's the kind of therapist. I want knows me better than I know me as opposed to me trying to explain things with words. I mean that yeah, I've already tried that. I've already tried to explain myself with words of that didn't go so
well you were talking about James Hollis and I know you just went out to interview him and you actually had sent me a video of him talking about creating a life. It's like an it's probably an hour and a half long.
But it was very interesting to go through that and you know, we've kind of touched on some of the stuff that he talks about in that but we want one of the words that he taught one of the things he talks about is your vocation and he breaks down the etymology of vocation meaning it's it's not just your job. It's what you're actually called to do in life. And then you get the things that Society is telling you to do and your family is telling you to do and the materialistic is telling you to do and your ego.
It's on you so they got all those things and they're kind of at war or at odds with this psyche this this human spirit that you have and what he says, which is interesting is you can't you can't outrun the psyche of an unlived life. So if you're not doing what you're truly called to do.
That creates problems that creates issues.
And when you when you're trying to figure out where you're at when you're trying to think through do you think you landed your vocation? Do you think you got it
done? Oh man. Well, first of all Hollis is amazing and we would normally not travel with our studio to interview someone but he wasn't able to travel and he said exactly that he talked about a he said he said and he framed an interesting way. He said, you know, he said, I don't think we should immediately applaud people that have a 50-year marriage and I thought
What he's been married a very long time he goes. Yeah, because sometimes inside that 50-year marriage, there's a soul death of one or both people and as a kid from a divorced home who still would very much like to have marriage and family working very hard to make the changes in me. That would be required to do that. Obviously.
That sort of broke my heart and on the other hand I said like what are you talking about? And he said listen in those moments where we're not in stimulus response we can hear what our soul wants. That's what the psyche and the Soul wants our expression and if we don't listen to it, it's the saddest thing of all because there's no no way you can go through life without feeling you lived the right life and so for me I have
both a blessing and a curse the curse is that
I can't help it but to do what I believe in and that's the blessing to so when I was a kid, I'll go through this quickly. I loved tropical fish and I love chop down the birds. I was obsessed. I spend all day all day at the aquarium store and at the bird store and just logging them in a venture. I got these great sheet dwarf parents and they've shit all over my room and made everyone miserable squawking it was disaster and then I hit puberty and then I fell in love with skateboarding and the stuff of the peripheral to that and you know discovered girls and like it was super
And and then punk rock music and then it was biology and neuroscience and psychology and biopsychology and and then run a lab and those were all and it was just I just couldn't and can't stop myself. That's right what I love it's like what I just bask in it and then when it came to podcasting it was like Rob more it was going to be my book agent because he does some publicity stuff but he does the fight with Teddy Atlas podcast and him and like this guy. I was telling me he's a punk rocker is even know it is he didn't even know what that is like drives a Tesla.
Parts his hair. He's like real look good looking guy and his wife had real squared away life everything and I'm like, but he's just got this Spirit. He runs triathlons and he's he's just got this Spirit. I'd use this like sense and I was like, let's do a podcast. He's like, okay, we set it up. It was like go there was never a should we do we get my blade back from DC be the photographer bring two guys, you know, Martin Frozen Chris Rea from they have this video production company. They worked for DC there from down here kind of Orange County guys skateboarders bring them together.
Ian Mackey Stanford media like get all the guys together do the podcast
could not stop us
couldn't stop ourselves and we're just all on the plane ride back last night from DC and everyone's like editing and working and doing and I'm like, this is the best. This is like getting in my friend Jake. Rosenberg's Volvo in high school taking time off with forged signatures. Don't do it kids going out to the Reno Nationals for skateboarding and do it, you know and and and just doing it and you know and like and
Having to get someone's credit card because no one was 25 and I don't know what someone had a credit card and staying at Circus Circus and seeing that all the craziness and it was like an all of that and just like we're just doing it like I can't help it. And so I think that it's I have I feel like I'm exactly where I need to be right now and the hard lessons that come with it exactly where I need to be our this is like very much in your guys's wheelhouse of like extreme ownership and good. It's like, okay.
That sucked that's not how I would want it. That's not how I would have written the story. And also I've learned something and a really smart person told me this actually on the way here. He said, you know, like we'd love to think of our life our life scuse me as a bunch of threads where you can fall it and connect the dots and people talked about connecting the dots Bubba blah looking back. You're supposed to be able to connect the dots. This is the whole Steve Jobs commencement speech on 2015 at Stanford. He said you can't connect the dots going forward I would argue. You also can't connect the dots going backward because if you spend too much time,
Knowing that you you lose sight of the fact that it's actually just a tangled ball of thread we have to do is just keeps pulling it Forward. I mean I think living in the past is dangerous have to reflect on the past. But I'm thinking okay podcast now get information out and shorter form we're thinking about how to do that. Maybe use AI to edit podcast get them out in shorter form. Think about like, I love the Olympics. I'm obsessed with track and field go up to Hayward Field and organ like I want everyone to watch the track.
And filled the Olympics, I don't know why this feels so important to me. But like I miss that something like positive stuff about country. Like these kids are amazing. They're working so hard and like want to go up there. I'm hoping cams going to join me. We like watch them, you know the Olympics. I love Sesame Street. I think each character on Sesame Street is like Cookie Monster is dopamine one cookie like this like Cookie Monster's I bounced because cookie can come from any direction. Right? It's like he's just pure dopamine Oscar the Grouch. It's our grouchy circuits right almost like that like sweeter side.
It's all neuroscience. And so I'm like I like we gotta like Sesame Street. I don't know. I don't know what's going to come with it. So it's like an energy and I'm like, I don't know where things are going to evolve but I want people to understand their biology their psychology and learn and for me it just kind of explodes through me and I try and do it with words or podcasting. So yeah, I feel like I'm exactly where I need to be and I can sense the next thing coming and I spent a lot of time with Rick Rubin these days. I'm not trying to name drop but because
I believe just did yeah, you know, he's a really close
friend. We've been spending a lot of time together.
Other for a couple years now get together sauna and cold and I love Rick as a person as a friend first, but I mean, he's like the essence of like learning how to tap into your Creative Energy and sense what's coming and he's just somebody who can just like wipe the Slate clean on like he will answer questions. I have about Strummer The Ramones or whatever he loves that stuff but he doesn't really like talking about the past. He's got all these great stories, but he's just like always focused on like what's the next creative thing? What's the next is I've been trying to think about that.
A lot. So yeah, I feel like I'm where I'm supposed to be and and it's weird because I think that the punishing features of being public-facing. Yeah, they suck but it's like nothing nothing nothing compared to like the like
Humbleness the like privilege and like the thing of being able to like Sheree what you love with the world and hopefully they benefit I mean that to me is like the ultimate when you're Your Love can benefit the world and I see that listen what you do I listen to your podcast with with Ferris with Rogan like I'm a fan so for me like here like I'm like also Fanning out hang out with Armstrong. He comes over. He's like, yo, good morning, and I'm like to Mars from the moms, you know, I listen to him every day in my life, you know sit.
Down here left a guitar at my house every once awhile who pick it up and I'll just do it in a mall, you know, so yeah, I mean I but it wasn't always like that and I want to be clear because it all sounds like magic there were many years where I was just like I felt disconnected I was disconnected when I left the skateboarding Community. I was very alone and the academic Community. I made eventually great friends there, but I didn't feel the same thing and then podcasting it's brought it back. So I would say to anyone like
Like if there are years where you have to go out and alone and kind of lonely, hopefully not alone alone where it's lonely like finding your people is hard and I think that's part of the reason why people are online they're trying to find their crew like my sister. I said, you've always been a pack animal and I'm like really crude up these days men and when I female friends too, I have female friends and they're like great sources of feedback and fun and and I think that it's one of these things where we
You know, we sometimes think like it all just like pops up and you're supposed to just you have to build these things and I don't know if they're if anything come through it like the spirit that you guys put out. There is like you can do this and it starts with getting your ass out of bed in the morning and doing a workout when you don't want to and then you go build the next thing and build the next thing like I think people sometimes forget you have like four kids, right? I do have four kids Merit your even steadily married with four
kids, you know. Well, I only have one left that's you know in the hat that I'm that's a dependent they say, yeah.
That's a
huge
accomplishment. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, and I know you
your your dad too. Yes. Yeah. Yeah and you guys train and you do it, you know, I think that we need more examples of this, you know, and I don't know so yeah, I think I'm where I'm supposed to be but you know listen lately. I this I text you every once in a while and say should we do it should be run for office? Listen, there's there's there's Rogan Haynes and then there's you know willing huberman. It doesn't have the same ring to it.
I think it's pretty good. I'll run
with you as long as long as your president. Yeah
Bulldogs grazing on the White House lawn you realize that we're going to upset some people by saying this
right? I'm one of them third box. You'd be great.
You be great. I know that's why people keep tapping. You thought I wasn't saying it now.
No. Yeah. I really don't like politics and you know, my standard answer is if things get bad enough, of course, but people people's ideas of what
It's bad enough. Most people's idea of what's bad enough. It's is not close to what bad enough is in my book. Yeah, I think people I know this is this make this conversation is not a pleasant one for you, but they're I think the reason people bring it up is people feel your steadiness.
And they feel your integrity.
And those are felt things well, like I said, hopefully there's not a civil war or some kind of crazy. You know people it is bad. They'll tell me I like you have an iPhone right now and power and food and like everything's going good. So everything's going good. We're on track I can keep away from that world, but we don't want you to miss your morning, sir for your morning workout in time with your rolling and talk about people, you know, trying to parse.
Your life, I mean, you know that time when you like borrowed an extra stick of gum from the kid sitting next to you and then give it back that's coming back to get you Jocko because that a
person if they're mad they won't talk about the Stick of gum. They'll say some other, you know, they'll say some other accusation and you're like, oh ok awesome. Who's this that's going on. So give wild real quick.
I fantasize these days in a real way. I mean we have obviously a big divide.
Someone came up with this name, not me, but I think that there should be a call for League of reasonable people. Hmm, like not not a tightrope in the middle, you know, but like a league of reasonable people that explore things issue by issue that really parse them as carefully as one can in the time allotted and then make the best decision they can for the greatest number of people and I don't know if that's just a pipe dream, but God willing
Like there will be to emerge out of what's happened right now A League of reasonable people but not as long as the internet is borderline.
It's going to require some other mode of communication and building. I don't know. I don't have any genius ideas about
I've brushed up against I've talked about him on our podcast one times. It's just like normal people. Hey, this is the party of normal people. I'm not crazy. I'm not flying off the hand. I'm just a normal person. I have a normal job and I want to live a normal life. And that's that's most people by the way, the the the people that comment on the Internet is a tiny tiny tiny fraction of people.
Yeah, and they're not normal people that are normal are focused on doing a good job at their at their place of work. They're taking care of their kids. They're taking care of their spouse. They're trying to save up for a new car. They're trying to put an addition on their house. They're trying to save up a down payment. That's not what people and that's most people that's most people and another thing that happens is oh you have one idea that I don't like therefore. I hate you and I hate all of your ideas.
And that's what's been very interesting right now is because you're starting to get all this muddled world where things are starting to come back and if you go far enough to the left, you actually become right and if you go far enough to the right you become left. And so now those people are starting to get confused there looking around. They're not know what they're protesting about. They don't know whose side they're
on listen. The solution was it was given to us years ago in none other than the Ramones Joey Johnny.
Didi and Tommy right Joey left very left wing Democrat. Okay, Johnny stated self stated Republican right-wing they hated each other.
Rick validate of these stories because he knew them. Well, they toured together they spoke through an intermediary one guy took I won't say the direction you can watch the documentary. It's awesome one guy took the other guy's girlfriend and married her and then she would tour with them and they all managed to stay in the same van. Now the drummer's turned over all the time and the best one of course was DD because we went in and when they were inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall Of Hall of Fame here ever see his acceptance now he gets up there and they're like
One person said so I think I think Johnny thanked President Reagan and the Republican party. I think Joey thanked. I don't know some left. I think the world or something. I don't check with you and Dee Dee gets up there and he goes I thank may he thinks himself? He thinks himself. He's just like he could care less about any of that stuff. Right sadly. He died of a drug overdose a couple weeks later. But Joey Johnny D and Tommy got it the if they could tour in a van together.
And play music together and even have this interpersonal Dynamic together and have it an inter intermediary help them communicate. That's proximity. Okay, if they can do that, then I like to think that humans can get along despite diametrically opposed
views. Yeah. It's it like a talking about the left becoming the right and the right becoming left. I just was reading a quote from John Lydon, and I can't get it. You know Johnny Rotten.
The Sex Pistols the original one of the original punk rockers and he basically said it's a very strange now that the most punk rock you could be is to be a conservative because they're the ones that are actually against authoritarian government now, so you get this role reversal and actually if you go back and look at California you ber Alles right by the Dead Kennedys and what's that song about it's
But the authoritarian that they're talking about is Governor Jerry Moonbeam
Brown. Is that right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I remember when Jello Biafra from the Dead Kennedys. He like ran for
governor. Yeah. He did. He did run but when you read that song Or you read lyrics that song it's hey, there's this authoritarian government. Will the authoritarian government is talking about is Governor Brown by name, you know, that's what he's saying you're trying to impose these things on us and it's really funny. It's it's really funny to imagine that he wrote that in 1982 or something like that.
And it's it's talking about basically political correctness in 1982. Like oh you're going to come at me with your suede pants. He's going off on these freaking tyrannical liberals that are going crazy with the government. And so it's very interesting that you see the the way the the tides turn and the way things have shifted. It's very bizarre. I actually still have I have a lot of hope, you know, I have a lot of Hope because like I said, I work,
Work with companies all over this country and I work with energy companies oil companies financial companies insurance guy every company and you want to talk to those people. They want to know. Hey, how can we help with leadership? How can I do this? How can we do better next quarter? How can we help our customers more? That's what people are thinking about. They're not thinking about these what these crazy people online are talking about all the time. So I think eventually though some of this stuff will burn out and I think there's burn out right now. I think there's a little bit of burn out.
It feels like
it on on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook. People are like dude. I mean, how can you consume all that information really like at the end of the day? How many comments are you going to read when you realize that you're going to be? There's going to be some extreme left. There's going to be some extreme right? There's gonna be a bunch of bell curve and that's that. And before you go you look how much time did I spend doing this if you spent 20 minutes imagine spending 20 minutes like reading comments your and what could you have done 20 minutes?
Get a guitar and learn to play guitar if you play guitar for 20 minutes a day in a year, you're going to be able to play guitar actually quite well
or do what Hollis said sit there close your eyes listen to what comes up and resist the temptation to get up and move and you'll learn something really valuable by taking yourself out of stimulus and response. You'll learn something about who you are and what you want to put into the world and you know, I've only done it once since he suggested doing this and it was this morning and I was like wild like this, you know, I couldn't
But this is why Jocko we want you to run but no I get it. I understand that the moment you step into the political Fray. It's a very different picture. It's a you know, it's a you know, it's a 12 hour news cycle. It's the it's the whole thing. But but I think people people do want that. They also want to feel trust they want they want to feel confidence in who's who's out there for them?
Yeah, we're going to keep pushing. It's going to be
interesting election and
2024. Oh boy. Yeah. I know. I think we're rolling towards it right now. I mean, I think that's what people are feeling. It's gonna like what's going to happen. But you know, I'm I'm still somewhat optimistic have to be
yeah, I mean late 60s early 70s there was there was people getting murdered. There was Bombs all the bombings all the time in America. Like there was a major issues and
We made it through that. Obviously. We made it through the Civil War. So hopefully we can make it through the 2024 election
really won't make it through the election. I think the question is what happens after that. But listen, I'm not very versed in politics. I have friends on both sides. Like I said, I grew up in a split political home. You know, I've lived in Berkeley California San Francisco San Diego, you know, Los Angeles, you know, never live to east of Interstate 5 at least not far east of Interstate if you always love to hear I've been to the east coast though love it, but I think
that yeah. Yeah. I mean you don't you don't really know humans. I think until you have friends from both sides. I mean, I've always had a huge mix of friends with different political leanings and you don't hate them now. No, I I love people this is this is what cell like this is the thing like I it's
my heart is what gets me in trouble because I love people I want to understand and then I think then you know, empathy is a weird thing right? I'm not saying I'm the most empathic person in the world certainly not but I think in order to that to empathize we actually have to leave ourselves by definition then come back and you know, I think you know earlier we talked about relationships. I think the best advice I ever heard on relationships. I'm really trying to internalize more and more as from Paul Conti who's been on my podcast.
And I think was on Whitney Cummings podcast. He said, you know, if you had to write down the top 100 things that are important for relationships of all kinds it's self-care communication that just repeat 50 times. You know, that's some choco Simplicity of directness. That's definitely simple, you know, and I think he's right and I think that, you know, we don't get taught how to do all that.
You want to make that more right? Yeah.
Self-care. I'm not 100% sure because I have to get some kind of definition. But let me tell you about communication you want to talk about how to help relationship with communication 97% of the part of communication that you need to be good at is listen to what the other person's own him point of money because everybody is thinks that good communication means I'm going to talk about CH like oh, I got a beef with my wife. I'm gonna go talk to her. So I go we sit down I talk 97% of the time I walk away thinking I had a great conversation.
Really proved my point my wife's ready to file for divorce. You know what I mean? Like that's that's that's what happens. So if you if you want to communicate, well shut your mouth and listen what other people say, by the way that also includes political discussions. So if you've got some some opinion that I don't agree with I shouldn't try to argue against you I should listen to what you have to say. So I understand where you're coming from. Otherwise any time I open my mouth is pointless because I don't even understand where you're coming from the first place. So everyone could do a lot better if they shut their mouths and listen more.
Is a weird thing for a person that has a podcast to say. Yes, because well I'm sitting here
talking well, but you're giving valuable information. I think you know, I think one of the Hallmarks one of the real challenges of being a person being an adult or a kid is you have to figure out well, let me put it differently. I think 50% of having a self is standing your ground around what you know to bolete know and believe to be right and true like
yes this know this I'm not this I'm that you're this you're that or this was a not b and standing your ground and we place tremendous value on that. The other half is hearing what's coming in and going. Oh, whoa. Okay, maybe or whoa. Okay, you're right. Okay, and the thing is is we tend to place a normos value on the former. Not the latter.
But we also have to be careful because we need to be semi permeable to input. We can't take everything that comes our way and say oh, yeah, you know, you're putting this label on on this or me or you or whatever or them and you know, yeah, right. I mean you can't be wishy-washy you need be semi permeable and the challenge is knowing when to stand your ground and when to take in and I think I think that's one of the major challenges.
Challenges of being human.
Yeah, I think that people get caught up on a lot of little things that don't matter in stand on stand their ground on on a bunch of things that they have no business standing their ground on and then and there's a few core beliefs. Like you said half the stand your ground half be flexible for me. It's like let's say there's a hundred things that I believe right now.
There's like seven of them. They're not moving seven of them. So that's a seven percent. Not 50% There's seven things that I believe that okay, you're you're not going to be able to change. So it's going to be very very very difficult for you to change my mind on the these seven things or five things or whatever. That number is. It's a very small number everything. This is to me is strategic thinking right? I think of like, okay, where am I at as a human? There's big giant thing.
This individual Freedom. Like I believe that people should have individual Freedom. It's going to be really hard for anyone to convince me that taking away people's freedoms as a good idea. It's going to be really difficult. Now are there a million little details in other worlds and other aspects of life that I sort of have a what does that softly held belief on sure but I can change my mind pretty easily about a bunch of stuff. There's probably seven things that I'm like, yeah. I'm not changing my mind on that.
Not without some significant really strong evidence articulated really well backed up by some kind of historical understanding of the world because most things they're going to change their going to change and they don't matter and and that's why I think it's people tie themselves. And actually that's another thing that that Hollis talks about.
Ee talks about the fact that these people that are ideologues ideologues. They are caught they basically they lose their soul because they surround themselves with I'm a left-wing person. I'm a right wing person. That's who I am. That's not who you are. That's not who you are. But wait hold on you're going to tell me that this whole belief system. You adopted the whole thing like you it from top to bottom and just said, yep everything that is left wing or everything that is right wing. I
At all, like who does that? That's crazy. Who who does that? The answer should be no one everyone should say yeah, you know what? I don't believe in what I don't believe in welfare because I'm so right wing that. Okay. Well, hey, what about this person over here who single mom she lost her job. She's trying to find a new job at you can't find one right now and she got four kids to feed. Do you think you should she should get nothing?
Well, you see what I'm saying there to just say. Oh, I'm an idea log and this is what I believe and that's it. It's just a dumb place to come from and yet we do it all the time. And then you throw your opinion out about something you're going to get attacked from all different directions. It's been a it's actually I had Robert F Kennedy jr. On that's what that's a they're having a hard time pinning him down because who's gonna who's gonna vote for him?
I'm not sure because if you're the most left-wing person and the most passionate thing that you're passionate about is the environment cool. He's your number one vote. But at the same time you're anti-israel.
Okay, then you you or sorry if you're a if you're anti-israel, you're not going to vote for him. So here's he's he doesn't make sense to anyone and they're trying for because he doesn't fit in one.
One particular view he's very hard to pin down. And so what is happening to him is he's getting attacked from both sides. And guess what? I don't agree with that everything that guy says at all. Sure. How could you how could you I don't agree with everything
that anybody says
at all because I'm a human and I have an open mind about like I said 96 of the things that I'm thinking right now. I have an open mind about and I'm ready to like saying hey, you know what I can see where that makes sense and you know what at least we could try it for a while.
I'll and if it starts to backfire we can pull it back and we can make a different decision. That's okay. So people get really into what they think they know and you actually don't know anything and I don't know anything. There's very few things. I always I always have a little trick question that I asked when I'm working with a company. I'll say how often do you think I have to admit that I'm wrong and people say all the time, you know you because I talk about humility. It's important to be humble and I say so how often do you think I have to admit that I'm wrong and people say you probably do it I said,
Times a week and people say probably 12, you know seven no, no probably even more than that. They'll have these little arguments amongst the crowd and then I'll tell them the truth, which is I rarely almost never have to admit that I'm wrong. And the reason that I rarely almost never have to admit that I'm wrong is I never go out there and say hey I'm 100% right about this under I don't go out there and say that because I don't believe it. There's very few things that I feel so strongly about that. I say, hey, I 100% know this thing that I'm about to say.
Is the truth very few things. Do I feel that way about so and yet you can go on the internet and meet thousands and thousands of people that actually think they know everything 100% better than anybody else. It's very disturbing. It's super disturbing. I mean, it's super disturbing and I think that we will be talking about politics that despite. You know, it always being a third rail topic.
I have to believe that people want to be reasonable. I think that there's so much projection onto like who the candidates are that I think we forget who they're supposed to serve and what it means, you know to be on one side or the other. I'm very bothered to the point of being like like legitimately concerned not not enough to run unless you run. I made this joke. Actually I was at the end of The Time Magazine.
Interview you're like so what's next and I'm thinking to myself. Well, I got to record this episode this week. Like is that like one mile one week Horizon rather, but I just I don't know. I blurted it out. You know, I just said like I don't know. Maybe I'll run for office. Like I think that's when the heat started actually in the heat what it come anyway, but that's like when some of the heat started and you know, I'm not flip about them in the decision to be a you know, a politician is a serious one, right? I mean making decisions on behalf of millions and millions of people
Oh and and there's rarely any recourse for four years or so. So I just I don't know. I like to think that there's some young girl or guy out there who's like like I'm gonna get this someday like they're like on it. They want that slot and they want to do it for the right reasons. That's the
hose going to say because most people that have that attitude you do not want them in charge of
anything sure, but at least it right I agree. I mean not for their own ego reasons, but that they really see an opportunity to do.
Better to serve, you know, and and and it might require someone like that can actually win at this current time. It'd be very difficult for a person with a good heart and a humble attitude to make enough noise.
Till to actually move the needle be very difficult. Yeah.
Well this country has a history of celebrities running and doing well. So I don't know like is Taylor Swift gonna run just seems like everyone loves her she did so yeah this amazing. She certainly has the stamina that tour schedule. I couldn't tell you one Taylor Swift song. Sorry. I just it's not my clarity, but
That tour schedule think you were taking Heavies before
standby. I think she's amazing. I think she's amazing. I just I just couldn't tell you one song. I'm just gonna be quiet overnight
in trouble now about what Taytay?
Oh sorry. Okay, she's super impressive. But that peddling the torque got the tour schedule. The tour schedule is incredible. It would bury 10 people
somehow she presented some work out here to this workout where you like
Do her however long her concert is you do some kind of exercise like what she does and apparently it's quite challenging Echo. Charles have never heard of that workout.
MK. Just the fear the mere
physical part of the physical part of
yeah. No, I like some, you know, non quote-unquote punk rock stuff.
I have some friends that are very into Taylor
Swift and keratea like
super into there you go. We call him swifties. Yes, we have these but the mother-daughter combo but I'll talk to the mom who I'm good friends with and
so it is
Like she has just nailed relatable
emotions and feelings and eras that girls go through and women go through
and she just nailed it because she's been doing
it through that in her life. So she's just captured like here's what and so as a girl grows up into a woman. She can kind of track emotionally what's being felt and and it just she just Nails it apparently and
apparently yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I mean, I guess that's for the tour the success of the tour the enthusiasm and it seems like the universal love right? Like there are these people who are just universally loved it's they're rare but I mean, I'm sure she catches Flack but if she does I'm not aware of any of those stories, right? You know, it seems like she's just revered and it's awesome. I think the yeah the just the right the sheer physical stamina the mental stamina that you know, obviously she's got
A team around her but like you can't you can't just kind of imagine that stuff into existence. So, who knows? Maybe she'll
run? Well, she's also an epic song writer and that's been proven over and over again, but she Taps into you know, that that thread of emotion that people have grown up especially girls and women that they get and she's nailing it. So Props props to take take take take Taylor.
Taylor Swift yeah, is that her name now? I just kind of thought you meant. Hey, I apologize. There's there's something you were talking about when you were okay. So before you had the podcast you are kind of a normal dude out there grinding still normal. If you will your life was more normal. My life was definitely more normal. It was me and the girlfriend and the dogs and and I still worked out we'd all that. There's something that Hollis talks about and its Authority.
Tea and if you're living your life for Authority for an external so Authority is something that's external and it's usually it's large and external. That's the way he describes it. So this is when you're living your life, too.
For in your case Academia, right? You're living your life according to this external Authority. Also according to the external authority of you've got to pay rent. You've got to pay taxes. Like there's a bunch of external things that you're you're living your life for and
then you kind of found your vocation. I would say in being able to teach a bunch of people kind of wide and deep and Broad millions of people. It's pretty awesome when you think of someone that's trapped or there and what he says is if you're serving these external authorities, it's at some point look they can be aligned right now. It's at a pretty line for you your happen to be able to serve kind of both Masters both the external things and your own internal.
Did you stumble into that because it kind of seems like you stumbled
into it. Yeah, so I the I've been cursing a bit more than usual during today's podcast forgive me. We'll need a explicit lyrics warning which by the way parents that made every kid want to buy it more. That's true. Yeah, and and that's like when they put those warnings on podcast episodes.
What was her name Tipper Gore Tipper Gore. Yeah Tipper Gore once again like she was
Authoritarian figure that was trying to stop free speech in music. Right and that was to browse Al Gore's you know wife so that's kind of
interesting. Yeah, so it reminds me the question again. Sorry. I took a software update.
So you kind of
like, oh, yeah, did I yeah, so I was about to swear. I'm trying not to swear. So I became a scientist on purpose as he became a podcast kind of podcaster kind of on accident in the sense. I
I really wanted to get the information out to a broader range of people and Instagram was limiting and I still use Instagram quite a bit as a platform but podcast just made sense in some ways though. It was long before that. I started teaching. So when I was a kid, I would go to the some fish stores and I was obsessed with fish and birds as I mentioned before there's a real nerd like a real nerd and I would even come in to class on Monday sometimes and
Ask about to give a lecture about what I learned over the weekend. I did one on medieval weapons. I was obsessed with catapults. That's like the coolest thing and I was obsessed with fish and that kind of thing and I was at a carnival with my mom when I was a kid and they had the little fish they had the little bowls with goldfish in him and he'd throw the ping pong ball. And if you got the ping-pong ball and you get it and I was there and I saw people doing this and I was just mortified because they take the fish home and I knew that those fish were going to die if the water wasn't dechlorinated.
So my mom who's like a real do-gooder, you know, really like my mom just as it like a one-second aside was the kind of person where when we grew up there. So there was a homeless guy in our town they call them the Sheep Man because he were these sheep skins even on really hot days like the years later I found out not him but she would put homeless people should get them hotel rooms and just pay like, you know, like she was that kind of person and so I told her about the the décor she was mortified that the fish would die and so we went and bought a bunch of decor.
And I would then go to these things and I would give you a bottle of declaw r2d chlorinate the water when you won your fish but there was a cost and you had to listen to me talk to you about dechlorinating and taking care of fish. So it kind of started early on like it was a purpose and I couldn't help myself and who knows I have a little bit of a grunting tick that takes over if I'm tired and when I was a kid, I had a little bit of a thing in my dad used to say, hey, he's to squeeze my hand. We were in d.c. Once on a family trip and I stop that so I used to hide in clock.
Was a little bit of probably like early Tourette's kind of like and it would give a lot of relief eventually passed a lot of young people have this it's more prominent in boys. And then as the frontal brain circuitry develops, it suppresses it because basically that's what the frontal brain does is suppress these reflexes. So fortunately they didn't like throw me on medication. There wasn't even medication for it back then but in any case, there's like went for me to like get out what I feel inside or for me skateboarding and falling and slamming. I feel like
Boxing not a sport. I was any good at or that I recommend if you want to keep your brain, unless you're a professional great sport. I love is a spectator. But I remember I'd get hit sometimes like I can think clearly now, you know just kind of like shake off the cobwebs or like a good hard slam skateboarding like, oh no the day starts, you know, it's there's something to it. But actually that's a reminder earlier you asked me about the difference between was it OCD and this would be appropriate time because Tourette's has a little bit of a OCD ish.
To it. You asked about OCD versus neurotic. Yeah. Yeah because I was the same kid who would organize his stuffed animals all in a row and I'm perfect wake up in the morning get them all in a row and feel like it go about my day. The difference is with with true obsessive-compulsive disorder the well, the obsessions are mental. Obviously the compulsions are the action the engagement in the compulsion doesn't sadly doesn't serve to reduce the obsession. It just exacerbates it so like a hand-washing compulsion like it's not likely.
Like oh like I'm obsessing about washing. My hands are washing my feel some relief. It's you wash them and then somehow trips a reward circuit or something. We don't really know yet that then makes you want to do it more. So it's like an upward spiral or downward spiral depending on how you think about it of the behavior makes the obsession worse not better. It's a dreadfully difficult thing for people but there are decent medications. Now that can help and some behavioral stuff and some medication based stuff and that's
OCD. So the
And then is it Spectrum essentially like, you know, some people have it worse than others. Let me ask you this. Okay? So when I was young I used to count the steps, you know what I want to go upstairs and it always be by 7. I don't know why I'll always felt like I had to do that Joey Ramone the
try remote at OC D. He would go up and down the stairs. He'd have to count to seven. They were always late to tour to her spots. This is like discussed in the documentary
04. So wait, what do you mean by seven hours? Yeah, so I wouldn't go up into the role as exam with yeah exactly, right?
Right and then I'd feel kind of off
put if it will if they didn't land on 70 something bad was going to happen.
Nothing specific but something bad exactly. Right and so I had in high school or might have been Junior. Yeah High School time. I remember skipping some stairs. So the seven would land perfect at certain places, you know, you know, it's not totally uncommon. It's actually really good that you're talking about this because a lot of people have these internal obsessions and knock on wood compulsions and things that step.
Crack break your mother's back that kind of thing like you hear that in childhood and you like, you know, and like it's when it starts to diminish life that it can become problematic but and it can get out of control. Actually. There's a guy at Harvard who does beautiful work on motor patterns. His name is Ben. So levski mispronouncing last name Hungarian guy, and he shows these videos of these rats learning to press levers and and turn on lights and stuff in a cage in order to access it.
Reward so you see the rats like kind of in there like pressing. It's like random and then they go to get through in like a then they try to reconstruct what they did. And then over time you see these rats get like wicked fast at doing this boo, boo, boo, boo boo boo boo boo and you see they're hitting the levers in the right thing that turning on the light and off the light and then they get the thing but they also are introducing these other behaviors like picking up the leg and doing a little circle over here that has nothing to do with the actual requirements to get the reward and now think about baseball pitchers they have
Whole elaborate repertoire of things that they do every single time very few of which are actually involved in the throwing of the ball is as we develop these kind of these are complex behavioral superstitions and they become these fixed action patterns. We have a lot of these there's some nice studies done. I think it was at Caltech where they put video cameras on the parking lot and they looked at people's where they parked their trajectories getting in and out of the car and then they put lines over it like they were a rat in a experiment these are humans and then they just show like six months of Behavioral data.
A' and people are just like robots robots with like respect to like the trajectories. They take through the parking lot. They might pause every once in a while and say hi to somebody like we get any of these fixed action patterns. So a lot of what we do is subconscious that way but I would say unless it becomes a problem, you know, then it's then it's probably okay. If the best thing to do to get over that is actually literally to do what we're doing here is like to talk about it with somebody like if you think you're crazy because you do this you talk to someone I go. Yeah. I kind of do that to ya.
So the so you and that's what
it it always felt that way to me. Like it was a
Superstition when I stop and think about it not necessarily that there's something
up with my brain or nothing like that. I didn't I don't think I know what knew what OCD was at the time. But um, yeah when you talk about is kind of like, oh, wait, why do I believe that and then you connect the dots but then you still feel that it's working.
Yeah, you know Felix working at listen. Do I have some superstitions? I'm a logical person, but I have some superstitions in the one. The one thing you can do is just challenged it like if
You really want to break it. It's just like classic but you know behavioral desensitization. You just you get you count to five not seven or you just say no not today and then you know, hopefully you don't get into a car accident. Yeah, and that's the problem is that often times people are tense and then things happen. I think or you stay busy with other things you are the Mind wants to be occupied. I think it really does and some people have a greater kind of hunger for thinking than others. This is that that underlying tick tick tick tick tick tick tick thing. This is why I think doing is so valuable is why?
I think I'm trying to get to the 430 program starting to get up earlier and earlier because getting into a mode of forward Center of mass forward action. I think does set you into a mode of doing rather than ruminating. I mean there is something really deadly to the mind about scrolling in bed in the dark. Not just for the lack of sunlight all the things you miss out on but it does something I don't know what it is, but it ain't
good. My mind can scroll with no screen. I mean my mind will just be scrolling thing about stuff my
My wife has been doing this what she's been she's been super stoked on falling asleep. No, look, let's be real be real honest. Just Between Us. My wife doesn't have a lot of trouble falling asleep. This girl can sleep. She can put it down like she's great. Yeah, that's great. But she told me the other day. She's been doing this thing where you count down from 20, you count each breath.
Hmm. And if you if you
mess it up, then you start again at
20 and it was
so I
Write it and I'm like getting down to down to one and then just having to restart the thing again course you are more. I'm just more I'm just making it to 19. I'm like 20 and then I'm like thinking about 12 or something go back and think about something else. So I kind of can get into it's not fun. It's not fun to to do mental scrolling. It feels like a roller coaster. So for me if I'm like trying to fall
asleep and
you are
just is like I'm going from one thought to another thought to another thought to another thought and I'm feel like I'm on a roller coaster in my head. But the reason I thought of this is because you said your mind likes to be occupied while while my wife had read was you need to make your mind think about a specific thing and it's easier for it to let go and fall asleep. That's why wouldn't a little kid member this count sheep. Whatever remember this little myth your parents told you it's actually kind of true. Yeah lot of falling asleep is stopping to pay attention to your body position.
It's about kind of just going into your mind and then your thoughts become trapped fractured and then you fall asleep. We've put out these scripts. I put them out on audio and video this icon on sleep deep rest, which is just my and people will say well that's Yoga Nidra Yoga Nidra has intentions and things non sleep deep rest is like a body scan long exhale breathing and some other stuff and and we put them out as audio scripts because a lot of people don't want to look at a YouTube or something. Yeah, but in any case 10 minute and 20 minute one, and they let you really do they
Hu dat to to move away from thinking and doing to being and feeling now that's about not sleeping. That's about staying awake while perfectly still. I'm really interested in this state of mind that is being completely still with the Mind actively alert. Mostly because called ice Roth who has a podcast it was on my podcast. He was a like probably that one of the best neuroscientist that ever lived bioengineer. He's also psychiatrist. He's got five kids. He's like hyper functional guy said that his practice every night after his
Kids went to sleep. Now. They're older they put themselves to sleep. Is it to sit in a chair and to close his eyes and deliberately thinking full sentences complete sentence hard and then Rick Rubin who I spend again a fair amount of time with oftentimes will go into like lying down or seated, you know position just kind of like keep but mind very active thinking while still he's also big on walking and that kind of thing. It's interesting. I'll wreck his kind of come to embody like the the Mystique of creativity.
There's so much Mystique around SEAL Teams and around spec ops like because that's like how do they do what they do? And it's like well, they're not really gonna tell you but you can keep wondering what that's Mystique. That's what school I remember the old commercials for it like footsteps on the beach then they disappear. That was the coolest one coolest commercial. I don't know how I did with recruiting bows cool commercial and then with Rick it's sort of like how does this guy access this and I think he has his own protocols. He's not like just haphazard about it. He spends time in the sun walking.
And he's talked about some of this, you know still while thinking did I Surratt does that to Einstein was known for that walking than stopping closing his eyes and thinking they're saying about body still mind active. It seems like it's a good good place to be
here. You gotta gotta get control that brain sometimes man and I I'll be the first one to tell you like sometimes mine. I like to be really tired at the end of the day. Yeah, you mentioned that when you came on my pyaasa, like if I'm like if I get to train hard
Man, I feel so good. I just go to sleep. I just my head hits the pillow. I'm out.
Did you roll this morning? I did
not roll this morning, but you train this morning. Yeah, I definitely but like yesterday freaking had really good workout really good training and like I just fall asleep in a in a millisecond like your head hits the pillow, but if there's if you don't get if I don't get that that physical like let it out get it out. Then it's going to be then my mind can start thinking about things and also if my monster thinking about things even if I'm kind of tired, but if there's
Nothing going on in my brain. It's like yeah, that'll that'll that'll take too many hours away earlier. You asked me whether or not I feel like I'm in the right Groove my career. I was rude I didn't ask you like like you've been at this a while little while now how long you've had the podcast since 2008. Yeah. Okay, it's good. Good. Good. I'm not 15. I see and you have the other stuff dialed you kids are mostly out of the house, except one. You're happily married you
Businesses, like are you thinking specific Evolution? I know you have the show or the movie the word. Yeah, the warrior kid. Yeah. He didn't ask me to plug this folks. I'm actually just interested in stuff. There's there's no see earlier before we started we talked about how like, they're all these theories about how podcasters have these like Secret commercial relationships that we won't talk about but like because we don't want to like exacerbate The Conspiracy Theory, but which would become which we just did even more by yeah. I'll say about it. Listen I but
But this is this cool you mentioned this the other day and I'm excited and I retweeted about it reacts to about it way of the warrior kid is going to be a movie. Yep movie. Yeah, we Chris Pratt. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's he was in Zero Dark Thirty. He was in Zero Dark Thirty and he was in terminal list and he was in the bunch of other stuff. I mean, he's Star-Lord Jurassic Park like he's very popular. Yeah, he's popular he's yeah, he's great to God just some super
Call super stoked and you know that that that is that that book I've gotten such the best feedback of everything. I've done in my life the letters and emails and handwritten notes from kids and from parents that did their first pull-up got an A on the math test memorize the president's like all the things that are in that book that are going to help them so many from there's nothing more gratifying and feels better than helping out.
Out all these people and get and also giving kids a framework. You know, there's there's there's a one of the messages in the book is like you need a code to live by its everything. I just talked about. Well, there's a couple things that I there's a few things that these aren't going to change that's like the code you have as a human and part of that book is the kid writes his own Warrior kid code and once you have a code that you live by it really can give you some direction in which way you're going to go and it's going to let you make so many decisions that's going to point you in the right direction.
In lead you to a better path. So to have that opportunity and and actually the guy that I had I have I probably had four or five people reach out to me over the years that wanted to turn it into a movie. Finally. This guy named Ben everard. He reached out to me and what had happened to him was he walked into his kids room in the morning, you know 11 year old kid and the kid was doing push-ups and he says, what are you doing? He's like, I'm to be a warrior kid. What's that shows in the book and you he's a movie producer.
And he said, oh my gosh if this book can have this impact on my kid.
What is it? So he reads it. He's like, oh we're going to turn this into a movie. So that was kind of what what got the ball rolling this time eventually, you know got the screenplay written by a really good screenwriter, which is a totally different skill set. I've been joking about this a lot. My initial thought was well, we need a screenplay. I was like, well, obviously I'll just write a screenplay. Obviously. I wrote the book who could do a better job than me, but it's a different skill set and I what I would have done is I would have taken the books and turned them into the movie. There's like 141 transfer.
You know, what? Did you spin like that?
But movies are different than books. They'll and different. They it's audio. It's visual a book is a book your it's very it's personal right? So got this great screenwriter named will Staples and he just took this book and turned it into an awesome screenplay and eventually Chris Pratt. We were working on some other things with Chris Pratt origin.
USA and Jocko Fuel and Hugh's been using geography long time and he's he's a patriotic guys supports or gusa and so we were talking about doing things Partners Partnerships on that end and he ended up getting a copy of the script and read it was like I want to do this and so just very fortunate and he's a great guy and we got a great team. There's a guy named McGee who's a awesome director. So yeah, we've had a weird. It's awesome.
Cement, it's awesome. And it's going to it's going to
It's going to help a lot of parents and kids get on the right path in life and learn about hard work and learn about discipline and learn about respect and learn about empathy and learn about how to learn it. It's I'm very very lucky very happy very blessed to be in this situation and super stoked as well. So
stoked for you. I can't wait to see
it. Again. It's one of those things, you know, you're asking so it am I in the right place. I mean basically am I in the right vocation
I guess so. My ultimate vocation was being in the SEAL Teams like to me that's going to be the only thing that I will look at it was like yeah, that's kind of what I was supposed to do and I was very lucky I got to do it and I got to do it for 20 years had awesome experiences work with awesome people. And so now everything else is just pure bonus. It's it's pure bonus. It's
It's awesome and trying to take some of those lessons that I learned in the SEAL Teams obviously and pass them on the Leadership Lessons, especially but you know, I took those lessons and tried to give them to my kids. That's why I wrote those books. So
I'll continue to do that but is doing a podcast as fun as it is to go, you know out to the desert training facility and running gun. No, it's not just not. Sorry. I go Charles you're cool and everything like hanging out with you. Thank you, but I'd rather be shooting a machine gun. I understand.
I mean it's that's pretty unique and Peak set of experiences, you know, knowing a fair number of people who are in the team's that's like you guys obviously and
enjoyed something really
special. Yeah best job ever. Oh best best job ever and it's where I've kind of I've kind of gone through little transition where I used to never tell anyone to join because the chances are you're not going to make it which is terrible thing. And so when someone says I'm thinking about going the SEAL Teams, I'd be like, yeah, you should maybe check out the Marine Corps, maybe check out the Army, you know, go do something else because there's a
At least an 80% chance that you're not going to make it and of course no one thinks that they're that person right every person that shows up to Seal training thinks that they're the one that's going to make it and 80% of them aren't and when you take that to like they haven't even joined yet. Now, it's probably 96% of the people that joined the Navy to be a seal. Most of them. Don't even get there in the first place. So it's a very small percentage and I got into a habit of telling people. Yeah, you know, it's it's it's a good job, but it's difficult. There's drawbacks.
I kind of am now at a point where dude it's the best job ever. It's the best job ever you work with awesome guys, if you want to do that kind of stuff, I don't understand.
What else you would could do with your life? So if you want to shoot machine guns, you want to blow things up and most important you're willing to risk your life and you're going to have to kill people and you could get killed which is the huge piece of it. It's like oh, oh I want to be a seal because I want to live in Coronado and I want a freaking run on the beach like all that means nothing if you what you're doing what your job is to kill people and put your life on the line for your friends and for your country. That's what it is.
So if you have that thought in your mind best job ever if you have any other little thought in your mind, like well I want to do it. There's some little thing like it would be cool. But anything like any but in there, it's the worst decision you can make but if that's really what you want to do.
Best job ever. I had the best time ever me and my friends friends for life best time doing the best job like it's awesome. So you can't do that forever can't have that job forever and it's and the when I got to 20 years, I looked at my family and I was like
You know, like I've been gone a lot my kids barely knew me, you know, I tell us my first deployment to Iraq when I left my son couldn't crawl when I got back. He's walking around my second deployment to Iraq. I got home and my son could swim.
Some one other person was actually a Navy lifeguard. It's taught him how to swim. So I'm a waterman. I'm a surfer. I'm a Frog man and someone else taught my son how to swim that's jacked up, you know, you want to talk about missing out on life events and then you know throw my daughter's into that as well. What did I miss from them all kinds of stuff. So I got to 20 years and I thought to myself while I am going to go in and it was a bummer because it was a hard decision to make I had
Of freaking ridiculously awesome career. I was in a great spot. I was you know
Screened for X. I was like rescreen for EXO deep select. Like I was I was in a great spot. My career was awesome. You got to up a lot. Yeah. Yeah, and I was past my days of operating were.
We're coming to an end. They were kind of over like, you know, you get to that level of seniority. You're not going to get to operate. That's why that's why in the SEAL Teams. There's a lot of guys that get out at that 12 to 14 year mark, actually 14 they're going to hang on but ten to twelve thirteen years guys are like they're looking at their future and they think well, I came in the job to be a Commando and now I'm going to be not a Commando be helping the Commandos. I'll be supporting them. But Ma can be doing that job and
that's what a lot of guys they don't they don't have that same affection for the job at that juncture for me. It wasn't really that it was more more. It was just staring at a bunch of deployments.
In in the immediate future and you know, my kids were just about going into high school and you know, you start talking about wrestling tournaments and digits tournaments. You just going to look you're going to you're not going to see any of it. That's what's happening. And that's why guys that do 20 years 25 years 30. I got friends have done 40 years in the team's 40 years in the teams. They call them bullfrogs if
If you're if you're the if you're the person with the lowest class number on active duty. Yes you is this one you are the bullfrog and there's one at a time and that person, you know usually will have around 40 years. That's how long we'll being on active duty. So yeah that bullfrog position is hard-earned and huge sacrifice, you know, like families are are not going to be seen very much.
CH and the team's comes first, it always does so you're committing to that life and I did man and the teams came first for me 100% you can ask anyone in my family. Like what was the number one? What was the number one priority when Joshua was in the team's they'll tell you without question what the number one priority was? That's not balanced. Maybe if I was more balanced if I would have been more balanced maybe I would have been more open to staying in longer if I would have figured out a way like oh, yeah, I can I don't have to be 100%
percent focused on the team's or 97 percent focused on the team's and 3% of my family, but I wasn't going to miss a training Evolution for anything.
So yeah, that's out of at a certain point that ride.
He's going to come to an end. That's exactly what you know, I had to make that decision this freaking rough and especially because I
I was expected to carry on you know, and for me to go and tell you know, I'd work for the Admiral for me to go tell the Admiral. What I was doing was was a tough conversation, you know, and to tell my immediate boss was the Commodore it's time to tell him. Hey, here's what I'm doing and it's rough and there's a whole and unfortunately there was a whole bunch of guys that got out around that same time and so it wasn't good for the community at Large.
As rough was
rough, but you did it on your terms. They didn't tell you you need to go. You didn't get injured. No, it's time like you decided it was time and there's there's something beautiful to that. Right? That's that sense of agency. Well, I don't know because if I don't I don't think that I wanted that that was harder if I would have been injured men like sorry guys or been a screw-up and been like, yeah, I guess I can't
But it wasn't like that. It was 100% on me to look at my friends my brothers and be like hmm. I'm quitting. It's quitting your I'm gonna quit and because that's what you're doing and you go your entire career in the SEAL Teams. It's like I talked about earlier. It's like we're not quitting we're going to carry on. We're not complaining like you don't complain you don't complain when you miss your kids learning how to swim. No one in the team's new that might get no no, no knew that.
No knew that my kids, you know went to the had to recital did this start in the in the school play. I didn't see any of that. Where was I was at work didn't tell what you know one in the team's tells anybody you you you eat it and you carry on and that's what I did and I did it because I love the team's I mean, I wouldn't do anything else. It's freaking the best job ever and the guys are awesome and do anything for him. And so when you get to the end of that so for me that vocation was 100%
sent I was 100% aligned was 100% aligned the the pull that I started to get was. Hey, hold on a second. What about these freakin for children that you created and that you have not been paying attention to how's that feel doesn't feel good doesn't feel good the other team. Yeah the other team and and so that's why I made that decision and then from there.
The other stuff kind of happened like you said, you know and I joke about the so you said there's no diabolical plan. I didn't have like a plan for any of this for any of this. It was like, oh, well, there was a guy that asked me to come and talk to his executive leadership. I was like, okay. Well I can do that. And then he said can you come talk to him? It's all my divisions and I said, okay, I guess so he started paying me money. It's like, okay cool. And then the the owner of that company.
P'nay I want you to come talk to all my CEOs of all the companies I own and he owned 45 50. So it was just so then I have a new job basically teaching about leadership and then I need some help call my friend life. Hey lave need help you in? Hell? Yeah, let's go. Now people are asking us. Do you have this stuff right now and up writing a book first book stream ownership. I I thought extreme ownership would be like, I'll give it away at the back of an event like for free.
A lot better than yeah did a lot better than that didn't expect it. I didn't see how well it would translate to the to the world. I mean even the title is Extreme ownership. What does that mean? It means taking responsibility for your actions. That's what it means. That's something you learned in second grade. That's something I learned. You know, the teacher told you in fifth grade you leave you need to be accountable for what you do. You need your sponsor. Well, that's extreme ownership.
But people realize that that's what they need in their world. So then as that's coming out.
Of seal friend of mine told Peter Atia to tell Tim Ferriss dude, you should have this guy on the
podcast. I still remember in my mind the photo of you. Was it like the scariest
maybe? Yeah. He click baited that stuff. Good job Tim Ferriss like the most clickbait titles. I was in my apartment. It was key to my apartment off High Street in Oakland. I remember where I was standing in the kitchen. I saw and I just go like I was like, yeah if you were
To like draw a Navy SEAL. I've been living in San Diego prior. I have you guys used to come over and take over bars. Like I've good friends in the team's community so I can joke about this and I spoke it a veteran solution than marked out marks Capone and a Capone's veterans solution event at Coronado and Veterans Day and roomful sales. I said the same thing same thing. I used to I don't drink much and I really did but these days I don't drink at all but was in going to bars hang out whatever you guys were.
Go up. It was like okay nights over. Let's just leave like like this one. It's over. It's over like they're taking over. Let's go you guys are yeah it was San Diego's good spot for you guys the yeah, but it's great. Yeah, but the point is I think that it's such a it's a great Community. I could see how it would create that Peak thing. It's also listen to you. Also you're alive, you know, I'm not telling you anything. You don't already know you're alive so for kids missing.
The swim instruction thing is socks. I feel you on that not being able to be there for any of it. You know, you clearly did the math and the other team seems to be thriving. Yeah. The team is great and you
know my wife God bless her she just held down the fort
like a boss and
never complained about anything
in just gave you know, she just
covered all
the home front
I'm talking three kids and maybe four years. The first three kids were like in 40. Yeah, like in four years. She got screaming kids my wife. I remember she's very bad morning sickness. Her morning sickness would be 24 hours a day for the first trimester of births. And I remember we had she's pregnant with my son and my other daughter cells like ones for and ones two or three and my wife is like standing over the toilet throwing up.
And she's such a awesome sweet good woman. She's looking at my daughter's and she's telling them she sorry and I'm like I'm saying there. I'm a total idiot, right? I'm just like there's nothing you can do your wife's just throwing up your daughters as I mentioned. They don't know that I'm not around enough for me to be like, hey come with me that there were want to be there Mom. I'm the random dude that shows up every three weeks with like a laundry and but there's my wife just holding down the fort and saying like, I'm sorry, she's Paul.
James my daughter's that they have to see her like this. I'm like bro this rough. That's a lot of warrior. Yeah, so she was holding down the fort and then when I eventually, you know retired and so now I go into leadership teaching and then going back to Tim Ferriss was Tim Ferriss has me on his podcast.
And again at you know, there wasn't that many podcasts. Then there was a very small number of pot
pies in 2013 2014.
It was 2015.
I was 2050 layer. Okay. Yeah,
so 2015 that podcast come out and then Rogan here is it I go on Rogan's podcast and both of them told me like start a podcast. I'm like, okay, so started the podcast later account. Yeah and start a Twitter account to and Ferris lied to me. He's like
He's like just started. I'll help you. He never helped but you know, he did help me by telling me to start it music. Don't worry. I'll show you how to get out. That's a pretty
amazing team to so it was ridiculous. And so when the pot when my podcast come out came out.
Again, what am I talking about? I'm talking about the stuff as to reference what you talked about earlier. I'm sorry about the stuff that's coming from my heart who I am what I care about what I like to talk about what I like to talk about war leadership discipline. Like those are things that I talked about and that's what we were talking about and you know speaking of like highly produce podcasts because we haven't really changed very much and someone asked me like, hey, are you gonna do are you ever thinking about you know, maybe putting a background in this kind of stuff and I was
Oh you remember that disco song that AC/DC wrote? No, like no and I go back cuz that's not a CDC, you know, and I'm not a disco. I'm not going to make a disco album. We're making what we make us like still what I really like doing is
I actually really like a reading books that are written by first-person accounts or written first person to person accounts of War. That's what I like. Why because it teaches you about human nature get to understand people better when you see them in very terrible situations and how they get through them and what they do and how the other people react around them. That's one of my methodologies from for Learning and becoming better. So that's how all this started and
and then it's just applying sort of the mentality of the DIY punk rock mentality. Oh, well, I drink tea.
Okay. Well what people are asking me what kind of tea do you drink? Because I talked about on Tim Ferriss podcast was like well, there's these few different brands. Why don't I just make my own I love the white pomegranate tea. Yeah. Yeah. So there you go made my own I wasn't paid to say that I just happen to like it. I like it. I like it. But I think I think I made 10,000 tins the first run.
Made 10,000 tens put them on Amazon and they were gone in like whatever it was nine days, and I'm like yo, so that's kind of where it started. Okay. Well people want good products boom started making and that's kind of how this stuff started in that's where I ended up. So what does that have to do with my vocation to me? The vocation is ultimately
trying to help people and trying to help people with whatever they're doing and whether it's in look if you interact with other human beings you're in a leadership position and you probably need help doing it. Most people leadership is not a natural thing leadership is not any more natural than skateboarding in other words. Yeah. There's one of your buddies was a little bit naturally better than you and you're a little bit naturally worse. But neither one of you was born with the ability to do a kickflip it doesn't exist.
First you have to learn it. He got to learn a little bit better. He had a little bit better coordination. Maybe he had a little bit better build for it. He had better muscle fiber recognition, whatever the case may be so he's but he didn't know how to kick do a kickflip when he was born and people don't know how to lead when they're born. They might have some natural attributes that make it a little bit easier for and maybe they're articulate maybe they're able to break things down. Well, maybe they're able to simplify things. Maybe they're a little bit better at understanding of what emotions other people are having and all those things are going to be beneficial.
But you still need to learn how to do the kick flip. You still need to learn how to lead and so for me that's kind of the essence of it. How can I help people out? Well start with leadership. How can I help combat turned into like, how can I help you? Get in better physical condition turned into. Oh you got kids Let's help those kids out as well. And so that's what it really boils down to me. And that's where the most.
Gratification comes from is being able to help people out. So one the fact that it's an expression from your heart comes through like people that against I have felt thing. I don't think any of us podcaster non pod podcaster athlete academic poet right or whatever. It's can get any degree of success without like really touching into like
what what comes from the heart and I think this is what Hollis is talking about. When you have to listen to that call from your soul your psyche. I think some people he says it's an irrational calling and Iraq and their rationale calling which is important to remember. Yeah. I love that you that you remind that and also he several times reminded me that
The people who do it the people who like really step into their expression are going to suffer it you wish they didn't have to you wish it was just all reward. There are rewards certainly but that their suffering and that's part of the reason people resonate with it. Like again, you know, we talked about Taylor Swift Billy eilish, you know, anyone like you, you know, pick your favorite musician like you have to imagine that that the because of the amount of emotion they put into it. There's zero minus one.
Chance that it's all Rosy. It has to involve suffering and I think and I think that's one of the reasons we Revere these people and I mean you're highly revered and you know, that might be weird for me to you know to sit across from me and and to hear me say that but the truth is like people can feel like you you take the things you learned in the structures and the things that make you uniquely you and then you're trying to share them with the world in a way that can really benefit other people and you know, that's where there's less like protective part of me that comes out.
that you need protection from anyone let alone me to protect you but but I would I would your friend and I would the the thing that's frustrating is when you see people coming at your friends who are like, you know who are doing it from the heart and then you're just like damn like like it's so it's so aggravating, you know, I mean, whatever they throw at me and I'm sure we'll all get stuff thrown at us more like whatever they gets thrown at me or like it's
There was the response internally for me is nothing like the response when I see friends getting attacked and we got some friends in the podcast Community. I've Got Friends in the science Community. Remember academics are Under Fire right now. They're losing jobs left and right and there's a that's a whole other Biz, but you know, you just it brings out this Spirit of like you want to just say like hey, like they're trying to get it right stop calling stop. But you know, there are I think there will always be you know,
Maybe 20% of people who's just like have taken upon themselves to like completely dismiss their own sense of agency and just try and tear people down because they feel like that's the right thing to do, but it's a completely misplaced sense of agency, you know? Yeah, I think that's just the
way that's just that's just as we say in Hawaii, that's just how right that's just how you got to be. You got to expect that stuff. I'm
trying to learn to do this somebody really close to me who serve as an advisor to me is always just saying like he's like that your life will become so much easier when you
Why's that there's a certain percentage of people that are just really unwell and I'm like no no like they're light like and change their mind or just or we can we can you know, we can talk about we can figure this out like today and they're like no no there that unwell, I don't know it drives me crazy. And you know, I think that that's my work and my thing is to realize
that there's something else to be careful of and I made an explicit note when I was kind of getting ready for this because I knew we were
Talk about like what's your true vocation what you're calling this irrational calling and gotta go after that or there's a separation between the authoritarian things in the world that you kind of have to obey and if that doesn't match up you're going to be you're going to suffer. Here's the thing you gotta watch out for a to is like and you just said it which is chasing your dreams. There's gonna be a lot of suffering and there's absolutely no guarantee whatsoever that you ever get anything.
NG good from it like externally there you look if you're doing it, like when people for a while it was sort of now that everyone already has a podcast like everyone but there was a while we're not everyone had one yet and people would ask me like, hey, you know, I want to start a podcast. What do you think or what should what advice do you have? And I would say if you want to do it because you it's in your system and you want to get it out cool then go do that and up.
Upload it and be happy if you want to do it because you think a lot of people want to hear what you have to say and they're going to listen to it. Don't like keep in mind. There's a very slim chance that that's going to happen because
We're I was just talking to school today, like most of the time most people don't want to hear what you have to say like that just doesn't it's not normal. Like if I'm in a meeting I sit there and thinking of meeting most people don't want to hear what I have to say that people don't want to hear what you have to say. So that's most of us most of the time occasionally you have this strain of knowledge that people wanted to hear. It's like, oh, wow this guy like you said it landed with a bunch of people at a certain time. Okay, that's uncommon so
If you're going to for lack of a better word follow your dreams you have to do it because that's what you want to do for yourself to get these things out there. And if the world happens to appreciate it great and if they don't you got to be okay with that the chances are they're not going to appreciate it. The chances are your efforts and your suffering and your work is going to go it's not going to be rewarded. It's just going to be out there and if and it's so if you're doing it because of that.
Great, if you're doing it for some if you're doing all these things for the external by the way by the external forces, including your ego.
That's another thing to haul stock sell your horse talked about your ego being an external force on the true you so your egos an external Force. That's a saying. Oh, I would like a bunch of people to listen to me. So therefore I'm going to write a book or therefore. I'm going to start a podcast or therefore. I'm going to do this performative thing in the world. Well, you better just make sure that you're doing it because you want to do it not to satisfy your ego not to satisfy your neighbors not satisfy the interwebs or anybody else because that's going to be rough. It's going to be rough.
That's that would I would just say watch out for that if you want to do it because you think there's going to be seven people that are going to be freaking hyped for it and you're down cool. Do you think that I thought a bunch of people were going to want to listen to me talk about the the, you know, genocide and and war crimes it like I didn't think that
Did I think people were oh there's a out-of-print book from 1930 to about World War 1 written in the first person that is out of print literally out of print. It doesn't exist anymore. I have a copy. I bet a bunch of people are going to want to hear me read and reflect on that. What are the chances? No, we didn't do it for I wasn't thinking hey, I'm gonna go do this. So because a bunch of people are going to want to listen to this. In fact, we haven't done that. I haven't done that. So
Oh, I've got a book that was written by a marine that was in Guadalcanal who wrote A first-person account of what it was like for him. I want to read that.
If anybody else wants to hear it, they can press play if they don't it's okay, and I think having that attitude is a smart attitude to have and I also think that it's the it's the authentic thing to
do totally and I think that there's a way in which whatever we happen to be working on or caring about most I'm not talking about podcasters although it includes podcasters. That's the thing that if it feels like almost like a compulsion not the OCD clinical
Thing but almost like has to come out then that's the best-case scenario because there isn't that deliberating do I do this? Do I not do this? Like it has to come out and and it's just it just runs through you. I mean people talk about this like I like Spirit running through you Hollis talked about this about it it in the best circumstance you you drop in once a day or so touch into your psyche your spirit. What who you are your unique expression and then something runs through you it comes out and it benefits the
That's the that's the that's the ultimate, you know form of humanity. Does it work that way also the rewards when they come can be distracting. They can contaminate. Yeah, people start doing stuff for money. Rick's talked a lot about this in his previous book tour around the creative act like he talks about as you're offering to God like that's how he talks about your the creative expression because if you're paying attention to the metrics of will get paid this or do it that then people start modifying there's this amazing clip. I don't know if you've ever seen the movie basquiat's
About Jean-Michel Basquiat. Oh, okay amazing movie. Not the documentary. I haven't seen that. It's got Dennis Hopper Christopher Walken David Bowie Parker Posey Benicio del Toro It's amazing And it's like him when he was coming up as a painter Courtney Love. It's awesome. When the soundtrack Basquiat be a squ I-80. This is a famous painter. Yeah famous painter the Andy Warhol, he was a kind of a street artist that may be big. Anyway, I don't give away.
Amazing movie and there's this great scene where he's shooting Hoops with his best friend who's played by Benicio del Toro who I think is supposed to be the young Vincent Gallo and he asks him. He says to his friend Benny who's been useful Tory goes like how long do you think it takes to get famous and his disc and so Benicio del Toro. Does this just brilliant one and a half minute description. I'll send it to you as a clip. If we maybe we can link it. Maybe not. I don't know but what I want to happen in description of how how long it takes to get famous.
How they'll reward you for doing something a certain way and then when you try to evolve they'll punish you so you continue to do the thing that initially got you famous. Then you'll be rewarded again, but then they're going to hate you for doing it that way anyway, and then the end you end up right back where you started but basically wishing that you were an unknown person because then you could be left alone. And so it's just a brilliant like street-level kind of like guy from Manhattan telling a friend. Basically. Listen, you got your life exactly where you want it you're painting you making
Of an apartment. You have a beautiful girlfriend like you don't want that life and it's really interesting and and and it's not to say that that success isn't great success is great. But people you have to be so mindful in any Pursuit as to why you're doing something and if it's a physical Pursuit like in the SEAL Teams where you can get killed or it's a sport where it's music or something. Like if you get away from the essence of why you're doing it. There's we know this there's basically zero chance of success if you do it for the pure.
Sense of it and I know Rick's talked about this. You just said it far more succinctly in eloquently than I could that but there is a chance it if you do it for the right reasons, you keep doing it for the practice of doing it and it comes from the heart and you know, we talked about the heart the heart the heart and I think that it's one of these things where it's like, what is that? That's the thing where like you can't imagine not doing it and you're scared to do it and it doesn't feel right and it's also where you and we haven't talked about this but like inside from outside the teams but where you are
Assemble the people around you that can help you do what you need to do. Like I didn't go. Oh podcast my kin and go it was like Rob more producer get my clay about you'll pull together things. I again I have many many flaws, but one thing I've managed to do very well across my life for whatever reason is I can assemble it an awesome. Awesome team to do work. My the people have been in my lab my students my postdocs like to get the best work done with a ton of attention to the right.
Right things and you know and I Look to them just like they deserve like 99.9% of the credit. I raise some money to do it. I try and guide them along but just spectacular a couple of them are professors now. Nothing makes me happier than like the call I got this morning. Hey, what do you think of this person who is a woman who worked in my lab who now has her own lab and I'm like, she's awesome. He's like great. I'm putting her up for this big award. You're like, yes, like nothing feels but you know, there's like nothing feels better than that. So being able to assemble a team.
Even if it's one other person or someone you can talk to at the end of the day or week like, hey, check me on this like no one goes at it completely alone some people in the podcast Community or other committees are more of Lone wolves, but nobody's doing this stuff alone. You just see that person lacks is got team Joe's got a team you got team. I got a team like and you pull together those people and that's huge. I don't care what your vocation is. Like you need people around you who can be like more of this less of that, you know and iterate. Yeah.
I do have to say that you can manufacture success with like my example is the monkeys the band The Monkees. Oh, right, and you just take one of those boy bands like a boy band where they say. Hey, here's the formula. We need this be we need this like riff. We need this kind of lyrics and they put them together. We need this look like they select the monkeys.
Because this guy is the cute one and this guy's The Jock one and they do that and but here's the thing and it's very obvious when you fast forward. However, many years old like they had no soul in their kind of meaningless. And so that can happen. Like you can do that with music you could do that with a podcast you could do that with you could write a you know, a a shocking title of a book and you could get it out there and it but
If you're if they're if it's not coming from a place that's real. Then
people will see through it. I won't go anywhere one podcast. It's great. I need to listen to it more but I've listened to it. Some is the founders podcast with David Sandra just talks about Founders and he's covered like amazing. You can tell he's just like a Ultra nerd about founders of companies and stuff is spectacular podcast. And then when I went and visited Rick last summer, we would tread water in the morning. It's kind of like everybody like like Seal Team type thing to do, but there are this is
A creek and me so it's
sort of a slightly different picture.
We're somewhere we're Treading Water exact and we would listen to history of 100 rock and roll songs by Andrew hickey and it's just an awesome podcast about rock and roll songs and stories and and I don't know, you know, I didn't continue to listen to it when I got back but I'm like whoever that Andrew he is, you know, he loves Rock and Roll history and you just feel it like you talk about rock. He's talking about Rock and Roll History right now. And so yeah like
In stuff and teaching, you know, that's always been my thing gather organize and disseminate information. And by the way never did I say Flawless human being, you know, it's like gather organize and disseminate what I think is valuable information. And so I think it's interesting when we project onto other people their expectations. I'm being kind of tongue-in-cheek about it, but in all seriousness like no YouTube channel, no podcast is supposed to give you all the answers.
You're supposed to create a composite of the things that are meaningful for you and focus on one more than the other or maybe a couple two or three different things. I only listened about 45 different podcasts total, but man they taught me so much. Yeah what you just pointed out that this guy loves rock and roll T. And he's talking about it right now. I mean, bro. I'll sit around people to ask me a question about leadership. I'm freaking gone. Like I'm just talking about it for ever or your boss asked me about some military thing. It's like oh
Okay. Well, do you wanna talk about that? Let's go and you and I were having a conversation the other day and you were mentioning this I think it's Bill Bill girly gave this talk running down a dream and and he's basically saying like if you're not totally into this thing that you want to get into someone's gonna outwork you because I don't consider recording a podcast and reading a book to prepare for a podcast. I don't consider it work. I'm doing it because I want to do it. So if you're out there and you're like well
now I want to make a podcast and I want to talk about stuff to and and it's work for you. I'm going to beat you and if that guy that loves rock and roll so much bro, I guarantee he started that thing with he was gonna do it regardless. I don't know the particular podcast or who sponsored many that stuff but I guarantee was like I'm doing this podcast and it doesn't matter what happening. I'm doing this podcast about the great greatest hard rock and roll songs of all time. Boom. That's what I'm doing and probably because of that passion he made it and then probably became
But no matter what you're doing if you're not 100% into it and you don't love it and it's not and it's not your true vocation. It's going to be problematic still be rough.
I mean one of the amazing things about becoming friends with Tim Armstrong is that you know, he has yeah Operation Ivy rancid transplants with Travis Barker and Rob Aston amazing band lot of people here Travis and they think blank but I always think Aquabats Cho he's gonna laugh.
Or that one Aquabats and then I think transplants amazing mash-up of like punk rock and some hip-hop tones and some hardcore stuff to anyway, Tim like this is a guy who's written songs more on the old firm casuals. That's not good. That's right a large. Yeah. Well, I'm a huge large in the bastards fan huge. I mean, like don't get me started. But you know, the amazing thing is like, you know and seeing how Tim works and he's written help, you know, ton of Pop male and female songwriters and he's
You know all this but he you know, he gets up and sometimes in the middle of the night and paint then I'll go back to sleep. I know this. Sorry Tim. I'm sharing a little bit this but I think it's so valuable for people to hear and he doesn't really do front-facing media anymore. But love to give them on my podcast, but he does then he'll get up and he he works out. He super-fit does does his workouts, but he also he writes music every day. And for a while during the pandemic he did this Tim Timebomb Series where they were putting out a song a day.
Day, I think him and Kevin move on from the interrupter is like I think that's who you do it with like every day. So he's writing every single day guys. Always got a guitar picking on your guitar. Always. He's got his Studio. It's like it he's constantly helping artists develop stuff and he's like either painting or writing music or working out or he's got a like a great situation and socially personally like he's like always in touch with his friends. He takes care of himself. He takes care of people don't like but he's he's 10 years older than me. Okay, so it's 58.
Every single day he's writing music. I'm like is everyday we don't like he's like no like every day. Yeah constantly constantly and so like there's no stopping him. He's like a tank. You can't compete he just you can't compete and and he's and he's giving and he loves and you can just feel it and you ask him any question about anything with music and he's like room like he'll talk about guitars. I know now, I can't play any music. He'll talk about tars hours and hours. Like he's just the fire is there and he's aligned with it and there's a kid who was basically like
Sparing for change playing guitar on Telegraph Avenue in front of Blondie's Pizza. I think he worked there for a little bit to was hanging out at Gilman Street. And there's that great line in Journey to the End of the East Bay like what you're going to do when everybody goes on without you and that resonated with me over the years because all my skateboard friends kind of went up and forward. I was kind of lost in that unlike what are you gonna do when like other people find their vocation? I don't want to inspire any fear in anybody but it's like he found it. He was like, this is what I'm good at.
This is the thing I love but good at meant like good at doing it all the time and he just went mmm and it's at least to me. It's one of the More Beautiful Stories and music because he's also outlived a lot of the people from from that world, but he's just like the number of creative things that he's involved in there was movies that they've done there's all sorts of stuff. He's been he's a character on The X Files sometimes plays trash win. He's going to be so these can be laughing or ready to kill me that I'm talking about this but like I just see him as like one of one of the many
Essences although they're rare of just pure Creative Energy. These are people that never stop creating. It's just in their soul the same way that learning and sharing like right now I'll be really like if I'm going to be a little bit more vulnerable as as it were, you know, like sure anything that's happened to me in my life. Now. I'm taking a new information learning. I didn't go talk to Hollis on accident. I want to know from a guy who's 85 years old. Like how do you make the best version of yourself? How do you do that? How do you do that with tools that maybe I haven't had access to
You have succeeded in some areas in my life. I've struggled in others. Lord knows I've struggled like anyone else and how do I like take how do I take in information learn and do different? You know, when any time we see somebody doing something. We're just like why just do it the other way like clearly people are rational, but sometimes there's some two plus two equals five in their in their unconscious mind. So how do you pull that stuff out? So I think like the evolution of somebody is interesting to me. Certainly. I'm always trying to evolve but just
The desire to learn and take in information make the changes see what works and then share that's my thing. You've got your thing. You've got your thing. And I think Tim's got his thing Lars has his thing. I love when Lars posts about professional wrestling because he loves professional wrestling Rick Rubin watches 10 hours a week of professional wrestling crazy. He told me he said it's the only thing that's real because everyone agrees it's fake. Yeah, he told me he said once I sent him something. It was really disturbing from the news. It's about somebody we know so it's a while back and he just wrote back he texted
I'll never get a screenshot as he said.
It's all lies Back To Nature. The only truth and I was like, what are you talking about? That sounds like a riddle wrapped in analog in you know in the myth with a you know, he's the like the Sphinx. What are you talking about? You say anytime we go back into nature. We're in touch with truth. Like there's no negotiating. That's a firm. That's a tree your youth your the and that takes us to this place where we start again to kind of like asked what's my Essence in this bigger picture when we're taking in all this stimulus, you know, that's when we get kind of
Helmed and we start becoming reactive and little unconscious ways. And we lose touch with our self. I mean, I don't have a language for this yet. And I think Hollis goes the greatest distance towards putting a language and I think you're onto this to now we're kind of like we're kind of pulling along this line under water and try to figure out like where does this go? But there's something there's got to be tools and I think that sitting with one cell for 10-15 minutes a day quietly and listening. There's got to be something that allows us to just go like this is my unique gift and I don't mean me Andrew. I mean everybody I do believe that everyone has
Unique gift that there that would better the world where they to lean into that gift. I absolutely do it's just it's a it's a it's not a fantasy. I believe it because haleh said it and the psychologist who said it and it's what makes us who we are. It's what makes us different than the other animals and this sets me up
for the last thing I'm we've already been gone almost 3 hours. So I don't want to drag this out too much but the last thing which is a good counter to that which you and I were talking about the other day and that
is as much as we're both sitting here saying you got to do the thing that you love
you also got to do the things that you don't want to do. Absolutely and
you were talking about this kind of I don't know if these are recent discoveries, but things that go on in your brain that are so beneficial but they only occur when you're doing things that you don't want to do tell me about
that. Oh, yeah to me. This is you know, I maybe it's because I've had
Bunch of
friends die. Okay. And again, I just like getting this like slightly kind of like abrasive mode where you know, like talk shit about me all you want but don't talk shit about my dog. Okay, don't don't talk shit about my dog and don't talk shit about my friends that aren't here that that actually checked out don't the John acabelles Johnny fares, the the, you know, Aaron kinker, he's like those guys like other girls. Just don't like just don't like come come at me with anything but
Not that because like that's just like a step too far. You understand
this also fully Okay,
so
If ever there was a discovery in Neuroscience that I think people should know about and I mentioned those guys and that theme because I think every day okay bullet Buster cancer, like if I were going to be taken out today, like what do I want to make sure is in the world? Okay, because when that bus comes or whatever, you know, that's it like sometimes that's it. So I think okay. What what's the the discovery in the recent years that I think everyone needs to know about blabbed a lot about dopamine. I blabbed while okay, get some sunlight.
Please
the
interim it cingulate cortex is this brain region that I knew about? I teach neuroanatomy to medical students. Do it every January did this last January doing next January taught it for years the anteroom. It cingulate cortex neuroscientist knew was there they didn't know what it did. It's an area that gets inputs and outputs from a lot of different brain areas like a hub. It gets inputs on the dopamine system serotonin system motor system that it's like interconnected with a ton of stuff, but a colleague of mine at Stanford Joe.
Rvz, it's a neurosurgeon is operating on a patient in a stimulating different brain areas and gets in and starts tickling neurons with an electrode in the anterior mid cingulate cortex and the patient and turns out every patient where he does this says I feel like there's a storm coming at me, but I'm going to go through it or I feel like something's about to happen, but I can lean into it. Okay, interesting moves the electrode back a few.
Totally different picture. OK this is super interesting the interim it cingulate cortex increases in size when people take on hard challenges on a consistent basis decreases in size when they don't it increases in size and successful dieters exercisers people taking on a new skill. It's maintaining size unlike in other people it maintained size in a group of people called super agers. It's a bit of a misnomer because what are super age are super agers are people that maintain cognitive ability late.
Into life they're constantly learning taking on new challenges. Okay, the summary that we now have is that the anteroom it cingulate cortex is a brain area. That's highly plastic that grows that becomes active in the can actually grow under conditions where we lean into things that we don't want to do. So if you love working out, sorry, you love reps to failure. I love reps to failure. I came up training like under the Mike men sir thing. Although I add a few more sets in a bit more frequently kind of Dorian Yates wasting your time and it worked and it worked.
For me, it's like it's what my body reacted best to given my time constraints and liked what worked best for me occasionally do a little bit more volume, but that's what works for me to get stronger. So the enter so training that way isn't going to do it, but you send me out on a like a 5-mile rock on a day with like just this amount of water. That sucks might even be dangerous but probably survive if it's not too hot if it sucks and you do it. Anyway, your anterior mid cingulate cortex gets bigger and it transfers to other aspects of life.
And this is something that I think we've missed in the do hard things as we missed that the hard to you hard to you. It's not sufficient to just do something that other people think is hard if you love getting in the cold plunge. Yeah, like it's not doing as much for your interior mid cingulate cortex as if you hate getting in that thing. So I think it's beautiful. Like I think it's beautiful that Neuroscience discovered this I do feel like it landed on my lap to tell everybody about it. I'm going to blab about it until I, you know until they tell me to stop or they stop me.
Give me a tracheotomy and then I'll probably just be like but the point being that this thing does not care about the stuff you want to do that's hard, you know, if you love grinding reps to failure, you'll benefit clearly there's benefits to that exercise, but it's it's the stuff you hate. It's if you're a talkative person you want to be right and you sit down and you you're going to do the okay. I got to listen for 97% of the conversation. It's that that's where the growth is and the great news is this area.
So interconnected that it's clear that it carries over to other types of behaviors so that you can tackle other things that you would otherwise avoid. Then the last point is that this thing about the super agers is not trivial it very well may be that the brain is paying attention to our efforts to absorb new information and grow itself and the brain of course controls the body. We know that the body talks back to the brain, but the brain largely controls the body and in there are some interesting data based on the longevity stuff.
I'm not talking about living to be 200. I think genetic limit for aging is probably 120 and then there's variability in there depending on genetics and Life Style Etc. But what ends up happening it seems is that this brain area is also related to the will to live the desire to keep pushing and you know, if ever there were an appropriate place to talk about this it would be here because I think when I hear about buds when I take Costello out to Coronado sometimes and he'd run around ITC you
Guys out there doing their thing like clearly. They're trying to find their their you know, who's going to ring the bell. They're trying to find the people that can do can learn to do the thing. They hate anyway, and I think I got a few things wrong early days of the podcast not scientifically wrong, but I put so much emphasis on on learning to make the effort the reward which it can happen. But we missed out on is it like sometimes the efforts supposed to suck?
And maybe probably and based on these data on the internment cingulate cortex. Certainly when the effort
sucks. You're
really benefiting. So I keep that in mind a lot and it scares me and I hate it and I guess that's exactly the point.
Well, there you go. That's a good book end because we talked about doing what you want to do and doing what you love to do, but they still got to do things. You don't want to do probably a pretty good place to wrap Echo Charles. Yeah. Sorry. We're going to question without wrapping. It's okay. Well, I figured you had some questions over here.
We wait till you we didn't go
into the neurotic part of it. So you were talking about OCD but then what so then what's an erotic thing because I thought neurotic I guess I was getting them kind
of yeah. Well, this is kind of fun because the word neurotic actually use
used to be what the what the Freudian and jungian analyst would consider healthy. They said the best you could be was neurotic and what do you want to avoid is being psychotic? Let's get going to Old School language and keep in mind what we think of as an erotic now, they might have thought was different maybe just like of the neurons or something. I don't know. Yeah neurotic people as a stereotype are people that like are very effusive and kind of like can't can't be satisfied by anything. There's always there's always some underlying
Action, but we have to be careful because that itch is what drives us and sometimes someone could be really neurotic but quiet. Yeah, I work with a guy who likes to tell me he goes. Yeah. I'm like a I'm like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. I don't like your the calmest dude. I know he's like, yeah stressful. So people people hide it. Well people hide it well, so I don't have a lot to say about it except that. I think neurotic people and people that are just anxious in general. I mean, I'm with Jocko on this one do more Tire yourself out.
A out like I mean if there's some dogs that are just like tail always going they need a lot of running and then there are the cost ellos that were just like super chill and like economy of effort is the name of the game.
So for example, so I know guy we went over to his house for Christmas. It was me my friend the kids. So there they had a Christmas tree. The ornaments are on the Christmas tree wasn't the fragile kind of ornaments. It was just like regular ornaments and one of the kids was over there by the Christmas tree like
Kind of pawing at one of the ornaments and the guy didn't know the kid. It was the first time, you know, he had been introduced to the kid
and the and the dad
they're just kind of guess at the house and he was like you could tell he was really bothered about the kid almost I don't know disrupting ornaments or whatever. Maybe the I don't think they could break but he was just like he's like, hey, you know almost like he lost control of himself because of that scenario and I was like, does he have kids of his own? No. Yeah, it sounds like
Having had kids living with me before it's a it's a you just have to embrace that like stuff can get dirty stuff. So yeah, bro, embrace the wildness it. Yeah. It's like a like a punk rock. I thought at that moment. I was like, okay because it had nothing to do with me wasn't my kid one of my was my own and I don't care. I'm going to Observer, you know, but I was like, oh that guy seems a bit neurotic because that doesn't move me either way, even if it wasn't what I meant. Yeah, you know he is he is he neurotic he's uptight or just
They get so uptight is like yeah eating soup. Yeah. I mean one thing we know for sure is trying to you know, control the behavior of others or you know, or get them gosh, like life's got to be pretty challenging for that guy do just day-to-day kind of yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know that he's not a happy camper, but I know that's I mean the world is the world's full of havoc and like stuff isn't aligned and you know, like, you know, like you know that kind of thing. I mean some people have the
Counting Obsession thing, you know, but yeah, that sounds like he's uptight. I don't know that we could diagnose him, but I'm calling him up tight a little uptight. Yeah, so that's like this the what the street
version of no rose
neuroses is yeah work. Yeah nowadays people are using these terms like neurotic and nurses are like, I mean all these accounts on Instagram like your people calling each other names is like people have given themselves like the authority use DSM diagnosis and it's kind of wild then again. I'm a guy who talks about
I mean and serotonin but those are real things right that you know exists in all of us. I mean, I think the clinical definitions of these things become really important. We have to be careful because we will erode that the like importance of of like real psychological diagnosis. We're like, you're obsessed your OCD or someone's going to like a year you're whatever like, you know, I think we have to be very careful about not drifting into that
kind of like the word literally nowadays, right because people are like, oh, yeah, no literally now means
Like just very much so not like for real, you know, like literally the word literally has become not literally
well the internet so free largely free open resource for people to declare themselves, whatever a few years back. I won't say what platform I was contacted because there was discussion about only certain accounts being able to talk about things from any kind of diagnostic labels or health labels, and I think there was just so much pushback.
Because you know we put gray value on degrees and obviously I'm degreed so I put some value on it. But then of course we know that there's a lot of great information like in the health sector like especially exercise physiology and stuff that comes from outside of the standard practices. Like I'm a big fan of knees over toes guy that Patrick and you know, some people are like, well that doesn't fit with what the like orthopedic surgeon saying like, but then everyone goes well, he's the guy doing the yeah, you know, the watching told to junk dunk the basketball do a backbend. I know Ben he's awesome and
Like and he's very generous with information kind of like well, you know look at the orthopedic surgeon and he looks like he needs to take a few laps and then you look at Ben and you're like, he's his knees look pretty good. He's like damn so I think you know, we have to I don't know I'm a and Derek more plates more dates doesn't have any kind of degree. Does he he I mean as a college degree in something else, but he's obviously a highly but he's sown so knowledgeable about the Practical applications and things and he reads papers very well. Like it's a real skill to extract the best of papers and he's he's
Dreamily knowledgeable very thoughtful and and again a person like he took what he loved and put it out there for the greater good, you know, he's done a lot of harm reduction. I also think he's just really really smart. Like I'm pretty good at spotting intelligence. He's really smart and
it comes through in that in the car. Yeah and to your point. He's not a guy that didn't go to school for it. Neither did Ben from knees over toes. So those are two guys that through experience and research
And personal knowledge. They've can put out really good information that can be really helpful to
people and then there's this isn't that kind of offensive to some people. Yeah, they hate it. I guess gotta drive some people crazy. It means they would have to go do something that have to activate their
midst. He did anybody does anyone get mad at you for
validating these freaking charlatans that are out there. Sure sure, but I'm just gonna say like look at the results they speak for themselves. Also. I've been working out since I was 16 and I also been running since I was in high school and so
oh so you actually have dual
Is you also have a degree in Bro Science?
Yeah. Yeah, and and you know, it's interesting because and I I've had plenty of training partners that were women there. Were they and they kick butt and they and they they yes their unique needs that people have I mean one person. I'd like to mention I know that we're both friends with her but also because she represents the combination of a number of different things medical doctor. So MD also very good teacher and and information.
Scherer
as well as a practitioner who's clearly got her own health not just worked out but it's really thriving is Gabrielle. Dr. Gabrielle lion. Yeah, right who knows a ton about nutrition as well. So the the space the this health space in particular is starting to bring in people. They're already here and there that are checking off multiple boxes and I'm excited about the work. She's doing not just for women in particular but also for men, I think she's getting it as specialization in in urology.
She her husband urologist. They're open about the fact his former team guys. So I mean there's a
lot of constant. I wanted to go down that she worked in a freaking like a sane Asylum.
Did she do it? Oh, yeah
for a while as a psychologist and I almost wanted to I mean, we only talked about it for 20 minutes public what's going on in there? Because you don't I've never met anyone that was worked in an actual like Asylum. It was kind of crazy.
Oh man. I got to introduce you to somebody I'm close with who is a psychiatrist who spent a lot of time out saying Quentin exam.
Meaning. Well, I was an and talking to the people of the worst gnarliest cases in touch with them. I couldn't bear you hear the stories. I'm not
I'll have them on the podcast. That'd be interesting. Great.
Yeah, he's impressive. But yeah, I mean I've gotten caught some stuff for it, but you know, yeah, I think Ben's great and and I think there are others that are you know who are degreed like Ben Bruno trainings friend of mine. He's not the biggest guy, but he's super strong like circus man strong.
So you look at what people can do and it's not just physique you look at what they can do performance-wise movement wise the duck Kelly Starrett. So, you know and you just go you okay, listen, like these people obviously know what they're doing and they're sometimes their degrees. Sometimes they're not I think the word expert nowadays is a is a complicated one. I think it's almost like what does that mean? It depends on people's orientation and how they approach health and science information. And listen. There's been a real fight for trying to make sure that
Only one source of information is considered valid that fight has been lost that fights been lost. It's been lost because as long as he has covid L got you said it not me I think because I didn't say that. No, but I think the fight has been lost because people start to realize that diverse sources of information filtered through a logical mind where one can try things safely and here I'm not talking about covid. Okay. I want to be clear. I'm talking about kind of daily self-care.
And I'm not saying that to be politically avoidant or anything like that. It's just like it's just that that became such a tangle on the internet and I think that when when it comes to how to eat how to exercise is those epic, you know the right thing for you or should you rely on something like those are conversations that I think like need to happen and are happening and look whatever this Beast the internet social media is that people thought could be just used to communicate one type of information well,
I got news for you too late, cause I'm fixing the fat loss thing right? Yeah, a lot of people are losing a lot of weight because it reduces appetite and so and so are people coming at that from both directions are some people saying it's good for you in some people saying it's bad for you. Yes. Oh and a tea has more to say about this there can be some muscle loss in addition and fat loss and it saw itself. So people can so people can offset that with some resistance training. So it's not good not all good or all bad. It's clear that people are benefiting from it's very expensive.
There's this question whether or not insurance will soon take care of it's on track to be you know, hundreds of billions of dollars and the the kind of polarization here is as follows and I won't reveal my stance. I'll just tell you the way I understand it and I'll probably get it only 80% right that some people are positioning this as hey doesn't matter what you do lifestyle or trying to eat less. This is the only thing that works and there's you know, people are genetically or metabolic
police tricking and they need to do this other people are saying no you don't need to do that. There's a bunch of Lifestyle things you can do and the answer is probably somewhere in the middle where you can imagine that it probably helps some people get to a lighter weight that then allows them to move around a bit more and one would hope that they would resistant strain and they would do cardiovascular training. But the way it's been positioned kind of like socio-politically is that it's one versus the other and that agency over one's Health mental health and physical health is the domain of one political camp and the other political camp.
Like no like where it's it's all about using certain treatments that are coming through farming but that's not real. Right, but that's how that the conversations on social media and kind of media landscape would have you think about this, but of course, it's maybe the league of reasonable people as you point out which makes up most people are going to say, alright, let's say somebody's like 40 pounds overweight and they're really struggling like maybe it's a good starter for them. Maybe it's a good place for them to drop a bunch of weight and then start exercising.
And you know other people are going to say Hey, listen, I never want to exercise but I want to be healthier. Well, maybe that's the right thing for them. Like I'm not gonna I'm not gonna argue with them, but I do think that you can do a hell of a lot we know this with
Proper nutrition with really tasty food exercise and and sunlight and sleep and taking good care of yourself in the information is all out there for free. Mmm-hmm. You just got a tickle that interim and cingulate cortex and bit you know,
so and in there what else I go forward expert is kind of like the world the word world champion. Yeah, because you know how like like me I'm a grappling X world champion. Oh seems like I did not even know I and I can you go I can see that. Oh, you know World Championships. Yeah, but
If it's not like what recognized as a governing body also know whatever the pond yeah. Yeah, exactly. Right? Hey, but factually factually, let's face it. I won the gold medal seem safe.
Yeah. Well, you want your surgeon to be an MD, you know, like you want your lawyer to understand the law right? I would hope you wouldn't you want your Seal Team operator to have made it through buds. You know you want that? Okay, but the word expert
though. You seem sane.
Like whether in we not use the word expert even though you know
now it's a free-for-all. That's why I'm saying we froze what I'm saying? Exactly. It's a free-for-all and I think that you know, the interwebs a complicated place, but it's also like stupidly simple at the same time because once you understand what you're looking at that it's a borderline situation and you realize that the goal is clicks and polarized things get clicks. Well, then if you're a reasonable person, you're part of the league of reasonable people who want to access it the right information what it means is
You're going to have to look at information across the board integrate. Try see what works for you. What doesn't work for you and probably avoid the strong opinions at the extremes like the outliers. That's my
suggestion. Okay, so perfect so my second to the last question, so to be part of the bear with me I'm bearing but if I want to be part of the league of reasonable people,
what would be like one of the
obvious criteria like I would say and I don't know this is with tents.
Seconds of thought I if I lose my temper on the internet, I'm automatically disqualified. No
because the league of reasonable people understands that we're not supposed to judge people based on them on a state. You can potentially judge them on the basis of trait but one state of mine one, you know, assuming you don't do something like like horrific right that if you can recognize like I was in a state of mind.
At that time and it just doesn't Faithfully represent who I am and and the people around me no need to be then we'll be like you're absolutely still in the league of reasonable
people. What if I do that three times? Well, then ways in a
row, then we then the people close to you might say Hey, listen, you might need some help. I mean if you've ever been online and you have a channel you're familiar with this. Yeah. I'm sure you get someone who's just like adoring you adoring you were doing you then tells you they're going to stop following you and then start sending a tax stuff. Yeah, probably looking at somebody who is bipolar then they
Here then they come back. Like you're probably remember a lot of times people are drunk when they're sending these messages. No, sir. You don't forget like summer while they don't like we're not good at describing state of mind and other people so no, you're absolutely in the league of reason why people why because you asked the question, which means that you're a reasonable
person. Oh, I was more asking for a friend well, but you're more of a hypothetical if you will because look I would imagine look I want to make it a big thing, you know, because obviously it's still hypothetical but I feel like after about 10 temper ashes infractions drunk or not.
Drunk after a while. You're like bro. It's just I want to be part of the league or
not. You know, maybe Penalty Box at that point. Yeah. I mean, you know like yeah, I mean, let's what would it be in the military? I got enough safety violations. Are you gotta go exactly
exactly, you know at least something
again. Let's not normalize. Let's not authenticate.
Unethical Behavior just because it's frequent people drunk drive all the time. But we all know it's a terrible thing to do so don't do it. But we also don't want to pathologize by labeling people to the point where they think oh if they drunk Drive God forbid, please don't but if they do that somehow they are incapable of change, especially if they still have a driver's license. Yeah, I dig
it. What if they do it 10 times in a row. I don't know about then. There's I got there they are going to jail bro there.
Malik okay. Alright. Okay last glass question you use this expression which I just kind of real casually
immune privileged. The brain is immune privileged. What does that mean yet privileged. Yes, you have to immune systems one is called the innate immune system. This is the one that like let's say you get a splinter. You'll get some pus around it some swelling. There's not really antibodies to a splinter. It's just that the your innate immune system go. Hey, there's a foreign body in here. That's not me. The body is so good at recognizing not of me and then creating a
Response is trying to isolate etcetera. Then you have the Adaptive immune system which comes along and starts making antibodies. So let's say you have a bacteria or virus gets into you first the innate immune system, like in the first, you know, 24 to you know, 72 hours is gonna be like, hey, let's just like contain this thing somehow. We're launched a like you might make you want to sleep if it's a virus like it does but then comes the second wave where the Adaptive immune system, which is amazing. We whole discussion about this basically sends out these like these
These cells that go what is this thing? And then they go what's on the surface of it? What's the shape of this thing? Oh, wow, okay on then they go back and the body actually manufactures antibodies that then can go and stick to the surface of this thing to make sure that it can't either Spread spread and or go attach itself to other parts of the body that it's just like amazing and then there's a like another wave where it's like an even more specific antibody. So the idea was that the brain is immune privilege that there's no antibodies and
Or adaptive immune system in the brain. We're certainly not knowing no adaptive immune system. And dr. Carla shots who coined the term fire together wire together brilliant neurobiologist at Stanford now has been at Stanford Berkeley Harvard all those places. She was the one that said. Well, let's just like test this idea. Maybe they're the brain actually does have an immune system and lo and behold has immune system. Boom. There's an entire field born of that critical field for a treatment of brain cancers for treatment of brain plasticity or and on and
on so
so immune privileged is essentially it has the privilege of having an immune.
So, yep Cricket, sorry didn't mean to drop but the at the word immune privileged Were Meant to refer to that it's not there's no immune system in the brain. Now, we know that don't the brain is not privileged like every other organ in the body. It is subject to the workings of the immunity. Okay, so it's kind of like, yeah, it's really cuddly Rangers thing is anticipated love getting that's backwards just confuse people and keep it secret so we can talk about it. Can we do more than that would be I'm just kidding.
Just let her run the clip the just kidding someone take off the internet open
freaking Humes over here young ours route. There were worse
than it names, but I'll tell you those later. Oh, so okay. So what is so
there is no immune privileged scenario in the body or there is
there may be a few few areas, but no pretty much your entire body is subject to immune
function like your hair maybe
that this the niche of the of the stem the hair follicle has stem cells in their knowledge immune.
Some stuff going on in there too.
Oh good then. All right cool. That's all I got was gonna ask about track and field. What do we like hundred meter dash?
No, man, I go up to Hayward. I went for the world's I go for the track and field qualifiers whenever I only didn't go the maturing covid because it wasn't open the 5012 laughs Steve Prefontaine talk about a hard race. He died right in drunk driving but his thing was he was calling it. He was going to do 12 62nd laughs damn that the 5,000 falls on the last
A I'm gonna be up there. We already got seats. I'm going to you guys should come up and bite cam like I want to be there to watch the 5,000. That's just a brutal brutal race. I mean think about three mile 3 miles Sprint. Yeah looks like a Sprint to me. Anyway, I think in the Olympics, they should have like a very skilled recreational swimmer. Go back and forth next. Yeah, I still do. Yeah. Yeah, yeah or a various budget it would make any sense, but tiger
skateboarding. Remember, I mean, have you ever like walked along the pool?
And someone's a high-caliber swimmer. Like it's a they're they're hauling. Yeah, you're a swimmer because you weren't even you wouldn't even be like the recreational swimmer wouldn't be in the game. He wouldn't be in the camera. Like he would
just like to be fishing on to the next
round maybe on the next event next day. There was just freaking forever. Yeah, there's no
those guys and gals are missiles in the water. You probably a pretty good swimmer. Despite your yes your do the earlier. I saw you gave you a Dap and a hug and I was like man like you and you and rogin like when I her and I'm like damn,
You guys are like turds box like this thing. It's crazy. Like his hat you Jutsu. That would well,
did you choose definitely part of it? But there's guys that are
not you know big and they're sick at
Jujitsu. There's guys that there's guys that feel kind of like
noodley absolutely real to
me you gotta watch out for those dudes a little bit because they're gonna get a little bit crazy with your flexibility.
Who's that kid? I liked his Instagram account Mikey. Is that his name Michael
Musa met you yeah. He's
his Instagram account is amazing.
Yeah. He met so freaking crazy flexible and
He's he's just really sick a Jiu-Jitsu. Yeah, he's amazing and a great guy like a just a super good-hearted
dude who
fought against this other guy. The other guy wouldn't tap. I'll show you the video. You'll his just ripping his all of his ligaments are getting totally destroying the guy's not tapping and he doesn't tap and
Mikey afterwards was just
Like he was a little bit
freaked out, you know, I
bet I mean psycho. Yeah, that's him Gigi. I need some stuff right now only in 10 people are gonna know that Joe
my friend got into a street fight and did an arm lock on someone and he said he goes, you know, when you're trying to break a chicken bone off of the chicken and it like you press it and it goes and then he'll go yogurt drink and you're just breaking all the ligaments. That's when you see this Mikey.
Musa mechi doing it. This guy's leg guys. Just not topic. Oh
you're talking about snot
adaptive. I was talking to Mike Perez the other day atcc just just want a TCC open classes 170 pounds, but he's like talking about foot locks and neelix. He's like, yeah, I'm not tapping. He goes I've turned off that switch like and he's been in tournaments where he's just gotten his ankle destroyed and just didn't happen one because he just turned off that sweater.
Not happening, so that to me.
I mean
it's a decision that you're going to make and certainly when you watch the the the highest level of submission Arts submission grappling atcc those guys. They will absolutely sacrifice their freaking tendance for a victory. It's crazy and look I know what it takes to recover from an ACL. So I've never had it but I know you like your you're out for a year, but these guys are going for the world championship.
It doesn't matter there. You can have
the ACL you can just take it. You can keep it now some people it's the body other people. It's the family, you know, you gotta be careful, you know, I know children of academics who are like really messed up because their parents were just like going for it all the time at work, you know, like, you know, like there's that, you know, there's it comes in different forms, you know? Yeah. Yeah
the sacrifice you're willing to make it's pretty disturbing to watch someone get their
ACL stopped and not tap.
From the heart does not mean foolish Reckless abandon. He's
smart where can people find you a human huberman lab doc calm is kind of the central place to find everything. We
got links out to all the podcasts. Everything's zero-cost the search function there you put in anything and take you to time Sam's AI human lab on all social platforms. Yeah, but keep it simple. Yeah
human lab you're out there. Um, let's see. We don't always want to work out now. We know that we're going to
I work out. Anyways, when we work out we're going to need some fuel.
Let me send you to Jonquil fuel.com. You just had a you just you've been jealous drink right
here. Yeah, you know and again I don't get paid to say this. We don't have any deal nothing like that. I my sources of caffeine are yerba mate some coffee and but if I drink an energy drink my drink the East Coast, I love
them and you got your specific yerba mate. What is it? So if he might want to get in there
now Latina sores and I have a relationship to them. Yeah. It's a zero sugar will get you
some I have a relationship to Jocko fuel.
Yeah, we're kind of even yeah, I mean my
dad's Argentina as I mentioned I grew up, you know drinking mate out the gourd with you know, the loose leaf, they sell a loose-leaf. I help them design a zero sugar cold brew one that I like a lot like 150 milligrams of caffeine. It doesn't have the nootropics in it. So this is like if I need the zip that extra kick and I'll do one or two of these I have to say if I do one of these because I'm not that condition to I'm like going they're good. They're good. I'm going this one's really good. I would not say that if if I didn't really feel that
at and I love it. Yeah, so I had the energy drinks usually before workout. Yeah or a three-and-a-half hour long choco podcast. So there you go Jocko fuel.com check that out. Also origin usa.com. We got stuff made in America 100% rebelling against the world bringing manufacturing back to America so crazy and we're making it happen. It's DIY by the way, it's DIY. We're making it happen. Just do we got this new workout gear.
It's freaking
legit. Is it all true Jutsu or no? No
justjust workout training gear and I'll get you some you'll be freaking pumped. It's all made hundred America the Fabrics made in America sewn in America. So whatever you're doing Jiu-Jitsu working out jeans because you need jeans. You can't go to the club and Yogi Echo Charles. Oh, no, you can't do that in San Diego. That's probably my life. Yeah, really been it's like on your GE really?
You know, I when I was in the lab more doing experiments, it was Halloween. I just used to wear a lab coat and the discovered it was kind of like yeah, you know, I was working late because I was still make the the Halloween party. Yeah, you can't wear your GE out Echo Charles despite the GE. Yeah. This is like the GDP scenario is it's a long story. It's a long story and a good one, but you'd be jeans boots. We got you covered origin usa.com bringing manufacturing back to America don't
Port communism don't support slave labor don't support companies that trash our environment which if you get stuff that's made overseas. They have no EPA they have no rules and they just pollute and they ruin the the Earth. So don't put up with that. Don't put up with slave labor. Origin. Usa.com. Go check it out. Hey also origin USA. Check this out. We've got a we do Jitsu Camp, right? It's in May.
Maine this year we're doing a law enforcement.
Jiu-Jitsu Camp it is August 27th through the 31st. So if you're in law enforcement or first responder or military and you want to get training that's focused on that environment, then check it out at origin. Usa.com the Elio the the gesu camps already sold out. The Jiu-Jitsu Camp itself sells out and like a matter of hours. So this is open for First Responders military.
Enforcement check that out chocolate store.com. You can get T cool t-shirts there Echo Charles. Yes represent discipline equals freedom because it does by the way equal Freedom. That's I know but what do you want to represent bulnes? We can get it good all this other stuff short Locker new design every month subscription. Scenario people seem like that people still hitting me up for the sugar-coated lies. Well, like I said, what is short short life shirt lock the shirt Locker play on words hurt locker. It's a long story, but it's called the shirt Locker. So basically you have a
scription you get a new shirt with a discipline equals Freedom Design, but we go a little bit more free as far as the the creative. So remember we're talking about how people have it in them. They gotta get that creativity out. Well Echo Charles got that. Well Ricky needs to get it out. I have my good shirt. Yeah. Yeah, so we have a good with so an old shirt from the shirt Locker because they're just like one month and then they're gone seem saying but actually when you join you can get ones from the past. So you're all good if you remember whatever but we have a good one.
Is good, but it's like in this what it what would you call it currency fancy, whatever cursive cursive cursive right? Looks like elegant which is kind of not jacko's Jam or whatever, but that one's called good high level problems seem saying. Yeah and all that means is hey you can be in the gutter. You can have problems. They still got to approach with that attitude or you can be freaking you know, what you call top 1% type scenarios. Damn. I got a flat tire in my Mercedes AMG. Yeah, or the ubereats guys later. I don't know whatever these higher.
Level and you know, whatever problems you still need the same attitude. That's what I'm saying. It's insane people seem to like down kind of relatable. Anyway, like I said, it's a new design people seem to like it like all the short Locker. It's on Jocko store.com. Also, you're going to need some steak. We're believing ready to go have some steak right now and we're going to have some Primal beef or some call. We're having both. We're cooking a both Primal beef. Probably.com. Colorado craftsy.com. Best steak. You can get go check those out subscribe to the podcast Jocko.
Comm check that one out if you want to get in there we have YouTube channels all of us have YouTube channels. So check out the YouTube channels psychological warfare Flipside canvas Dakota Meyer making cool stuff to hang on your wall. You get a shirt that says good you might want to freaking what's it called a piece of art to hang on your wall says good from Dakota Meyer right can't go wrong. I've written a bunch of books about leadership. I've written kids book you heard it today. We gotta keep we got a kids movie coming out. It's actually it's actually something Echo Charles.
Four quadrant movie. Do you know what that is? No for Quadra movie. This is a movie that goes for the whole family. All quadrants are covered. I don't know what the for art but it's obviously the kids. Yeah, maybe the teens maybe the parents and maybe even the grandparents loved it. So four-quadrant movie. That's what it's called. Yeah, so that's what we got coming. So it doesn't matter who you are in the fam. Yeah. You're still going to get something out of it. So check out the books. Also Echelon form. We have leadership consultancy. We saw problems through
worship at salon.com check that out a bunch of live events that we do for individuals FTX Council Battlefield. We got the woman's assembly happening September 11th through the 13th in San Antonio, Texas. We got the Nashville muster. We're at it right now when this is playing. Yeah, so that's sold out next one's in Dallas. So if you want to come to one of these events, they all sell out so
Register go to Iceland from.com. Also we do Consulting. So if you have a company you need help with your leadership. You have need help with anything. It's going to get solved through leadership. So as long from.com, we have an online training academies. Well extreme ownership.com learn these principles.
Virtually, we also have some Charities that we support. So if you want to help service members active and retired you want help their families won't help gold star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom Amelie. She's got an amazing charity organization. She helps out veterans with health support that the VA is not going to pay for.
So if you want to donate or you want to get involved go to America's Mighty Warriors dot-org also heroes and horses dot-org Michael Fink up in the mountains right now last report. He just whittled a small stick and defended him and his family from an onslaught of grizzly bears in the mountains of Montana. Then he takes veterans up to the mountains where they can when they can.
Get lost and get found. It's an awesome program. Jimmy maze also going to organization beyond the Brotherhood dot-org. So there you go. We're all on the interwebs at huberman lab ads AKO will link a deco Charles just watch out for the algorithm because there's a freaking psycho right now sitting there two of them an engineer a software engineer and a psychologist in there trying to figure out how to get you to stare at that screen longer make that algorithm. They carved it up just for you.
You put little taunting little little
things that you love. They know what you
like. They can tell a long you looked at that post half an hour ago. They know that you looked at it for an extra point four seconds. They're gonna throw another one at you, and then the throw another one at you and they get a hold until you're just
addicted and you're wasting your life. Just
don't let that happen. Watch out for the algorithm. Thanks. Once again Andrew for joining us any closing thoughts for us. Just thanks so much for having me here. Thanks for giving me a venue to talk about
Some fun things some harder things and let me show up from the heart. So I'm doing and you know, I always appreciate you and you both and people tuning in it really again. It's an honor and a privilege. So just very
grateful right on man. Well, thanks for what you do. Thanks for getting the word out there and thanks for helping people become better people. Also we want to thank our men and women in uniform around the world holding.
The line right now and protecting our freedom and our way of life. We couldn't do what we're doing without you doing what you're doing. So thank you from our hearts for getting out there and holding the line. Also thanks to our police law enforcement firefighters paramedics and EMTs dispatchers correctional officers border patrol Secret Service all other First Responders. Thanks for doing what you do to keep us safe here at home and everyone else out there.
Got one more quote for you from James Jones book From Here to Eternity quote. You had to lie down with pain not draw back away from it. You let yourself sort of move around the outside edge of pain like with cold water until you finally got up your nerve to take yourself in hand.
Then you took a deep breath and do Vin and let yourself sink down it clear to the
bottom.
And after you'd been down inside pain a while you found that like with cold water. It was not lie nearly as cold as you would thought it was
when your muscles were cringing themselves away from the outside edge of it as you moved around trying to get up your nerve.
And that's it's good call. It's a good call with life lean into the pain. Don't draw back away from it. It won't be as bad as you thought and in fact, it will make you better.
So go get after it. And that's all we've got for tonight until next time. This is Andrew and Echo and Jocko out.
