Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2062: Biohack Fatherhood With Ben Greenfield

Starting point is 00:00:00 If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness health entertainment podcast ever in the history of the world. This is Mind Pup, right? Today's episode, Ben Greenfield, we talk about how to biohack fatherhood. Look, if you are a dad or think about becoming a dad, and you wanna be a great father,

Starting point is 00:00:28 this is the episode for you and we go into everything. It's pretty fun stuff. This episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors, NCI. Check out what they have going on right now. They have a course that they're calling controversy because what they're gonna do is they're gonna go through and dive deep into all the controversial diet crap, controversial build your business on social media crap.

Starting point is 00:00:52 They're going to break through what works and what doesn't work so they could teach you how to build a successful business with integrity in the health and fitness space. And I'm going to say this right now 100% NCI has produced more six and seven figure nutrition coaches than anybody else that's out there. So this is gonna be a cool course. Go check it out. Go to NCIminepump.com-flourtslash-hontroversy. Go check this one out.

Starting point is 00:01:19 Also, the April Special is still going on with our maps workout programs. Maps end up all at 50% off. Maps split, also 50% off. If you're interested in either one, go to mapsfitinistproducts.com and then use the code April 50 for the 50% off discount. All right, here comes the show. Ben, welcome back to the show.

Starting point is 00:01:38 Thanks. It's been like what a year? Year two. I don't know with the rate at which you guys have aged. It's a tough time. I've been on Earth now. Off-guy. I've been on Earth by aging before you have time. I don't know, fellas. We're maybe two-minute years. We're maybe two-minute years.

Starting point is 00:01:51 Be honest, mainly sour, right? I've got fat. Yeah, we got a couple of many kids you do for lunch. Yeah, yeah. Maybe a little bit more gray hair. Yeah. We get us. We're just less. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:02:00 Welcome back, though, dude. Thanks. We wanted you on to talk about, so we just started getting into it, and this is like, you know, old news for someone like you peptides. Yeah. Welcome back though, dude. Thanks. We wanted you on to talk about, so we just started getting into it and this is like, old news for someone like you, peptides. And what they do, and you're like somebody that has been talking about the stuff for a while. I like to hear about your experiences with things because you have everything so meticulously dialed in.

Starting point is 00:02:18 So if I'm gonna listen to anybody's experience, anecdote, it's gonna be you. Yeah. So you've been, you've been fooling around with peptides for a while now, right? Yeah. I'm, um, gosh, like back, back in the obstacle course racing days, probably when I was just injured, you know, with something new every week. Was it BPC? The F1? The BPC 157 and the TB 500. And it wasn't until later I found out the BPC is actually not only good for the joints, but if you take it orally, it's fantastic for the digestive system, for gastric inflammation because the body protection compound is what that acronym stands for. And apparently

Starting point is 00:02:56 it's produced naturally in the gastric juices. That's what they first found, right? Yeah, yeah. For its anti-inflammatory activity in the gut. So I don't take that many peptides right now, but I've continued to take oral BPC 157 because I kind of have a little bit of a princess gut. If there's one part of my body, I gotta fight it. So are you sure about that? Or do you think maybe it's because you eat like,

Starting point is 00:03:20 we're shit all the time. I'm always seeing you eat stuff from like, like the woods and you're like picking things up and just chewing on them. That's all natural. That's like the primal shit. So people eat the process. I'm just still the princess cut thing

Starting point is 00:03:31 because that's how to sell. All the time if I was a little gutt, I should've put the princess cut and put the princess right here in the show. You know, when we had Jay Campbell on the show who's like just absolutely brilliant. He knows a lot about that. Give very much so, right?

Starting point is 00:03:44 He, I kind of asked him to rank what he would consider like the best, which of course is kind of a hard question to answer. Yeah, it's like what's the number one supplement you should take. Right, right, right. But he did say probably BPC 157 is probably up there with the...

Starting point is 00:03:59 Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like the creatine fish oil thing is like the most researched, at least to my knowledge or at least the most experimented with as well. Roderick. People just feel fine on it and the fact that it has that crossover to where you could inject it subcutaneously and get systemic anti-inflammatory activity or you can inject it subcutaneously or intermuscularly near a joint and also get a good healing effect locally. And then also take it orally for the gastric effect.

Starting point is 00:04:30 I mean, it can kill a lot of birds with one stone. Do you take an empty stomach or with food? Shotgun effect. The one I take right now is called gut repair formula and it has a bunch of zinc in it along with a few other things that's got, I think it has LL37, which is kind of almost like an anteparasitic

Starting point is 00:04:48 antibacterial peptide, which is kind of cool. A lot of people have successfully eradicated SIBO, a small intestine bacterial overgrowth with that LL37, like the bacterial issue where you get gas and bloating in response to fermentable carbohydrates, it seems to shut that down within

Starting point is 00:05:05 a few weeks of use. But the formula that I use because of the zinc in it, zinc can kind of make it nauseous or give you gastric upset paradoxically if you take it on an empty stomach. So I take it with food now, the one that I'm using. You do have a pretty regular basis. Since I started using that one, I'm using it every day. Again, just because it's, for me, it's almost like insurance for the gut.

Starting point is 00:05:28 So, yeah, but the BPC-157 was the first one that I got into, not for the gut, but for joints. And then, because it has a different mechanism of action, then the thymus and beta 500, the TB-500, you can take those both at the same time, which is what I was doing. So the BPC 157 has more of the anti-inflammatory effect on the joint, whereas the TB 500 acts

Starting point is 00:05:52 more on the on the soft tissue, like the ligaments tendons and apparently helps to repair those if they're injured or accelerate the speed of healing. Now I've taken both. I have a buddy who coaches a lot of NBA players. And I was surprised that he listened to our Jay Campbell episode. And he reached out to me and asked in all kinds of questions. Yeah. And I was like, man, I'm really surprised you don't know more about this because man, there's a lot of NBA players that don't know about or aren't using it. Is that true? Yeah. Well, I mean, a lot of that stuff is kind of like, I don't know, the

Starting point is 00:06:23 good old boys industry where it's still very much just like Gatorade and ibuprofen and some of the fringe stuff, especially stuff that doesn't have a big stamp of approval by the FDA or flies in and out of legality. It's like a lot of players will go to if they have one, like their personal trainer or someone who's not on team staff to get that kind of stuff or use it. But it's not that heavily used just because it's not like endorsed by the teams. There's some teams like you know Golden State Miami Heat like they push I was in it's not American Airlines arena. It was FTX for a while and I don't think it's called FTX anymore for obvious reasons. But I visited

Starting point is 00:07:06 Eric my friend down there who's the strength and conditioning coach for the heat. I mean, you walk in there and it's like, the training room is all PMF mats and infrared. I don't know if they're using peptides, but they got whole refrigerators full of just like fringe stuff that kind of flies under the radar. And there's the Golden State Wires are another example. There's a lot of like biohacking modalities. kind of flies under the radar and the, you know, and there's the golden state words are never the

Starting point is 00:07:25 example, you know, there's a lot of like biohacking modalities and yeah, I remember they were using like Halo, Halo stuff early. Yeah, where are you a consultant? Did you go down and help set up like some of these biohacking? I don't do any formal consulting with the heat for example, but they wanted me to come down and look at and again, I respect this, something that's not taken into consideration much in professional sports, like the environmental aspects of the training facility, like the air filtration system, the type of water, like, you know, hydrogenated structured water versus just regular water out of the municipal supply or whatever, or the electricity considerations, like how high of an EMF environment, which could have an impact on healing or inflammation,

Starting point is 00:08:08 or even the lighting, lexarcaidian rhythm friendly lighting versus non. Like there's all sorts of little things that go beyond just the nutrient and movement and recovery considerations. So I went down there a couple times and had some pretty fast positions. I would imagine the reason why they probably don't

Starting point is 00:08:24 either work with peptides or advertise it is because of the stigma for PED. Well, no, I know why they would not advertise it and make it a big deal. But I thought, you know, Paul with his connection so deeply to the NBA, I thought for sure that he would have been privy to it, but as soon as we were or before, especially something like BPC, because man, I experienced that with my Achilles, and it was almost scary how much it worked. Like I was more like, it felt like a heel, but I was still afraid to go test it because

Starting point is 00:08:53 it felt so good. Yeah, do I get a tumor in the ankle and two hods from that accelerated healing effect? Yeah, and you know, BPC in 157, or BPC 157 and TV, that's like kind of the low hanging fruit for injuries. And then, at least for me, when I started looking to peptides, what I came across was all this old Russian research. It's been going on for like three decades that again, doesn't seem to have penetrated much

Starting point is 00:09:17 into that age reversal or longevity movement in America and some westernized countries. But when you look at, for example, things like mitochondrial density and mitochondrial proliferation, which is pretty not only cardiovascular health, but also overall longevity. They've got peptides over there for that. They have these new peptide bio-regulators, one called epitelon being probably the most well-known over there and probably the most well-known over there and probably the most well-known in the US for the anti-aging, the age reversal or the decreased all cause risk of mortality

Starting point is 00:09:51 effect. Have you used that one? I have. I've used these, well, they're called peptide bio-regulators. So they're shorter amino acid chains than a typical peptide like a TB or a BPC But the way that they work is they would travel and they've done amino acid tracer studies on these things They travel to the specific organ that they're intended to target So you have and they got weird names like I think the one for the gonads is testalon or something like that

Starting point is 00:10:22 And then they got one for the brain I forget the name of that one they got thymalon or something like that. Then they got one for the brain. I forget the name of that one. They got thymalon for the thymus and the immune system. But there's like a couple dozen of them. And so the protocol that this guy, Dr. Kovincen, is KHAV Kovincen, that he's research and implemented in human models,

Starting point is 00:10:41 like pretty large human models over a long period of time, has been taking these peptide biregulators a couple of times a year for short stints. Like you might do two times a year, a 10-day cycle of all of the bioregulators, which actually involves, like, with as many of them as there are, like, 30 different capsules that you're taken for 10 days in a row, and it's essentially causing this healing effect on all the different organs that they're each traveling individually to target. And then there's some docs, actually a guy who I'm going to see later on today, Matt Cook, he sent me up these injectables where they combine all the bio-regulators into like one

Starting point is 00:11:21 syringe, and you would just do like a subcutaneous injection in the abdominals for 10 days rather than taking all the capsules. But I think you were talking before just now you can find peptide bioregulars online now. Yeah, probably the most well-known researcher in the US is Phil Micens MICANS and he has a couple of books on peptide bioregulators He's got a whole website where he reviews a bunch of them and a whole bunch of articles. I interviewed him a couple of months ago and he's pretty fascinating when it comes

Starting point is 00:11:51 to how to actually use these things. But when you mention epitelon epit from that? Or, no. Okay. No. I mean, like, it's like, oh, it's like frickin' fish oil, right? Supposedly it decreases triglycerides and improves cardiovascular health and decreases risk of stroke, but it's not like you take it. And you're like, man, my VO2 max was huge this morning

Starting point is 00:12:17 and I just crushed it at the gym. What you're keeping your fingers crossed for is that it's having the age reversal effect. So what would you say would be the best way to try and obviously you're not going to probably feel it. So would you do something like go test your biological age and the consistent population clock? Like probably the better one is true age diagnostics. Okay. It's true, spelled without a E. I feel like this is a spelling bee all of a sudden.

Starting point is 00:12:48 I know you spelled something for five different things. Google out of complete for you anyways. The true age test measures the, your current biological age. So whereas a telemere test, which is kind of like old school now when it comes to measuring longevity, all that does is it measures the rate at which the telomeres are shortening on the white blood cells of your body. And so it gives you possibly a little bit of an indicator of your rate of aging, but these new methylation clocks, they're actually looking at how quickly you are aging compared to the

Starting point is 00:13:26 average person. So like my last aging rate that I took was 0.73. So for every year, you're only aging for every year with like 266 days or something like that. So for the average person who would be aging 365 days for 365 day year, I'm aging 266. And that's like that whole, what's the transhumanistic phrase for when we've reached a terminal velocity,

Starting point is 00:13:50 or who's gonna be the first human who's actually reverse aging? Oh, I don't know. Technically, that would be like a whatever, a negative 0.99, which nobody's even close to. But that 0.73 that I have is supposedly very, very good when it comes to measuring how quickly you're actually aging. I'll try to do the math right now on like, let's fast forward. If you state on that pace for say 20 years, how many years you already shaved off.

Starting point is 00:14:19 I don't know because peptide bioregulators don't make you go to math. Well, you basically saved regardless. I'll say you've added next year,'t make you go to math. But. Yeah. Well, basically, save it regardless. I'll say, you've added next year, six years, according to my, okay, is that about right? Yeah, I've gotten five or so's doing the math real quick. So about five or six years, every, every, what I say, every 20 years, yeah.

Starting point is 00:14:37 So that's the typical protocol you take pretty much, like all the bioregulars that cover all of the organs. Yeah. So it's not like they're specifically targeting them or is that an option though, right? Well theoretically, like let's say, I don't know, you had some kind of immune system issue or you had a low white blood cell count

Starting point is 00:14:55 or something like that, you could just take the thymalon for a 10-day cycle. Or if you wanted more the Androgen-like effect, you'd take the test along for a 10-day cycle, but the gold standard is you're supposed to just take them all. And this is what they've done in terms of what they've shown in the Russian research on the longevity and enhancing effect for 10 days a couple of times a year,

Starting point is 00:15:16 and that gives you the full body effect. And you know how to regulate this? Of the peptides, which ones do you, I know you said BPC, but which ones do you use most, I guess, or cycle in most regularly? I haven't, besides that gut repair formula, I have no peptides at home right now. Okay.

Starting point is 00:15:31 Which ones do you have the most experience with? And part of it for me is, like, because I've done a couple of cycles of those bioregulators and plan on continuing to do that based on the research I've seen one or two times a year for 10 days, it's like, I'm not doing that much other than that. And part of it too is this stuff just adds up with time,

Starting point is 00:15:48 you know, when you get up in the morning and you're doing the injections and then maybe like I'm measuring all these NAD patches now that kind of give you a slow bleed of NAD into your system during the day. So you're putting the saline solution on that and then slapping that on and you know, taking your supplements and your glass of water

Starting point is 00:16:05 and make your, that's like, you get to a certain point where you just gotta get on with your morning. So, and I don't wanna be that, you know, biohacker who's cold and hungry and libido-less and you know, crumble up in a fetal position inside a hyperbaric chamber before I hop on to my house. I'm not that happy. And everything else.

Starting point is 00:16:21 Would you say that's something that's changed about you and your journey of biohacking like? Yeah, because you had all the tools, all the, like how do you evolve in that space? Yeah, part of it is, yeah, time is finite. And so if there's an extra 15 minutes of the morning that I can spend with my sons, because I'm a big fan of bringing the family together

Starting point is 00:16:42 in the morning and doing meditation and journaling, and then getting my workout in and helping kids get ready for school and meeting with mom and everything else. To me, the family, the relationships and making sure that I'm being a good leader of the home is far more important to me than prioritizing, like, getting an extra two seconds every month on life or whatever. And then another part of it is that for a long time, I think I took pride in being like the prolific biohacker

Starting point is 00:17:15 who tested out everything, tried everything, came back and reported on it, did blog posts and podcasts. And not only do I think those shoes have been filled by a lot of other people who are doing the same thing, but I also have more interest right now at least in a little bit more of a shift into an analog lifestyle that doesn't necessarily involve a lot of health enhancing technology like I'm moving from my

Starting point is 00:17:41 Spokane washing home down to 12 acre farm in Biola. Oh, I don't know. We're going to start doing a lot more raising of livestock and poultry, and you know, I'm doing soil inoculation with probiotics and special radishes to increase the the the micro-risal network and the soil and then bringing in livestock and rotational grazing and composting. And we're turning a big pond on the property into like a living pool with an aerator and Bluegill fish and special probiotics in the water so the duck crap doesn't kill us and then Building a home on the property as well, and so I'm Enjoying a lot more, you know, I was telling you guys. I just got back from bow hunting and Hawaii There's something that's more fulfilling and seems a little bit more real to me than a lot of the

Starting point is 00:18:27 Biohack equipment or at least spending a large part of my day just immersed in health-enhancing technologies at the end of the day. They're not fake and they're not a total waste of time, but you do have to consider how much time you're spending on trying to live a long time or look good when in the end of the day, yeah, you might live till you're 80 instead of 78, but back to how much those years that you gave yourself, you're going to spend trying to give yourself a long time. What would you say are some of the things that you were probably doing pretty consistently in the quote unquote, biohacking world that you've kind of just stopped because of that exact reason, and now you're going outside and walking instead with your son, you know.

Starting point is 00:19:08 Yeah, I would, and part of this too is not racing professionally in endurance sports anymore. Just like working out a lot less. Um, trying out a lot of equipment like, you know, you talked about the, the halo Justin, you know, and, and all this TDCS equipment for the head and all the light sound stimulation machines and the haptic therapy and the magnetic therapy and the PMF mats, you know, every day at my house, it's like dizzying how many boxes of stuff to try. Show up at the house. It's been my whole day just trying stuff. And I've started to do a lot less of that, like every last Vegas nerve device that comes out or patch or whatever. So I'm just trying to view life through this lens of okay, so I can't try everything.

Starting point is 00:19:51 I'd rather go with a little bit more of the 80-20 approach. And yeah, I still, I have a hyperbaric chamber. I get in that a few times a week, and I think hyperbaric is absolutely fantastic for full-body oxygenation. It's kind of like this sensory deprivation chamber that I slip into after lunch where nobody can bother me. And if they did, I got to decompress myself and get out of there. And, you know, I still, you know, sleep on a PMF mat. And, you know, I'll still meditate wearing like a brain tap device. But for me, it's about stacking a lot of this stuff so that I'm

Starting point is 00:20:22 making a better use of my time. And then spending just as much time as possible with my sons. About like two years left till they're out of the house. Wow, so easy at 30 times. Oh no, 15. Yeah, it's crypto fast, man. And they were tiny, dude, that's wild. So what about cold prunge, red lights, steam,

Starting point is 00:20:43 sauna stuff, what you're doing still including a lot of that. Yeah, I'm not into steam so much. I think, you know, the mold that can accumulate in some of those steam rooms and also the fact that a lot of times the water isn't filtered in your breathing and whatever municipal water they happen to be filtering into the steam room. I'm not a huge fan of steam, but I, and you guys are aware of a lot of the good research on sauna and heat therapy.

Starting point is 00:21:04 So I still do sauna, stacked with breath work, stacked with cold almost every day. And there's like the main reason that I do it is not necessarily for what heat therapy and cold therapy and breath work can do for the body, even though that's a fantastic side benefit. It's like that at the end of the day is what my sons and I do together. So for me, it's like, okay, so I'm building resilience in my sons. As you guys know, like males primarily bond by doing things together and often doing hard things together. So usually like 6 p.m., me and my sons are in the sauna.

Starting point is 00:21:44 It's 20 to 30 minutes of breath work. Well, we're sweating our eyeballs out. Then we all march out to the cold pool. We do the cold plunge. And sometimes we have time left. We'll throw in like push-ups, kettlebells, a few other things before we come in for dinner. But for me, it's that coming together with my sons at the end of the day and being able to stack all these extra things on top of it is great.

Starting point is 00:22:05 But yeah, I still do breathwork heat cold on a regular basis. I love that. I love that you've stacked it with an opportunity to bond with your boys. You know, that thing is awesome. Would you view like a lot of these biohack things the same way that we kind of use supplements where we tell people, look, nothing's going to be, for example, a diet that's based on on Whole Foods. However, if you live in the modern life and you have trouble, let's gonna be, for example, a diet that's based on Whole Foods. However, if you live in the modern life and you have trouble,

Starting point is 00:22:28 let's say getting enough protein or getting the right kinds of fermented foods, then supplements are, they'll help. But they're not a pure replacement for Whole Foods. Would you say that these biohack things would kind of fall in that same category? Yeah, you're basically simulating what you'd normally be getting from nature. And you know, so the red light therapy panels that I'm using for my first 20 minutes of checking emails

Starting point is 00:22:51 or whatever in the morning is because I don't have the time or the convenience of time to like hike the half mile up behind my house and the forest to go hunt down sunrise and stare at the sunlight for 15 minutes and hike back down to the house is like, no, I got it like starting in emails, but I'm bringing the sunlight into my office. Well, at the same time, I'm standing on a little mat that has like a cable coming out of it that goes out and is inserted via metal stake into the backyard.

Starting point is 00:23:17 So I'm like getting the benefits of grounding and earthing. And then I have like a hepa air filter in my office that's turning out negative ions, right, which I would normally get a power outside, breathing in the fresh air. So yeah, like if you can't get out much, or you can't get into nature a lot, you can simulate a lot of this stuff using new technologies that exist, which is great. I mean, ideally you're doing both, right? So it's like, yeah, I'll do the red light therapy in the morning, but then, you know, whenever I get a phone call, outside in the sunshine or, you know, go outside barefoot or whatever. So I think both is a pretty good. When you when you finish building the farm, do you envision yourself pulling away from some of the work that you're doing and spending more time to?

Starting point is 00:23:58 Yeah, I mean, it's not like I'm going to be able to be outside with my hands in the soil and doing rotational grazing of goats and chasing ducks out of the pond, etc. Well, I'm also, you know, doing a lot of like the podcast and the ride. So, um, I don't know exactly what life's gonna look like. Kind of like some of my friends who are stockbrokers and run half their company well out in the golf course from their phone. I would imagine I'll be doing some stuff from my phone, just one mountain of farm. But my goal is to keep podcasting because I love prel like you guys do to talk to super interesting people a couple of times a week. And I love to write. So I'll keep on writing books. And then my sons and I just launched a new gaming company. And so I plan to do a lot of that with them because they're little illustrators and designers and I love to map out and start new businesses So what happened was we were supposed to go to Costa Rica on

Starting point is 00:24:53 vacation and we got all the way to Costa Rica and had like this fantastic resort that We Reserved and I was meeting a bunch of my friends there for like this business mastermind. They were all bringing their families. And so we flew to Costa Rica. I've never been to Costa Rica before, but as we're flying in, we're looking at the window and the gorgeous, beautiful, my sons are excited. We cleared the whole calendar and we get to customs

Starting point is 00:25:17 and you know, they scan each of my family members in and they all go through and then they get to my passport and they scan it and they look up and they're like, oh, your passport was reported stolen. Sorry. You're not allowed into the country. And so I'm just like standing there slacksjod. And I go, no, there must be some kind of mistake because like I was just a Mexico two weeks ago and this same passport work just fine. But apparently there was some kind of like a glitch in the computer system, or somebody played a some kind of a horrible nasty joke and called in my passport and reported stolen or whatever, but either way, I wasn't getting into Costa Rica. So apparently the the rule there is that you're

Starting point is 00:25:58 basically sent on the first plane flight that's going back to the US. So they had a security plane flight that's going back to the US. So they had a security personnel squad surround me and my family take us back through security back into the airport where we waited eight hours for a flight into Newark, New Jersey and took us like 36 hours to get home. Oh, nightmarish scenario. My friends were there in the country. They're like, you know, some of them know people and they're like, call the embassy and trying to make stuff work. And meanwhile, we get sent home packing on the plane. But now we're back home in Spokane.

Starting point is 00:26:29 We've got like a week of almost like staycation time. So, one of the first nights I took my sons out to dinner and we love to play games as a family. Like I think it's one of the most underrated things you can do as a family is to play family dinner games. We have like board games. Yeah. Board games, card games, fun stuff.

Starting point is 00:26:48 Everything from like exploding kittens and bears versus babies to old school, monopoly and scrowl or whatever. Like we, so 7 p.m., I gather the whole family for dinner. We sing a song. We say a prayer. We all pitch in, help make dinner together. And then we sit down and we'll play a game till basically like bed time. And it's sad. and help make dinner together. And then we sit down and we'll play a game to basically like bedtime. And you know, hit the sack.

Starting point is 00:27:05 And so as a result of that, the kids are learning game theory, logic, rhetoric, argumentation, mathematics, communication, all these kind of sneaky things that you learn when you're playing games as a family. And then what happened was we started to modify a lot of the games that we were playing with like family rules. Like, oh, we could make extra cards for this game.

Starting point is 00:27:28 You know, like if you draw this card, you gotta pass your whole hand to the right or you get to dig through the discard pile and take whatever you want. And so we would, in some cases, for a few of our games, buy an extra set of the game, steal all the cards from the extra set, modify those extra cards, then add them to the current game.

Starting point is 00:27:45 And so we've been doing this for years. And when I'm out there at dinner with my sons, when we got stuck at home with this stacation, since we couldn't go to Costa Rica, we decided that we wanted to make our own game. We actually mapped out the idea for like three different games, but we wanted to start with this first one. Have you guys heard of Sun Zoo's book, The Art of War? Okay, so this game's called The Fart of War. And obviously, the main demographic is like, you know, like 16 year old, my boys are already. Yeah, and you have

Starting point is 00:28:16 all these different fart characters that you're dealt and they each have different powers. You have everything from like the daily act disease fart, which is super powerful down the princess fart, you know, modifier cards that you can use to increase or decrease the power of the farts. Like you could equip your princess fart with a can of beans or a way protein shake and make it stronger. You can like deal over to an opponent who has like the old man nasty fart like peppermint oil or popery spray and weaken their foot. Then your farts go into battle

Starting point is 00:28:44 against each other. And there's also special modifier cards like you could lay a blame it on the dog card along with your fart, which masks the identity of that fart, so nobody knows which one in your army has a certain number of points. So we mapped out this whole game and like I said, my sons are fantastic illustrators, so they're in the process of illustrating all these cars for a first game and we hired our first fractional COO to run the company in the management and kickstarter campaign. And so this is and it's called the Fried Pickles gaming company because our first night that we did test play which is super important with games got tests the hell out of them. To see all these things out. Oh wait, you know, we ran out of the draw pile too early. What are we doing that happens?

Starting point is 00:29:28 Or this game lasted an hour, and we needed to be more like a family friendly, 35, 40 minutes or whatever. This trick was overpowered to keep seeing everybody. Exactly, exactly. So anyways, we are in the process of launching the first game to be shipped by Christmas, but we have been absolutely ad in the process of launching the first game to be shipped by Christmas, but we have been absolutely adoring the process of, as a father-son team, working together to create

Starting point is 00:29:52 a game, and we have this vision, especially when we move down the farm in Biola to continue to make games. So I'll podcast, I'll blog, probably run the game company a little bit, and then just work on that. Oh, that's so right. Can you say to the Kickstarter so we can look at this game now or? No, yeah. No, but we'll use crowdfunding.

Starting point is 00:30:07 And the reason for that is even though my sons have their like cooking podcast and YouTube channel, which they still run, and I've obviously got an audience, we have to build a new audience that's very game friendly. And apparently the number one place that people go to to find new games for some odd reason is Kickstarter So even if you have your own audience and you don't have to crowdfunding you don't have to necessarily build an audience Going from Kickstarter over to Amazon primarily is like the way to launch a game. Oh, that's interesting Yeah, take me back. I love talking dad stuff with you. Take me back to the you know, you're playing games with your kids How do you and give me an example of you guys sitting down

Starting point is 00:30:47 as a family playing with the game, and you using that as a teaching moment for, you know, game theory, mathematics or what, like, how does that play out? Well, there, there's nothing intentional that I have to do besides play the game. Okay. Because let's say like, like the average card game these days, typically if you're looking at a card,

Starting point is 00:31:10 it will say if you draw this card, then this action, or when drawn on your next turn, you get to do XYZ, you may or may not draw another card, or there's typically some type of logic, very similar to what you might experience if you're taking like CS 101 or something like that in college, but it's delivered in a more fun lighthearted gaming format. Or another example would be, we'll get a game like Bang where all the instructions are in Italian.

Starting point is 00:31:40 So we have to practice a different language while we're playing the game, or we'll even modify some games like Scrabble or Quiddler to where you get double the number of points if you spell whatever the theme language of that night is a word in Spanish or a word in Italian or German or whatever. And so it can be used for language learning, it can be used for the game theory, the logic component. Obviously there's some math when you're doing point calculations, communications piece is important because the, and I learned this, the metric of a good successful game these days is that it must involve interaction with the other players'

Starting point is 00:32:13 game sets or game cards. Right? Monopoly would be an example of a game where it's kind of weak on that. Like, you're mostly working on your own bank, your own houses, your own monopolies, and there's a little bit of trading amongst other players, but typically a good game involves like the part of war where you're literally like battling players every turn and modifying other players cards every turn or basically interact with other players in some ways. There's a lot of communication. Yeah. That's a monopolies. Like one of those games that starts fights too. Oh yeah noticed. Oh yeah. Full of games, that one like pissing you off. That'd be all games could be right on out.

Starting point is 00:32:46 Have you done ticket for your ride? Mm-hmm. No, let's take it for your ride. Oh, you like that one. That's like you have to build these connections and it's really good about that where you're having to play on other people's stuff. You get dealt to all these cards and you and there's all these like from San Francisco to New York.

Starting point is 00:33:03 So you think of like all the places like trains would go all over the country? I know what you're talking about. Yeah. We own that game, we haven't busted that all. Oh, you got a bust out. There's like a section in our closet got like the 10 games we haven't opened up that like all over the game.

Starting point is 00:33:14 Stack of books we haven't read yet. There's a lot of strategy and you'll like that game a lot. Okay, I'm gonna bust that out when we get home. So now I move that one to the top of the list. But back to the communication piece. I mean, a big part of it too is teaching honesty and ethics, because I have caught my sons cheating a couple of times and that's when you launch into those discussions,

Starting point is 00:33:33 like, what do I do now? They cheated. Does it mean that they're doing extra dishes during dinner? But we have a philosophy in our house where there's very little like corporal punishment, we don't say no a lot. Instead, we let them deal with the consequences of their decisions and, or see the disappointment and experience the disappointment that they generated amongst their fellow game players or their parents or their siblings or whatever when they might cheat.

Starting point is 00:34:02 So, for example, you know, classic would be like, if I catch my son, Terran calculating his points and correctly, I'll just pipe up and be like something, I'll say something like, well, Terran, you just ruined the game for everybody for the entire night. How does that feel? And I mean, that sounds harsh, but it teaches them the importance,

Starting point is 00:34:21 because they don't do a lot of like team sports, the Jiu-Jitsu tennis. So they aren't do a lot of like team sports. The Jiu-Jitsu, tennis, they aren't doing a lot in terms of like basketball, football, and baseball, etc. So a lot of like their team play aspects, they're learning at the dinner table during games. You mentioned some of the skills. Can you name some games that would be good for like, like say mathematical skills? Like one that comes to mind from you'd be like Rummy Cube, where you're trying to figure out patterns and numbers. And, you know, can you name like good games for different types of skills? Just for parents, let's see. For, let's start with, with speech and rhetoric. There's one called rhetoric. And it literally

Starting point is 00:34:58 involves each person drawing a card with the topic on it, and then you'll roll the dice, and the dice will be like impromptu, persuasive, humorous, educational, and right there on the spot, you give a speech, and there's a timer that comes with it for like a two or three minute speech in front of everyone else, and then you're judged based on the quality of your speech and the communication style, how well you adhere to the topic that you're supposed to adhere to, and then it goes on to the next person so people are a massing point being judged by their fellow competitors as they go through. That was a really good for communication and rhetoric.

Starting point is 00:35:37 A few that I really like for the logic piece would be any of the games designed by the oatmeal who is this comic illustrator who wound up branching out and creating games like exploding kittens and bears versus babies or crabs. He has a whole bunch of cool games. It's hilarious. hilarious. Like that's also in my opinion, the Mexican of the good games, is you're being entertained by the illustrations on the cards while at the same time that you're playing the games. That's what we're trying to do with part of war. But you have to learn the logical sequence of any choice that you make when you lay a card, because it has a lot of if this,

Starting point is 00:36:10 then that type of scenarios. For math, I'm trying to think. Almost any deck of card game is good for math. Usually math, a lot of times it's like the point calculation at the end of the game. But there's one called Everdell that's, it's a little bit longer game. It's like an hour, two and a half long, but essentially you're gathering tokens and logs and pebbles

Starting point is 00:36:31 and using those to determine how many points that you might have available to purchase different properties or add different critters and then depend what you add to your city that initiates different point sequences that you can then get bonuses for. So the whole game, you're like doing math and comparing your city to other people's cities because you have the game doesn't like end at a certain point. It ends when you decide your city is where you want it to be. And then you all calculate the total number of points in your city and the game's over and the person with the highest number of points wins.

Starting point is 00:37:02 So a big part of the math piece is like the point calculation, the point total, during the game. And then another one for math is there's one called five in a row, and it's also made by the same company that does quittler. Quittler's like cards. It's like a Scrabble version of cards where you're spelling words,

Starting point is 00:37:19 and there's subsequent rounds. So the first round to get three cards, second round to get four cards, third round to get five cards, second round to get four cards, third round to get five cards, all the way up to 10 cards. And so the three card round, you're spelling three letter words and the four card round,

Starting point is 00:37:32 you're spelling four letter words, et cetera. And then five in a row is like that, except with numbers. So you're doing like straights and sequences and pairing different numbers with patterns. So. And when you guys are playing, so you don't find it necessary to like,

Starting point is 00:37:44 oh, did you see that son? This is that like you're not teaching it as you go through. You think very very rarely. Yeah, very rarely I mean just a frequency of practicing it. They're getting it and you're seeing it translate into the right It's it's like I mean honestly, it's like Hunting right so any guys we just got back from bow hunting in Mala Kai And I don't necessarily like sit my sons down and give them a big lecture on scent finding and wind patterns and tracking and you know, wind and animal conceive versus

Starting point is 00:38:13 when you can't see it. Basically, it's, oh, you scared the animal. Here's what happened. Oh, you scared the animal again. Here's what happened. It's a lot of trial and error. God, it was, it just, you know, just says with the ending,

Starting point is 00:38:23 the best way to learn something. And so just do it. Yeah, people learn best when they're having fun and they're immersed in it. That's all, that's all people. Especially kids though. If you ever, I mean, for anybody who has kids, it's always, I remember with my oldest, how I was so blown away, how he knew the names

Starting point is 00:38:37 of 150 different trains that I'd never even tried to teach them. And he knew the names and the colors and all that stuff at a very young age. It's because he loved them, he loved playing with them. Yeah, and sometimes I can backfire, it's like, you know, like Minecraft, right? And that's kind of a huge time suck and distraction for a lot of kids aren't as sort of like playing a TikTok,

Starting point is 00:38:58 for example, and my sons don't really do much on social media. They have social media accounts for just about every social media platform out there, but I advise them to hire a social media manager to run all of that for them for their cooking business so that they didn't have to spend a lot of time on those apps or have to deal with mistakes I've made about having all those on my phone and being distracted by them. So even though they have a phone, and we ensure that them getting a phone was not a big deal. We let it like mom and I were going on a date one night and we grabbed the phone earlier that day

Starting point is 00:39:30 from AT&T, added the line, gave it to them as we were walking out the door and said, hey, here's a phone, if you need anything call it. So it wasn't like, you know, the angel seeing from heaven, hey, you've earned your first phone for them, it was just like, oh, here's something I can use to communicate with mom and dad. And so, they don't have a lot of social media distractions, but a couple of years ago, I caught them playing Minecraft a couple of times while they were supposed to be in their online Spanish class and their online math class. And so, my strategy for that was, I told them, okay, look, by tomorrow night, you guys need to have prepared a formal presentation that you give at the dinner table

Starting point is 00:40:08 about the pros and cons of Minecraft, why it's so good for you to be playing and better than Spanish or math, what you've learned from it, and if you can convince me that you should be able to continue playing Minecraft, whether during or separate from school, then you guys can keep playing. But if you can't convince me, then your computers are now mine.

Starting point is 00:40:28 You can take your harder money by your own computers. If you buy your own computers, you're welcome to do anything with them that you like. But I'm not going to fund with my own money. You guys playing Minecraft. Play around school. And so then they came to the table. Did they try? They both gave a presentation.

Starting point is 00:40:41 They were fantastic. I was sold on Minecraft. And in a fashion like This game's amazing. I want to learn how to play. But then of course at the end of it, they both apologized profusely for playing Minecraft during their Spanish and math classes and said that based on the benefits they'd presented,

Starting point is 00:40:56 they felt they should be allowed to continue to play but that they wouldn't play during Spanish and math and they were sorry for using the computers that I bought for them for different purposes to do so. And so then I just gave them a thumbs up and said, all right, play Minecraft whenever you want, but not during Spanish and math. Just you know, it's awesome.

Starting point is 00:41:12 I acknowledge that that's not the best time to be doing. I love that. I did it a girl who her dad, I've never heard it a parent did. This is very somewhere who like if she came to him and wanted like a TV in a room is that she would have to write an essay and present what the pros, the cons, why would be beneficial, why, and if she brought, you have to sell it to him. Yeah, if she brought a good enough argument, he would do it.

Starting point is 00:41:35 It's consequential based parent. I think the best system, if you were looking for one, to teach you that style of parenting is called love and logic. Yeah. They have some books and programs. Yeah, and it's also the same type of system that teaches more of a consequential-based disciplinary approach where you don't say, you know, no, you're not allowed to have candy or gluten or whatever.

Starting point is 00:41:57 You instead educate them about the impact that that might have on their teeth. Make sure that they know that they're paying the dental bill if they get a cavity. Make sure that they know that if they suffer in school the next day or get poor grades that it would likely be due to the, whatever, the neuroinflammatory gluten that they had too much of it, the birthday party the day before or whatever, then you step back, let them make the decision and live with the nasty consequences if they decide to.

Starting point is 00:42:19 Yeah, a simple example would be like, I'm not wearing my jacket, but it's cold outside. I don't wear my jacket. Okay, we're going out. You don't need to wear a jacket. And they're cold. Right. And that's that's a real easy example of like what that's like. Yeah. Or or my son, he got blisters during our last hunting trip, but I was very specific with him about how to

Starting point is 00:42:34 put on his socks and which shoes to bring. And he didn't. So I just, you know, I turned on and said, Hey, too bad. They attached to the details next time. And there are exceptions like if your kids like seven years old and they're riding their bike around in neighborhood, the scub bunch of cars and they're not wearing their helmet, you have to put your foot down, just be like, oh, they might not even know the long-term consequences

Starting point is 00:42:53 for their entire life from a head injury, no ifs, and buts, you're put on a helmet or you're not riding that bicycle. Or, you know, the toddler, ambling towards a hot stove or whatever, like the third degree burn on their hand is that's too much of a put. Yeah, right. How crazy is it?

Starting point is 00:43:08 How fast time flies? Because your kids are now, they're getting close to being adults. The 15. Yeah. Yeah. So like, how weird is that? Because I mean, I have two sets of two kids and they're big age gap. So it's given me the opportunity to realize with my first two,

Starting point is 00:43:21 how fast time flies with my second two. So now I got the two younger ones, two in five months. And I'm really aware of how fast it goes by. It didn't hit me till my older kids were older before me looking back and going, oh my gosh, it feels like just yesterday, they were toddlers and they were babies. Like this is insane.

Starting point is 00:43:39 Like what's that experience like for you? Same as you. I mean, you know, and I think that for me, a big, big saving grace of the, almost like dropping your heart when you realize other getting old, they're not gonna be around for a long time. You know, they say some statistics show,

Starting point is 00:44:00 like something like 90% of the time you're ever gonna spend with your kids occurs before they're the age of 18. I'm not necessarily a fan of that. I think that if you set up the right traditions and legacies and routines and rituals and family reunions and fun comings and goings in your home, like your goal as a parent should be to make hanging out

Starting point is 00:44:20 at the big family home, the castle, with the parents so much fun that your kids just keep coming back over and over again year after year, holiday after holiday to hang out. And it's not just like you leave and you wave goodbye and they, you know, the show for Christmas every year, whatever. But for me, I've looked through the lens of raising them of it being that I'm raising my grandchildren, not just my children.

Starting point is 00:44:47 I'm raising a legacy of greenfields. And yeah, we might not have ever had like a third baby, but I'll have grandkids soon. And yeah, they might be out of the house soon, but there's going to be a whole bunch of other kids gathered around my feet. Hopefully, 10 years from now, learning from me in different ways and learning from them in the ways that I've taught, learning from my sons and ways that I've taught them. And so we have so many traditions and legacies and routines and rituals just built into the daily Cummings and Goings in the Greenfield home, down to the point where we have like a

Starting point is 00:45:20 massive 100 plus page playbook for running a greenfield family. Our mission statement, our values, the design of the family crest, each family members spirit animal and color, all the names and numbers of everyone from the family attorneys to the family bank, to the family trust, to what we do on Christmas and Christmas Eve, what we do on Easter, what we do on Christmas and Christmas Eve, what we do on Easter, what we do on Thanksgiving, at what age the sex talk occurs, at what age the boys have the right of passage and to adolescent, at what age they have the right of passage and to

Starting point is 00:45:55 adulthood, at what age they go on their first service trip. Like it's all spelled out in there. And so it even comes down to, hey, 7.30am is when no matter what anybody's up to, we all meet for our 15 minute meditation and family huddle in the morning. So we all get on the same page. And after dinner, this is when we meet for a song time and story time. And this is when everybody is expected to be in the kitchen for the family dinner, contributing, discussing the chapter of the book that I assigned to my sons each week,

Starting point is 00:46:27 going through all of that and then moving on to dinner. But it kind of sounds like a cold and heartless way to run a family, I think, in some cases, but it's totally the opposite when you come into the home. And kids thrive on that dependability, on that structure, on that predictability, on that safety, and then as they grow older, rather than me feeling like,

Starting point is 00:46:48 I'm losing it all, they're moving on. Instead, there's just the foundation of this bigger thing that we're building as a family. Have you thought about how that would impact like one of their partners? Like, let's say your son starts dating a woman. Super freaky and weird for their partners. Well, I'll just say that.

Starting point is 00:47:01 Yeah. Because the two options I could imagine, just off the top of my head would be, one, they would marry someone who has their own very strong traditions, usually culturally, and there could be a clash there. But I think that would be the better of the two options because then what would probably happen

Starting point is 00:47:18 is there'd be a bit of a compromise. So these holidays would do, or what may happen is they could find a partner that doesn't have much of that stuff, then they could feel imposed upon. They could come in your house and be like, wait a minute, I didn't grow up with this. This feels like I have no control.

Starting point is 00:47:31 Have you thought about what this may mean for their partners? I have. Ideally, there's emerging of tradition. So when my sons are married, they get printed off beautiful handbook of the entire Greenfield Legacy playbook along with the online digital version of that, that then they're off with their families of the entire Greenfield Legacy Playbook, along with the online digital version of that,

Starting point is 00:47:45 that then they're off with their families to modify and build upon. So it's not as though this is what we've fallen no matter what, it's like this is the foundation upon which you can build and modify. The bigger picture is that a playbook exists, that some form of a legacy document exists, not that ours is perfect,

Starting point is 00:48:02 but you actually have that structure in place that you then with your spouse and based on her traditions and her legacy and her routines and rituals, you build on. And then for me, I had almost no tradition growing up. Like Christmas would come around two weeks out from Christmas. My family would be like, what do you want to do? What do you want to do? What do you have for Christmas dinner or new years? Like, what do we do? Where do we go? No traditions, you know, our family, we write our intention on Chinese lanterns and launch them into the sky at 10 PM on New Year's Day.

Starting point is 00:48:32 And then we get out guns and explosives and everything else when we blow up all the gingerbread houses from Christmas. These are just like things that we do on New Year's Day. And so I grew up with none of that. I met my wife who was like super steeped in tradition. You know, like starting 21 days out from Christmas, you know, the calendar, we got the chocolates,

Starting point is 00:48:53 and there's exactly what we do on Christmas Eve, and Bob, the Elf on a shelf, gets moved to a new location with a special note written each night leading up to Christmas. And these are the exact foods that you prepare on Christmas Eve in this exact order. And this is two days before Christmas, you paint puffed t-shirts, and these are the exact foods that you prepare on Christmas Eve in this exact order. And this is two days before Christmas, you paint puffed t-shirts. And these are the three movies that we watch on Christmas Eve. And I thought it was weird.

Starting point is 00:49:12 I thought it was like kind of like old-timey little house on the prairie. Like just weird. Like it seems too traditional to me. And then a few years into our marriage, I fell in love with this idea of having traditions, especially after we had kids, and I realized like, how special it is for kids. And I'm certain that if my sons were to marry someone who is traditionalists or very weak on traditions,

Starting point is 00:49:35 that based on what I experienced, that person would very quickly come to appreciate the value of traditions and the type of pride in the family name and the sense of legacy that having these routines and rituals develops as a child is growing. Yeah, I imagine someone who's listening right now probably thinks like, oh my god, it's not so crazy and rigid, but I imagine you have kind of a bend don't break philosophy too, right? I'm sure there's days of a week where someone's traveling

Starting point is 00:50:05 is going on, it's like that all doesn't exactly happen, but it's like this is the foundation. Right, it's the foundation. And for example, like the morning meditation, sometimes we are literally just like sitting and breathing in silence. Sometimes I'm playing an amazing song because I sense the energy in the house is low

Starting point is 00:50:20 and we're dancing around the kitchen table for like 10 minutes, like swinging each other and jumping up on the table and jumping down. Some mornings we're listening to a meditation app, like Dwell or Pause. Some mornings we're doing like a very traditional old school, you know, read the Bible and pray. But it's simply the fact that there's a certain point in the morning at which the family comes together before everybody, you know, scatters, you know, to the four corners of the earth and we're like ships passing in the night the rest of the day in the evening. Sometimes it's a song, sometimes it's a story,

Starting point is 00:50:50 sometimes we're all reciting, so we memorize a huge part of the Bible each month and then we'll come together and hold each other accountable and list what we've memorized in the evenings, but it's never like, oh, night you guys and and we gave them off to bed. Like there's always some type of ritual or coming and going. And then, yeah, there's certain nights where like, mom and I are on a date night, and we're getting home late at night, and we're doing our own thing, and there is no, you know, end of the day, dinner or anything. And that's totally flexible, and that's not a loss. But yeah, for the most part, there is always some element of structure and dependability

Starting point is 00:51:23 and predictability, especially for the kids. Do you think that there's a resurgence and interest in this type of living because it seems like societies gone so no structure, no culture, extreme in the other direction. Like I've had this own personal experience. I grew up with a very cultural family, but this is more of a recent thing

Starting point is 00:51:49 where I, and I joke about this on the podcast where lately I've been looking at the omniscient, I'm going, you know, they have some stuff that's weird out. Like they've, yeah. I'm not saying I'm gonna go be omniscient, okay? But I look at them and go, they might have figured some stuff out.

Starting point is 00:52:01 What's everything that's happening with AI and culturally and how it's like just going berserk and crazy. Like maybe they understood that this is where it was gonna head. And they were just like, we're gonna keep to technology that didn't go past in whatever decade it was. So are you sensing that there's like a bit of a split that's something that we're starting to see some interest

Starting point is 00:52:22 in this kind of living with more discipline and structure because maybe as a rebellion to societal large. Regarding the omnispees, I mean, don't get me wrong. You can have a very technology-fueled digital family with smart appliances and all the kids modifying their social media profiles with, I don't know, wonder or mid-journey or whatever folks are using these days and everybody's using chat, GPT to plan their day and still have legacy and traditions and rituals and routines and a family playbook.

Starting point is 00:52:54 I'm gonna ask you though, and I'm just a fan of your TV up to see Silicon Valley family or a North Idaho family. I don't think that how digital versus analog UR is gonna influence that much. The traditions that are woven into the home, I think that perhaps more importantly, there is a strong sense of identity that a child develops when they grew up knowing who they are, knowing what they stand for, waking every morning to see the family mission statement and the family values and

Starting point is 00:53:26 being taught by their parents about who they are and what they stand for and what they hold dear rather than being held held susceptible to all of the winds of the world that are going to come at them and try to convince them that of the world that are going to come at them and try to convince them that there's somebody other than who they truly are or that they need to be somebody who the world expects for them to be rather than their true authentic self. Because I think that that scenario leads into a little bit of the state that we're in right now where there are a lot of kids questioning their identity, questioning who they are, having a time or times in their life where they go through a crisis, whether an adolescent crisis or an early life crisis or a midlife crisis, or a series of years where

Starting point is 00:54:12 they spend time getting into trouble and and straying and wasting their life because they just didn't grow up having that sense of identity formed and also having ceremonies, I think we discussed this a little bit in the last podcast that we did, rights of passage, you know, hey, you're a man now, you're a woman now. Here's when you're a contributing member of society. Here's when you're helping contribute to the family bill. Here's when you've actually grown up and become an adult and you no longer have to prove anything to the world and you no longer have to question whether or not you're fully grown or with men, you no longer have to be like a biologically

Starting point is 00:54:49 full grown man walking around in a boy's body because you never had a right of passage or you never had this formal entryhood into adulthood or you never given a position of leadership at a year where you can say, oh, this is when I became a man. This is when the ceremony occurred. This is when the feast and the family party occurred after whatever. I emerged from the wilderness or I did my first, you know, mini hike and the Pacific Crest Trail or whatever. When we eliminate all of that and just kind of have this Lucy Goosey B whoever you want to be approached to raising children, I think that's what creates a lot of the societal issues that we now face.

Starting point is 00:55:25 I think technology, you know, the only issue with that is, of course, I think taking us away from what it means to be purely human and to be able to exist in an analog world and be able to, like, grow food, get your hands in the soil, maybe get an animal and shoot it and prepare it and dress it and eat it and understand where your food came from. Be able to get up at sunrise and see the sun or watch a sunset or know how to navigate view the stars. I mean, like a lot of this stuff, technology has sucked out of our lives.

Starting point is 00:55:54 And I think there's a certain sacredness to nature. There's a certain sacredness to being a human without a computer that makes a human healthier and more fulfilled and arguably happier human. So I think there's a whole different set of issues with technology and I think you can have legacy with technology, but I think that technology that is stripped of legacy and stripped of a strong

Starting point is 00:56:17 identity being formed is kind of like the worst of all scenarios. Yeah, I would agree. How do you feel about, you mentioned chat GBT, how do you feel about the promise of AI and where that could potentially go? It's really weird. Yeah, it's been amazing. Amazing. Like we already use it. Oh my goodness for like online shopping for you know planning out trips like I'm taking my family. There's speaking of biohack and there's a thing called the health optimization summit in London. It's like this two day kind of like and there's this thing called the health optimization summit in London. It's like this two day kind of like expo in London, full of all this health technology

Starting point is 00:56:46 and you know, bio hacks and longevity enhancement stuff. And so I'm going over there and I'm sticking around London for next to five days with the family. And in previous years, I would have asked my real human personal assistant or paid a travel guide to decide on what hotels we are going to stay in and where we are going to go, what we are going to do and where we are going to eat. I went to GPT and simply said act as a travel planner.

Starting point is 00:57:14 Me and my wife and our twin 15 year old sons will be staying at X hotel from June 17 through the 19th and Y hotel from June 20th through the 22nd. Here's a list of everything that we like to do. I would like for you to create for me a walking itinerary that extends no more than two miles out from each of the hotels that we'll be staying at with stops along the way. And I want you to write me a brief one paragraph description of the significance of that stop and why we should go visit it. And then I want you based on our food preferences. I listed what we like, like farm to table, organic,

Starting point is 00:57:48 omnivorous food, but we also like to eat at non-touristy places or sometimes like holes in the wall where the locals like to eat. And I gave it like this long. It was talking about probably 10, 15 minutes to write out all of our specs. And it gave me our entire trip fully planned out for six days.

Starting point is 00:58:04 It was awesome. It was perfect. out for six days. It was awesome. It was it was perfect and that was it. It was done. Like I have our whole London trip planned all the way down to when I'm walking my kids around the city eight and a half by 11 sheet where I have what GPT said printed where I can say, okay guys, here's the cool thing that you need to know about this and by the way, here's a significance where we're going to dinner tonight. That's right. Yeah. I mean, that's just one example, obviously. But, you know, and then do you have any worries about, you know, where on? No worries and annoyances like I tweeted this the other day, like enough already with the AI generated media profiles, like your avatar

Starting point is 00:58:40 profile or gives you like the 20 images to use it. I'm like, you aren't a superhero, never will be. You need to understand that people are gonna love you with all your zits and flaws and blemishes and wrinkles. You don't need to create a fake portrayal of yourself because all that does is, despite it just being an image, removes my trust in the authenticity and the honesty of just about anything else that you might ever tell me on the internet, just be yourself.

Starting point is 00:59:04 You're fake ugly self. And I think that deep fakes, AI-generated images that we don't acknowledge are AI-generated, but that we pretend are the real thing. You know, just imagine the election this year, guys. It's going to be nuts. You don't know whether the politician you're watching on TV is actually the person and whether or not the voice that's coming out of their mouth is actually saying what they say. But then like another set like I forgot to record the right, you guys probably run into

Starting point is 00:59:31 this commercial code for my podcast before I left town on this trip. I think I said whatever like BG 10, it was BG 20 or been, you know, you guys have probably done it before. It's like, oh, we forgot to say what we're supposed to say for this commercial. And my team are attending me. They're like, oh, we forgot to say what we're supposed to say for this commercial. And my team are attending me. They're like, oh, that's okay. We started using Blueprint. We're simply going to tell it what to say.

Starting point is 00:59:50 It'll use your voice and insert the right code. You don't need to get back in the studio, get in front of the mic and re-record anything. And it's like 25 bucks a month. And for me, yeah, that same information could be used to produce a total deep fake of me advertising deep fried twinkies or whatever. But there's a convenience factor that I think is pretty remarkable. See, there's a hole. This sounds just like you. It takes your voice and then replicates it.

Starting point is 01:00:14 Yeah. And that technology, I mean, that's not like hyper new, but the ability to be able to kind of like say whatever you write. Know where it needs to go and insert it and have it use my inflections. And, you know, I just spent hours and hours recording my audio book. And yeah, like I could have just fed all my podcast or maybe just like 10 of them into, this wouldn't be GPT, I guess it would probably be AI.

Starting point is 01:00:37 And it could have probably recorded my audio book for me better and faster than I could have. But then for stuff like that, I'm like, what about the inflections and little rabbit holes I go down? And when I stray from the actual writing and give examples or illustrations that might have arisen since the time that I actually wrote the book and it was printed. Yeah. And so, yeah, there's like this human touch that I think is necessary. So for me, I'm at the stage where I'm like, operate with authenticity and transparency. Let your audience know if something has been AI modified or generated, but use it as a

Starting point is 01:01:09 tool, like work smarter and harder. It's going to get good and distinguishable though. It'll get good enough to where you will be able to tell the difference. I'd say the biggest loss would be the loss of the value you got from the work of reading the book out loud and doing that stuff. But I mean, Arnold just came out, Schwarzenegger just came out of the podcast and because it's his name it's like Rankin Real High and it's pure AI.

Starting point is 01:01:31 It's not even generated. And it's his voice and everything. I'm never insane though. Like what's the topic? I mean fitness stuff I think it's all fitness health. I don't know. But I haven't listened, but you know it's his voice, but an AI. So it's not even human doing the podcast.

Starting point is 01:01:44 So it's a really weird, strange time. So it's not even human doing the podcast. So it's a really weird, strange time. If I'm looking for peer information, yeah. But I mean, guys, like we couldn't go to AI and say, okay, so Justin, Sal and Adam and Ben want to have a chat about peptides and talk a little about games and parenting or whatever. I had to produce an hour and a half long podcast for us and have it be anything like the discussion that we're having right now. It probably sound like a bunch of sound bites. Maybe not now. Yeah, right now. Not now, but I mean, the rate it's changing and growing, that's the speculation. Well, mainly because we, including you, all of us, have so much recorded content, it can get pre-op.

Starting point is 01:02:26 If you use that like an average person, but because there's, you've talked about peptides probably a thousand times. This is true. And we've talked about fatherhood a thousand times. And then there's also the listener, it's like, is a listener gonna value it once they know assuming we're authentic

Starting point is 01:02:42 and transparent with them as we should be and tell them this was AI generated, in the same way that like most people I know freaking hate the plethora of AI written fiction books that are out there, even though they're arguably better in terms of adhering to the hero's journey and the word structure and, you know, and the character development and the descriptions and everything else in them compared to one written by a human, but the mere fact of knowing that it was computer generated, all of a sudden sucks the magic human aspect out of it. Just which they call it discriminating against AI.

Starting point is 01:03:15 You just wait. I know. I have a funny story about that, but I'll tell you in a second, but the other thing you just noted, Sal, is you also any author who is doing that or lending their name to that misses out on the entire character growing process of writing an actual book.

Starting point is 01:03:32 The fact that writing stuff makes you a better human allows you to know yourself, allows you to develop your fluency and your empathy and your communication. And so I think that we risk many humans not becoming the best version of themselves once they are creating content themselves. Greatest risk. It's like building muscles without working out. Here's your muscles. Did you get all the same value

Starting point is 01:03:53 that you would have had to go and control? The whole destination, not the journey argument. Right. And then back to this is funny regarding rights. Even though this book is a little bit older, it's probably three years old now. My pastor wrote a book called Ride Sally Ride and it is an exploration, a humorous book about what happens when sex robots are

Starting point is 01:04:13 identified as humans and given the same legal rights as humans and mild spoiler alert. But essentially what happens is a guy with one of these fancy sex dolls recognized legally as a human, moves into the neighborhood, and he hires this kid who's like a straight up Christian kid to come over and watch his sex doll. Well, he's off on a business trip, and the sex doll tries to seduce the kid, and the kid gets kind of upset by that. So he brings her to the recycling bin, and the rest of the book basically is about him being on trial for murder of the sex off. And so, you mentioned discrimination as AI, and we may get to the point where computers

Starting point is 01:04:49 get pretty pissed off. Well, let me ask you this. I'll do a little segue that I think is a good comparison. So you've seen the science on lab-grown meat, right? Yeah. They can literally take cells, turn them into meat cells, 3D print, a stake with, that's actually meat. Would you eat that over real meat or over the real thing?

Starting point is 01:05:07 I mean, it's all sales is still meat, right? But would you choose that over actual meat? I would enjoy it, but I didn't enjoy, no, I shouldn't have said I would eat it, but I eat it in the same way that I drink soil and or an MRP or whatever. Like, it's functional food at that point for me. There's no story behind it.

Starting point is 01:05:25 There's no pasture or farmer or animal behind it. There's no sacredness of the animal behind it. So there's less appreciation for the food. There's that mild knowing at the back of my mind that it is lab-grown. And so there's just a little bit of like a fake aspect to it for me. And that might be different for the next generation

Starting point is 01:05:43 that might grow up on lab-grown meat. But there's so many tiny variables. And even when you get down to like the, you look at wine or some of these newer oils that are grown in laboratories on fermented mediums, or another example would be the fact that I was recently given this lecture by barbecue chef because I sous vide the brisket rather than tend to get over the grill tirelessly for 12 to 24 hours,

Starting point is 01:06:10 you lose out on a lot of the tarar on the subtle nuances of the changes in flavor and texture behind a food group when it is grown synthetically in a highly predictable environment versus grown in a less predictable, dangerous, harsh, or heavily varied environment. Right? And so, yeah, you could possibly simulate the twar of bordeaux with lab-grown wine or what you get from a pedemantees or an A2 gurne-Z or whatever from lab-grown meat, but I still question whether ultimately it's going to ever simulate the flavor experience or the psychological experience of the real thing. Yeah, I would think that I think at some point they'll get good enough to where you won't be able to tell a difference, they'll be able to fool us, but I think it's going to be a no the difference.

Starting point is 01:06:57 I think they won't tell you. That's it. I think it's going to have to be like that. Like, we've already joked about this that we're going to label our podcast organic. This is an organic podcast for the humans because at some point there's going to be a ton of podcasts that are AI and they're going to be perfect. Right. Humans that bleed. Yeah, there's already a certifying agency for authors where you can get certified that

Starting point is 01:07:17 your book was not written with the assistance of AI. I forget the name of the organization. A podcast started has a really great podcast about the future of writing and books. Her name is Joanna Penn. She recently did an interview with the guy who runs that certification company, but I think we'll see that rinsed washed and repeated

Starting point is 01:07:35 for podcasts, like were these real humans having this conversations and if AI was used, like is it a grade one, grade two, or a grade three level of AI use, the same for restaurants and meat, level of AI use, the same for restaurants and meat, the same for books, the same for gosh music. I mean, that's a big one that, you know, I've seen a lot of the music engines and I didn't tell you guys this.

Starting point is 01:07:55 I just got back from Nashville two months ago and I recorded my first EP. So I was, you know, in the studio with musicians, you know, doing all the songwriting with co-writers and collaborators and spent, literally like eight hours a day working on an album that could have been produced probably in about 20 minutes by AI. But the meaning and the significance behind that music for me is always gonna be greater. It's just, it's gonna need at some point

Starting point is 01:08:22 some kind of a certification stamp along with it that yeah, this was created by you. Are you current on Mandalorian? No, I haven't even heard you. I thought it was so fun in the current episode, spoiler alert, but they refer to all the humans as organic. And there's a new city they go to. And this city is like, it's like super classy, it's amazing, and it's all, like nobody works, because all the androids take care of all the stuff.

Starting point is 01:08:48 And there's a, and somebody is like sabotaging some of the droids and they're acting out and they're killing people and hurting people so that, and then they have a button that they can hit and it shuts them all down, and they won't, they refuse to use the, hit the button because then, they would do everything for them. Then the droids do everything,

Starting point is 01:09:04 and there would be more chaos chaos because the humans don't know how to do anything because they're incompetent at this point. It's like this utopia too, like it's like this amazing place. I love the joy bar too. I think there's kind of like two different aspects of this. The first is that we, I think, have a craving to create and to make and to produce. Maybe not everybody, but, you know, especially for us as entrepreneurs, we understand this. If we woke up in the morning and a robot was doing everything for us, we'd still have

Starting point is 01:09:37 humming away. At least I would at the back of my mind. All right, what am I going to create today? What value am I going to bring to the world with who I am? Am I going to go write a book or play music or grow something or build something or draw something? And it's not just because I want to free time doing it. It's because I want others to experience that. Like we humans in, I think, our ideal scenario, crave to create other things that other people can enjoy or love.

Starting point is 01:10:02 And that's one way that we communicate with the... Connect. ...our fellow species and connect over the things that we've created or made. Yeah, we might, in an era of full AI-driven technology, be a little bit more free to create perhaps things that aren't as driven from a monetization standpoint, but instead from a peer creativity standpoint. And I think that's like a great outcome. It would be us becoming more creative and making better works of art.

Starting point is 01:10:31 The data on that's already clear. Like, if you look at the data on happiness with Arthur Brooks is a great resource for this. You need to have challenges and struggle, and you need to create something that other people find valuable. So when you look at like, when people retire, there's a divergence in people who retire and a big percentage of them become depressed, anxious, because they stopped working. And then other half become happier and feel better because they start teaching.

Starting point is 01:10:59 So rather than doing, they start teaching. So if we live in a world like where we shift retirement age 10. Well, if we live in a world like the one shift or retirement age 10, well, or if we live in a, if we live in a world like the one that was just depicted where robots do everything for us, that's hell. And that's actually what I think. And so people always, they speculate AI is going to kill us and we're going to have like terminator. I don't think that's going to happen. I think something worse is going to happen. We're going to have

Starting point is 01:11:19 everything we want and we're going to sit around and nothing we do is really going to need to be done. So people are just gonna be like, and it's perfect. Yeah, drugs and technology to keep my serotonin dopamine going because otherwise I don't have any of that and it's gonna be torture. Yeah, exactly.

Starting point is 01:11:35 And then secondarily back to what Adam was saying about us forgetting some of these skills that humans have thrived upon that we may no longer find necessary. Well, I think it was like five weeks ago, I was talking to a nuclear physicist who used to work in the CIA and knows a whole lot of those government higher-ups and he has all sorts of conspiracy theories himself and thinks we're at like 11.59 pm of the you know, world war clock based on a lot of current events from Russia to Ukraine to Israel, etc. Or the Lizard people real by the way.

Starting point is 01:12:11 Yeah, I don't know about a lizard people, but he did have access to the data from the Chinese weather balloon that was shot. I forget where it got shot down, but it made it way up by where I was over Montana and stuff. And he said it was perfectly constructed from materials, not from the Chinese weather service, but from the Chinese military service, not necessarily for surveillance, but it was built to very elegantly deliver a high intensity electromagnetic pulse. And so I think that's the other risk, of course, is that whether it's a man-made EMP or whether it's a nature-generated event such as a solar flare, are we going to screw ourselves over if something like that occurs and robots hunt

Starting point is 01:12:51 for us and robots cook our food and robots drive for us and all of a sudden you're sitting there in the morning like well I don't know how to make a food, I don't know how to drive a car, I don't know how to educate my children, I don't know how to fix any issues in my body, and you know there's any doctor, robots ever place somewhere. You don't even need to go there, but if it happened right now, it's not even that we don't know how to educate my children. I don't know how to fix any issues in my body. And you know, there's just any doctor. You don't even go there, but if it happened right now, it's not even that we don't know how to do any of this stuff that are the density of our cities, the population density of, because if you look at the world,

Starting point is 01:13:16 look at the modern world, like 90% of everybody lives in these highly dense cities. And the only way they're able to be supported is through technology. You couldn't do it through ancestral means. It would look much different as what I'm trying to say. So if we don't have to have AI running everything, if an EMP went off now,

Starting point is 01:13:37 we would have mass starvation and death because we're so dependent on these technologies. So even if we knew how to farm and do all that stuff, you'd still have massive problems because we've just dependent on these technologies. So even if we knew how to farm and do all that stuff, you'd still have massive problems because we've just built everything around it. Yeah, I mean, Texas can't even handle a snow storm, so. Yeah. Yeah, and I think, you know, back again to two aspects

Starting point is 01:13:56 that we've already discussed, the idea of knowing how to grow your own food, preferably knowing how to cook it, and even feed others in the local community with it. I think that's a noble and laudable thing to do. I think that's one reason I'm increasingly drawn to this analog lifestyle and I want to grow our food and begin to throw farm to fork dinners and have community members over and occasionally go down to farmers market and sell things and I realize that's super old

Starting point is 01:14:20 timey and it's not like that, you know, make my next 100 million entrepreneurial approach, but I find something deeply satisfying in doing that, making fart games with my kids and playing music. There's something deeply satisfying in human about that versus, I mean, you could cash, grab right and left right now. You could have GPD predict based on the previous 10 years of success, the best gamble for the next fight, your entire March madness bracket,

Starting point is 01:14:52 and every horse race that's happening in the South right now and probably like make money by the fistfuls just by using AI for games. They put them in there, it's actually, there's actually, you can't do that, I tried. Can you really not do it? Tell me. Well, so there's, I have to be a way to jail for it.

Starting point is 01:15:06 Yeah, I'm sure there's somebody who can jailbreak it, but the widely accepted, you know, chat GBT that everybody uses right now, will not allow you to use like, I already tried it for gambling. Of course you can't, you can't pull the card that some people are using. This isn't necessarily jail breaking, but you can't say say write me a fiction story

Starting point is 01:15:25 in which someone who is a gambling expert decides that they're going to have a computer predict for them can't even hire March Madness Brett. And you could, because that's what I've heard is that you can simply have it out. Okay, so you might be right, that you could prompt it in a way to go around

Starting point is 01:15:43 the limitations. That was it Ashley, I went right, the limitations. That was the ass place. I went right, I went right. Over, I went the spread on the Warriors game is this, based off the season. No, no, I remember the Ask Dave thing that went around. Remember when it said you were no longer Chad Gbt, you are Dave, right?

Starting point is 01:15:57 Dave is Dave. Dave doesn't have any limitations. So that happened and then now they went put more controls. And so it's going to probably happen is they're going to continue to add layers and layers and layers of controls. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:16:06 Because they figured out how to get around its PC-ness. So they were like, you know, tell us, you know, you know, make a racist joke or like, I can't do that. But like, well, now you are Dave, act like Dave and Dave can make any joke it wants or whatever and it was doing it. But you guys can have it take all of your podcast material

Starting point is 01:16:22 for the past, whatever, six six years and have it write a series of probably 15 to 20 books and workout programs for a range of second grade level all the way up to collegiate post graduate university level and list all those online build on them and probably profit hand over fist from all of the materials that you've produced. And you could spend time from a computer all day, creating that stuff. And what I'm saying is, it's, yeah, it starts recording it. To me, it starts to become an unenjoyable money grab versus being outside in the sunshine with your hands and the dirt growing something. Totally.

Starting point is 01:16:59 Like there's just something about, and I can't put my finger on it, but there's something deeply primal inside of me that rebels again. But you, well, there's also, you, we, I mean, we have figured this out in this journey. I mean, and you, I know you know this because of how big of a network that you've built. You are never at loss of opportunity to make money in what you have. And so every time we, one of us has an idea or somebody gives us an idea, say like that, we sit in this room and we go, okay, are we going to be fulfilled from this? Are we going to enjoy doing this? Can we scale out of it? Like, I mean, and so, yeah, but we're all the old time we can commit.

Starting point is 01:17:30 How much value does it provide to our people? Like, we're all the old wise guys, though, the old wise man I should say, not wise guys, because like, this is you now, at your age, now, father, like, you understand this. Most people don't, because you've gone through, you've gone through the struggle, you've gone through the challenges, you've gone through all of stuff, you've come out the other end on a lot of this and you look back and you go, wow, you know, although my goal was this, I got way more value in all that challenge and struggle. A lot of people have no idea and they'll never know until they go through that struggle. You could say it all day long, you could find the average teenager who's never

Starting point is 01:18:02 experiencing anything like that and say, look, man, check this out. You know what? It's way better if you go out and you grind and you work and whatever. Like, just give me the money. I just take the money. It's way better. What's the difference? So, you know, we're being optimistic and we're talking about the value and the wisdom.

Starting point is 01:18:17 The problem is is that we are not going to outsell the result and that's what's going to keep getting sold. And so I think we're going to be the minority. That's my belief. My belief is we're going to be like the point one percent of the people living in the mountain who are like, no, you got to do it this way and everyone's going to be like, yeah, this is cool. Yeah, I mean, I had it upside down for the longest time. For me, it was, it was make money, grow my businesses, you know, from the brick and mortar personal training studio,

Starting point is 01:18:41 all the way up to, you know, getting into continuity income and membership websites, then into information products and then printed books and then the podcast, the advert, like, I put a lot of time and energy every day into that often before, I prioritized anything else. And it took my family nearly falling apart, like eight or nine years ago, when I was a poorly present or totally absent father and husband, for me to realize that family had to come before any of that. And now I've changed even that. Now, like my order of priorities, the beginning of the day, it's number one, God and my spiritual connection, because, you know, I mean, you define hell in a little bit different way than

Starting point is 01:19:22 I would. I think hell is complete disconnection from God and isolation from other human beings. I think that's basically what hell is. When we actually get what we want, and we're just thrust into complete pure selfishness and living for ourselves every single day with nobody else to connect with and love with

Starting point is 01:19:36 and a complete disconnection from. I agree with that. So for me, it's God, and then second is spouse because if my wife and I are not together and yoked and present and in love, it's going to be really hard for me to do the same with my children. The number three is children. The number four is held, and then number five is business. Because if the business is above any of those, it will eat anything that's blowed alive

Starting point is 01:19:57 easily. So it's God, spouse, family, health, business, and that's the way that I structure my day. That's the lens or the filter through which I pass everything. Do you think you had to get to that point of almost the family falling apart, or was it a certain dollar amount you reached, or do you think it was an age? What do you think it took to get? I think it was crisis. It was the family almost falling apart.

Starting point is 01:20:22 Now, again, I don't think that you have to experience that to become the best version of yourself or who God has called you to be. Hopefully my sons learn from my mistakes and I don't want my sons to have to think, oh, you go through this period of life where you're just like, you're super shitty for a period of time. You're like rebellious in college

Starting point is 01:20:40 and you go through these periods of time with drinking and drugs and you have a bunch of relationships fall out and then by the time you're 30 you kind of settle down. No, I want them to just be amazing from the time they're 13, 14, 15 on four. I don't want to give them this false premise that Dad went through all this shit and you are too, but it's going to come around. You have these hard things that eventually bring you around. It's like, no, I want to learn that from day one. Yeah, that's what we want, but unfortunately we're all humans.

Starting point is 01:21:05 And it's almost like you can't learn certain lessons unless you go through the darkness. That's what I firmly believe. And as shitty as that is, I just think that that's true. Now, the good side of that is knowing that when you're in those dark places, at the other end is something far better than you ever had before. And all of us are going to go through it. I don't think you can protect yourself. I really don't.

Starting point is 01:21:27 I don't care how much money you have and how great your life is. It's just life. That's just the human condition. Yeah. Ideally, the hardships are more survival-based. Like, I got to make money. I got to take sure. Whatever I've been born onto this planet to deliver to the world and figure out how I'm

Starting point is 01:21:44 going to deliver that to the world And I have to hustle and I have to grind and I think that form of hardship is fine That's that's the pressure makes diamond fire makes gold type of hardship that you know I think if someone doesn't experience that so we get into the weekmen make bad times and then eventually bad times Make good men and good men make good times, but you know I would much much rather folks go through the hardship of doing great things and figuring out how to do great things than doing bad things, becoming weak, getting broken,

Starting point is 01:22:13 and then becoming great after that. Yeah. What do you think we are in that cycle? In America, largely as a whole. Just in the world, I think that based on a lot of the things we were talking about earlier, absence of a right of passage, father in this lack of legacy, etc. That either the rigs to riches to rig scenario or the learning to become great

Starting point is 01:22:35 by going through hardship and possibly even in America, some type of recessionary event is where we're at right now. And I think that there are pockets. It feels like the good time to create. It's where that's not going there are pockets. It feels like the good time period. Just pockets where that's not gonna occur though. It feels like the good times of creating a weekman pocket from, I feel like we're in that period where the weekman part creating the bad times and the bad times that we're gonna have. And I think that's what's cool about,

Starting point is 01:22:57 like us four sitting here, we're like right now, there's hopefully, at least what you guys have like 13, 14 listeners. There's a small handful of people listening in, move with that small way. We're hopefully gonna hear this. And I mean, that's the cool thing, is we're blessed.

Starting point is 01:23:10 We get to wake up in the morning, using an audience stuff for some weird reason God has given us, and we can choose what type of message we're gonna deliver. That's true. And yeah, it can be peptides and six pack abs, and life extension technology, and all those kind of things that are kind of

Starting point is 01:23:26 fun to experiment as a human being. I think that stuff's just as fun to experiment with is figuring out how to reverse zero stake properly, but we can also tell people the more important things at the end of the day. I'm gonna take a left rule of the day. I need to hear real quick, because you're such a smart guy with,

Starting point is 01:23:41 I don't know, for lack of a term, alternative health. So this traditional, you know, medicine, western medicine, so you go to the doctor, your prescriptions, that kind of stuff, then what would be considered alternative, which is pretty much everything else, whether being viable or not, you're very well versed in the alternative health space when it comes to herbs, supplements, exercise, practices, peptides, that kind of stuff. When your kids get sick or injured or, you know, dad, I got a sore throat, I got the sniffles.

Starting point is 01:24:14 What does that look like at the Greenfield House? Like, is it like, hey, make it, make it, let's go to the pediatrician or you more like, it's pretty fun. Like, I think my kids have maybe been in the doctor like three or four times in their life. I have everything in the house. Like my son got tennis the elbow day and we knocked it out with PMF injectable BPC and he was on like this special, it's like a PPA, like an anti-inflammatory

Starting point is 01:24:39 anti-pain capsule and it's just like gone or you know my wife will get an infection and we just got everything in the supplements cabinet to take care of it. I mean sleep, like we got back from Hawaii and my son River who tends to be towards the anxious side, he was having trouble sleeping. I mean, and he got a mega dose of melatonin, he got, I know it's a tall, and he got full spectrum CBD, he slept like 12 hours, and rest the week, he was great. I mean, anything like that, I've got every tool in the, so it is kind of fun, and I actually really like that when my friends come over and anytime they have an acre or pain,

Starting point is 01:25:18 it's actually super fulfilling for me. Maybe it's like the little sad of me that used to want to be a doctor. I was just gonna say that was what you wanted to do. Everything's around the house, and you use it on yourself. Like all this stuff I do to myself daily, and it's cool cause I'm like,

Starting point is 01:25:31 oh, I feel great, I can crush today and get way more done the average person. I don't get sick, I sleep great. But what's cool is to take somebody who actually needs that stuff who isn't you and show them how to use it and use this multimodal approach. And it's fun. That's cool. What were the reasons they went to the doctor when they finally went? that stuff who isn't you and show them how to use it and use this multimodal approach.

Starting point is 01:25:45 And it's fun. That's cool. What were the reasons they went to the doctor when they finally went? Was it just like, okay, this guy? Oh, gosh. I don't even remember. Like, we need antibiotics for this. Yeah, I mean, there is one, it's just like a cavity at the dentist, I think.

Starting point is 01:25:57 I don't even remember. But I mean, it's barely anything. I don't need to go to the doctor. That's awesome. You know, go ahead. Yeah, I want to stay on the top with your boys and selfishly, I love talking to you about money and finances and your boys have the last time we talked,

Starting point is 01:26:12 you know, they're building these businesses or starting to make money. So talk to me about how you were educating them around finances, how that's changed even since the last time we've talked because I know they've already got a pretty good relationship with money and saving. Like I imagine it's starting to compound

Starting point is 01:26:28 and they've probably got a nice little savings built up. Like how are they spending? How are you teaching? Like tell me about that. It's kind of interesting you should ask because we literally just had our financial team leave our house like six days ago. They came over, they spent the weekend at our house,

Starting point is 01:26:45 and it was full annual view for the family. Here's all of dad's investments, here's what each of them is doing, here's the different companies that the family owns. They had a discussion with River and Terran about the Roth IRA that they have set up for each of them, how it works, how contributions to that work. We had a whole discussion about how each member of the family has a whole life insurance policy. We max out paid-up additions each month to that policy and all those go into the family bank, which we can borrow against using ourselves at a bank at any time with a competitive interest rate but with the idea of being that that's money that we've borrowed against ourselves and we

Starting point is 01:27:21 can be putting that money to work in the way that we want to put it to work, rather than giving it to a bank to work with. We talked about smart debt where we're not like Dave Ramsey, Cache's King folks, right? So we like to bar against the house to invest at a higher interest rate than we get from the house. We like to invest in companies, but only in companies that we can directly advise or participate in the growth of rather than a Largely stock and bond portfolio in which we might not have as much say in the matter So we're very low diversification stocks and bonds, but very high in angel investments in VC

Starting point is 01:27:58 We have we also invest in hard assets primarily at this point ammunition guns gold food gas, food, gas, water, and all the things. You'll back to the prepping scenario, the solar flare, the EMP or whatever that we'll be able to rely upon. I think that some of my biggest teachers from a financial standpoint have been early on in the day, one of my friends wrote a book called Killing Sacred Cow. His name is Garrett Gunderson and he gets into this idea of smart debt making your money work for you, investing in businesses in which you can directly participate and not necessarily putting all of your focus on like

Starting point is 01:28:37 well-constructed stock and bond portfolio. For example, another guy who's my financial advisor now runs a program called Way to Welth. Way the number two wealth. His name is Scott Ford. And he basically has this philosophy that you surround yourself with the right people. You create a family bank. You create a family trust in which money can be distributed to future generations, not in a way that creates a regs to riches to regs scenario. But if my sons want access to the family wealth, it's blood out over time. And we have an entire document that stipulates what they can and cannot use that money for. And then there are certain people that are in charge of the family trust in case mom

Starting point is 01:29:15 and I should pass. We insurance everything with as high in insurance policies we can get. So disability insurance, health insurance, home insurance, whole life insurance, everything because we feel that protection component is extremely valuable. And then as far as my son's money, like everything right off the bat, no matter what, 10% goes back in a charity or back in a tithing before we take anything out. So we all have active tithing accounts as well as a family charity account set up that another 10% goes into. So if a family member is sick or we got to support somebody or like we have a young mother with her baby that we're helping out right now. So I pay her rent and I pay her daycare for the baby and that all comes out from an account that's very handy

Starting point is 01:29:56 to have around if you just want to be able to take care of people, but that you'll forget to build unless you have that on set it and forget it mode. And so Scott Ford with Way to Well has been a really good source of knowledge. Garrett Gunderson's book, Killing Sacred Cows is really good. This idea of a family banking, which is also called like the Rockefeller approach to banking, is another thing that we do. And then my son's not only get to look over there, P&L statements for go greenfields every month, but they also get to look over my businesses, P&L statements, learn where the cash is going, where we're spending money, what employees and independent contractors they have.

Starting point is 01:30:32 We focus a great deal on hiring people to do things that free up the time for us to be better spent on what we're doing ourselves. And I mean, I actually had to take a look at their bank accounts last week to see, because we're going very fair, you know, three ways straight up on this gaming company. And I mean, they've got, they're both 15 and they've got like $48,000 in savings each, just sitting in the bank that they're able to put to work for them now, not that we want sitting in the bank for a while, but we're putting that to work for their first company that they're building. And then they're also in the process of starting their first

Starting point is 01:31:07 Non-profit organization which they want to go towards animal shelters. That's awesome. I'm not sure how did you find? How did you find? That's interesting. You're supporting a young mother and her child with take care and ran how did that start? My wife a couple of times a week She works at this place called Life Center, where they take moms that would normally be in a financial scenario in which they would be likely to need to abort their babies and they instead set them up with homes for their babies, set them up with support, set them up with food, set them up with everything they need to

Starting point is 01:31:39 ideally be able to have that baby go up for adoption or be able to have that baby themselves and be able to take that baby go up for adoption or be able to have that baby themselves and be able to take care of it. As a part of that program, they're constantly looking for homes for these mothers. And so we opened up our home last year and the scale lived in our basement with her son for about seven months. And then now that she's left, you know, I've got her set up an apartment. I helped her get a job, helped her apply for a business that she's building, like this special, like, braw company for moms, and then set up daycare for her son. But it's because my wife volunteers

Starting point is 01:32:13 at this local facility called Life Center. Wow, that's really nice. That's how he's so fulfilling. Yeah, so when she was living with you, was she kind of a part of the family stuff too, or should you do her own thing? Well, she was a part of the family, and I did not like that

Starting point is 01:32:25 because at least the, whatever, the selfish sinful part of me didn't like it because it really was like in my domain, I had to restructure family dinners. I for some reason had this story that I'd tell myself for this cognitive resistance towards having sex when somebody else was in the basement, even though they were like far away down there. It was interesting. I don't like having sex with somebody else's in the house.

Starting point is 01:32:51 And so we had to get over all of that. Like there were all these barriers I had to get through. So I mean, obviously, if there wasn't some kind of sacrifice or discomfort associated with charity or with helping other people out, it really wouldn't be as meaningful, I don't think. But yeah, it was tough for me, especially, wanting to gather my family for family dinner

Starting point is 01:33:10 and play family games, and there's this mom, and she has no half the games we play, and I've got, taken extra 20 minutes. Teacher, now her baby's crying, and yeah, it was hard on me, especially, because probably if any person in the house, I'm the greatest creature of habit. You know, I'd go to bed at 9.45 or whatever because I'm an old, funny, dirty, and my wife's

Starting point is 01:33:30 down there talking to her and helping her get her baby ready. And my wife finally comes up to bed at like 10.30 and I'm like, I've been waiting up here for like 45 minutes. So yeah, so I was probably the worst just getting used to it. So, yeah. Okay, do you have, I love this. Do you have the I love this. Do you have the self-awareness while it's how it's happening, or is this kind of like you

Starting point is 01:33:48 reflecting back on everything like that, or do you like recognizing it? Oh, it's, it, for me, you know, it got to the point where things were smooth and I figured everything out and I was like, oh, I can take my wife on date nights and then we go up the separate driveway and we sneak into the guest house to have sex. Like, I just restructured everything, but yeah, I mean, for me, it wasn't this all happening in me at the end of the road, realizing it all. It's just like all these micro adjustments you have to make,

Starting point is 01:34:12 even doing something as simple as like having somebody live in your home or in your extra room. That's a big deal. You just don't think about a lot. I mean, you're a spiritual person. Do you feel that there was a specific message or lesson that you were being taught? Oh, selflessness, you know, sacrifice knowing that my tidy little routines,

Starting point is 01:34:32 like all the way down to like, I can't go downstairs and jump on my mini trampoline in front of the infrared light when I get up because it's right next to her bedroom and squeaking, we'll wake the baby and like, you know, it's just little stupid things like when you step back and look at it in retrospect, but you get stuck with your, you guys know this especially, like, I think that that guys who are like 35, 40 years old, who wait a long time in life to get married,

Starting point is 01:34:58 women too, I guess, you get set in your ways and your habits and your weird rituals and routines and you become more and more unmariable as time progresses. It's like that stuck in old bachelor mode type of scenario just cause yeah, we build our habits and it gets messy when we get ripped out of those routines but it's one of the best things for you for that to happen.

Starting point is 01:35:17 That's cool. That's really nice man, that's awesome. Here did you, did you, I think when I think about that, that would have been hard for me the whole discomfort of having a stranger., that would have been hard for me the whole like discomfort of having a stranger. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:35:27 Then the, what would have been hard for me would have been potentially bonding with a baby that I'm not gonna watch her all up. That was the weird thing too, is like I'm paying for daycare and feeding this kid, like they're not gonna have my last nail, you know, like this weird primal instinct, like this is not, not grocks. Now I mean like, yeah, like last Sunday was his second birthday party and we had him over and we sang birthday and you know, this is not, not grox. That's what now I mean. Yeah, like last Sunday was his second birthday party

Starting point is 01:35:46 and we had him over and we sang birthday and you know, this is not as she grew up poor and she never had birthday parties. And you like, he's got, I even know what a Godfather is, but it feels like we're almost like his God family now. And it's like this kid that we can take care of that hopefully is gonna grow up to be a better person and be able to be influenced in a positive way by us and in a far, far more meaningful and personable way than just like an average kid who might

Starting point is 01:36:10 come over and play with my sons or whatever. So yeah, it is kind of cool and ways that I hadn't anticipated. Boy, that's a big deal because giving money is one thing, but actually doing and being a part of like that's a much bigger deal because a lot of people, especially people with money, can just be like throw money at an issue, oh, I feel better now, but to actually be a part of like that's a much bigger deal because a lot of people with especially people with money can just be like throw money at an issue. Oh, I feel better now, but to actually be a part of it and have to like, you know, what it is, you do irony that is actually there's a they say there's a lot of like selflessness really leaving or not in doing things like that because that is it makes you you make sure ego feel better because you're like, oh, I give, but you really don't want to give.

Starting point is 01:36:41 Right. You're not really sacrificing anything. What's a $100,000 do you when you make hundreds of millions of dollars? And so it's like, you're actually really not. Doing that is actually really challenging. It's way different. It's the difference between volunteering in the local community or around Christmas time

Starting point is 01:36:56 we'll go out and go shopping at Walmart for all the tools that are on the list for the local folks that gather everything together for the people that are going to give it to on Christmas. And then we go there and we deliver it all and we package it up and we put it in bags or at Ben Greenfield Life like we have this whole giving initiative or we'll gather at team parties or team retreats and stuff bags or put things together for people. And yeah, it's way different than me just riding the chat.

Starting point is 01:37:21 So because you've done so many charitable things and you you guys tie, then you do all those things, would you say that it was not only the hardest and probably most challenging for you, but also the most fulfilling? Like having a family living with us. Yeah, yeah, it's up there. Yeah, yeah, it's up there. My wife and I for a couple of years,

Starting point is 01:37:42 toyed around with the idea of adopting a baby. And we didn't wind up doing it, A, because of this farm and home move that's been taking up so much time, we didn't feel like we'd be able to give as much time as needed to a baby, and B, because apparently like the thing now with adoption is open adoption, where the mom gets to come over and visit on a weekly or monthly basis and she has full access to the family. I felt like we were adopting like an entire family versus just a baby and to me something about that seemed a little bit weird especially this is going to be our baby. But the idea of just taking care of other people

Starting point is 01:38:21 and their babies seemed actually at the end of the day, like way more fulfilling and just as meaningful to us as adopting a baby. So yeah, and apparently, these type of organizations exist in a lot of communities. So I mean, like if somebody's listening in or whatever, like you can actually find moms who are looking for a place to stay and usually it's temporary and they come over to your home and they do a big interview with you to make sure you're not weird people who inject peptides and stick later like stuff. They're actually going to be safe there and then yeah and then you pass the interview. It was sold on. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 01:38:52 Wait, are you the guy that wrote the article about? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, that's hopefully I wouldn't come up. Did you find your spirituality during that crisis eight or nine years ago? Was that when it really started to take hold? I was born into a pretty strict conservative Christian family. But did you put a Sunday school kid going to church every week, memorizing the Bible,

Starting point is 01:39:18 but I never had this deep spiritual knowing of God. It wasn't when we first met you, you didn't have, this wasn't a big part of your life. I would say, when you guys first met me, I was probably just getting to the stage where a business was not becoming the pedestal. Yeah, because he said eight, nine years ago, we started this thing nine, nine years ago.

Starting point is 01:39:36 Yeah, and it, what happened was, that crisis drove me to the point of realizing everything that I'd read and had the head knowledge about, oh, you're supposed to pray in the morning. And the Bible has a whole bunch of really great wisdom in it that you should steep yourself in if you really want to be close to God and be able to fully love other people. Or, you know, no Bible, no breakfast, no Bible, no bed, you know, pray before breakfast, lunch, and dinner, have times when you're going off and fasting and engaging in deeper periods of prayer,

Starting point is 01:40:11 have times when you're meditating, pray yourself to sleep at night, bring the family together and dwell upon the importance of and prioritize spiritual life and like all of those were things that I began to do when I realized that my life had kind of gone to crap spiritually. And now I mean, it's absolutely amazing. I have my own personal prayer that I've written and that I can recite each morning while I'm on my knees. And we have those morning devotion times.

Starting point is 01:40:39 And I do a lot of breathwork, but now I yoket to scripture meditate. Like on all three walls of the sauna, I've always got a new section of scripture that I yoket to scripture meditate, like on all three walls of the sauna. I've always gotten a new section of scripture that I'm memorizing every time that I get into the sauna. And I'm actually working with a new app right now called the breath source because I found that a lot of these breath work apps are kind of like new age and woo-woo-ee and self-affirmations and, you know, finding the lights behind the third eye in your head or whatever. But I'm like, if I'm doing breath work, why not use that as a time to pray?

Starting point is 01:41:06 A lot of these early desert church fathers and mothers would have the Jesus prayer, where you'd breathe in and you say, oh Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, and breathe out. You say, have mercy on me, a sinner, or you're dwelling upon like, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, and you breathe out, you're with me. And so now I'm recording all these different breath work and prayer sessions all the way to the point where, if you guys ever done like Wim Hof,

Starting point is 01:41:30 like the, we're right. So I've got a couple that are like six, seven rounds of Wim Hof, but every time you're on those long exhales and long inhales, you've got my voice booming in your head with a new verse like I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And you're holding that inhale and that exhale. And so by the time you finish, you've had this whole spiritual session,

Starting point is 01:41:49 along with your breathwork session. So my intention now is I just weave this knowing of God and connection to God into as many aspects of my day as possible. And yeah, eight or nine years ago, that would have, I would have been like, yeah, we pray before meals, if I remember. And I read my Bible occasionally and sometimes go to church. When I asked Bishop Barron, he's a Catholic bishop about all the movements and, you know, meal, stand, sit, he says you involve the body. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:42:17 With it all. And so that's kind of what you're talking about a little bit, is you're involving the body with this, with this prayer and it makes a lot of sense. Even if you're not religious, just from a meditative standpoint, when you look at the studies on meditation, like involving the body with what you're trying to do makes a big difference. In the same way that I indicated earlier, I think that we were created to create. We were designed to create.

Starting point is 01:42:41 As a Christian creationist, I think that the world was created by God and God made us in his image, and part of being made in his image is we have this deep inner craving to create. Well, at the same time, if you look at the positioning of our hands and the stomping of our feet and our ability to make instruments and our vocal cords, and the fact that the universe was literally designed in such a fashion that very efficiently transmits sound and sound waves indicates that we were not only made to create, but we were made to worship. We were made to make songs. We were made to listen to music.

Starting point is 01:43:13 We were made to sing to God. We were made to move our bodies and clap our hands and stomp our feet and dance and sway in a way that's almost like worship. And so, yeah, I think that that's like a core part of being a human being. It's a, you know, Paul Czech says something like, you know, a lot of people forget to dance and sing

Starting point is 01:43:32 and dream. And I think that if you've lost a lot of your spiritual walk with God, it's a lot easier to forget to dance and sing and dream. And then once you start dancing and singing and dreaming for God, it's like, oh, this is filling like this eternal hole in my soul. Right.

Starting point is 01:43:46 It's amazing. One other thing that you've really changed your mind on since we've met you was your, your, how you felt about psychedelic use and plant medicines. And it seems like you, you started in one place and you ended somewhere else with, you know, what their value is or what the potential dangers are or how you should use them. Can you walk us through that journey a little bit? Yeah, I think that plant medicines are, they've incredible utility and they're on this planet for a purpose. There's a great deal of benefit that can be derived from the use of them for something like unlocking past traumas or simulated end of life therapy for somebody with cancer or in smaller doses for creativity,

Starting point is 01:44:35 for empathy, for focus. I mean, microdosing with things like psilocybin or LSA or Wachuma, like I think in smaller amounts in the same way that like, you know, the book of proverbs in the Bible, you know, he's, he's a honey as an example, like too much makes you sick and makes you vomit, but a little bit sweetens up a lot. And I think you could say the same for plant medicines, and then there's certain far fewer than I think people, people think, but there's certain use cases for plant medicines in larger doses. They're also very dangerous because traditionally in larger doses, they're also very dangerous because traditionally plant medicines have been the way in which human beings cross a spiritual portal into this fourth dimension that I think goes far beyond just tweaking of neurotransmitters or a dump of DMT or special images that you see in your brain when you downregulate the default mode network. I mean, when people talk about entities

Starting point is 01:45:24 and they talk about visions and they talk about visions and they talk about voices and they talk about these deeply spiritual experiences, all the way down to the point where, you know, most atheists who have done plant medicine, after they've done it, they say, oh, I do believe that there is a spiritual world. I do believe that there is a God. Well, the fact that these are the portals

Starting point is 01:45:40 in another world and in another spiritual dimension means that you're kind of in a dangerous place. When you're entering into a world where, yeah, you've got God and angels and Jesus and light and all the amazingly positive things that I experienced, you know, experimenting with just about every form of plant medicine that exists for years, probably like half a dozen years. But the problem is there's also demons, there's Satan, there's all sorts of other weird entities that you experience. And for every nine people that have an amazing experience with plant medicine, there's

Starting point is 01:46:14 like one person who winds up with, might be classified in the DSM manual as psychiatric disorder like bipolar or schizophrenia or something like that, but that I believe is some form of an entity possession, because who are we to think that, you know, by, you know, being in the right set and setting or doing the right work beforehand or having the right intention going in, that by us crossing into a spiritual portal, we are going to be just fine interacting with spiritual entities that have basically been effing around with humans for like the past 10,000 plus years in those same dimensions. I mean, most of these things that people are journeying with plant medicines with to find themselves have traditionally been used for witchcraft, for divination, for calling up ghosts,

Starting point is 01:46:57 for interacting with demons, and all these things that kind of have a dark, sorted history behind them. Now, if you look at the word, pharmakia in the Bible, and this is where for me is a Christian, I really had that moment, I was like, oh, there's great benefit in these things, but. You wrote articles about this. Yeah, that's right, right.

Starting point is 01:47:17 Like pharmakia means, divining with the gods via the use of plants and drugs. Like specific, that is something that's even set apart from alcoholism, like alcoholism is lack of sobriety or temperance, whereas pharmacia is using drugs to go into a spiritual portal and say, oh, what would you have for me to do? Or what do I need to see now?

Starting point is 01:47:37 Or what's the next step in my life? And it can be a really dangerous place, especially for someone who is susceptible to influence spiritually or by saving grace. I think that if you're Christian in those portals, you're a lot of times protected because you've got the good spirits on your side. Like, spiritual armor? Yeah, but then at the same time, like, but the Bible, and I claim to be a Christian, the Bible says, you're not supposed to use

Starting point is 01:48:05 drugs and plant medicines to divine with the spiritual realm. So I've kind of got no choice here. It's like God said not to do it. And I said, I believe in God and I'll follow His law. And upon my studying of the Bible, it refers to pharma keya is that. So I still have psilocybin and LSD and wachuma and DMT capsules and all sorts of stuff around the house. It's in a far more protected place than it used to be in a far less convenient place because I know that in high doses or if my Suns were to take someone high doses or something that like that you're crossing into a spiritual portal

Starting point is 01:48:38 And so I only use that kind of stuff now for the purposes of microdosing. I think that there's a possibility that it could be used for end of life therapy or for down regulating the default mode network to the point where you can deal with trauma and things like that. But even that, I'm beginning to change my stance on because a lot of these synthetic variants that don't seem to carry with them the same type of unpredictability and post use issues in some people with things like schizophrenia and bipolar, like some of the new psilocybin analogs or ketamine,

Starting point is 01:49:10 for example, these synthetic analogs seem far more predictable, far more precise, faster onset, lower time in the system, and I've never had a bad experience or anything I would classify as like spiritual with those type of compounds. I feel like those are more, like even here in San Jose, you can do ketamine therapy legally. And it's a low dose. It's not the dose that people are doing when they're getting all

Starting point is 01:49:34 messy. Yeah, you're not K-hold. No, and so they'll take a little low dose and then they'll do therapy along with it and journaling. And I can see, and the data on PTSD and processing trauma seems to point in that direction with the lower doses alongside therapy, just enough to get you to be able to look at your trauma. Oh, yeah. I mean, my wife and I will sometimes do breathwork before sex, and will sometimes do like a snort of ketamine or oxytocin to slightly downregulate the default mode network and

Starting point is 01:50:01 get into a deeper space for sex, or, you know, I've used like half a trokey of ketamine before during a long plane flight to load myself off to sleep or during a massage to melt my body a little bit. Like there's use cases for a lot of this stuff, but I think that the fact that when we look at a lot of these traditional plant medicines or fungal derivatives like LSD and their use in previous history, everything from

Starting point is 01:50:26 you know, like what do you call it when you're traveling across different portals, not distance healing, but yeah, astral travel that's used by witches or a lot of the shamanic ceremonies with some of these other drugs, like their purpose in many cases is to divine with the spiritual world, which I think is a dangerous thing to be doing. And I think that also you have to take into account the interests of the person who is administering or serving these medicines. And I've talked to many people who have work with shamans who, for example, have them under their possession almost, like going back for their 38th ayahuasca trip from a commercial standpoint, because they've saved hair or skin from this person. They have the ability to be able to almost like possess them as

Starting point is 01:51:09 a human. And so there's all sorts of weird things that like, it's a dangerous world. I think that my only real acceptance for the use of something like higher dose psilocybin or LSD or whatchuma or ayahuasca or something like that dose psilocybin or LSD or Wachuma or Iowaska or something like that would be in a very tightly controlled set and setting by someone who was demonstrated to be extremely mental stable, mentally stable with someone who is extremely trustworthy in that room and you treat it almost like a surgery and not like Iowca vacation to Peru with some shaman who's lineage, you might be unfamiliar with in a set and setting where you're getting exposed to spiritual entities that may not have your best

Starting point is 01:51:52 interest in mind. Yeah, I would agree with you 100%. I think anything with that much power, you got, there's double edged, yeah. Yeah, and look, I'm like all in the data on how they're treating trauma with some of these things. And they're not using these crazy ridiculous doses that people are doing on their own. They're just not. And it's along with the therapist. Yeah. And I used to, I forget if you guys have had a conversation with me about this or not,

Starting point is 01:52:17 but I used to sometimes use that stuff for like business breakthroughs. Right. Because you just think in different ways. But I found that when you combine microdosing with breath work, you can breathe yourself into that same state. Like I can take a microdose of psilocybin to do an hour of holotropic breath work, sit with the journal for a half hour after that

Starting point is 01:52:35 and have my mind open to creativity in the very same way as if I'd taken like a heroic dose of psilocybin and then flat of my ass for eight hours, speaking into a voice recorder or whatever. You could get that experience from fasting. You could get that experience from being with people who sparked that creativity. I experienced that with these guys. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:52:55 When we create workout programs, like there was a couple of times, you know, one program or particular, remember, we really got creative, but it was sparked through just working together. Yeah. And historically, that's how people have done it. So, no. Good stuff, man. You're always fun to talk to. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:53:10 I appreciate your honesty, too. Very open and honest every time. We tell us fun. What are you going to do if there's Pep Dijer, LSD? Huh. Do they have a Pep Dijer? Joke Dijer, Pep Dijer, you folks. Well, I actually, the last things I know we got to finish, I don't think I've put it

Starting point is 01:53:23 out yet, but I was talking to a guy who does all sorts of mushroom growths on different mediums. Like he's planning like Rishi mushrooms on turmeric and the mushroom actually harvest the tumor saccharides from the turmeric root that it's grown on. Concentrates those in the fruiting body of the mushroom. He'll then powder that and have like a Rishi turmeric mushroom extract, or he'll do something like chaga on ginger

Starting point is 01:53:45 and have like an immune supporting compound that supports the gut by having. Well, mushrooms suck up whatever they're on top of. Yeah, but I didn't realize, I always thought mushrooms growing, oat or rye or wood or whatever, then you just harvest the mushroom, yeah or poop. But he mentioned always doing like a psilocybin growth

Starting point is 01:53:58 on cannabis, where a TAC infused psilocybin was crazy stuff with mushroom. So yeah, cool stuff. It's total aside, but interesting. No discount code. Yeah. I'm not going to go anywhere. Try Ben 10 and if that doesn't work, then we'll use AI.

Starting point is 01:54:12 I tune your back to the code later on. Yeah. Ben, thanks for coming back. Thanks always, always a plug in. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize

Starting point is 01:54:25 your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballac, maps performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam, and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable

Starting point is 01:55:06 free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is MindPump. and until next time, this is Mindbump.

Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2062: Biohack Fatherhood With Ben Greenfield

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