Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 401: Brain.fm- Focus, Relax & Sleep Better with Music for the Brain

Episode Date: November 14, 2016

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin interview Adam Hewett and Junaid Kalmadi the co-founders of www.brain.fm. Brain.fm is a fascinating, science-based tool that uses music to to enhance focus, relaxation, meditation, napping and sleep. Try it for yourself! Sign up for your 10 free sessions at www.brain.fm Have Sal, Adam & Justin personally train you with a new video on our new YouTube channel, Mind Pump TV. Be sure to Subscribe for updates. Get MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, MAPS Aesthetic, the Butt Builder Blueprint AND the Sexy Athlete Mod (The RGB Super Bundle) packaged together at a substantial DISCOUNT at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Get your Kimera Koffee, Mind Pump's first official sponsor, at www.kimerakoffee.com, code "mindpump" for 10% off! Please subscribe, rate and review this show! Each week our favorite reviewers are announced on the show and sent Mind Pump T-shirts!

Hey, MindPublicaners, this month, enrolling any Maps Bundle. That's either the sexy athlete bundle, the Build Your Butt Bundle, or nine months of exercise programming, RGB Bundle. Oh, the best deal. And you can pick any guide, absolutely free, but that's not all.

You'll also get a free Maps T-shirt. What? Of your choice. Here's what you do. You enroll in any Maps Bundle, then you email admin at minpumpmedia.com Let them know your shirt size, your address, and which guide you want, and we'll hook you up. If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go.

Mind, pop, mind, pop, with your hosts. Salta Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. Hey, mine pump listeners Pumple listeners. You're about to hear us talk to two guys, two of the most fascinating dudes I've ever talked to who have a very interesting product. It's a very cool, it's hard to explain. You actually have to listen to the episode,

but it has to do with designing music in a particular way to change brainwave patterns to change Brain activation and they've actually got some pilot studies that demonstrate that what they're doing actually works They got very popular in a short period of time all by word of mouth and our good friend Kyle Kingsbury swears by them And I can't wait to try this. Well, I believe they've even said too on their website, you can go to their website, right? And you can actually get like 10 free trials or something like that, right?

Free, yeah. So, I mean, that's, and the response from people is ridiculous. I was reading through the reviews. They literally had like 500 like five star reviews. It's crazy. It's crazy. It's, you got to go to brain.fm online. So it's www.brain.fm or you can go,

it's an app on your iPhone. So if you have an iPhone, it's an app that you can get. The two guys you're going to hear is talking to are the one of them is the creator and the other one's his partner, Adam Huitt and Jen Ed Colmati. So without any further ado, here's my pump interviewing the guys that run Brain FM.

I like your tattoo, what is that? Oh thanks, so you know whenever you go and like the pharmacy or whatever, you'll see it's usually got snakes. You're wrapped around it, it's called the caduceus. And instead of snakes, I have brain waves or audio waves. Oh, fuck that's sick. That's pretty clever.

God damn it, did you get that recently? A couple of years ago. Really? When you started brain FM? Oh no, no. I've been doing this for almost 14 years now. Oh, shit. You've been doing that for that long.

Yeah, so I figured after 12 years, I should probably commit to it in a bodily way, a physical way. But this is kind of my most visible tattoo. And I get a lot of compliments on it, even though. But this is kind of my most visible tattoo. I get a lot of compliments on it, even though, and explaining it, people are like, bad ass. So you waited almost 14 years before you got a tattoo? Oh no, no, I have other tattoos.

No, but I mean of your company. Oh yeah. Just because I thought Justin rushed it. He went out and got a low back mad mic, like literally within a year of where they're. Right in my ass crack. Commitment. Yeah, I don't know.

I thought that was a little early. Adam got his, he got M&P. It's never too early. MP on either butt cheek, and then when he bends over, says mind pump. Yeah, so it's a little bit. You get to find it. You get to find it by spreading.

I waited until we hit a million listeners though before we did that. I wasn't stupid. Yeah. So I want you to just start that. I'll let you start off. I want you guys to explain to us, you know, maybe your elevator picture, whatever, what brain FM is, I'm familiar somewhat

with like, binereal beats and that kind of stuff, but I know you guys are way different. Yeah, way different. So explain it a little bit. Yeah, go for it, Jeanette. Yeah, we're completely unrelated to Bino beats, but what we are basically doing is that we're making music that's designed for the brain to influence your mental state within a few minutes.

So we're combining music with auditory neuroscience to influence cognitive states. Really? Yes. And now, so this obviously works for focus, for sleep, for meditation, for relaxation, and for naps. It started off with these. Now, how does, so how does this work? How do you test this?

How do you even develop, you know, sounds and music that do this? What's that process look like? Well, there was this, and you mentioned Binarl beats and we are completely unrelated to that because we use music and we'll get into all that. But there's this phenomenon called entrainment. And whenever I started doing this back in 2003, it was not a very accepted concept. But the concept is that you can use music, you can use sound to affect the brain. And what you'll see is you'll see music is being played and then the brain will actually have a corresponding change that you can see on an eG or an MRI.

And whenever in 2003, whenever I first started doing this, yeah, nobody really was actually researching this seriously. Nobody was really taking it seriously. See, that blows me away because it's obviously music has an effect on the brain or sounds, do you? I mean, I know I feel different when I listen to it. Yeah, I mean, and it definitely has a more indirect effect, which is really interesting. One of my first EEGs, I put it on my then girlfriend and she, I was playing some music that I liked

and that she didn't like. And you saw her auditory cortex lighting up as normal. But whenever I played a song that she liked, you'd see you saw the whole brain change. She saw alpha patterns. You saw, because she was enjoying it, and it had memories associated with it. Wow. So, but what we're talking about within Tramon

is a direct effect. So, in 2005, I ended up creating a way to integrate entrainment into music itself. And basically, what we can do is I can produce a rhythm that corresponds to a brain wave pattern. And you can actually see that pattern in the brain. Do you discover this through trial and error? or do you have, is there like a particular pattern that you work off of that's proven to show a particular type of influence?

I mean, this is fascinating to me. Yeah. Well, I mean, any inventor or any scientist that says they don't use trial and error is lying. Of course. I mean they don't use trial and error is lying. I mean, it's all trial and error. But we do, yeah, we do have very specific protocols that we use now that have been proven just over the 13 years that we've been doing this to help people focus and we test it with EEGs. And now, and recently, we tested it with an FMRI. Oh, wow.

What did you guys see? Oh, it's incredible. I mean, we saw changes all across the brain in areas that, you know, like the frontal lobe, like you wouldn't think, okay, we can affect the frontal lobe with audio, but you saw, we saw changes that were very much related to attention. And we're going to be putting that up on the website real soon.

So explain the frontal lobe and why that was surprising, because I think a lot of our listeners might not know why that's a surprising thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the auditory cortex is kind of, I mean, you can kind of think of it as near the ears. It's in the temporal lobe, which is kind of midbrain and nearer to the ears than the frontal lobe.

So, whenever we're talking, and the frontal lobe is just like, you can think of it kind of your forehead, right? And it has to do with attention and your sense of self and predicting what's going to happen later it's what is commonly said to make us the most human and it's the part of our brain that's the youngest and the most FALLOWBLE. It's the one that screws up and makes us go crazy Or depressed or conscious side, right?

Would you say that? Would you say that, would you say it's like your conscious side? Yeah, I would say- Or aware of your conscious side. Yeah, awareness, yeah, they're definitely trying to find the seed of the consciousness, but if you had to put it anywhere, probably the frontal lobe would be. So, but you wouldn't think that audio would directly affect the frontal lobe simply because of proximity.

So you've got the auditory cortex, which is again near the ears, not anywhere near the forehead, but we see activity everywhere. Wow. Now, when you're playing these, these beats to people, when you're playing this music to people, and you're seeing these patterns in their brain, is it also correlating to what they perceive they feel? In other words, if there's a part of the brain that lights up, that's maybe connected to relaxation or focus, are they then coming out of it saying, I feel relaxed and focused. Or is it just something you see on the measuring devices?

Oh yeah, you feel it. That's really the great advantage that we have and just something that's really getting people excited because if you simply try simply try it out you're going to feel it and that that includes focus. I mean relaxation's always been something easy to you know to a certain extent if you close your eyes and listen to any right okay you're gonna feel so you're you're closing your eyes for one thing. Sure. You know you're and you're you're remaining stationary. So you're going you you're going to feel some kind of relaxation. Wow. But there are two other things, sleep, which is very, very impressive.

And we can talk about that. Some of the crazy stuff we've done with sleep, crazy results. But focus, you will actually feel it. And here's here's kind of a typical experience. You know, you'll, you'll start it and you won't know what really to expect. And you'll just start working while the music is playing. And then 10 minutes into it, you'll realize I haven't been doing anything but work this

entire time. I haven't thought about Facebook. I haven't, I've just been kind of typing away or doing what you know coding, whatever kind of work you do. And that's whenever it kind of clicks that this is actually doing something. And you, and people use it for, you know, half an hour, hour, two hours, and they get a lot more work done. And you see changes in the brain.

And you can't feel it. How much would you say the genetic component comes in? Like, you know, it's obvious like it's how right up the music and You know like we all go to the gym and there's certain music that motivates me like you know Justin I will listen to something like Metallica and Salis and something like Taylor Swift or pretty spirit Yeah, to get in the morning. Yeah, I'll fucking deadlift everything So you know is there is genetic piece to that like is it not always just like these types of music will relax you or the like, it also means to like, for this person, is there a lot of that or?

Um, it sounds like, um, like musical preference. It's kind of like what you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. Um, like that, that'd be really interesting if it was genetic. I mean, it's like, I do like Irish music. But I. But I grew up with it, so. But. There has to be a- There is a preference, yeah. Yeah, because why else would you like polka? You know what I mean?

I like polka. Yeah. But you know what's kind of weird about that? Is that we initially thought that that was going to be a huge component in the system that we had to make all kinds of different genres, because not everybody's going to like it. Yeah, that's right. Not everybody's going to like classical. The weird thing is that I made an Irish session just basically for myself. I made a classical session.

We have a large variety of sessions and the classical is within the top five. The Irish is within the top five. It's weird and it maybe it's because of the way the AI is kind of arranging things or it's simply the results that you get. These are not boring tunes either. They engage you but they're not distracting. We actually haven't had a problem with preference, but science, there's been many studies that have said that musical preference.

You said AI. Let's stop there for a second. What do you mean by that? What's the role of artificial intelligence and what you're doing? Is this kind of inner ears? Yes. Yeah. Oh my god. It's happening.

Well, um, the AI I had to make, What's happening? Well the AI I had to make I had to create an AI it took me about five months to actually kind of compose the music and arrange it because It's not just then we're talking about Binaural beats Binaural beats are just just a tone It was just two tones that are kind of offset What we're doing is actually integrating this into music. And that's a whole different beat. Of course. So if you think about music involves not only drums, which are beats in themselves,

you know, so I have to arrange all these drums and everything has to synchronize with millisecond precision. But also every note is an auditory event and every piece of the music, for example a raindrop, we have raindrops and every single raindrop has to be synchronized with the brainwave that we're trying to induce at that time. Are you gonna take over movies with this or what? Like it sounds like it'd be amazing to have like a soundtrack. It affects like my whole experience. I'd buy more popcorn. How you would think though the future of it

would involve that for sure. It's to me. Why wouldn't you produce a movie where you now you can impact the mood of somebody, right? Yeah, I could see the application. And this is the application. It's cool. It's cool.

Almost like you could cheat. Like you could design a song that causes maximum pleasure in the brain and you've got yourself like a number one hit on the billboards. Well, yeah. You guys are nodding your heads like you guys are already trying to do that. Well, like no, we don't have a better set. Yeah, we're working with Justin Timberlake. Don't they actually do this in grocery stores?

I've heard that the tones and the types of music that they choose in there promotes you to want a shop and want to be in the, have you heard that? Oh, I mean, it doesn't work on me. It's a, I just want to get out of there. I mean, I seriously doubted I don't, this is very new science. And we were talking about, whenever I started in 2003,

this wasn't, in 2003, this wasn't, in training meant wasn't very accepted. So I, but I believed in it and I had used it and I was very interested in it and I was a programmer so might as well. And, but now it is very accepted. I mean, you're seeing, the body of science for it has blown up And you're seeing papers that are in prestigious journals like Nature Nature had a paper on and you're seeing Dynamic attending theory, which is this

It's kind of this offshoot or it's it is based on in training and that's a huge amount of Supporting evidence for that now so The idea that sound can actually directly affect the brain is actually remarkably accepted now. It's very very exciting But academia hasn't taken that to the level of okay, can we change mental state and simultaneously Back in 2003 it was not accepted and this is crazy to me. And it was crazy to me then, that if you change brain waves, you change mental state. I mean, it's insane.

There are academics that were saying, oh, brain waves are just a side effect of the brain. If you change brain waves, you're not necessarily changing mental state. And it kind of contextualized that we are caught every single mental state that we have has an associated brain wave pattern. Right? So if you're in the zone working out, if you're completely relaxed and you're recovering, if you're taking a nap, if you're on a hike, if you're drunk, it doesn't matter. If you're high, right? It's like there is a brainwave pattern associated with that.

So there was a very deep relationship that's quite clear that wasn't accepted for a long time. What Adam was saying, but now there is an overwhelming body of science with leading publications, with amazing scientists, with purely great science being put out that is putting a foundation to say, hey, brainwave states and mental states, if you can alter your mental, if you can alter your brainwave state, theoretically, you can alter your mental state,

which is what the promise of what we're trying to do with innovating with brain science right now. So when I met him, yeah, what is your guys' roles? How did you guys meet? So we met about three years ago at a meetup in Chicago. It was a quantified self-meatup where he was presenting a paper that was published based a researcher used his software to publish a study on. And I kind of got to know him and there's a lot of, after kind of understanding jargon

that was new to me, I kind of figured I was like, okay, this guy has invented the gold standard for auditory brain stimulation software for neuroscientists and research labs, which basically means if you want to think about it, it's kind of like a Photoshop-esque tool that he invented for neuroscientists where just like a creative would go in and produce a PSD file and image, right? That's highly customized. A neuroscientist can go into his software and make an MP3 file that he can then he or she can then use in a research experiment. So I'm like, so this guy has been pioneering and innovating to understand the relationship between these can the brain and he is helping these neuroscientists. So why isn't this not out

for anybody for us to use? So that was when the thesis came about. Let's create an application that anybody can use that we would love to use first, right? Like let's build something that we would love to use and we started off with like what are the most primary use cases? So he had all kinds of use cases that you could do. So we're like the most important use cases, at least for us, for me, and for Adam, for our friends, was focus, was sleep, and was for relaxation, for meditation. So we started off with those three primary use cases, then we branched off to NAPS, and

then sort of general relaxation that you can use beyond meditation. And it's been interesting. We've got pilot studies out. We've applied to two US government grants, one with the National Science Foundation, the other one with the National Institutes of Mental Health. We've done it with amazing auditorium neuroscientists we've co-applied. So there's these government applications

where you can apply as an innovative brain science company along with an academic institution. And the government is very bullish and very proactive on this kind. It's called SBIR, Small Business Innovation Research is how the government classifies it. And we've applied with Dr. Psyche-Lew at Weston University and we've done some FOMI-Pyla data. We've also got in Dr. Andrew Espenser from Harvard Medical School, who trained under the

number 180 HD Psychiatric Group in the country, and he also has her bachelor's in music for me out. So we've got some interesting people that... And Dr. Ben Roland. Yeah. He was published in the literature on this very subject, and that's how we kind of got acquainted with him. And he this very subject, and that's how we kind of got acquainted with him. And he's very important, yeah.

Now so far, what are you seeing with some of these studies or what's the feedback that you're getting? Because this product is already, you have these products already available. Yeah, you can go try it out on the web, if you're on your laptop or on your iPhone. We're coming out with the Android version soon, but the promise is that you listen to it, and within a few of kind of like an espresso shot, right?

You should be able to experience something because that is what we're trying to go for. So whenever you talk about brand new firms, like ignore everything we're saying and go have your own experience. And if it doesn't work for you, that's fine. And if it works for you, great, keep it in it, you know? So what kind of feedback are you guys getting? Are people telling you, man, this is pretty awesome stuff? Yeah, it's been... Because you guys are growing. Yeah, oh, okay. Yeah, crazy amounts. I mean, that's the proof in the pudding to me whenever you see a product come out and

it just starts to blow up. Yeah, and it was really interesting because, you know, we started off with this tiny experimental product and we had 200 people on it. They were just some of my customers that we just onboarded. Of course, my existing customers would love it. What happened is we made a deal with this company and we did a promotion and We saw 405 star reviews. I mean it looked like we had faked the whole thing

It looked like my wife I sent it to my dad and he was like these all your reviews son. Thanks dad That's great Do you remember that was what people were when we first started mind-. If you look, I think we're at what a Doug 800, 900 reviews or something like that and all but maybe four are our five star. I mean, you kind of want some four stars. You do. Please. Just have an elderly mediocre experience. One of you. Yeah. So it was crazy to us that and that was kind of the final like, I mean, you can have all this science and you can work for, you know, over a decade and you can really believe in yourself. But whenever you finally have this just gigantic, supportive kind of event where everybody's

feeling it and everybody's loving it, then suddenly you get very confident in yourself and very confident in the product and you start, yeah, really going crazy. And there's a ton of anecdotal evidence from our customers, from our users, but we are very much respect science and we, like, this is innovative stuff. This is, we don't say that, oh, this is the be all end all. That's why we're working with the best researchers. That's why we're applying to these grains. That's why we're going to use our own significant portions of our revenue to have landmark

studies come out. Because that's in our best, that's in the best interest of everybody. Of course. I always like hearing from you guys, like you guys too, that chose to go the podcast route. What led you that way? Because now you guys are starting a podcast with our good friend Kyle is the host. Yeah, it kind of came about with a few serendipitous events.

Kyle is a customer of ours. So he tweeted us out maybe like eight or nine months ago and I kind of, I was monitoring tweets back in time and I made a note I was like, if I ever come to San Francisco, I need to talk to Kyle and I sat down with him within the first two hours. We hit topics, you know, covering from meditation to to plant medicines to all these kind of commonalities that we had that, you know, when you have certain commonalities that we had, that when you have certain commonalities that are so, you know, that kind of define who you are, you know, and it was just like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

I'm like, it was kind of like, before I met him, I was like, we need to have a podcast. And we just sort of evolved from there. And we've got some very amazing people. Just like yourself, these, putting out great conversations is a Fascinating way to learn and a fastening way to teach at the same time. It's a very I believe it's the future of education I really believe the podcasting Ted talk type of mentality is the future of learning I mean, I don't know about you guys, but I mean I know in the last

Five years or so in my life I think I've learned more on TED Talks and good podcasts and interviews and YouTube channels than I have ever in a textbook, you know. So, it's more engaging and I think people can relate and I think it's so much easier to learn that way. So, I really believe it's the future of learning for us. It's the modern equivalent of the Gutenberg printing press except multiply at times a trillion. And so we're just all much more connected. Then a fascinating that we're constantly evolving

as human beings in terms of consumer knowledge. It's like if you would have told this to the people that we're putting the Gutenberg, it's like yeah, people are gonna be bored with this stuff in a few hundred years. And they're gonna start putting little earpod things and they're gonna like listen to any person in the world. Well, it's, you know, the printing press, a lot of people don't realize, is probably one

of the main catalysts that started the renaissance. That really, I mean, it was a decentralizer of power as well as it was. Before that, you know, you had the holders of information where the church and the nobles. Nobody could afford books because you had to write them by hand, and so you had to be rich to have a book. And so you didn't know how to read, and if you want to learn something,

you went to your church, and you said, hey, why is this guy blue or why is this work? And then they are the ones that got to control them. They're the earth's flat. So yeah. And so the technology is doing that times a gazillion.

Now everybody's so connected. And of course, you got growing pains just like you did with the printing press. But it's probably the most, it's the biggest decentralizer of power mankind has ever seen. I like to bring up the example of Hollywood and how there's such a powerful industry, right? They control music and movies.'s such a powerful industry, right?

They control music and movies and they're so powerful, but they can't stop free music and free movies being shared online. Like, they're so powerful, they can't control the spread of information. So that's why I think we're seeing such rapid growth in a lot of pain, we're seeing a lot of pain too. You're seeing those celebrities now,

that I mean, now it's actually really common to hear like a I mean Adjust in Bieber the kids started on YouTube. It wasn't for YouTube and him playing his guitar at whatever five or seven years Old he wouldn't have been the star he is today. So I mean now Famous difference defined differently and now the people that have a little more power and saying control It's it's not like it used to be. How your product would have been almost impossible to promote without the internet, right? You'd have to like make CDs and tapes that people have to go and buy. And if they never heard of them on the radio, which you know, try, imagine trying to get on the radio.

And yeah, and with with CDs, for example, we would, it's such a brilliant point because we're constantly improving on the back end. We're constantly improving our algorithms, just like Pandora, right? It learns from you in a very basic way, thumbs up, thumbs down. That's not possible on CDs, right? That's not possible. There's no feedback loop here that we can take advantage of

for giving the best content, for giving the best music out to people. Now we have a lot of listeners that are entrepreneurs. We actually got a pretty sizable audience that own businesses. We talk about entrepreneurship all the time. The three of us are, our fitness is one of our passions, but entrepreneurship is either a close second or might even be first. How is the business, how did the business grow,

how fast is it growing, what's it looking like? Yeah, it's something that I've never seen before, which was it's fascinating and very, very, it blows my mind because it's spreading just through Wardamouth, right? And that's where I've never seen anything like that happen So when Adam refers to this partnership that we did we we we basically You know what we were just looking for feedback for a couple thousand people like we thought okay

If we could sell a couple thousand people and get more feedback than his 200 customers, right? We just needed to have more data points internet upselling 10,000 accounts in a week. Oh, shit. And we got 300K coming towards us. It was just like literally like, it was kind of like, it was kind of like a little bit like, oh, here's a freebie from the universe. And then I was just like, and then another freebie. And then another freebie, like we were on, we were we were we last week we launched our our iOS app, and really we were handicapping ourselves because

99% of music apps are on mobile, and we were only on the web. So Ron now really, we're beginning to see a lot more steam, and we went to the front page of Hacker News. Hacker News is kind of like a Reddit website, gets about 14 million people, it's basically upvoting, downwinding, for a more technical community. And we've had these random events, and now we're inching up to about 300,000 people using us,

and almost 20% of them paying. That's awesome. It's great, man. That's without a single ad. That's crazy. God damn, I love that shit. Isn't that awesome though? I mean, that's so cool that we have the ability to do that now.

That's why, I mean, when people hate on America, I always talk shit like, come on dude, where else can you do something like that? I think that's so fascinating that we have the ability to build a business like that and so fast, but it also speaks to what you guys are doing too. It's the right time. People need this. It's good information. It's, I mean, this is the type of stuff that we need more of.

It's also why we were really excited to have you guys on the show was, I think more people need to hear stuff like this because this is the type of stuff that's going to take us into the next century. I feel like, yeah. It's not an overnight success either. You know, like all those years leading up with the research. That's a great fucking point because it sounds overnight. It sounds like that just happened from the gods,

but really, let's be honest, you guys were onto something, you stuck with your idea, you refined it, you polished it, you did all the sweat labor, and now, listen, you reveal it, and it's the right timing. And boom, yeah, that's what it is.

It reminds me of business I tried to start when we were, God, I was probably about 22 years old. And I think we were just too fucking ahead of everybody at the time. And we saw the important, and this was good from training all the clients. We knew that this, them sitting at their desk was just killing them,

posture wise, and I know it was a major contributor to all the aches and pains my clients were having. So we created this ergonomical chair that it was just like a normal, you know, office chair that would go up and down But the shaft had a ball bearing in it and it had a 15 degree play in all directions And then the seat was just slightly angled at like a 45 degree angle So you got a little bit of the pelvic tilt and then it forced them in a more upright posture And then the play with the shaft actually

forced them to activate their core while they sit at their desk. Why am I a little horny after that? You know, you found a good opportunity to say shaft and pelvis. I'm not sure that existed. You guys had it bet before the show. I'm ready to use this and the set and use it. How many $10 a week to say shaft for everyone. So no, so we were just so far ahead. I remember and then of course it was right around the time when we were the economy was kind

of crashing and we were going down at the real estate and we were trying to sell a chair that was five times more expensive than what these companies were providing for their employees. And of course that wasn't going nowhere. You know, like there's, oh, what you mean to tell me, you want me to set a spending $50 on my employees chairs, you want me to spend $350, get the fuck out of my office. So, you know, I'm thinking right now about what you guys are talking about and music has been shown conclusively to influence people's workouts conclusively.

People, like, you can't go into a gym, you ever go into a gym and it's silent fucking sucks Every gym you go and do's got music and when of course MP3 players got popular Everybody's got their headphones on the working out in fact. You're seeing a lot more of these over the ear headphones being used in gyms because it really It really improves your workout and makes a big difference when you're exercising I Feel like there's a huge market for what you guys are doing for that. I mean, to show the focus, performance,

enhancing benefits while you exercise, I could see people using that shit all the time. I mean, for God's sake, they sell some of the stupid products that might show the smallest improvement in performance and people buy them up 100%. You know, I could only imagine. Yeah we actually fitness is huge for us. We were approached by Matt Lindlin the Olympic silver medalist and coach of the Greco Roman wrestling team. He used to fight MMA too right? Yeah that's one of my heroes okay. Oh really? Yeah okay. I did not know who he was. He was a monster

back in the day. Yeah, his ears are all up. Sal was full of worthless information. You'll figure this out. I know a lot of random shit. But we ended up working with your team. The Salmon Act. Pre-Olympics and during the Olympics. And with recovery, right?

That's another huge part of it, it would sleep. Like no one, it's sort of like everyone's all about go, go, go. With sleep, we really assisted them to get up all the sleep aids that they were using that were not so kosher, right? Like just, or could have just been like melatonin. But having the right performance with just having sleep is where we're starting off with,

we're really getting a lot of momentum there. And with focus, the other aspect of it is listening to it right before you go into a workout like just kind of like coffee. So you can listen to the focus session. It's not just when you're zoning on your laptop to knock some shit out. It's more also for just before the workout and during the workout. Paul, this shit a pre-imposed workout. I know, yeah.

I'm like right now my wheels are spinning with the world about what we're about to release right now. You're talking to three, you know, when you talk about how to package something and promote it, that's what we do really well. And what you just said explains is a pre-imposed workout, which is a huge market and fitness, except they don't have to take some kind of a shitty supplement.

You know, that's gonna hurt them. But let me ask you this, when using these, so if I were, you brought up melatonin. If I took melatonin before I went to bed, there are some studies that show using a very low dose might enhance my sleep or whatever. But over time, actually in a relatively short period of time, my body builds up a tolerance to it

and may in fact reduce its own production. Yeah, I've heard that as well. Of melatonin. Now, with your product, with what you're doing, for me, it feels like it would probably work better over time, not worse. Are you noticing any adaptive effects or is the brain, does it become easier to get these type of waves that you're looking for, if someone listens to it for 15 times, now they

get in that state a lot easier than the next time they listen to it? Or the opposite, right? Yeah, like what are you seeing with that? That's a super good question. The sleep is, I'm very, very proud of it and it took me a long time to invent this. And so I was a very severe insomniac. I had it like Ambien wouldn't put me out. You know, we're talking crazy, crazy drugs that I needed to take.

And even while I was making this software that helped me relax and helped me focus, I still couldn't conquer sleep. So I finally I finally did a couple years ago and what what what it does two things it helps you with sleep onset which is what most people have as far as insomnia so they can't get to sleep. Maybe your mind just keeps running, you're thinking about worries, you can't, you know, and that's what most people have when you talk about insomnia. And this has kind of a 3D effect and it's really cool, you'll hear sounds going all the way around your head And it's very, very relaxed, it's gently engaging. So you just kind of, all your thoughts kind of go away.

I mean, it's very, God, this is what's called. I know. I know. Yeah, that sounds awesome. And it's pleasurable actually. It is very pleasurable. You feel kind of high.

Oh, you know, I mean, Wow. So, It's like somebody else is doing the work for you to think. Yeah, yeah. It takes your mind off of it. And so whenever I found this effect, I was, I immediately went off all my meds,

which was incredible to me. Nothing had ever worked. You're kidding me. Yeah. So no longer had to take anything to help you sleep. I haven't taken anything since. Wow. So now how does that work?

Do you, how long do you have to listen to it before sleep? You know't taken anything since. Wow. Yeah. So now how does that work? How long do you have to listen to it before sleep? You know, what's the protocol look like? Yeah, did you have to wing yourself off the ambience? I think that that one. No, no. You were able to. It works immediately.

Wow. It does this. I mean, because it's taking your mind off, I mean, that was, that was my problems. My mind would not shut up. Yeah. I have the same problem as what I'm very intrigued right now. His mind is like his mouth. Yeah. Pretty mind would not shut up. I have the same problems, but I'm very intrigued right now. His mind is like his mouth. Pretty much.

One shut up. So what? Probably a test of that. Same time. But the other cool thing that it ended up doing, which is even more extraordinary, is it ended up increasing what are called slow wave activity in the brain.

And slow waves are, they're produced in the deepest part of sleep. And this is whenever memories are being formed, they're being taken from short-term memories to long-term, they're being consolidated, that's what you usually call it. And you're recovering if you had to work out, it's healing, your body's healing itself. And it's only during this slow wave period that these things are happening.

A lot of people think that memories are consolidated in REM, and that's true, but only emotional memories. Memories are consolidated in REM and that's true, but only emotional memories so the declarative memory like as in I did this then I learned this I have a trivia fact That's all in slow wave sleep and we increased it 20 to 30 percent now to put that in perspective Yeah, to put that in perspective if you were to not sleep tonight at all, it'd pull an all-nighter, and then the next night, whenever you go to sleep, your brain will only produce 10% more to compensate. So we, it's a big boom.

Yeah, Northwestern scientists we were working with, he didn't even believe it. hit we were doing a sleep study and He thought I I surely had somehow fake I mean how I would fake eight hours of EEG recorded. I do not know but but then he did it and we had other people do it and I did it again and We kept getting the same result with everybody now. Are you listening while you're sleeping or is this before? Okay. So you put it on.

Yeah. So you put it on how long before you go to bed, what do you put your headphones on? Um, it seems to vary from person to person. We usually recommend that people don't change their, uh, sleep, uh, schedule at all, because I don't want people sleep schedule at all, because I don't want people to say, oh, I have brain FM now, I used to go to bed at 12. Now I'm gonna try to go about at 7 p.m. and it's like, I'm sorry, we can't do anything for you.

It's not that powerful. So don't change your sleep schedule. I tell people to put it on whenever they want to fall asleep. It's more about quality of sleep than it is when you're sleep tying or how long, right? That's what's really good. That's another thing, yeah. It made me change my mentality a bit about sleep

because even if you just take a nap with this, I mean, we showed that it increases slow wave sleep, it increases your time, it increases the quality of everything about sleep. So, you know, going to sleep is easier whenever I can think, okay, it doesn't really matter if I think I'm sleeping or if I get six hours versus four hours, I'm sleeping or if I If I get you know six hours versus four hours, I'm still gonna feel better This is a good thing and then then ironically you go you go straight to sleep whenever you have that mentality Wow, so when you use this I'm gonna ask you guys I know you guys said you guys are doing some studies right now And I can't wait to the results come out of that but and if totally speaking

What are people saying when they're using that, that are they remembering more as a result of those increased slow wave? I would think they would see like better energy and production. Yeah, what do people, what do people, what are people noticing? Yeah, what's a feedback? Well, they're off their, they're off their medication. It's the first thing that, which is fucking huge. That right there in itself is such a big fucking market.

Gigantic. Which is fucking yeah that right there in itself is that is such a big fucking market gigantic And then I do want to preface it is if you're on medication Always consult your doctor before trying out anything right? I'll like always consult your doctor because people have all people come from different walks of life And we don't know every single aspect and the second thing I want to say too is that we're an innovative Brain science company right we're combining music with our tour neuroscience So this is innovation here. This is new stuff is that we're an innovative brain science company. We're combining music with auto-torn neuroscience. So this is innovation here. This is new stuff.

So we have released pilot data. Pilot data is not the same as peer-reviewed published data. It's a very, very separate thing. Pilot data is what we would use to fuel a peer-reviewed published study. You start with that. Exactly. So if you go to brain FM slash science,

you will see our pilot data. We have no peer-reviewed published studies yet on our on brain FM, but we have applied to two US government grants like we are are sort of you know default is to be transparent about this and you just demonstrate an incredible amount of integrity. I'm glad you said that but for sure. But for speaking from you guys, because people want to hear what you what you feel, you know what what you guys experience when you do this, what does it feel like when you use this the next day? And you can tell us it's your own anecdote obviously. Yeah. I mean, it's brand FM is my, is it completely changed my life in terms of sleep.

I traditionally, I've actually never had issues with sleep, but I travel a lot. And in plain riots for naps, anytime my sleep schedule is out of whack, to, to have that comfort and that sort of this tool that I can rely upon, right? I know that I'll be fine with my sleep. I don't have to worry about my sleep. For me, that was my advantage. And obviously for insomniacs like Adam, it's more meaningful, right? Yeah, I was going to say you talked about adaptation.

Well, it's interesting because after four weeks of using this myself, I no longer need it. I can put it on whenever I want to have a very effective sleep whenever I feel like I have a sleep debt and I wanna get rid of it, but I have the soldiers talent now. I can sleep anywhere at any time. And then this is coming from, I sleep through airplane rides now. I mean, it's like I'm being transported.

It's incredible. And he used to do that and it annoy me on road trips. It'd be a nine hour trip. And he'd just be like, I feel great. And I'm, well, thanks. I just drove nine hours and you're wondering why I'm not in a great mood. And he's like, woo.

So I can do that now. Train the brain. And what's interesting is that sleep is a unique, is a uniquely ideal place for an audio intervention. Because what's happening whenever you're asleep, even in the deepest part of sleep, your brain is using the ears to monitor the environment, for tigers and other tribes at tracks.

So it's actually, your brain is really paying a lot of attention to the audio environment. And whenever you have auditory sounds or it seems like a 3D location is kind of being, is going around you like a music or what I call like balls of sound. I mean you'll hear it whenever you use it but basically there's, it seems like there's movement going on at all times. And so your brain kind of gets used to that. It's not monitoring completely because really there's no reason for us in the modern day to be constantly monitoring our environment, constantly waking up. Every time there's a horn or a siren or every time somebody moves a little bit in their

sleep. Yeah, modern society is a trillion times safer while we sleep than it was a thousand years ago. And keep in mind that every time that slow way of sleep is very, very difficult to get into. You have to go through stage one and two to get to slow way of sleep. So if you're suddenly jolted out of sleep, which most people are, like my girlfriend, for example, if I just even move a little bit, you know, she'll like, yeah, you know, and I'm trying to get her to use brain FM.

Yeah, we're trying to find headphones that she likes. But for sleeping, that's the one, because there's no ideal headphone for sleep at the moment. So we recommend certain ones that we love using, like certain Skullcandy ones, and there's the ones where you can put it over your eyes. So certain people, they get hot flashes at night, so they begin to sweat through the cotton. So we're constantly updating our recommendation lifts.

If you recommend over-the-year headphones over earbuds, I'm assuming? Well, we wouldn't recommend earbuds at all, because they're gonna fall out. And yeah, so you kinda have to get special sleep phones is what they're called. And it's usually gonna be like a sleep mask in a little wafer thin speakers in it.

And those will kinda stay in place all night. And yeah, you do have to make, it makes like a $20 investment, yeah. Yeah, and that's a good point because for sleep, you need to use ideally something that is within your ears because there's a 3D component going on. So within, for a slow way, sleep what he described, there's a lot of literature that pointed us towards

that if you're rocking in a hammock or a cradle that that stimulates slow wave sleep activity. So what we've done is basically, for example, with the rain sounds that he just mentioned, that the rain, all every single drop is synchronized, that it's kind of moving like. So it's simulating that. Exactly, kind of like a cradle or a hammock.

So it's really important. Because the ears have to do with balance there. Wow. So listening to overspeakers, you're losing a lot of the effects and we get a lot of people saying, oh, this is great, but it kind of serves that what white noise, like really to get the full effects is to really have something that's really great for your ears for sleep.

For focus, for any of the other ones, you can use anyone. That's fine, but for sleep because there's movement and you're in bed. You can find the one that we recommend on brain FM slash FAQ. You won't get the 3D effects unless you use headphones. And we're not actually using panning, it's kind of cool because if you think about what happens whenever somebody's talking to me from a side, the volume doesn't change

from ear to ear. What happens is it hits one ear first and then it hits the other. So it's a very, very slight difference. And what we've done is we've figured out what happens all around you. So we have a simulator. It simulates, yeah, the changing phase of music going all around you. And this appears to train your brain to not really care so much what's going on around

you. So then you can develop what I got, which is the soldiers talent, I can sleep anywhere. I mean, it's crazy. That's the same. Now you talked about slow wave, you know, slow wave sleep.

Is it true? If I'm not mistaken, most medications do a poor job of getting us in. No, no pill will do this. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's like it'll help you fall asleep, but then you don't get extra slow waves. And some of them actually inhibit it. Wow. I mean, it's it's it's like it'll help you fall asleep, but then you know you don't get extra slow way and some of them actually inhibit it. Wow. I mean, it's it's gonna sound arrogant, but I you know not only are we a solution, but I truly believe that we are the best and only solution to this right now. There's I haven't seen anything else out there that does like everything. The pills are all

crutches right? Pills are crutches like Like, I just wanna propose that, you know, Adam's the inventor. It's hype, man. Yeah, no, but, no, I mean, yeah, we need to, we need to prove, I'm usually the one that's pretty safe about this stuff. I was, yeah, I'm still in the room. I picture those raindrops and it's just like rocking

just into sleep and it makes him go to old habits. He starts sucking his thumb, right? Probably. I wonder if it would do that. It takes you, it takes you back to that feeling. I wonder if it would do that. It takes you back to that feeling. I wonder if it would just, you would naturally stick your thumb in your mouth. Damn, I feel like this is probably

this is my pants. This is revolutionary science. It's almost like you could go almost anywhere. I mean, you could analyze brain waves like you could have, hey honey, why don't you listen to this music real quick. She's horny, you know what I mean? You could like figure all that out,

holy shit. Brain hackens to, yeah right. You don't partner all that out. Holy shit. Brain hackens to yeah, right? And we don't partner with these guys. I feel like we definitely need to make headphones though. So just asking you these questions right now, I feel like there's an already a need for this that nobody seems to really have a really cool good pair of headphones that pairs with this.

So if you do that, then yeah, I would love that with your ergonomic. Do you, you'll find a way to integrate shafts and pistons and other things. Don't even trip, I got you. We'll sell it. I'm not that with your ergonomic. You'll find a way to integrate shafts and pistons and other things. Don't even trip, I got you. We'll sell it. I'm not even worried about that shit.

We'll sell it. We just got to make it. I feel like I have never seen a pair like the where you do that. I'm sure Ben Greenfield's got him. He's got all the nerdy toys. He's got all the nerdy toys like that. All the fun toys.

Where do people find your product? How do they get access to these songs and the sounds? So you can go to brainfm, brain.fm, www.brain.fm, or you can search it on the app store if you have an iPhone or an iPad, a brain.fm. We're coming on the Android version, we're sprinting on it, and it will be live by the end of the year or the next year. So take me through the quick process real quick,

if we're going to start this, like, is it a subscription base? and it will be live by the end of the year or the next year. So take me through the quick process real quick, if we're gonna start this, like, is it a subscription base? So once I get the app, is it like a monthly thing? Or is it a one-time purchase? Do I need to buy headphones special for that or go through all your, take me through if you're selling this to me right now?

So you can come on to brain FM. We give you 10 free sessions. Okay. And after that, if you feel like it's been worth it, you can get unlimited sessions, you can get access to the full library and also personalization of the content. And that is for $7 a month, $50 for the year.

That's what it is right now. And for no special headphones required, if you're listening to it for focus, meditation, relaxation, for sleep, people are particular about it. So we say go to our FAQ page to see what we recommend. Best. Like for me, I am super flexible. I'm fine with any pair of earphones as long as they don't fall out. Because I know that, you know, the effects for the 3D to really come into place is important to have that there. Wow. okay, so easy, it's really easy and you give 10 free sessions.

Yeah, so that's the model that we're trying right now. And so for ours is like, we have to deliver an experience where people are like, okay, like an espresso shot. Like, you know, I know it's working. Like, just like, Kyle, just like Wim Hof says, like feeling is believing, right? Yeah, no, it's true, no, it's true. That's confidence too in is believing. Right, yeah. No, it's true. That's confidence too in your product.

That's what's great. I love that. I love this. This is very cutting edge. I can see this getting becoming very, very large within the fitness and performance aspect of the fitness industry. I can see this becoming one of those next big things.

I can't wait to try it. I haven't tried it yet. Yeah. But you've got me completely, oh, we all are today, front of percent. You've got me completely sold and fascinated. And I will, we will give our honest 100% opinion on our show, but based on what you guys are saying

and what Kyle said so far, I don't think I'm not gonna like it. Yeah, really exciting. So try it while working out as well, because we didn't do that with the Olympic team because they were on the mats. They were talking to each other. So we did, we said, okay, use it beforehand. It's kind of a pre workout, which you can still do. But you were talking about, you know, muscle tension and thing. i would recommend in some cases because we had to have some anxious players uh... you know you can also use kind of a relaxation session like fifteen minutes

ten minutes right before you go into got a workout because i mean correct me if i'm wrong but um... uh... tense muscles are still less efficient than relaxed muscles that Is that the dogma still? Yeah, if your muscles are in a constant state of what they call tonus, they fatigue very, very quickly. You can only stay ready intense for a short period of time.

If it stays like that all the time, you start to fatigue, and you'll see this a lot with athletes' fighters, for example. They'll be so amped up. By the time they get to the ring, they're exhausted. They've gasped out because they've been so tense. There's definitely a happy medium. Yeah, getting that central nervous system to fire when it needs to and to not, you know, when it shouldn't, that's a wonderful place to be.

That's ideal. But, yeah. One thing before I wrapped up, I wanted to touch on was music's existing relationship to the brain and humanity, that's a complete mystery for us. For everything that we should have, I've revolutionary speaking, that this should be an advantage for. But even Darwin commented in the original species

was, it was music, this is one thing that completely puzzled him because it's for enjoyment, right? And it's for people make it for expression. So why does music exist? And it's the way it's, it's, it's with language to MIT did a mic drop, a science mic drop in November of last year, where there basically, there was a lot of different consensus of whether even music did anything to the brain or not, but they went as far as to say that not only that there's dedicated parts of the brain that are processing music, the whole brain lights

up, right? And there's two schools of thought at the moment is that either language, there's actually three. So either language came first, either music came first, or either they evolved together. And you can go as far as to say that either language evolved from music or music evolved from language. So that it's so so from you on that for a little bit. So so so music can be you know like you said this sort of pre-language communication tool. Well, I we talked about this not in this episode, but another episode we recorded earlier that we know for a fact, if you

learn something to a tune, you are far more likely to remember it. And this is why when you're a kid, this is why when you're a tune, you are far more likely to remember it. And this is why when you're a kid, this is why when you're a kid, you learn your ABCs to a song. And why in a classroom, they'll teach you, if you learn something to the beat of it, look, I tell you what, I could play a song that you listened to when you were 13 years old, that you haven't heard since then. And as soon as it starts, you'll remember all the lyrics.

If I had given you the lyrics without any music, when you're 13 years old old you would forget them today. So there's definitely an evolutionary advantage to music and I mean before we were able to write and record that's probably how we ended up passing along information was through song and when we go and we thought we when we go research you know hunter hunter gatherer societies that exist even today, this is how they pass on stories is through music and song, and then you remember things. Music is a very important part of human evolution. There's a reason why we love it.

There's a reason why we're driven to seek it out. And almost anything that we're driven to seek out has got some kind of a evolutionary advantage or benefit to it. Music's one of those things. You're very right. I mean, it has to have an evolutionary advantage because it's found in every culture.

And there are precious few things that can be said. It's like smiling whenever you're happy, crying when you're sad. These are things that are found in every culture, regardless of how isolated they've been, but music is found everywhere. And what's weird is that we are the only species that has this.

We're the only species that has this level of rhythm or arguably any rhythm. I mean, we have such a complex... You're talking about white people right now? I know, right? It's like, my dad thinks he doesn't have any rhythm. Yeah. Yeah.

But we all have rhythm. And we all know what music sounds like when we hear it. Yeah. Well, I mean, everybody can march to rhythm. I mean, if it was just, you know, if white people couldn't march, then we wouldn't have had some crazy wars. And that's it.

And, you know, I think people might have heard of like, staying alive, being used with, what, like, CPR, or, what is it? Oh, the beat. Yeah, the beat whenever you do. Well, you're paying attention, but how can you? Wow, yeah. Can't imagine doing that.

And I'll tell you something for that, you guys might find interesting is that if you work out to a beat or you say you're hiking or backpacking and you use that, you every step is a beat. You will never tire. If you don't tire within the first 30 seconds, you can do that all day. Try it out and you'll believe me. And that's none of that. Okay. So it's a big mystery. Why are we so good at music and keep buying? We are really good at computers. Can I? Why is it coincide with math? much? Well, we are, yeah.

And it's an incredible amount of math that it's doing. Yeah, exactly. And we do it effortlessly. And by the way, we can do it at birth. We can do this at birth. This is an instinct. It's one of the craziest and one of the very few instincts that we have.

In fact, one of the tests few instincts that we have. In fact, one of the tests, because we're always trying to, especially today, we're trying to identify when true self-conscious artificial intelligence comes about, what are some of the tests that we're going to be able to give it to show that it's conscious. One of them is, will it be able to compose music? I've heard many scientists say that. When real artificial intelligence can compose art and music and do all these things that we really don't know to put words to, then that's one of the things that will know, oh wow, we've gotten to that. I think he didn't, I didn't think he really

knew what music was. Music is actually very structured. It's very predictable. But that's not to say that it's not to demean it at all. Spoken like a scientist. Yeah. I mean, you have things like the circle of fifths. I mean, you've probably seen there's a YouTube video over this guy basically proves that every song ever written is derived from Packables Cannon. I mean, there are predictable things that you can do. I mean, whether they'll have good music, that's a whole different thing. Will it be able to compose original good music or innovative music and use innovative instruments?

I think that's more of a, that would be kind of a better test. But you know, it would be a really good test of just computing ability would be the ability to even a small fraction of our ability to perceive music. So for example, you could give a symphony to let a computer hear a symphony and just say, let us know whenever the tempo needs Playing let it let us know whenever you hear a lead violin doing something. It's like good luck Yeah, you know, the it's it's the amount of how because because we think about We we our brain

Processes it much differently than a computer does. And I have to deal with how does a computer look at sound every day and dealing with things like, okay, what do we find complex, what do we find annoying? The brain hears and processes music on a completely different level and you have to deal with it. And until they find a way to do that, it's, that that would be my test. Good luck, correct?

Yeah, good luck. I think, I've said before that if I was, if terminators took over the earth right now and we were going to have a capsa, you know what I mean by capsa, like you're going to prove that you're not a robot. All right. Okay, at the front gate You remember the terminator move because you had dogs to screw that just Men be like here's a here's a symphony or

Or here's here's some music tell if it's tell if it's good. Oh, it's Kanye West get the hell out of here Freakin terminator trying to get in here again All the terminators in the car. Those bastards. Excellent guys. Trying to kill us. Good time guys, thanks for coming on. We really appreciate it.

Yeah, we'll definitely have one. Fast and I cannot fucking wait to try this out. I'm doing it today. We'll definitely do this again for sure. Yeah, thanks. Hey listen, if you like Mind Pump, leave us a five star rating review on iTunes. If we like your review and we pick it, you'll win a free Mind Pump T-shirt. Also don't forget to check us out on Instagram at Mind Pump Radio.

You can find me at Mind Pump Sal, Adam is at Mind Pump Adam and Justin is at Mind Pump Justin. 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 overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbumble at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbumble includes maps on a ballad, 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 and over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal, Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money back guarantee guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable 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 MindFunk.