Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1340: Fatherhood, Parenting, Home Schooling & Religion with Ben & Jessa Greenfield

Episode Date: July 20, 2020

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin talk with Ben & Jessa Greenfield on the subjects of parenthood, home schooling and much more. How Ben’s hitting his muscle-building potential. (4:04) The paradoxical effect of what/when you eat on your gut for elite athletes. (9:10) Jessa’s famous sourdough bread. (12:20) The Greenfield’s are NOT helicopter parents. (13:10) Ben’s definition of attachment theory, how the way you are raised affects your relationships & MORE. (15:44) The importance of traditions and the greatest challenges faced, as a couple, by the way they were raised. (26:20) The idea of love and logic parenting. (32:35) Raising your children to have virtue and make their own mistakes. (39:45) How fatherhood has been devalued in modern societies. (47:25) Religion, the foundation that holds communities together. (53:45) From a scientific standpoint, what are the values of having a spiritual practice? (57:48) Why science doesn’t work if you have morality attached to it. (1:04:30) Busting the myths surrounding homeschooling/unschooling. (1:09:28) The value of saving/investing. (1:17:58) Speculating on the future of education. (1:23:19) Featured Guest/People Mentioned Ben Greenfield Fitness (@bengreenfieldfitness)  Instagram Ben Greenfield Boundless Book Jordan B. Peterson (@jordan.b.peterson)  Instagram Bishop Robert Barron (@bishopbarron)  Instagram Arthur C. Brooks (@arthurbrooks) Twitter Related Links/Products Mentioned July Promotion: MAPS Strong ½ off!! **Promo code “STRONG50” at checkout** How Blood Flow Restriction Training Works Jessa's World-Famous Sourdough Bread The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts – Book by Gary Chapman Abide Love and Logic Institute, Inc Father Absence Statistics Bishop Barron Presents | Arthur Brooks: Love Your Enemies Practicing gratitude may help lower blood pressure The Ultimate Guide To Unschooling: Top Tips To Create Free-Thinking, Resilient, Creative Young Humans Who Can Thrive In A Modern World. Go Greenfields Tuttle Twins Book Series  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, UP with your hosts. Saldas Defano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode of Mind Pumped the World's Top Fitness Health and Entertainment Podcast, we interview one of our very, very good friends, Ben Greenfield, the great Ben Greenfield, and his wife, Jessa. We have the luxury of knowing these people quite well, they're good friends of ours. We were on the Ben Greenfield podcast years ago when mine pump was in its infancy and just

hit it off right out the gates. He's a very, very smart guy. One of the original, I guess biohackers, knows a lot about health and fitness, but one thing that struck us was how involved him and his wife were with their children. They're very, very involved parents, and they seem to have a great family dynamic. So we had them on the show to talk all about parenting, fatherhood. We talked about homeschooling, they both homeschooled their children and we talked about how their religion plays a role in raising their children.

Now Ben Greenfield is also an author and his book, Boundless, talks a little bit about parenthood. It's a great book. You can check it out at boundlessbook.com. And of course, you can find Ben Greenfield, all over social media and his podcast is the Ben Greenfield podcast. Now, this particular episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Zbiotics.

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They have three packs, six packs, and 12 packs. Also one last thing, one of our more popular workout programs, Maps Strong is half off all month long. Now Maps Strong is a resistance training program inspired by strong Man Training. So the exercises in there, many of them are unconventional, which is a good thing. Unconventional exercises tend to be not done so often,

and when you throw them in your routine, the novelty gets your body to respond. This program develops muscle, speeds up the metabolism for easier fat loss. It places special emphasis on the posterior chain, that's the back, the butt, and the hamstrings. It's also great for increasing your work capacity. That means it improves your body's ability to recover, so you can work out harder with more volume over time and not over-train.

So here's how you get the 50% off of MAP strong. Just go to mapsstrong.com, that's MAPS, STRONG.com and use the code strong50. That's STRONG50, no space for that discount. I asked you the software, Ben, I want to ask you again, because the last time I saw you, you were like a good 15 pounds of lean body mass smaller. Yeah, so that's the size of everybody.

At least, you look jacked right now. I think it's the shirt. No, it's not, dude. It's not, you know I'm pretty sure. You know, I'm kind of getting out of here. You put on some serious muscle. Yeah. Recently, what are you doing differently? What's going on? Duck at home for 10-a-bikes. Map 10-a-bikes.

I did the Russian kettlebell start, so I spent the first half of COVID training for that. So it had ton of kettlebells. How'd you like that? A ton of overhead farmers' walks, it's snatches, Turkish get-ups, and I would just keep ordering heavier and heavier kettlebells. Now, I love it. And I wanted to do RKC2, but they keep moving it with the pandemic farther

in the future. So every time I get excited about the snatch test again, it just gets thrown a little bit farther down the road. And then I did a lot of BFR training, a lot of BFR training. Like three times a week, two failure, full body, BFR training. Well, my kids actually got a lot of really

good meat sponsors for their podcast, like Bell Campo and Butcher Box. And then this guy named Ty Lopez, who partnered up with Joel Salaton, he's got a farm now. So they're sending my podcast meat for that. And so we have a ton of me, we have a ton of organ meats. I started doing about 12 of those ancestral supplements, organ capsules like heart liver, kidney, what else they got lung, they got brain, so a ton of liver and liver organ meats, kettlebells, BFR training. And then I'm still doing a lot of BPC and TB500. Vanable. Between. Yeah.

Vanable. Did you see the 3PO? Did it feel like your body was craving to grow because it seemed like you just put it on? Do you feel like you were holding it back? And you feel better with more muscle mass? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Well, it's telling Adam, especially going into the winter when you don't want to be cold and frail week. I don't want to be the first one that the wolves of the bears get and But in all seriousness, I like to maintain a little bit of extra muscle But my all the guys in my family are so lean. It's hard. You do have to eat a lot really and For me probably with my one week link if I have one week link. It's gut I have to be careful when I'm eating a lot to really select my foods. You know, like we were talking about,

I'm doing no fog maps, no legumes, no pre-botic fibers, very few probiotics, so I'm pretty much doing like meat, tubers, fish, bone broth, organ meats, some berries, still doing a little bit of like a good clean protein powder with some colostrum and things like that in the mornings, but yeah, just a lot of nutrient-dense super clean food, but it is hard to eat a lot. I imagine you're, I mean, we have a similar bone structure, some are height. I would think that you have to be north of 4,500 calories to maintain or... Yeah, I think 4,500 from here, I now would be

tops. I think I'm going like 3,500 to 4,500. Well, 3,500 is not bad there. I've found once I started over for this. This little lady next to me right here, she just keeps shabbing through my face and I just ate it like a good boy. I can't keep it going. Well, you're both obviously a picture of health. I think you guys represent what you talk about pretty darn well.

So that's pretty cool. Do you notice any changes in performance because with more muscle mass because you are, most of the time I've known you like to really do things like obstacle course racing, hanging off things and is it make it more challenging because you're heavy or just a strength offset that. We were talking about the doctor this morning because we're going over to a clinic after this to get just some work done and the doctor asked me what hurts and I paused them. It's nothing.

Like I feel great because, and you hit on something there, I'm not racing anymore. And that's probably a big part, that's a big part of the weight gain too, is I went from running, you know, sometimes 23 miles away. I'm running maybe,

so my running right now is when I go check the mail, I sometimes run up from the mailbox, so I'm running like a mile a week right now, and then we play a little bit of family tennis. We do family tennis, usually a couple of nights a week. And so a lot less chronic cardio, a lot less running. I was even trying to transfer a triathlon last year. So a lot less swimming, a lot less cycling, and just basically a lot of kettlebell and a

lot of BFR. The thing about resistance training that I like so much, and one of the reasons why I think it's the perfect exercise prescription for the modern for modern life is that it's pro tissue, whereas lots of cardiovascular activity tends to be, you know, anti tissue, as your body tries to become more efficient and become better at this kind of long-direction, high oxidative stress type of activity, resistance training done properly, just for longevity. Not saying you shouldn't do any cardiovascular activity, but resistance training just, it's better for longevity. You just feel better. It's a totally different feeling. I think, honestly, as simple and non-complex as it sounds,

I think lifting heavy weights, walking a shit ton, and then playing some sport that forces you to sprint every once in a while, is just like, that's the perfect patch. I would think that's it, it's just about everything from a physiological standpoint. I would 100% agree. Back to the gut health thing, I've read studies that show that athletes in hard training individuals suffer from gut health issues

at a much higher rate than the average person, which kind of sounds contradictory, right? If you're a hard training person, you work out a lot, you're probably very health conscious. Really, you think it is? This is what the study shows. I think it's... I can tell you what I think it is.

And it's paradoxical because they have found, I believe it's the pharmaceutical to bacterial ratio in elite athletes tends to be more favorually oriented towards metabolic efficiency, towards harnessing energy from carbohydrates more efficiently. And there was even an outside magazine article, I think it was last year, about whether or not people would start getting fecal microbiota transplants from elite athletes like get the

same gut biota as an athlete. But the biome aside, we know, and we've known for a long time, an exercise physiology, that gut permeability increases when blood flow is directed away from the gut, all the more so during high-intensity interval training, all the more so during high-intensity interval training or exercise in general in the heat. This is why even, like, back when I was racing Ironman years ago, I would always use colostrum. I would load with colostrum for a couple weeks going into a race just because of the research that also shows that that limits that amount

of gut permeability onset. Just seal those junctions. Furthermore, we're not going near. I'd be profan or adivil or any end-said during a race or after because when you combine that increased gut permeability with something that's mildly toxic to the liver and the kidneys, it's a recipe. You essentially simulate rabdo with that type of error.

And then you combine that with probably toxic shock. Different eating behaviors too, right? When you're an athlete, you tend to like get down on meals on a whole other level than somebody who's just a sedentary like sometimes you're eating when you still have blood from a directed to your extremities. Always. You're encouraged to eat right after a workout.

And if you've got some systemic inflammation going on, which is going to happen, especially after an intense workout, and then on top of it, you're consuming a quote-unquote easily digestible food like a shake, which is, you know, it's even more, it's probably even more likely to pass through your gut than solid foods. So that combination over time, I feel like it's the perfect storm. I agree with your theory on that. But I do notice that if I, because I'm sensitive to gut stuff, my gut issues something I'm always kind of dealing with.

When my training is through the roof is when I need to be the most careful. So it makes perfect sense. I think nearly every athlete should be on something that's going to alter the opening, that zonulin protein, the activity that zonulin protein that makes the gut more permeable. So whether that is a colostrum or lignite or anything like that is gonna help to keep that tight junction closed,

I think that just about any athlete should be on a really good enzyme complex, especially for any fat or protein rich meals. And finally, they should have a giant slice of your sourdough bread, babe, every night with some grass-fed butter, salt, and honey on it. And that would solve all the world's woes. Now, I'm assuming that that's real sourdough. It is. The gluten is all, I guess, out, right? What happens to the process? It's somewhat out.

It basically predigests the gluten. So gluten isn't gone. It's just gone through the starter and it eats the gluten and digest it. So when you eat it, you actually don't have to do all, your stomach does all the hard work of breaking gluten down. It's already partially broken down.

Now, how long have, oh, probably, if you, if you have COX disease, you're still going to pay it to the back of the toilet seat, if you have. Yeah, I would. Yeah, I would. Thank you for the easy work. I appreciate that. No, so how long does it take to make a real sourdough at home? At least 24 hours. Okay, so it's a process. Yeah, but it's mostly just waiting.

Okay. It's not that hard. People, I think the hardest thing is keeping it alive. Mm, yeah. Now, what we talked about before you came on the show when you had told us you would be in the area, you had suggested it would be a good idea to do a podcast on parenthood and raising children.

And I think you two... I thought I said guns, vaccines, and abortion. And abortion. Yeah. Abortion and the questionable gender of track and field athletes. Yeah, that's what many people would do. That's terrible.

Let's just jump in on each of those. Yeah, let's lose everybody. Political affiliations, yeah. Yeah, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. I talk about parenthood. And I think you both are two of the most interesting people on this particular topic.

We've been to your house, just and spent the night there a while ago. Oh, no, I didn't, but I definitely did. Oh, you did? But you were there at your delicious meals. So, yeah, it was great. You were both two of the most involved parents that I've ever met with your children.

You're just, you're involved in almost every aspect of what's going on. You can call a helicopter. Yeah, no. I was just gonna say, I thought you're involved in almost every aspect of what's going on. You can call us helicopter. No, I was just gonna say. I got to be involved, I'm very different. You guys don't feel that way. Do you really, you don't feel like you're helicopter and I can see you?

Oh my gosh, no. I was gonna say, I don't feel like you. If anything, anti-helicopter. Yeah, I don't think you can see it. No, what I mean by involved is you're literally present and involved. It's, you know, your kids aren't just good, you know, you're present, you're involved with the whole process.

Definitely not helicopter. I see your kids having a lot of freedom to fail and to succeed kind of on their own. So I think you guys are great people to talk to. Plus you guys at home school, what I think is an interesting topic. I know right now, home schooling is exploding. Oh yeah.

It's the fastest. It sounds like the best way to do it right now. Yeah. And Ben grew up when it wasn like the best way to do it right now. Yeah. Well, and Ben grew up when it wasn't cool. I grew up when I was in school. When it was like- You're heading your time, which I get hit the right button because I would be so cool.

And I was homeschooled in the traditional manner. You buy curriculum. You know, back when I was homeschooled, it was the Saxon math curriculum or the Usborn books or any number of different. You know, A Becca was not a very popular curriculum, and you'd order typically, in many cases, the same books from the same organization,

so you had your math, your reading, your writing, your logic, your grammar, your social studies, whatever, you'd order that all from us-born, or from A-becko, or from SACSEN, or from any of these folks who had then sent all the books to your house. Kind of like when you started semester in college, and you got a bookstore together, your books,

and then you'd go through lessons plans with mom and set around the kitchen table and everybody you know meet at the kitchen table at eight and we go through all the books and occasionally there's some kind of a group activity with other homeschoolers in the afternoon. Very traditional dyed in the wool homeschooling scenario and that is not what we do with our kids. Really? I want to start there actually. You, I feel like we've gotten to know each other really well in the last, what has it been? Three, almost four years? It's been four years?

It's been four years. Four years. Yeah. And, you know, I consider you a good friend of ours. And I'd say that the thing that I probably know the least amount is really your childhood. And like, you're upbringing. I feel like I've gotten pieces of it through the years,

but I really like to like dive into that, your relationship with your parents, what it was like when you were a kid. And that I think will... Well, that has such a strong influence on how you parent. I think that's a great place to start and influence not only in the way you parent, but also in the way you partner,

Jess and I have even been digging into this a little bit in terms of our relationship and the attachment theory in terms of whether you were given a lot of attention when you were young, in terms of whether you were left to defend for yourself, in terms of how much you've been to. So I'm not very good at explaining attachment there, and I'm going to totally bastardize it. But essentially, some people are born and grow up with anxious attachment where they really look to other people for verification, for compliments, for words of affirmation, and for things that make them feel as though they're okay.

They don't have to be anxious about everything. Mom and dad are giving them verbal approval and saying, good job, and they grow up really digging that kind of approval and almost needing it and still needing it from a partner when they're married or they're with a partner. And then there's another one that's more of like, it's almost the opposite of attachment. Do you remember what it's called, babe? Or the opposite anxiety? Avoidance. So avoidance would be, I want to be left alone.

I was maybe left to be very independent and I love my independence and I want my independence and I don't want a partner who's in my face all the time and I'm very self-sufficient and independent and that person would not necessarily be the person who needs many words of affirmation. And there's this whole idea of the five love languages, you know, words of affirmation or quality time or gifts or certain things that really mean a lot to your partner when you express those to your partner. And for example, I kind of skew a little bit towards anxiety attachment and just kind of skews a little bit towards avoidance attachment.

And so in our relationship, one thing that I found myself doing for years was, I'd worry if she was okay. When I'm making coffee in the kitchen, I look up and she's in the kitchen, and I can't quite tell if she's smiling or if she looks like she got up and she's in a good mood. I'll be, you okay, babe? It's like, yeah, I'm okay.

You sure? I can't, you sure you okay? And you mean things. I'm gonna cut you. But the other more, Jess is like, I'm okay, damn it. And for me, what we've realized is that because my love language is words of affirmation, if Jess wakes up and she says something like, gosh, I'm still thinking about how great

that stake was that you could class nine, or that coffee smells amazing, you make such good coffee, or something like that. I feel zero need to ask her if she's okay. That's all me projecting me on her. So it's really interesting. And so kind of a rabbit hole from what you were saying about how the way that you are raised affects the way that you parents. And it also affects the way that you interact with your spouse to a certain extent.

Now how do you think the way you were raised made you skew towards that type of attachment? I was kind of noodling on this because my mom, I really depended on her for approval. I really looked to her for you're doing a good job. You're good, you're great, and gosh darn it people like you. I think that I looked to her a lot for compliments. And so I still grew up looking to women in my life, such as my wife, for those same type of compliments. Yet I married someone who's very like Tom Boyish,

more, more of the avoidance there, who's, who's, wouldn't, wouldn't necessarily think of, unless we had a conversation about it, oh, like compliment this person. Cause for her and we were talking about this, it almost feels like you were like... It feels unauthentic. Like, inauthentic.

It sounds terrible, but I'm like, I just don't, like, compliments do not come to my mind at all. Like, I mean, it's not that I don't think it, it's just, I don't voicing it, it just feels weird to me. Yeah. And plus the fact that Jess and I met,

and well, we met in second grade Sunday school, but we really got to know each other well in college, and we're very competitive. We had triathlon, she raised track and fields. We've, you know, sand volleyball, everything. We've always been a very competitive couple. And so part of it, too, is like when she compliments me, it's almost like it rubs against our

eye-night tendency to compete with one another and to try and one up each other. Unless she beats you range, she's like, you did a good job. Oh yeah. I'm wired up to be an achiever. If I take a personality profile, I'm achiever, perfectionist, and Jessa is more people-pleaser type B and You know one of the ways that I'll compete with her is if I see her out in the porch drinking a glass of wine Just like you know lounging at whatever 6 p.m. And I I come up and it's like an hour before dinner or whatever I see her out there, you know I I will literally say well I've got about an hour of work still and about 30 emails. I still got a finish

So I'll be up from the office in about an hour so I'll see you then I'm gonna get some work done. I'm like I'll literally find myself. Right. Just because we're still competitive with each other so you guys are actually the reverse of Katrina and I very very similar so I can totally relate to the feeling and authentic to just say compliments to say them. So I actually, and I love, uh, the five love languages, I recommend that to anybody in a

relationship. I think it brought so much insight to Katrina and I and, and how we navigate. We've been together for 10 years. So of course, we've learned a ton about each other. And I, I can never, uh, I can never compliment enough, um, for her. And so I'm always trying to practice things that feel authentic and real, that it provides that for her. Something that I've done that's helped that is, I just make a point,

I try and do this at least once a month where I get her flowers and write a card. And if I sit down, is that her language is receiving a gift? Actually gifts aren't affirmation, it's the card that really matters. The flowers is like the message of the day. Yeah, the flowers is a bonus. She likes them in the house and they're pretty. The card is what means everything to her.

And she would rather, and this was hard for me. When we first started dating, I was the shower with gifts because that's my thing. So I mean, it bought her all these nights, clothes all the time. Because the way that you thought was, well, of course, of course she's gonna love to get gifts. I love to get gifts.

She's got a lot of it. Yeah, it's really interesting. It's not the language or partners. No, and I actually think this is like one of the biggest things where people miss in their relationship because, and no one is really guilty because you feel like you're trying. I remember when we had that, this first, you know,

paradigm-shouting moment in our relationship because she had felt like I wasn't giving her that love. And I remember like, going, literally last week, I just dropped like $500 on new loo outfits. I can pull the receipt. Right. And I'm thinking of myself like, you know, I stopped in my day, I thought about her,

I went and bought her all this stuff and I brought it home for no reason, no holiday. Like how is that not showing love? But it took me a while to make that connection that I could do that all day long, and she still not feel loved because I'm constantly speaking my language and not hers. And now Ben, I think, go ahead. One thing that comes to mind, I realize I haven't even answered your question about my childhood yet. So, but one thing that comes to mind regarding

that whole idea of gifts as being a language of love is I also think that that can lead to a certain form of lazy parenting, meaning that in many cases we feel as though we're doing a good job as parents, if we take our kids to some expensive steakhouse and then the next day a trip to the zoo, an arcade, and a movie, and we were just trying to make every moment epic, or every moment extremely valuable with cash, with money, when, in fact, I think that time and traditions trump that big time. Like, I can tell you, if you have breakfast

for dinner on Tuesday night where dad makes eggs and waffles every Tuesday night for eight years of their childhood, they're going to remember that more than any random trip to Vegas where you can get $1,000 on the whole family at dinner at a Japanese restaurant. Or if they've got every single Christmas, they're doing the 24-day Advent calendar and getting a little chocolate and doing a little bit of reading each morning for this 24 days building and building and building to Christmas every single year. When they grow up and you ask them about Christmas,

they're probably going to talk about that tradition and that memorable habit that's a part of the family, then they will, that one year they got the huffy, the shiny, huffy bike that they'd always wanted. I found out my kids just building things with them was everything. Like, you know, taking them to, like I knew my son was into tetherball, and so we just, like his gift for Christmas

was all of us were gonna put this together and like make it from scratch and everything, and then, you know, they're bike ramp ramp and all this just that vested time that everybody shares together it makes that thing more valuable to them it has you know some kind of relevance and we all had an experience we shared together it doesn't if that time is repeated and regularly scheduled I think that's where you start to build families and legacies and even this concept that grandparents matter because they become part of passing on those stories. Totally traditions. And I think that having family rituals, and that's a huge part of our parenting.

Like our family dinners, the song we sing before Sunday dinner, the type of journaling we do in the morning, the type of journaling we do in the evening, as a family, the bedtime music, the trips to the tennis court, the six different card games that we play nearly every night of the week, our kids find dependency and trust and safety in that, but furthermore, we're not raising our children, we're raising our grandchildren, our reserve children, our reserve grandchildren,

the type of traditions that we instill in our children now. Those are the things that go on and become a special dependable part of family, no matter where. If I get uprooted and I got to move to a new state and get a new job or whatever, we can still play our Sunday night test. Did you both get that growing up? I got a lot of that growing up.

She did. I've learned everything about the value of tradition from my wife because my family was, my family was Christmas morning. What do you guys want to do for dinner tonight? Should we get some subway sandwiches or find a turkey that we forgot to pull out for these or whatever? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no Was that just normal to you and it wasn't a big deal or did you ever go through a phase where you had

animosity towards your parents because of maybe how you were raised so Pleasantly Agnostic like I just I didn't even know right how you're normal until I met Jessa and I thought it was super Yeah, most people you might she's like oh we've got our annual trip to the coast We do it this time every single year my trip. When you actually do the same place, they're from here, or you know, this is the color of the plates that we use on Christmas. And these, this is what the name tags look like

for Thanksgiving. And this is the exact Easter egg hunt that we do every Easter. And for me, it's just... Now you push back against that? I didn't push back against it, but it was just super weird for me. I got never, and oh my goodness, pinched me now. I am so lucky marrying a girl who actually knew about the importance of traditions, because our kids are like, they're so stable at home, because they, there's so much they can depend on every day of the week,

you know, predictable environments, remove a lot of fear and anxiety. So I wanna hear from Justin, because when you have the difference like this, and I know Katrina and I have this, there's always some sort of resistance somewhere, what has been the greatest challenge for you with him because of the way he was raised that you guys have had to work through together?

You know, it wasn't like the crit, like doing the same thing at Christmas, or Easter you know, Easter or whatever or having those traditions around certain holidays. It was honestly more of the tradition in the daily routines. Oh yeah. Because like I grew up in a family, my dad, he was a farmer, he raised cattle, he came home at five o'clock every night, we had dinner at six o'clock, everybody came together, and then we enjoyed maybe a half hour TV show with popcorn. You know, there is always tradition built into the day.

And so for very, very long. And she married me where I'm like, I'm on a plane to Abu Dhabi to race a triathlon. I'm on the back working, you know, 10 to noon, three to five, eight to 11 p.m. at a gym, and then coming home, trying to build an online business to 2 a.m. it is all over the map, because I grew up with a dad who literally would hold the same job for like a year and then go start a new company and then sell that and buy a franchise and then go and buy some old ambulances and start to do ambulancing. Like my dad was all over the map.

So she grew up in a very dependable, traditional, consistent, farmer type of environment, whereas I grew up with a dad who was just all over the map in terms of entrepreneurship. So that was a, that was a, because I could see how the annual traditions, it's like we're being... That's understandable. Yeah, Ben can be like, the annual traditions, it's like we're being...

It's understandable. Yeah, Ben can be like, yeah, okay, fine. We'll do this later. We'll do this later on. Every day, it's like, this is what we do in the morning. This is what we do at night. Yeah. I could see how that would be, you know, kind of chill.

It took me a long time. And now, like, I can't, like, the date is not feel right unless we have our family dinner with our card game. With me playing ukulele or guitar to the boys afterwards. With our, you know, we do self-examination and purpose at the end of the day. So at the end of the day, we say, in our journals, what good have I done today and what could I have done better today?

So we learn from both our successes and our failures and what is one way that I lived out my life's purpose because I've taught my children from a very early age to have a strong purpose statement, you know, to have their icky guide, to have their plan de Vida, the thing that rips them out of bed in the morning, that gives them a lens through which they see a lot of the boxes that they might be checking during the day.

In the end, ultimately, how is this helping you to fulfill your purpose? And then in the morning, same thing, right now we meet as a family out in the sun, on the deck, we've got a five minute meditation app that we go through called a bide that walks us through like a little verse from scripture and a prayer, then we all write down one thing

we're grateful for and one person we can pray for or help that day. And all these little things, they rubbed me the wrong way at first. I just, to me, it felt like being just like an old, buddy, dutty TV show family from the, you know, 50s or early leave it to be, and now Like it it is the most magical part of the day these little tricks. They're a request in these specific songs from you now like some ACD series They then a little bit of a place, but they're they're really into epic movie soundtracks, which I can't play. Oh, yeah.

But in order to, I took them into a recording studio for Christmas gift from mom, and they really like the greatest showman, which has a lot of really epic songs. Oh, right. We recorded a whole album from mom recording studio, and then they also really like super heart felt like praise and worship songs.

Oh, yeah. Because of the very into like praise and worship songs. So, because of the very, the very into like praise and worship. So, it's usually like that kind of stuff or sometimes it's just like an old school hand, like amazing grace. Well, so I'm listening to all this. By the way, it sounds amazing. And speaking to these rituals or traditions, this is how cultures are created.

Absolutely. And one thing about humans is when you look at things that last for thousands and thousands of years, that's because we've found significant value. And otherwise it wouldn't last, right? This is part of evolution. People who are into science, who understand evolution from a biological sense, you also need

to understand evolution from a cultural and practical sense and behaviors and practices and cultures. We often take them for granted because they've been around for thousands of years and we tend to look at them and be like, well, that's stupid. Why do we have to do it that way? Everybody's been doing it so long. Maybe we even view it as oppressive or whatever, but the realities that exist because humans have found it tremendously valuable and oftentimes in ways that you don't even fully understand

because it's been around for so long. But as I'm listening to this, and I think, again, what you guys are doing is extremely valuable. I also know that you have two 12 year old boys. They're about to become teenagers. And like all kids, I'm sure they give some pushback sometimes. I mean, I don't think there's any perfect person out there, let alone perfect kid.

What do you do when your kid says, I don't wanna do the thing we did. Or what is it that they give pushback? Yeah, what are the things? Like, how do you handle that? Well, first of all, and I think maybe it was when we recorded in Tahoe, we talked a little bit about on one of the previous podcasts

that we recorded together, about this idea of love and logic style parenting. Yeah. Educating your children on the consequences of their decision, then as much as possible, allowing them to make the decision, am I going to eat gluten? Am I going to look at pornography? Am I going to smoke a cigarette? Any of these things, you teach your children about the impact on the brain, the impact on

the body, the potential societal implications, and then you let them make the decision and deal with the consequences, right? Maybe poor performance at school the next day because they punished three cupcakes at their friend's birthday party. I'd rather them learn that way than me say no cupcakes and then feel like. I actually took a whole course. There's a free course right now online, Love and Logic. And one of the things that they say on that, so powerful, so they give the example, here's an easy example. You're going out, you're going out somewhere, it's cold. And you tell

you're, you tell you, hey, make sure you grab your jacket. I don't want to wear a jacket, right? So the old school way would be like, get your jacket, put it on. You're going to the Love and Logic way would be like, okay, don't worry. And then when you go out and they're freezing and there's, oh my god, it's cold, you empathize with be like, get your jacket, put it on, you're gonna, the love and logic way would be like, okay, don't worry, then when you go out and they're freezing and there's, oh my God, it's cold, you empathize with them. I'm not sure. I know. Yeah, that really sucks, or whatever. It's cool.

And they learn from that, and the way that they sell it, which I think is brilliant, is if they learn those lessons now, then they don't have to learn in the hard way later on when it's like getting drunk driving or, you know, things that have real serious consequences. So, yeah, and take the course, I really think it's valuable. It is, and there are two other considerations here with the style of parenting. A, it only works if you're a really good example.

You can't tell your kids, oh, you can use the phone and the television and the video game platform as much as you'd like. You know, might hurt your eyes a little bit, you might not the phone and the television and the video game platform as much as you'd like. You know, might hurt your eyes a little bit, you might not sleep that well tonight. But if you say that, and then every night after work, you're plopped in front of Netflix for two hours, then that's what your kids are gonna have is a good, like in the Greenfield house, if there's downtime,

90% of the time I'm holding a musical instrument or I have a book in my face. Right, I am not on my phone, I'm not playing a video game, I'm not parked in front of a screen. So when my kids have downtime, like their go-to thought pattern is not, where's my eye touch? Or I'm gonna go hunt downstairs and you too on the MacBook.

Then the other thing, and this is new for me, is that I think that sometimes that side of parenting can lead almost too much to you, wanting your kids to like you. You know, or as Jordan Peterson would say, don't do things that would make your kids dislike you. Don't do things that would make your kids hate you. Sometimes I think we can take that in too far the opposite direction. I don't want my child to ever feel as though they were deprived or as though I told them

they had to do something because we use this whole love and logic. Don't ever make your kids angry type of approach. But for example, I have decided that even though for the longest time I've been writing out little workouts for River and Terran to do. So you guys you gotta do 60 pound pet sandbag one time around the obstacle course and you do this three times this week

or your workout today is five goblet squats, five push ups, dead hang for max time and you can do you do this three times this week or your workout today is five goblets, squats, five pushups, you know, dead hang for max time and you're gonna do five rounds of that. I was not being a good father, I was not being a good leader, I was not being a good king in terms of basically me almost parenting through check boxes and giving my kids little assignments that they could or could not do but great if you've done it versus me literally bringing them out with me and sacrificing my podcast time or audiobook time or my favorite Spotify artist time

to just go inside my own head for a workout instead take them with me and have them suffer in a way that they kinda sorta don't watch suffer you can tell along with me because let's face it. I think a 5am paper route like I had when I was a kid, like if my parents would have told me that oh, you could or could not do that's up to you, but because they said you need a job

and we have a paper job, so go work, make money. I think that's character building. And so I think that you sometimes have to get to a point where you are telling your, you put your foot down you're saying, yo, this is gonna be good for you. Let's go out to the garage. We're gonna sweat for a half hour. It's not, it's not do you wanna come for you. Let's go out to the garage. We're gonna sweat for a half hour.

It's not, it's not, do you wanna come with me? It's, we're going out. We're going out. And also it's just coming along side or kid and doing something with them, rather than. I just tell you. Yeah, that versus telling them, because it's not, you're sacrificing your time,

which is a display of love towards that person. And so really, I think in all of this love has to be seen in everything that you do for your child because they won't have trust for you if you aren't displaying that to them regularly. And that's in putting them to bed and not just saying, goodnight, see you in the morning, it's putting them to bed,

you know, making sure they have everything they need and maybe they need that prayer or that song or that ritual. Oh my gosh, that's awesome. It's literally just like taking your time and giving to them. I 100% agree. So what do you do when you're, like, do you have an example of time when your, when your boys was like, I don't want to do that,

journaling today. I'm not going to do it or I don't care about that right now or whatever. I don't feel like I've ever, and this sounds crazy to probably people. We don't receive a lot of pushback from our boys in that way. I haven't seen that.

No, we don't. They're not perfect. Like, you know, because they are, they're unschooling, they each have their own little MacBook, and sometimes they'll have, you know, like they take one course called Mathnasium, where they have an online math tutor, and sometimes they've got little homework assignments.

And, you know, I was finding with the increasing frequency, I walk into them and you could tell, they were switching browser windows really nice. That's like, show that they were here on task. And where my mind goes is, I can tell them, hey, you're hiding something from dad and taking your computer away from the week you're grounded. But what I said to both of them in two separate conversations,

because sometimes you wanna be careful not to embarrass one kid in front of the other or make one feel like they're wrong, those right? So I took them aside and I said, look, I'm not stupid. I can tell when I walk into the room, when you're on your computer and you're quickly switching browser windows, that you're doing something that you feel

might not be the best use of your time or that I might disapprove of. I told them, look, I don't care. It's your time. It's your life. It's up to you whether or not you want to waste your life or squander your education or spend time on some silly cartoon website versus applying yourself and doing what it is that's going to make you a better person in the moment.

But my one request is that you not hide it from me. You don't have to be embarrassed. If you have a certain website you're visiting, you wanna visit, go for it, do it. Just don't feel like you have to hide it from me because you're not getting trouble. All you're doing is you're ruining your own life and that's up to you. Just please don't hide it from me.

And so those are the type of conversations that I have. It's like Cartoon Network is ruining my life. I'm sorry. Well, so here's the other thing too that sometimes I worry about. My son is about to turn 15, my daughter's 10, so kind of close in age to your boys. And obviously, I'm a fitness and health person, right?

And I've seen this before. I've seen this before where I had a family member whose dad was an herbalist and super into health and whatnot. And the kids had to eat everything was healthy. They didn't get all the processed foods that everybody got and when it was their birthday, they didn't get the normal cake. They got the super crunchy, whatever cake with no sugar.

And what ended up happening to both of them is the second they got out of the house, they went super far. Tracking up, right? They felt like sells to each other. Like a ride cracker for their breath. Yeah, they went super far in the opposite direction. And so sometimes I get or I've also seen where parents are super into fitness to where the

kid maybe feels like it's a bit tyrannical. And so they have the bad relationship with fitness. And then when they get out of the house, and they're on their own, I never wanna work out type of deal. What do you do to ensure that either that doesn't happen or if it does happen that they end up coming back to the right thing? Well, I don't know, here's my feelings on that,

is my own personal journey myself, is my parents didn't force fitness or food or anything on me really. And I was allowed to come to that in my own time. Now I think my parents instilled in me like an understanding of this is good for you, this is not good for you. You should maybe be active and not sedentary. You know, they instilled those virtues in me, but they didn't force them upon me. And so I call it, we're not raising dogs,

we're raising spiritual beings. You know, you're not raising your kids to do this and obey and this and that. You're raising them to have a spirit and be able to make a decision and have virtue. And so to me, I really feel that if you are a teaching or kid anything, if it's not done in the heart of London, they don't understand that you love them and that's why you're teaching this to them is because you care about them, then it's going to have, it's going to kind

of hit tin and just bounce off. I think the independence that comes with adolescence, which were of course increasingly going to experience as our kids, growing to teenage your hood, dictates that a child will want to do the opposite of what their parent is doing to assert their own independence. That's just the way that things are. And so I fully expect it.

I'm fully prepared for River and Terran to be the anti-gymrat, or the person who prides himself upon maybe having a little bit of pooch and being a member of the chess club and playing a lot of piano, just because dad is son fitness, and I don't want to, like, that's not cool. But not that I'm saying that adolescents, I think sometimes it's used as a crutch for or an excuse to go into full rebellion, but I think some amount of asserting ones independence and sometimes asserting ones independence by trying to do the opposite of what their parent may have done is

understandable. But for me personally, like, I think that you always kind of experienced that prodigal son-esque moment where you where you come back and you realize the value like my dad used to give me books that I absolutely did not want to read. I mean like Christian apologetics and you know sermons by CS Lewis and just all this stuff. I was just like, why do I want to read. I mean, like, Christian apologetics and sermons by CS Lewis, just all this stuff. I was just like, why don't I want to read this just like, you know, the way I think about Asatini, just Jesus-free drivel and you know, just this random religious philosophy,

like I want to be reading about, you know, I got, I loved fantasy fiction and I loved space fiction. I got, that's the kind of stuff I wanted to read. But now, coming full circle, like when I've got downtime, and I feel like I really want to feed my spirit and feed my soul and challenge myself intellectually, I mean, that's what I'm reading. I'm reading John Piper and CS Lewis and Doug Wilson,

and all these these deep, logical, philosophical books on religion, or on apologetics, and all of a sudden, I'm like, oh geez, I'm doing exactly what my dad did. I'm like, my dad, all of a sudden. It took me 30 years to see the value in that, but all of a sudden I'm like, oh, I'm actually, I'm growing my spiritual muscles now, I understand what that was about.

Yeah, but I came to that place. So I think you show your kids what's important, and then at a certain point you just, you trust God that they're going to, if you've exposed them to the right type of things, eventually make the right decisions, even though they'll probably go and through that independence.

It's the hardest thing to do as a parent. That's gotta be the hardest thing, because you know what they're gonna do. You see the pitfalls and you just gotta let them do it. That's really, really hard. But you know what's really cool is, I've seen my parents go through that and see their daughter take really hard nose dives and do really stupid crap.

How did you rebel? I was a really... I... I like to teeter on the edge, but I never fully won. She was she rebelled by marrying me. Yeah, I basically did. Did any of you guys... No, did any of you guys have siblings that rebel? They're with the complete opposite. Like, did you guys... Yeah, did any of you guys have siblings that rebel or went the complete opposite?

Like did you guys, yeah, I think I'm out of magic. Everybody's got a little bit of a black sheep and every family Absolutely, but at what I what I was saying is I'm like I got to witness my parents walk through that and go through the fire of that I lived through that with them and so to see that they're how they react into that and how they walked through that it was just Honestly with a lot of faith and a lot of prayer and that's all you can do at that point because they are their own person and at some point You do have to let them you gotta let them go and just you know Yeah, you got you gotta let them go rest and promises basically Here's what I think and here's why I think that idea, like, whatever they say, 99% of the time, you're going to spend with your child is done with

by the time they're 18, so you better just make every minute count and live every moment with your kid as if you were going to be in your deathbed that night. And everything has to be happening. And I think that that's a, it's based on a flawed theory. If you have built up traditions, if you have built up rituals, if you have built up an environment

where parents are honored and grandparents are honored, and children are honored, then you create a scenario where, when your kids are 18, they wanna keep coming back for more. When they've flown the nest and they've started their own family, they still wanna keep coming back to their original family

or including their parents and their extended family and their rituals and routines and traditions because the entire family is built upon these deep rooted traditions. And so, I think that even though a lot of kids are gonna have times when they go their own way, our job as parents is to create this safe nest, full of traditions, and habits, and rituals,

and routines, and dependency, and routines, and dependency, and trust that just makes them wanna keep coming back for more as they age, and then take you when you're old as a parent into their home. Because I think that's another big issue with parenting, with the value of parents, and with the honor of being a father

and a mother right now in culture, is A, we hide away old people. We hide away old people because we don't want to care for them, we don't want to give them the time, we don't want to give the attention. And then, and I mean, this is probably, this probably delves into the politics that I know you guys love to talk about so much. We kill a whole bunch of little people. Like, yeah, 40 million of them. And so when we say, okay, we care about babies, but you know, there's several tens of millions that we're willing to kill for convenience to say each year.

And then we care about parents, but when they get old and it's inconvenient, you got like, change their diaper and they stink a little bit, we're gonna hide them away. Right, so I think on both ends of the spectrum, there are some issues that cause us to a certain extent to devalue parents, to devalue children. Well, there's one, I'll move away from the third rail there there are some issues that cause us to a certain extent to devalue parents, to devalue children.

Well, I'll move away from the third rail there a little bit, but I'll move to one that's a little bit much less of a third rail, but sometimes is also, I think is a big one, is that I think fatherhood has been totally devalued in modern societies. We just had this conversation. Look, you watch TV shows and how they display the father. Gosh, modern family, right? He's an idiot, he's a bumbling whatever. He doesn't really do much, he has no value.

He's like the jester, he's a clown. And, and so here's what I think the problem is. And we run into a lot of this, like in the health space, anti-aging, longevity, Peter Pan syndrome, right? Like I'm gonna be a boy and have fun and go to, you know, like, time myself to be. I'm gonna go to Spartan races and triathlons and get the, you know, stem cell injections in my dick

and do all this, like, cowboy, Peter Pan. I'm gonna be a boy forever type of shit. When, in fact, living like that, having all the biohacking toys, having the workouts, you know, being the buddy because you really want your kids to like you and then the clown and the jester, not that there can't be some light playful aspect

to being a father, but I think too many dads are not freaking like kings, true leaders, fathers, strong rocks that the family can depend upon. And you know, another part of that too is just, you know just welfare parenting, right? So many single parent households with mothers, government steps in and takes the role of the father. So dads a lot of times they don't even need to be a dad,

right, because somebody else is going to care for it. Well, a lot of boys running around. Yeah, and a lot of the old cultures, I talked earlier about how things exist for thousands of years oftentimes, because we find lots of value. When you go to the lot of these old cultures It's a it's almost like a way to brag when you're a father with a lot of kids like when men talk to each other So how many kids you have I have three kids? Well, I have four like wow you know, that's awesome

Whatever it's the opposite in our culture if you are you know You tell a guy a buddy of yours that you have three kids and they'll respond with like, oh, God. That sucks. That's so true. Yeah, well, well, I'm gonna, I got my Corvette and I get to bang hot chicks all the time and that sucks that you have to, you know,

do that kind of stuff and they laugh about it or whatever. It's crazy that we don't prize that anymore. And by the way, you can disagree all you want. The statistics are clear. Their crystal clear children raised without fathers are many, many times more likely to end up in all the terrible situations. Everything from prison to drug abuse to suicide,

we are in a, it's like a pandemic of fatherless societies. It's really, really sad. And this comes, because you were asking about my childhood, my father was somewhat absent, meaning he was not a very high quality time. You know, lots of hugs type of dad. He was off running businesses, starting businesses. Very, he's naturally quiet, naturally introspective,

naturally good at being an introvert and kind of off doing his own thing. Like I tend to be pulled towards his father with the same way, always locked away in the office, always working or using work as an escape. So coming down to me and this idea of you're not raising your children, you're raising your grandchildren, I have come to the realization a very strong way over the past year or so that if I don't break that cycle, if I continue to, you know, parent through checkboxes, whatever, you know, River and Terry, here's your work out here's your work, I was this,

is that dad's headed out to LA for eight days, I'll be back and check it on you guys and make sure everything's, you know, going well. And if I am not a fully present father, if I am not a leader, if I'm not the king of my household, then it's going to show my children the example of the father that a greenfield father is, and then they go forth and do probably something very similar to what I did. Mary a really strong woman, because just as an amazingly strong woman, she's super independent,

self-sufficient, even a little bit of that avoidance syndrome versus the attachment syndrome that I have. So she can operate on her own, just fine. And it's very easy for me to let her wear the pants in the family, to let her be the leader. And so I can be a little boy, you know, off, you know, pulling on a speedo to go swimming Hawaii in a triathlon, well, she's at home holding down the fort.

And, you know, the question I've increasingly been asking myself is, is that what a greenfield father should be known for? Should a greenfield father be known for being a playful little boy off having great adventures married to a really strong woman, so the kids are taking care of it home, or should a Greenfield father be a leader, be a king, be someone who really takes their children under their wings and trains them and spends quality time with them, and sometimes has them suffer

along with him and really, really teaches them how to be a man. And I would say that I think the latter is far more valuable than your kids liking you because you're just like the clown around the house. That's a very powerful realization. Now have you found moments recently where you were about to take off and go to something and then you stopped yourself and you go cancel your flight or canceled your trip and said I'm staying home. I mean, have you had moments like that in this last year where, because you're right, when

you have something so deep that it's generations, your father, your grandfather, that that should so deeply rooted that that's always going to be default for you. It's hard to be aware of. And I'm, I had the same similar type of thing is to go bury myself into work. And so I have to always kind of check back in like, is this me kind of running away without even realizing I'm running away? And you know, can I pass on this? I didn't have to cancel I think because God bless COVID. But what I have done, one big change I have made is and this has been really remarkable in the ways just transform my whole week, my approach to work,

my approach to productivity, my approach to procrastination, my approach to prioritization is Sundays are full on family day. I mean, no calls, no work, no, oh, you know, we missed a call on Monday, let's just shove this one into Sunday, you got time this weekend, I'll ping you this week, and I would find myself sometimes on Sunday, you know, three or four phone calls, planes and catch up work, you know, just getting things done. Sure. I don't find myself sometimes on Sunday, three or four phone calls, planes and catch up work, just getting things done. Now knowing that Sunday is coming,

and that's a full on family day, it really gives me hyper focus every other day of the week. And then when Sunday's roll around, not that I'm not spending quality time with my kids every day, but that's been transformed if I have that one day where it is nothing but family and faith focused. I love that. Now you've mentioned spirituality and faith a few times

and I've been on my own and I've been public about my own recent spiritual journey. I used to be very atheist and then I became agnostic and more recently now I've been pulled to the Christian religion quite a bit and I've learned quite a bit of it and there was a moment that I read, Justin Adam, myself and Doug,

were invited to listen to Bishop Baron and Arthur Brooks speak. And it was one of the most, Arthur Brooks is a, I don't know if you know who Arthur Brooks is. Yeah, I can speak very, very powerful effect. It was actually one of the most genuine, nice people I've ever met my entire life. He's one of those people you meet every once in a while that you immediately feel their energy

and you wanna give them a hug. Just a great guy. And he said something so powerful that literally, Justin, Adam, and myself and Doug looked at each other and looked away quickly because all of us were all emotional. We were all in the verge of tears. I love that.

He said something very powerful. And he said about the power of going to church with your children as a father. And he said something, I'll never forget. He said, here you are, if you're a good father, I'm paraphrasing, he says it much better. But here you are, a good father, your children see you as the most powerful person in the world. If you do a good job and you're a good parent,

your children will look at you as the ultimate role model. And it's not totally not unusual for a kid, especially a young kid, to think that they're dad. You're the strongest person ever. He's the strongest, most powerful, most whatever. Which is not a bad thing, you're the protector of the family. So they think, and I remember thinking that about my dad, and he says, to go to church,

to see the most powerful man in your life, bend in knee and and and and and praise and give great and give, you know, to someone else, basically saying, I am this one thing's servant or this God's servant. He said, what a powerful message all of a sat there like. Yeah. What a very powerful thing to show your child, you know? The perfect, the perfect example of a father and a son is so when when you are a good father, or you're a powerful father, you're a leader in your home, you're absolutely right. And you show your kids that you still get down on Bended Knee that there's still something that you fear, there's still something you honor, there's still something you have a great

deal of reverence around. And it is this, you know, this creator, this greater power, this absolute truth. I think that that also shows kids that there's even a, there's even a greater rock, there's even a greater foundation. And honestly, I just think the whole idea that there is an absolute truth, that there is absolute morality, you know, in my opinion, that that's part of the strong fabric that knits cultures together. And that keeps morality from unraveling.

You're not shakeable. You have to have the very idea of this country when it started. There was a period of time when anybody could come here. No matter who you were, where you came from, you were welcome, and you think to yourself, how did that work? You got all these different people,

and I've heard people say, oh, they're all Europeans, they're all the same. It's stupid to say I've heard of my life because they've been at two world wars with each other. They were very different. They're Germans, Italians, Irish. They were all very, very, very different. They all came here. How did they all get along? They all had an underlying appreciation, respect, and belief in liberty and freedom. So this is how they all got along. So that when you say this absolute morality, the only way different people can ever work

together and still be very different is if they have one, they have this common thread of something and that's what this absolute moralizes why when morality is subjective and not objective, you run into a lot of different problems. But the question I want to ask you, you're very spiritual. You've mentioned Jesus and God. So obviously very strong Christian, but you're also very analytical objective,

scientific-minded, individual. So aside from the specifics that you find in Christianity and in your religion religion from an objective scientific standpoint. What are the values of having a spiritual practice or a belief system? Are there values because these days it seems like that. There's constantly people are saying there's no value in that. It's silly.

It's make believe. Why do we even do it? Obviously, it's existed in every culture. Where is the reality? Yeah, every culture forever has had some kind of a strong belief. So there's obviously value, but from that standpoint, why is that important to have? Right. Well, there's two things to consider here.

The first is when you're talking about science and reducing everything to scientism, if you want to call it, everything must be proven. There must be a reason for everything. If you trace everything back to its ultimate origin, everything must be explainable. And it's very difficult to be a respected authority in a field of something like fitness or nutrition, you know, as kind of like shallow sciences as those fields might be considered to be, and to make statements that you want to be respected for, when at the same time you have admitted that there comes a certain point where when you've traced something back from tissue to cell to atom to molecule to quark to proton to electron and you know stripped everything down to its tiniest tiniest component.

You know the tiniest little threat of existence, you will get to the point where you can either say, well, you know, we're going to keep on digging because we're going to figure out what came before this and what came before this and what came before this. We can eventually explain the way everything be via science or you get to a certain point where you throw up your hands and you say, I don't know, it's magic. Something made like some higher power that I don't understand made this and I'm just going to have the faith that that happened and resist the even the mild arrogance that I might be able to explain away everything in the universe.

And that's tricky to be involved in a field that depends upon science at the same time. Essentially say the equivalent of, yeah, I believe in unicorns and berries and fairy tales and magic, but I'd rather live in a world of magic where there's deep hope that there's a story written for your life, that there's a big guy upstairs watching out for a buddy, that this entire universe around us and all the wonder of it,

from, you know, from, you know, smoked clams and cannabis to, you know, to sourdough bread and a good red wine to, you know, psilocybin and dumbbells and every, like, these are all wonderful, wonderful works of creation that we can simply enjoy and not necessarily feel that there's an extreme need to have to explain away the science. And so that's one part of really the difficulties,

gang to the point where you just say, yeah, I believe in faith, I believe in magic. So, you know, so, you know, judge me for it. And then the other part of it, when it comes to the value of this, you know, we know that there's a lot of data out there about how people who, who are church goers tend to have reduced all cause risk and mortality. Maybe that's the community. Maybe it's the tiny, thimble, full glass of hermetic inducing red wine every Sunday.

Who knows? But we know that for a fact, we know that gratitude lowers blood pressure, improved sleep, increases empathy, increases self-control. We know that this self-examination practice increases the amount of actual productivity impact that you make with your life. We know that having a purpose statement actually is associated with higher profile of mood state scores and greater happiness.

When you go down the list of all these spiritual disciplines and you read wonderful books by guys like Richard Foster and David Wallace on all the spiritual disciplines, gratitude, service, community, worship, solitude, purpose in life, silence, abstinence. Yeah, that's a big... Absence, everything you wind up with this list of things that ultimately have deep physical and physiological and psychological which these people can't replace. Right. It's not because they had a scientific book telling them, even fasting, right?

Fasting did not originate from science, it originated from religion and... It was a spiritual health, not for physical health, right? That's what it was for. Exactly. It was for spiritual health, not for physical health. That's what it was for. You know, it's fun. So for me, what kind of got me to move in this direction was a few different things, but one of them were some of the ideas that seemed to work so well are not obvious. For example, the idea that, and this comes from religion,

the idea that all people have are born with inalienable rights, which is, you know, it's in our founding. What a weird, radical, crazy idea. Totally not obvious. For most of human history, there were kings and queens and peasants and slaves. And nobody, nobody would come up with such an insane thing. From a reasonable, logical standpoint,

you can look around at people and observe. And obviously, that's not true. We're all so different. We're all some people are born this way. So where did that come from? And it came from religion. So that was one of the things that helped me move in that direction. That is the gospel, right? Like God sent his son to die so that the burden and all the shame and all the sin and all the shit that we are born with and that we create and that we live with every single day could be taken upon the back

of the extreme suffering and pain, literally a God from the sky came down to take on. And it says very clearly in the Bible, which I consider to be a source of absolute truth that that was not just done for like the Jews, not just done for the Gent that was not just done for, like the Jews, not just done for the Gentiles, not just done for the Asians, not just done for the South Americans,

every single person, right? The grocer, the slave, the free person. You name it, everybody is on equal ground when it comes to all of us. And it's entirely not obvious and reasonable to think that anybody would come up with that, especially anybody with any kind of power. Why would you give away?

So it's very interesting to me. The ultimate act of humility. Yeah, now I understand that it is improved that there's a supernatural God, I get that. But boy, how pragmatic it is, how effective it is at helping create societies that we value, boys that crazy. The other part is this is that,

let's talk about science for a second. Quantum physics is magic. Let's talk about it. Yeah, but listen, it kinda is. The observer effects, it's unexplainable. It is kind of magical. But let's talk about science for a second. Science is, I can easily make the argument

that it's one of the most valuable, powerful, the scientific method's gotta be one of the most powerful tools that we've ever come up with. But here's the problem of science. You mentioned scientist, scientist. It has no morality, it's not supposed to. Science doesn't work if you apply a morality to, it's supposed to be purely objective. But if you don't

have people who have an idea of morality within themselves, here's what science turns into. It turns into not should I, but can I? Is this possible? Okay, let's hybrid humans with gorillas to see how strong they can get. Let's create, let's have children out of the womb because that's convenient. You know what, all these monkey embryos. Yeah, you know, eugenics, eugenics is an idea. It's such a terrible idea, right? That we need to get rid of the genetically bad people to have a perfect race.

From a scientific standpoint, an objective for the collective, it makes perfect sense. At once, one science becomes absolute truth. You are on a very slippery slope towards an absence of morality, because there is no consideration of whether something is right or wrong, just whether something is true or false.

And what's really interesting is a book that I recently read. It was when we were in, actually, when the boys and I were in Dubai, I think I was reading this book on the plane and I sent you this book, Jess, and I'm forgetting it's about how every single culture has this one great God in the sky,

who actually is this source of truth and is this source of right and wrong. Many, many cultures have no idea who Jesus was, a gospel, sacrifice, saying any of that stuff, but they know there's this one God who has created a deep truth and morality that goes beyond, and it's gonna be nuts that I can't remember.

I can't remember what the name of the book is, but essentially what it comes down to is there is head knowing and there is heart knowing. Head knowing is science, right? I know whether something is true or false. I can use reasoning, I can use logic. I can explain away the observer effect by maybe talking about how like particles would interact with the photon. There's got to be a way to explain this. And then heart knowing is basically just, I just know because

I know. I know that I should not walk up on the street to the person holding a wonderful, aromatic loaf of sourdough bread, hold a gun to their head, pull the trigger and walk away with their bread because I wanted it and that felt right to me. Everybody knows in their heart, that's the heart now. You know, you may not be able to explain, but you know deep down inside because you could try to explain it in a way.

You could say, oh, you did, because that makes you happy. And that's, and morality comes from what makes you happy, but did it make the other person happy from not? Here's an interesting thought experiment along those lines. It's like you asked somebody, if you could go back in time and kill Hitler when he was a baby, would you do it? And some people might say, well, yeah,

I would save lots of people, but if you really think about it, he's not Hitler yet. He's a baby, he hasn't done anything yet. So your heart knows that would actually be wrong even though theoretically I could prevent all this other, you know, stuff from happening. It's wisdom. It's also very unrealistic. You never actually write it. But you okay, so so so obviously so fitness is my expertise. So I like to take things to fitness because that's where I understand the most I would say. And there's a lot of

wisdom in fitness and I'll explain. Often, so we do episodes called, uh, quas, right, where people ask us questions and we answer those questions. And there's a question that pops up all the time, which is, if scientists invented a pill that made you fit lean and healthy, uh, regardless of what you wait and what you did, uh, would that be a good thing? Now, uh, for, for somebody who's been, who's took this seriously, understood this study, this work with people for well over two decades, I have developed a level of wisdom with fitness

that is beyond the, you know, you get fit, you build muscle, you burn body fat. And so when I hear that, I understand that, yeah, you'll get people who are lean, you know, more muscle, mobile, and that kind of stuff, but they're not gonna get the true value that you get. So the value is the kind. The value is in the discipline and the abstinence and the journey.

It's the journey, not the destination. It's always the journey. And so that's something that's totally different from the reason and the logic, because the science would say the pill would solve everybody's problem. But here's another example. You have people who seem to have everything

that you think that you would want from a logical standpoint, money, power, sex, drugs, fame, and their suicide rate is through the roof. What does that tell you? I would take that pill daily, if it was on top of a mountain, I had to climb up the mountain every morning to get the pill, I'll take it. Exactly. So I wanna take a pill daily if it was on top of a mountain and I had to climb up the mountain every morning to get the pill, I'll take it. Exactly.

So I wanna take a left turn here or whatever turn here and ask you a little bit about homeschooling. I know you guys are big homeschooling. First, let's talk about Jess's shirt. Did you watch Tiger King? I did. He did. That's a great shirt.

I had to point that out. I've only seen a couple. Okay. I don't even know what's here. Free jokes, Otik. Yeah, free jokes, Otik. I'm glad you, I had to point that out. I've only seen a couple. Okay, I don't know it's her. Free, exotic. Yeah, free, exotic. I'm glad you don't know. It's a total waste of your time.

So you mentioned unschooling, which is a form of homeschool. I had friends who were big in the homeschooling world and when I started training them, that's how I met them. And I was very skeptical when they would tell me about what they did. They were unschoolers and I thought, oh boy, I hope their kid doesn't turn out. Anyway, he turned out to be one of the best young men I've ever met. I thought he would be lazy and he, oh, he just gonna play video games all day.

Now this kid is entrepreneur, start his own podcast. He's become a personal trainer. He's a go-getter, very, very balanced, well-adjusted young man. There's no friends, he's depressed, he's depressed, he's not that stuff, right? Yeah, right. No, that's tough. Now, there's a lot of confusion and a lot of myth around,

or just incorrect knowledge or information around homeschooling. And along those lines, homeschooling is exploded, not just recently, because of COVID, but over the last 10 years, it's exploded a lot. First off, why do you think that is? Why do you think more and more parents, and it's growing exponentially?

This is real now. In fact, the public school system is actually quite worried about the fact that more and more people are homeschooling. Why do you think it's exploded so much, and then I do wanna get into unschooling and what that means. Okay, I actually, I have,

I post this question to one of my girlfriends whose kids are in public school. And I, during all of this stuff in recent laws that have been passed in Washington, and I said to her, I was like, and I said, don't take this as offensive, but I was like, how do you feel dropping your kid off at the state every day and allowing them

to pour themselves into your child rather than you pouring yourself into your child? Like, that's a really honest question. And I wasn't trying to be offensive or rude but in say that you're doing it wrong, I just really want to pour my values and my, yeah, my values into my child rather than allowing the state to pour their values

into all of our children. I think that is, it's good that a parent would want to be with their kids more and want more quality. It's not about being with your kids more with their kids, or want to be able to inst not about being with your kids more about your values. You want to be able to instill more of their families values into their children. But I think that the human psychology of someone else

being able to educate a child and you could drop them off and go to work and fulfill your Basil's hierarchy while somebody else says the work actually would make homeschooling a less popular notion. And so I think the reason that homeschooling a less popular notion. And so I think the reason that homeschooling has become more popular is multi-fectora, but a big one is technology. Yeah, it makes it easier.

No, I'm not working. Like the ease of being able to find information, find teachers, find tutors, have that be scalable and affordable, has made it so that you can homeschool anyone anywhere in the world and you can, I mean, compare it even what you could do 20 years ago, have an amazing, amazing education for your child. And then I think that when you pair that with a little bit of social unrest, you know, increasing school violence, increasing bullying, increasing amounts of depression and loneliness and suicidal tendencies among children who are simply in an effed up social environments

in many cases in public school, or even in some cases in private school type of situation, dictates that I think a lot of parents are aware that a school might not be the best place, a traditional school might not be the best place for their kids to be during the day. And as that awareness grows, what I've seen are, I've seen a growth of homeschooling, but I've seen this real shift towards the notion of creative free play, aka unschooling, aka find

out what your kids passions and interests are, find out what makes them truly excited what they really want to study, what they're truly interested in, then surround them with as many arts and crafts and tutors and computer programs and games and activities and museum tickets and everything that they would need to be able to pursue that passion, and then step back and just lightly guide them. Make sure they've got somebody to drive them

to the place they want to be driven to and they've got some cooking class or make sure that they know how to log into the computer for some class they want to take online. So lightly guide them and then just surround them and then the other important part of unschooling. And this is very similar to that love and logic approach, right? Like use love and logic but also discipline. So unschooled but also realized there are certain skills that your child is going to

highly benefit from having experienced in life, that they might not know about yet when they're six or eight or ten years old. You know, in the Val-Ravicon, great modern day thinker and philosopher, right? You know, I love a lot of the work that he does. He says there's essentially five key tools that a child needs to be able to excel in no matter what career that they go into. And those are reading, writing, right? So, so being able to consume information at an efficient pace, writing,

be able to express thought clearly on written in written form, on paper, or via keyboard, arithmetic, being able to just do basic figuring, whether it's geometry or building, or woodworking, or anything that involves basic math skills, and then finally, logic or computer programming, right? Which are technically synonymous, right, a logic or computer programming, right, which are technically synonymous, right? Like logic slash computer programming, and then rhetoric slash persuasion.

If you can weave in, reading, writing, math, logic slash persuasion, or logic slash computer programming, and rhetoric slash persuasion, then your child is really going to be set for life. And so we have 12 core subjects that Washington State requires us to show that our child has checked the box for. They did chemistry this week. Well, you're sure they learned how to make a ravioli,

right, and that counts as kitchen chemistry. So we'll class for that as chemistry, but then I'm also very careful to ensure that, even if they, because there's some weeks, they don't wanna take their online, Mathnasium class. They probably would not be doing logic puzzles right now if dad wasn't paying him five bucks every time they successfully completed a really hard logic puzzle in this logic book that

I got for them. So there are certain little things I nudge them towards that I know they aren't super interested in, but that are going to serve them well in life. And then everything else is a weekly family meeting. What do you guys passionate about? What do you want to learn? One local assistant who helps to drive them around and you get them to different activities.

One virtual assistant who kind of helps us keep track of all their different passions and interests and which block of the year are we going to kind of focus on whatever woodworking and which block of the year. We're going to focus on building the tree for it and which block are we're going to do more wilderness survival and plant foraging and we just keep running list of all the things that are interested in

and then weave those in throughout the year and it's scary because there is no model. There is no proven model. There's no one right way to do it. And you want, you know, you you almost want like a set pattern habit or routine because that's what we all grew up with with schooling. Once you realize it doesn't have to be that way and that kids actually learn really well through this concept of free creative play. So that's what works really well. So essentially, unschooling is no real

for a structure. No curriculum, right? And you know, here's a thing, here's my argument in support of what you're saying. I'm glad you explained that, and you did it so well. Modern society is a lot of specialization. You go to work and you're probably really good at a couple of things, and that's how modern society works. You don't need to know everything or lots of little things.

You kind of need to be really good at one thing. And for anybody who's, I mean, anybody who has kids, you know, when your kid is into something, like when my boy was four years old, you know, he loved Thomas the train, the train set, the little trains. And there's like, I don't know, 300 figurines, or maybe thousands, right? And so I saw that he was really into it and he built the trains. So I bought him, he had to have at least a hundred and something trains. He knew every single name, every, at four years old, there were two trains that were twins. I could not tell the difference, he could. It took me days to figure out how he was doing it.

And you know what it was? It was the direction of the eyebrows was slightly off on one or the other. And it's because he was into it. You know, the like little tiny sponges. So what are you seeing unfolding with your kids right now? What are you noticing? Are you guys feeling like you can kind of predict

what they're gonna be into or what they're gonna do when they get older by now? Well, they've been saying what they wanna do since they were like three or four. They both love art and writing. They love cooking. They have a cooking podcast. And even above like cooking and food prep,

they like to create art. Both of their purpose statements are based around inspiring people to joy and adventure with their art and with their writing. River does a little bit more of the writing. Taron does a little bit more of the art and they really want to do a lot more publishing of their own books. They want to live in Moscow, Idaho, 90 minutes from our house, for all their nieces and nephews reside and they want to live down there and make books and kind of have like a little coffee shop that they run during the day and then write books, you know, in the evening or in their off time.

And that's what they want to do right now is to beat authors and own a coffee shop, which, you know, that might change a year from now, they might want to be professional tennis players. You know, you never know, but you just, you sit back and you just let them pursue their passions and resist the urge to push them towards the stuff that you really thought you were going to be gutted out because living vicariously through your children is so easy to do. It's cruel. How are you guys teaching them finances right now? They've got these books called the Tuddle Twin Books that are a little bit more of kind of a libertarian,

conservative approach to the economy and the finances. They go through each month with their, actually, they're once a week right now with their podcast producer and manager, the financials, what they're bringing in from each affiliate, what percentage the affiliates are. Oh, great. They go grocery shopping with mom and with our assistant

to help manage things like, you know, finding deals and finding discounts. Same thing on Amazon. They leave the tip when we go to restaurants. They're never playing card games. They're in charge of keeping track of the numbers and the digits. And it's great, because it's all real life.

I mean, this is all stuff that you're gonna have to deal with. Yeah, so do you guys allow them to be by whatever they want freely or how does that work for them, saving and spending? So in your time, they're actually pretty big singers. Yeah, they're big and the same, but again, we are too. Like we're just not, like we drive a Toyota Highlander and Dodge pickup and we don't live very fancy, flashy lifestyle.

You know, this shirt cost me 10 bucks from the thrift store and Justin makes our furniture and like, we live pretty simple. And so I think they just, they've never really grown up being spend thrifts. We don't live with a spirit of scarcity, but we also just, we're not spent, we spent all our money on random items. But the understanding in our house is that if it's related

to education, especially if it's in the book, no questions ask, I will buy it for them. I will provide them anything that really fuels something that they want to learn about, something they're passionate about. If it's a nerf gun, if it's a Lego toy, whatever, then what they do is they send to my assistant Marge, who does a lot of our shopping, what they would like, and they have their email addresses. She finds the best deal and she comes back

and tells us how much it is, then they decide if they want to get it. If they do, she then transfers from their bank accounts where all their affiliate income from their podcast goes where any money that they make, gifts that they get for their birthday or Christmas or whatever and she'll do a transfer and so they know that when they bought that,

it gets transferred, it's purchasing our Amazon account, but then the transfer occurs from their account into our so they're covering it. And they have the freedom to, I mean, they decided to go on a crazy addiction of nerf guns and buy them every day technically could with their own money. They could, they could do whatever they want

with their own money, but again, like because they see mom, I mean, they see me spending, this is almost too much, they'll see me spending 10 minutes deliberating over, which AA batteries to get on Amazon, cause one packs like $2 cheaper. So we're pretty aware of spending in our home. So I think they're pretty used to just the value

of saving slash investing. I haven't taken them through any investing courses or anything like that yet, but. That's awesome. One thing that I've heard from people, this one's actually quite a disturbing comment I'll get on homeschooling is they'll say things like, well, there's a lot of parents out there that are really bad. The kids shouldn't be, you know, the parents, a lot of parents shouldn't school their kids and they should go. And to me, this is always such a disturbing thing to hear because of course there's bad parents out there. But if you added it all up and you did the math and study,

I would trust a parent raising their kid over the state raising your kid. Mainly because parents usually care about their kids or or call up or collect it I mean or like a homeschooling group like like there are ways that a parents can be involved in their children's education And if they don't have the heart of a teacher or they're frankly a shitty teacher like there There are ways that you can homeschool and not be No, just as a wonderful teacher for arts or crafts or gardening But she's not to teach the kids calculus

or science because she didn't learn that stuff in college. She doesn't have a passion for it. So that's a big part is whatever your kids are interested in, you find the person that's going to be the best job teaching them that and might not be you. And that's okay. So a little speculation, do you, how do you think, what's going to happen with the current education model now that formal education, the cost of it is, it's been exploding for years, far faster than inflation. Schools are now, you know, either shutting down, not kids can't go there, so kids are at home or you have to go to

school and you have to wear a mask and do this whole thing, which can be very anxiety-inducing. I'm sure in children, they don't know what's going on, or you have schools that are saying, hey, like Harvard, for example, said, next year, all online, oh, by the way, it's still $50,000 a year, tuition, we're not changing the class. Speculating, moving forward, do you think that we're witnessing the beginning of the end of the way that school has been administered because of all these stresses now? And then of course, technology, making it so inexpensive to transmit and receive information, what do you see moving forward with that? I personally think a hundred years from now we're going to look back and laugh at about the past 60 years or so of education that we've tried to hang onto the threads of. That is all good stuff.

The agricultural revolution and the design of factory workers. And it's laughable. I really don't anticipate that model sticking around much longer. And who knows, we might be in the time right now during the COVID pandemic, where it's a full on light bulb moment. And people really do realize, oh shit, I was paying $50,000 to go to Harvard. And they've just admitted that everything that I'm getting from there, I could literally be doing

from a beach in Thailand. Well, simultaneously running a surf. For pursuing, it will. Yeah, yeah, yeah, crazy. Well, you guys are, you're always a great guest band and I loved having you on, Jessa. Thank you. Yeah, this is great. You guys are both very, very good people.

I love hearing about how you guys are at home and how everything's going on. And I wish you guys continued blessings and success with everything. Yeah. Thanks for letting us emerge from our little hole and ask for a second about you, see people. Well, you know you're always welcome. I'll call that from under our eye.

You're always welcome on our podcast. It's like a direct flight. Yeah, yeah, I'm interested in you. Excellent. I just gotta get you guys up to Spoke Handsome time. We're due. We're due for my new home. We haven't been there in a while, so. All right, guys, thanks. Yeah excellent. We just got to get you guys up to spoke hands of time. We're due. We're due. We're due. We're due. We're due. We're due. We're due. We're due. We haven't been there in a while so all right guys thanks. All right. Thank you. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to

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