Modern Wisdom - #561 - More Plates More Dates - Inside The Liver King's Lie

Episode Date: December 5, 2022

Derek is a YouTuber, founder of Gorilla Mind and a fitness expert. The Liver King has seen one of the fastest rises to internet fame ever. Documenting his ancestral lifestyle generated millions of followers and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for his businesses, but it turns out that the physique he displayed in his content was built on massive amounts of performance enhancing drugs, despite him denying it on many occasions. Expect to learn what Derek thinks of the Liver King's apology video, just how extreme the number of drugs he was talking were, whether there is more information still to come out, the risks for anyone of taking TRT, Derek's thoughts on NoFap, how to develop confidence when approaching someone you like and much more... Sponsors: Get 10% discount on all Gymshark’s products at https://gym.sh/modernwisdom (use code: MW10) Get $100 off plus an extra 15% discount on Qualia Mind at https://neurohacker.com/modernwisdom (use code MW15) Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D and Free Shipping from Athletic Greens at https://athleticgreens.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Extra Stuff: Subscribe to Derek's YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@MorePlatesMoreDates  Follow Derek on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/moreplatesmoredates/  Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Derek from More Plates More Dates, he's a YouTuber, founder of Gorilla Mind, and a fitness expert. The Liverpool King has seen one of the fastest rises to internet fame ever, documenting his ancestral lifestyle generated millions of followers, and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for his businesses. But it turns out that the physique he displayed in his content was built on massive amounts of performance enhancing drugs, despite him denying it on many occasions.

Expect to learn what Derek thinks of the Liver King's apology video, just how extreme the number of drugs he was taking were. Whether there is more information still to come out, the risks for anyone taking TRT, Derek's thoughts on no fat, how to develop confidence when approaching someone you like, and much more. This has been one of the wildest things to see from a front row seat. Zach, my housemate, has been involved in the production and is in the video, the living King lie, and watching it unfold over the last few days, has been done like being in the Iver Storm, so much interesting insights today around

the dangers of audience capture, of commercial capitalism run wild, really, really cool, very, very much hope that you enjoy this one. Before I get on to other news, I am flying to New York tomorrow to film a full-length podcast episode with Andrew Schultz, one of the hottest and fastest growing comedians. On the planet, video guide Dean is flying out from the UK and I'm taking the entire film crew up to New York

to record this with Andrew. It has been many months in the making and I'm finally getting to sit down with him. I absolutely can't wait for this. And it is going live one week today. So it's live next Monday. And the only way that you can ensure that you're not going to miss it when it goes up is to press the subscribe button. So if you're on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you are, go and find the subscribe button and press it right now. Thank you.

But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Derek from More Plates More Dates. You broke the internet this week, man. What the fuck? No, while. Yeah, but we will. Has there ever been this much attention on you, do you think? Um, I don't know, to be honest, um, I feel like the thing is so much bigger than me. At this point that I don't even know if it's necessarily attention on me or just the situation at large. That's a really, really good point. Yeah, so it's tough to say, but probably not. Maybe when I went on Rogan last year, I think I got a decent amount of attention, but I don't know.

How long have you been working on this? As far as like the actual editing and putting together, you know, the script and whatnot, I think in totality it was like a month probably. Yeah. That's a big project. Yeah. Fuck. Especially for a guy who usually just films off the cuff and just talks, you know, whatever comes to mind kind of thing. Yes. So you've put this hour long documentary out that is talking about emails that you've received explaining what the liver king was taking in terms of his steroid cycle in terms of some bits of blood work and health markers and all the rest of it that you've done from that.

Obviously you've been with this content for a long time and then you release it into the world. You know how you reacted to it and then you're going to make predictions about how the public's going to react. What are your thoughts on the reaction to this information so far? predictions about how the public's going to react? What are your thoughts on the reaction to this information so far? Um, I think it has been pretty, it went more viral than I was expecting, but the overall response I feel was pretty aligned with what I was expecting in terms of there was going to be a subsector of people who no matter what happens they were still hardcore supporters of the guy regardless.

And certain individuals who kind of knew what was gonna happen at some point anyways and had a feeling that this kind of information was gonna come out and like very much me as well. Even before this stuff came to light I was like somebody fucking has this for sure like he's definitely put this out there in some context to somebody. And like as he gets, I don't know, gained more notoriety, like somebody's going to feel, I don't know, obliged to put out the truth, I would imagine. So I don't know, just felt like a matter of time. And I think the, the general response was fairly expected, just far more viral than I ever anticipated. Well, that's riding off the back of his virality. Yeah. response was fairly expected just far more viral than I ever anticipated. Well, that's riding off the back of his virality. Right.

He's been one of the biggest guests. I'm pretty much every big podcast over the last year or so, the Logan Paul's, the H3H3's, etc. He's been everywhere. And on that, vehemently denied, like absolutely denied. What is it that he says, PEDs are prioritized, execute, and determinism or something? Dominic?

Some anyway. Just outright storm while I haven't taken, I don't need these. You can achieve this body if you follow these nine ancestral tenants. And I think that there's some sense of vindication that people have when hypocrisy gets called out like that. And I think that's one of the big reasons. You've got all of these waves of exposure. And then, Bink does undeniable proof.

Yeah, it's hopefully it doesn't lead to a skewing. The thing I worry about is there are individuals who are genetic anomalies who do work their asses off, and are actually natural. And typically when something like this, like it's not like this is an everyday thing, but when something like this happens, it very much frames the, I would imagine the layman perspective to assume that any good physique might then equate to harmonious and then, oh, I, you know, the limitations on what they think is possible, the bar drops a little bit, which I'm sure that is partially what fueled his mentality to justify this whole thing is he would, like obviously he has his own, you know, monetary

incentive and upside on that and whatnot, but also from one of the points he would always make is self-limiting beliefs and you know, you're putting yourself in a box and this and that. Like there are individuals who could otherwise do great things without having to take drugs. It's not something that you need to do to have a great physique that's going to be seen as a top tier representation of health and fitness.

So hopefully that message doesn't get lost in this whole debacle. Oh, that everybody assumes the only way that you could get into the remotely good shape would be to take the goodies because this guy did. Yeah, because I think that's like one of the downsides of the nati or not discussion can kind of skew into that. Like, obviously having realistic expectations is great, but at the same time, you don't want to put yourself in a box where you think that every single good physique out there or anything that is representative of elites, I don't know, the physical representation of,

you know, elite tier body composition is, oh, definitely drugs, I might as well not even try. There's two things going on with nation nuts, I think. On one side, it is trying not to dissuade people who think the only way I can achieve a good physique is to use PEDs. But on the other side is bringing down the expectations of people who think I should be able to look like that without PEDs. This is the forever balance that I think is being is being struck with like your content or Greg's content or whoever else I think the good thing that was guys like Greg O'Galliger met us fitness who come out and show like this is what I do without PED's And I like a fucking tank and are and are willing to actually go out there and prove that they're natural too with like stringent testing Yeah, and like if they want wanna be a role model for natural fitness, I think those guys represent the upper echelon

of what could otherwise be achievable if you had great genetics, but also worked your ass off, ate clean, et cetera. And hopefully that message doesn't get lost. The most midwit take that I've seen this week is, liver kings on steroids, like, oh my God, who could have predicted, like everybody knew this, I knew this, this isn't shocking information,

it's like, that is not a smart opinion. And that's the most common critical message that I've seen online. Like dude, it's not about the fact that he had a very unnatural physique, and it's now being confirmed as being a natural. It was about how blatant and flagrant his lies were. Like, that's what people are shocked by. Like, if this guy is able to so naturally point blank with ease on the biggest platforms in the world,

say, I've never touched steroids and he's self-assured in his lies. Like, what else has he lied about? What else is this sort of a person capable of? It's like the liar king. Like, that's the position that I think needs to be taken. No, it's wild how he'll just, you know, look people in the eye and just fucking flat out, have his script ready to go and say the exact same thing every single time at what he deems to be the, I don't like the risk on that too. Like I just don't understand the perception of the ROI

and when you know the information's out there too. Like you, this smoking gun was that even if nobody else knew about it, he did. Yeah. And like obviously even internally among his team, they knew about it. And they had put out information. You think his team knew about it? They message me.

Oh, on his behalf, asking for you to sort, also, it wasn't him that emailed you. He emailed me, but also one of his team members emailed me too. And it was like literally subject line video content idea or something of that nature. Hey, this would be a great YouTube video. Brian Johnson has this issue with, you know, IGF1. He's taking four times the dose of HGH with no success. I think it would make for great content for you to like figure this out. And just, you know, that kind of thing was hang on. Is this the email that you missed? No, oh, I missed both those emails. How the fuck did you miss those emails?

Because I have a separate subsection for contact form requests. Right. And on my blog, I don't really look at it like I used to, because I don't write anymore. I don't think I've written article in like two or three years. And they just pile up, dude. And it's like, I can imagine you can relate to me in that once you have seven inboxes

and they fill up every single day, eventually shit goes by the wayside and you will just never, you'll never see the light of day. Some stuff even goes into the spam filter that might otherwise not have made it into the priority inbox. Like there's, how much did you kick yourself

when you realized that you had this? Dude, when I saw it, it was like a movie moment. I swear. It was just like, You searched for an email about this topic while I was making the video. Yeah. And that email that you'd never seen before just appeared.

Yeah, so basically I was looking for the email that was forwarded to me that had blood work, breakdown, like the questionnaire thing where he broke down, you know, his daily routine, et cetera, his cycle, et cetera. And then as I was doing that underneath, there was unread messages from anything that had that word in it of at antestralsupplements.com. Very few things in my inbox that actually have that. And it was unread from May 2021,

which is like, well, this is old, what the fuck is this? And the sender, I'm just, I was just like, what? So I opened it and I see who it is. Like, there's no fucking way. And then I see this other email too. I was like, wow, I can't believe this has been sitting here this entire time.

Like, my impression was, and I thought this was what he was going to do, and I was sort of watching to see if this was what he was gonna do, is go on all the biggest podcasts, and then at the end culminate it with a, you know what guys, this is the actual truth, and I thought that it would help push the message harder, but this is the truth, and I hope you guys can get this.

He was gonna do this ahead of your video. Maybe, yeah, like I was, he was gonna do all of these podcasts. I thought that was maybe a scenario that might happen where he was trying to like collect the infinity stones of podcasts essentially and then end it with Rogan and like have the gauntlet and be like, oh, I'm fricking atty. And I hope you guys can accept it.

And then hopefully the steam he's built up to there, the net outcome would still be so significant that the people that stuck by him would be. Yes. I thought that that was a potential possibility, but then it just never seemed to happen. But also Rogan didn't want to have him anyways. And that is a any more information that you didn't include in the video. Was there anything that you felt was too much to hold back? Blood work, I felt like it was a very long and elaborate dissection and I felt like it kind of just was a little bit, it wasn't like redundant because I had, I guess, new information, but it was more for

the nerds and the guys who were highly interested in that stuff. And it just didn't feel like it added more after the first video to put it out when I feel like the communicated message was already sufficient to kind of achieve the, I don't know, kind of show exactly what had happened from inception. Now, I don't necessarily think that going down the complete scientific dismantlement of like a blood test panel was going to be something that added more to the conversation other than being, I don't know, highly confusing, or otherwise maybe even boring, or I don't know, it just didn't seem like it was going

to add more to that was a worthwhile to pile on at that point. I wouldn't do whether this more secrets about his past, his business practices, drug use. There's zero chance that there's not more stuff out there with like there's no way I was the only person he tried to reach out to or this other coach. There's definitely more out there for sure. That's the concern, right? It's the same reason why telling rumors about somebody

to another third party friend is always dangerous because it's not just about the fact that you're telling the rumors But it's the interpretation of the third party friend about you being the sort of person that tells rumors Right, this is the concern that no one ever really thinks about when they start gossiping. It's like you get known as a gossip In the same way now, liver king has been the most brazen, confident, full-fledged liar on the biggest platforms in the world. What else does that suggest that he can do? Like, how there can't be more stuff. And I mean, the ambient anxiety that he must have of just whatever it is, all of the business practices are under scrutiny now. Everyone's got eyes on him. Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if there's more to come. Yeah. Yeah, that's why I was kind of surprised his apology wasn't just a concise and full-fledged admittance of what happened and

just that's it. It had like hedges in it and kind of side tangents that might have been interpreted as kind of like cop out a little bit. What did you think about the apology video? I thought it was very well crafted and I think the his supporters very much appreciated it and a lot of them were like we don't care fuck it doesn't matter. But I do think that some of the stuff in there that was mentioned was a little bit of a hedge justify. Like, oh yeah, people have mental health issues and are killing themselves.

So I took PEDs to build this more viral brand to then get my message out to the masses further to help the people who are suicidal. But, and because I also have mental issues, like he mentions his insecurity and whatnot, but it's like, is you building this character that is unachievable naturally, helping body image issues for men? 100 percent. 100 fucking percent. Definitely worse, but actually. He's causing the low self-esteem that he claims he's here to support.

Yeah, and then it's also, it would be one thing if there was no monetary upside to it, but for him to continue to hammer that, my business is grow 50% year over year without my, without my push. It's like, fuck off. Like there's no chance. His physique was created to sell supplements. Yeah. That's why it was that it was premeditated.

Now, his self esteem may play into this. This, you know, a lot of businesses businesses are a commercial manifestation of the person. Your businesses have a bit of derrick in them or a lot of derrick in them because your philosophy infuses into them. But you can't claim that your physique has got nothing to do with creating a boatload of money for yourself. It's in the email. It's in the email. Yeah. Like, it's in the fucking email, that.

Yeah. And it's like, while I do totally understand the benefits of TRT and, you know, HRT and having proper medical oversight, et cetera, like some of the justifications for like DECA and Windstroll and stuff that is clearly only included to enhance your image to like in your 40ss there's nothing ancestral or conducive to longevity about adding in windstroll like what's be fucking honest. So when he said it didn't help it's just like well what was the desired outcome of it to begin with? Well, can you not support people through depression without taking a metric fuck ton of gear?

Yeah. Like is that not, is that not possible? Like, I'm helping you not kill yourself by taking a winstrel. Oh, man. Well, what do you think about the apology? Dude, that man is like a WWE star. Yeah. To me, I, the, the cadence of the speech, it was obviously heavily prepared and maybe even entirely scripted. I think there's one arrow throughout the whole thing. The whole like fucking movements and the pointing to the sky and these sort of pre-prepared little routines of words to me are not what an apology video is supposed to be about. He doesn't seem sorry. He doesn't seem sad. There is no part of vulnerability in that. It seems unbelievably performative to me. And you could say that is part of his personality.

Maybe that's just the cadence and like the way that he speaks and stuff. I'm prepared to accept that. But I didn't feel sympathy for him. And I feel sympathy, other YouTubers do apologies and I'm like, yeah, fair enough. All of the caveats when it came to this is to do with self-esteem, the immediate misdirection toward 4,000 men a day killed themselves and 80,000 men a day tried to take their own lives and stuff like that. It's like, bro, no one criticized you about that. No one even brought that up. Yeah. Um, he also said, it's complicated. Do you think it's complicated? No, not really.

You took drugs, like you would call out for taking drugs and lying about it. Yeah. Why was the complication? I would understand the complication if he was on therapeutic replacement and that was it from day one. And he didn't want people to think that his therapeutic replacement was something that

everyone needed if they were following a good lifestyle diet, et cetera. And there wasn't monetary upside to what he was doing. And there wasn't this like lying to their faces and all this stuff, but it was just, yeah, it was, I don't know, like the apology was not, some of the stuff he said was good. He said, I fucked up very clearly and acknowledged what he did. You know, some of it was great for sure. You got, you got maybe 30 seconds of that before twice being told how rich he was. And then again, misdirection into the number of people that it's like, dude, it's on your shoulders.

This wasn't in service of anything that was outside of your control. Like, you're the person that chooses how, what happens with your business. You're the person that chooses what happens with your self-esteem. You're the person that's controlling the inputs and outputs that you have within your own life.

You're not even restricted and monetarily are in terms of resources. You can't even say, you know, I're the person that's controlling the inputs and outputs that you have within your own life. You're not even restricted, monetarily, or in terms of resources. You can't even say, you know, I needed the money. It's like you said in second, 25 of the video that you were rich before you even started doing this. Like this was completely elective, right? Yeah, but at the beginning, he says, I fucked up like I own this. I thought it was a really bad move to not put it on his Instagram in full. I think it was incredibly contrived to take the most vague portion of the video

that is on YouTube. Clip that, put it as a real on Instagram. And if people didn't know about the story, it gives him culpable deniability and it doesn't sort of stride and effect the problem any further. And then the YouTube channel that only has like 200,000 subs. I mean, the video's done too, Mel, by the time that we're speaking, which is a lot. But if he put it on his Instagram, story shares, extra exposure,

that's his primary platform of growth. But he didn't put the full video on there. Well, why? It's not because of platform limitations. It's because he didn't want the exposure video on there. Well, why? It's not because of platform limitations, it's because he didn't want the exposure. Yeah, I think longer videos, you can have it in real format still, right? Like it's still the exact same push as a short video.

And yeah, that's definitely notable. I don't know, like I definitely think his brands will survive and I think he will, you know, continue to have his followers that are ultimately a lot of the stuff he does talk about is positive. And I do think people would benefit from some of the things he preaches, but it's just the way he calculated this out meticulously and went about deceiving people was just hard to wrap your head around as a justified move at the end of the day.

Just how many drugs was he on? What did the sort of dose aid jizz for those of us that aren't a part of the... After talking about my head, there was IGF1, CJC, IPAMRELL, MK677, GH, Windstroll, DECA, test, so 8. And that's just going into the questionnaire of trying to just say, this is what I'm doing right now, but I need next level and I need to figure this stuff out. Now, he was trying to figure out how why all of the GH related stuff he was using was not working, because he does, I believe, have a unique genetic predisposition that makes it harder to produce IGF1 or if some of the other drugs he was

using that were kind of inhibiting it, but what gives you that sense? Well, because IGF was less than a hundred, which is reflective of somebody who is like chronically malnourishing themselves potentially, and like, I don't know, chronically, keto dieting potentially, fasting way too much. He's not representative of somebody who's in, like a growth state necessarily. What makes you think that that is something which is inherent to him and not a byproduct

of the lifestyle that he's leading? Because we're using that much shit, it's really hard to imagine that you wouldn't manually be putting your IGF1 way higher. Like he's a smart fucking guy, even though he dumbs himself down on podcasts to come across as more relatable and make it more understanding for the people he's trying to inspire or whatever. Because some of the stuff he would talk about otherwise is complicated, especially when it comes to, you know, the, like, I don't know, biomarkers and endocrine hormones and what kind of impacts certain foods have, like, he very much dials it down to be as palatable

and competent and, I don't know, like, a palatable for the average person. But that, I don't know, like, just the low value was something that he couldn't even wrap his head around. Like that's one of the motivations that he was seeking guidance on. Essentially, like, why am I on all this shit? It's not working. Well, I suppose that's one of the framings where you could have gone, look, I think that there's something physiologically going on here.

I've kind of got myself into this strange feedback cycle of taking modrogues to fix a problem, which potentially means that it shuts down production modrogue, which makes modrogue, that wasn't really the nature of the emails. That was a part of the emails, but the majority of the emails was... Yeah, it was driving the brand and getting virality. Yeah. Yeah, I just, yeah, it would have been more ethical of him to disclose what he was going to do with it and then give the opportunity for whoever he is trying to contact for guidance to decide from there. I'm okay with that in the way you're going to do it versus not. Do I want to be the rocket fuel for this ship that's going to be stratospheric?

Yeah, it's like obviously you're not the one on camera doing it, but like you're very much providing guidance and endorsing the process that he's doing. That's the first time that I've heard that take and I think it's a really interesting one. That's a really interesting ethical dilemma for somebody to be in. If you want to synthesize the smallpox virus so that someone can study it in a lab or synthesize the smallpox virus so someone can weaponize it and send it out into the world. Yeah, yeah, not quite the same.

Yeah, do you believe that he's now on a therapeutic dose of 100 milligrams of test per week? Um, well, it's 120, but even I would, if he doesn't put out blood work regularly, which, you know, he has no obligation to, I'm sure people would like it though, so they can know he's, you know, representing the ancestral lifestyle well and isn't walking around with a stressed out liver and kidneys and fuck that markers and stuff. I'm sure he is probably doing something

that he believes to be more therapeutic than blasting his face off, but it is, if you're maintaining that physique, whatever you're doing is clearly not representative of physiologic replacement. Like, even guys who are on cut smaller, yeah. Like if you're, if you're on 120 milligrams, depending on where your test levels land, it might not be therapeutic replacement. Like for context, again, like I've seen the guys blood work

and it's, some of these levels, they will sustain themselves in perpetuity, essentially, because the way the drug is released into the bloodstream. Like it's a long ester and you are not having any dips following a diurnal rhythm through normal

pulsatile secretions, which happens endogenously when you have natural, testicular output of testosterone. Like normally you would have test levels go up in the morning, they would dip, kind of like go up and down, up and down, and you would not have a disproportionately high free tea testosterone. That is supporting enhanced amounts of muscle mass, whereas when you're on exogenous TRT, even if you have your training twice a day or you're, you know, getting shitty sleep or you go out drinking or whatever it is, like your level stays exactly where you want them to. They don't dip, they don't change,

and you have a disproportionately high free tea. So even though on paper it might look like you're in the reference range, like it might not be representative of that. And that's not to say he is or isn't in the reference range because he's definitely been. He's definitely holding something that's unsustainable if he came off everything, put it that way. Yeah, that was the conversation you originally had with Matt does fitness, right? So the people don't know Matt's this big fitness YouTuber who's in really great condition and he wanted to come to you to get the most highly scrutinized type of blood work at a cadence that you thought was good enough

for him to be able to prove his natural status. And the issue that you had, the concern that you had is, if we start to do these tests at randomized frequency, and your condition begins to change, or the lift that you've got begins to change, or we see some anomalies within the blood results. If there's no anomalies, and if your condition stays the same, we can be pretty reliable at knowing that right now you are not taking anything to enhance. It seems like liver kings just getting linearly bigger and leaner and drier at the moment.

Yeah, I think he's probably plateaued by now, but yeah, in your mid-40s, you don't walk around like that and you don't hold that when you are working out twice a day, you know, have been spread so thin entrepreneur really, having a family to support, et cetera, et cetera, like, you know, again, he doesn't have that much historical photos anyway. It's just check his progress and like when things, you know, picked up heavily, but like you very much kind of elucidates himself what I think is representative of prior liver king where it's like my cruise dose is this even though you're coming into like this is me coming to you from square one.

This was my cruise dose heavily implying I have blasted. Because you would never say cruise dose if you're not a guy who blasts. Oh, so. Okay. If it was just HRT, you would just say HRT. But it wasn't therapeutic. Do you believe because he says in the...

Well, again, I don't wanna misconstruer like 0.6ccs a test, could very much be therapeutic. Like I'm not saying that's high. It very much depends on what achieve symptom relief, what your levels, again, like the levels on a piece of paper are kind of just arbitrary at the end of the day. It's about what, if you had primary hypogonadism

and you needed TRT, whatever gets you to symptom relief is probably what you need, even if it's some guys need more than what liver can takes in testosterone dose, but I'm just saying that the context in which he presents it very much implies that, previous to even the request for how do I optimize my IGF one and take you know wise the g h not doing what I think it's going to do, there was to build the physique where he got, like there was a blasting involved. So you believe because he says in his apology that he was natural for 36 years of training twice a day, seven days a week.

I don't know why he put that in, like he makes it sound like he just started hormones like right at that time. It's like, well, then your physique would have morphed by it from then to now. And, you know, it's just not representative of that. And it was just more of the verbiage too. Because again, you would, you would never say I cruise if you're, if you've just started HRT, you wouldn't even know what the fuck cruising blasting is, you know, it's just very, well, maybe what, but it's like you would never use that verbiage unless it implies this is my baseline to try and hold on to what I have.

But when I'm pushing the envelope, it's something else. It would be very interesting to see because it's not like although the living king is a what was he called before barbarian lad. Well that was like a primal boy. I don't know. I don't know who deemed that to be his, you know, whatever. Like that wasn't chosen by him because he clearly identified himself from as a liver king from even Prairie. Where's the barbarian land thing come from? I saw on Facebook. It was like a viral video on Facebook. I got tagged in. Okay. It was the first one I ever saw. Okay. My point being even though that was the genesis of the character that he plays, literally talking about WWE guy here.

Yeah. I feel like he could have just shown up at least with a shirt onto the YouTube video. Yeah, come across as more like this is Brian talking about. Yeah, I make sure that I get a pump on before I do this video about how I took lots of steroids to get this physique. Yeah. But yeah, he existed beforehand, right? So there will be, there has to be,

no one's a fucking digital ghost. So there has to be physique progressions over time. So even if you're not going to come out and do blood tests, why don't maybe say, look, here's me at 33 years old. 33 years old, you can see I've already got the muscle insertions, I've got the size, I've got the dryness, I've got the fullness. This proves that I haven't been taking drugs for this long. Or is it that some of the pretty sort of malignant looking blood work results are a byproduct of how much juice it took to get you to this stage? Yeah, no, I don't know if that would ever like there are images of him. He looks much smaller. There's just a few and far between. I don't know if his team like did a fucking scrub of the

internet before he started who knows. I don't know how well-planned it was because again, like you, it didn't seem like the whole thing was forward thinking at all to begin with anyway. So it's kind of hard to speculate on that. What do you think the future's got in store for him? So it's kind of hard to speculate on that. What do you think the future's got in store for him? I think as long as he remains fully transparent, but I don't know. Like again, I don't think he is fully transparent even after the apology, but still I think that overarching leader will be a subsector, people who very much feel that it was a necessary evil potentially to get the message out more or people just

don't care because they find him highly entertaining or I do think that he continues to grow on social media and make wild and sestually consistent videos and shit. I don't think it changes that much. Like, he definitely is going to carry this with him and people generally at least know the truth behind the inception of the brand now, what the plan was from day one, etc. But I very much think it continues a little bit on the same track, all but with more transparency to some extent. There's been something weird that's happened over the last few days since the video that you released went out and it is A lot of Instagram stories from him tagging you in this sort of appreciative

Almost collaborative or attempting I think to position himself as collaborative with you To not position himself in any way as an adversary of yours. That's the number one thing. There was a video of him that you must have seen sat around the table with his kids at dinner, saying, before we eat, I want to say thank you to Derek for doing the whatever he said. You're the catalyst to help bring him to his knees and rise to new heights that he's eternally grateful for. What do you feel, are you feeling the gratitude? It's, dude, I don't know what he says is part of the character or not at this point. So it's like, I don't necessarily think it comes from like a totally honest place necessarily, as you would expect, but I understand why he would be doing it to, you know, if he aligns with the video and makes it seem like he's has gratitude for it coming out

and it helps him, you know, be a more transparent and better man in the future than like what, I don't know what else he could position it, or just not talk about it at all. I don't know, what do you think? I don't even know what to think about it, dude. Like wrapping my head around the whole situation is. It's very strange. It's very strange. I think it makes sense to use it as a defensive strategy.

For all that, on the outside, he looks relatively unflappable. The apology video, to me, held very little vulnerability or sadness in it. It didn't seem authentic. It didn't make me feel like any sympathy for him. There still must be a lot of frenetic. We need to fix this. We need to come up with a solution toward it to stop this. Not even just, there is a person in there, right? There is a human in there for whom this is gonna be a difficult time.

Like, and I do want to and recognize the fact that this will fucking suck personally for him. So it's not like every single thing is a contrived business activity, and he's literally like the mouthpiece puppet of a business that he also happens to run. But I think the reason that he would do it, that he is trying to align himself so closely with you, with the Instagram stories, with the gratitude, with the raised,

new greater heights and all of that stuff, is in an attempt to down-regulate the in-group out-group dynamic that weaponizes people on the internet. Like that is what causes people to really fucking dig their heels into something. So if he was to say Derek's a fucking piece of shit, he shouldn't have released those emails. I think that it's unethical, a stone walled, a light, I said like I'm gonna whatever, whatever, whatever.

Like if he'd done any of that, the entire internet would have got behind you. They would have said, you've just been rumbled and we're going to take you down for it. The only way that you can deal with this is to be the very gracious, very humble, very accepted and to not position yourself as someone that is on the other side of this discussion to the person who has a massive amount of respect, a huge massive loyal fanbase, and is generating like two million plays a day on the YouTube channel from one video. Like, you can't do that.

And I think that that closeness and affinity is a protective mechanism. I'm not saying that that is exclusively contrived either. Like I genuinely think that you just like, I don't know whether you ever did this in school, did you ever get, you would accidentally like play too hard and hit someone and they would start crying and then you'd go, and you'd start crying as if you'd been hit as well. Like I see this happening with kid, little kids all the time that they just, they want to try and find affinity with the person that is maybe a little bit of an adversary and that tries to calm down the energy a bit Yeah, yeah, it's hard to say man like wrapping my head around the situation is like I don't really know what to make of it

Sometimes when I think about the whole picture it's just mind blowing. This is even a thing Seems like a like a movie almost, it's just absurd. I've seen a couple of interesting takes coming out of the ancestral slash paleo slash carnival community, saying people already think that were like weird enough as it is. This was Michaela's point, right? That she said, like everyone already looks at carnivore and blind-eyed people and thinks that they're freaks. Like, this guy is not making our job any easier of assisting people with autoimmune disorders or whatever it is that they're trying to fix

with a particular diet, is not making it any easier. No, at least, yeah, stuff. Because again, if you have to make an excuse for why you did this whole marketing strategy around your brand, but you have this noble intentions that are underpinning the whole thing, and that's why you did it. And then it's like all the other carnivore people have to then say, no, trust me, the diet actually is useful for certain people.

And that's not a representation of why we do it or why we'd recommend it or whatever. Yeah, I can imagine it would be kind of a weird thing to navigate for them. It's a little bit of a trolley problem, you know, is the net benefit of this guy, the nine ancestral tenants that seem pretty fucking good. I rely on a bunch of them myself,

although not through him. How much of that good information ultimately is tarnished by coming from a place of contrived, fundamentally not natural foundations. Like it's definitely, I think a lot, like I said, I think a lot of the tenants are quite useful and I think would highly benefit a lot of people's lives. It's just the issue is that he does not necessarily live them himself. Like to some extent, yeah, but it's like, oh, your cell phone next year, your dick and balls are going to kill your testosterone.

It's like, well, you're on testosterone. Like, how much did that work? No concerns about that. Yeah. And, you know, I'm fairly certain. Now again, I don't know his entire medical history, but it would be, I would be surprised if he actually, you know, needed all the stuff that he's doing. Like I'm sure the guys like Paul Saladino are a good representation of, here's my blood work on an actual carnivore diet and what it can do for you before and after, and why I believe it to be effective. And yeah, he kind of leans in the more viral route for

reels and stuff nowadays, which some people frown upon, like Lane Norton, some of the guys in the the nutrition space who otherwise think Paul is too tunnel visioned on demonizing certain things to propel his message a bit more, but he's a very, very intelligent and I think represents it to probably the most, to as ethical of a degree as he could while also simultaneously selling supplements and stuff. Because no matter what, you're going to have people saying, oh, you're a sell out, you're a snake old salesman, whatever. Like, once you start selling anything that supports your thing, that you're also a, the, the front facing spokesperson for. So, and that's, you know, not necessarily a fair take when there is act. I think there

is utility. The things like, like beef liver capsules, if you hate the taste of it, by all means, take a, take a supplement. Like, who cares. It's just the marketing behind it, at least Paul is at least forthcoming about, this is why you would use it. It's not going to make you, you know, Jack Bodybuilder who looks like a WWE character, but it might make you healthier because of the micronutrients kind of thing. When we're talking about testosterone generally, I'm hearing a lot more about guys going on TRT. In America, it seems to be significantly bigger than it is in the UK, which is where I'm from originally. What are the health risks that guys should consider

if they're thinking about going on TRT? Someone comes to you and says, Hey, man, I'm whatever at an age where I feel like this is something that I want to do. What should I be concerned about? What would you tell them? Well, it depends the context in which they enter into that because again, if you don't actually need it and you get on it,

you could be making yourself less healthy if you're already perfectly functioning top tier and you're just doing it because, I don't know, you wanted to look like liver king or some shit, like I don't know. But if you don't, if you do need it and you're clinically deficient, you are, and again, not a medical advice,

but in general, you are going to be more prone to things like cardiovascular disease, neurodegeneration, et cetera. So it's kind of like, if you actually clinically need something to then say, what is the downside to TRT? It's like, what is the downside of not being on TRT at that point, potentially? That's the kind of how I would frame it for the actual clinical utility of it in a real deficient setting. It's kind of like, what could you be staving off by using it in a responsible way? It's kind of...

And again, I think this is where Brian could come in and be educating and actually say, you know, he knows why stuff is actually useful and healthy or has actual utility in a clinical setting, but he very much foregoes that because it just doesn't fit the... Well, up to now, it hadn't fit the narrative, essentially. Would you be surprised if the volume of drugs that it's likely that he's taken, wouldn't have taken a little bit of time off his health span? Oh, for sure.

Yeah, it's definitely not conducive to longevity. But bigger you are, the more muscle you have, okay, this is too vague of a statement, because I was about to say more muscle you have. Okay, this is too vague of a statement because I was about to say, if you have too much muscle, you're just going to die quicker. But in general, humans who are bigger and have more demands from their organs to support their infrastructure are going to live a shorter amount of time in general. Like a small, tiny Asian woman is probably going to outlive the jacked

brontosaurus human that's on a bodybuilding stage every single time. Why? Because of the stress and taxation it takes to support the demands of that tissue. And also it depends how regulating you are of things like blood pressure are you letting it get out of whack? Do you have a resting heart rate of like, are you like borderline, tachycardia all the time with a hundred resting heart rate and you're never getting to sleep because you're so jacked up on androgens or like whatever. Like there are so many things that play into it

and it's multifactorial for sure, but in general if you are just a, and again, this isn't to say, because there is definitely a push in the longevity community to be protein deficient and be as small as possible and be frail and just live a terrible life, but live to 100 plus, like there needs to be a happy medium,

in my opinion, for a high quality of life that's also trying to live as long as possible with that high quality, because you're gonna die eventually and do you want those years to be frail, like barely fucking functional in a chair, probably not. So there's definitely a happy medium, but in general, the more you go super physiologic,

the less healthy it is in all areas. It's kind of the best way to put it. That's a really good take. And I totally know what you mean with regards to the balance between longevity, amount of years and quality of those. Do you want to feel good, perform well, be able to do a variety of tasks

and be able to live life to its fullest? Or do you want to permanently be in this ambience anxiety about whether or not your oxalate level has gone through the roof because you didn't eat the right type of spinach this morning? Like that is, I think one of the condescents, I dug into the longevity community for a long time and Dr. David Sinclair has been on twice and Went to go meet him in Harvard and it was just after he'd been on Rogan and then I went to go and see him in Boston the week after that

He's getting a lot of heat recently. I've had People think he's coordinating with the FDA to get NMN band in the supplement industry. He think that's true. I haven't looked into this at all I haven't looked into this at all. I haven't looked into it enough, but there is pretty damning suggestive things that don't look too favorable. And are people like attached to the access to NMN?

It's like, I don't even know if it has that much utility at the end of the day, but it's just the fact that he's trying to restrict people so then he can benefit Runner Potentially again. Yeah, yeah, allegedly. I've so one headline about this and didn't haven't read it yet But it makes you also wonder is it just because he's a big name that then has monetary upside now that automatically equals

He's a piece of shit. Yeah, that's often when people start making money off something that they were otherwise just talking about with seemingly no bias or financial incentive, etc. He's very much been on many podcasts and made it seem like, I don't necessarily recommend it, it's just what I do. But he literally says when people ask what NMND take And he's like, I don't have a recommendation. He actually ended up, I think, starting to say alive by nature was the one that he began using after a while. Something tells me the only reason that he gave up any brand

that he uses was simply because he was sick of being asked which brand it is that he used. It was like a fucking just take anything from me. Yeah, that's a wild and odd scenario that I feel like the, maybe not the exact same, but like, Huberman or Sinclair, they often find themselves in a weird situation where they'll talk about something they feel is promising, but they're so influential that it then spurs people trying to buy it, as you would expect. And then when they ask him for his recommendation, he's like, do I just tell you a brand, or are

you going to then think I have some sort of like? Well, also, you're adding in, I've done the due diligence about Tonga Ali and Fedoji regressed us, let's say. And I've looked at the data on the backend of that. You're gonna then ask me for a supplement recommendation off the back of that, which now requires me to go and do a whole shit-ton more investigation

in order to see whether double words or guerrilla mode or like whatever it is is like the optimal product for me to go and take. So I understand the hesitation around that, but when I first spoke to David and the longevity r slash longevity reddit was going off, it's a very passionate community in a way that few others are, and I wonder how much of the longevity community is like real vehement, obsession and passion for it, is kind of like a denial of death thing, that inbuilt into the longevity community, you have to assume that there is a large minority, maybe more, of people who have found that as a techno utopia, secular equivalent of trying to find eternal life that you would have done previously spiritually. And if

someone comes in and says, starts to either criticize the community or restrict their access to supplements that they think is going to like get them to the promised land, they're gonna respond in kind. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, if you designed something from scratch, like how NMN came to be, you know, it's just like a basic thing

that could be derived from like, like for example, nicotinic acid or niacin or any of these things that are very, very overlapping. These are readily available as supplements, so I don't really know how the hype behind NMN came to be if it was just in clear or what, but it's definitely a, I don't know, it's problematic when you know that the price of it is probably going to be exorbitantly higher than the supplement itself, because it's going to be from pharmaceutical standards and prescribed to you, and then it's going to involve some hiked up, hiked up amount that it costs, et cetera. And yeah, I can see why he's getting backlash,

regardless, even if he feels like he deserves the monetary upside, and he doesn't want to publicly say it, he might very much feel like I'm the only created the hype, fuck you guys, I'm going to capitalize on it. That's an interesting position. Yeah, I mean, we were talking about this over dinner last night about the unbelievable degree of influence that certain guys have got hell, especially in the health and fitness space. And Max Lugavir was on the show. And his nutrition scientist, and I was like, bro, why is nutrition science such a mess?

Why is it the case? Everybody, every single person on the planet eats multiple times per day. How can it be that it's so contested? And the point is that when you can manipulate studies to be able to fit whatever kind of narrative or rhetoric it is that you want. You're always going to get the opportunity for fuckery from people. They're always going to be

able to slide themselves in to different bits and pieces there. Going back to the testosterone conversation, men's testosterone dropping 1% per year since the 1980s and they're at all-time record lows and stuff like that, is this something that we should be worried about, do you think? Yeah, for sure, definitely. Why is it happening? I think it's multifactorial and it is a combination of lifestyle, environmental exposure, diet choices, lack of exercise, poor lifestyle habits, sedentary jobs now, no exposure to sunlight,

being indoors all the time, more people are depressed from social media too. There's just so many things that are conducive to being a sedentary, lazy, apathetic piece of shit basically. And these are not conducive to masculinity or to making disaster and obviously, right? Do you agree?

I do. I don't know the way that testosterone production can be influenced by environmental factors. Oh, if you see a hot chick, all All tea goes up. I found out that it goes up if you're around weapons as well. Yeah, if you're near a gun. Yeah. So that's an advisor for keeping lots of weapons, I suppose, in your house and touching them right here. Yeah. It's still a wake up and just fucking gun. Stroking guns on the morning. But I don't know how big the impact can be, right, on human physiology simply from what

you're talking about. It's like of sleeping itself can just fucking destroy you. And a lot of people are perpetually five to six hours with pork while they sleep. We got data that people's sleep has decreased the quality of sleep and the length of sleep has decreased over time. You'd have to defer to Matthew Walker on that for like an exact statistic, but I'm fairly certain that you could confidently say in general, sleep, quality, and duration is deteriorated in recent years, significantly.

Yeah, well, it's interesting to think that we could be, our environment could be the architect of this downfall. If there was one thing that you would just, if you had to put money on a roulette of what are the biggest contributors, where is the Pareto for this or what is making the biggest impact, what would be up there? Maybe sleep, touching receipts. I was just kidding. I was just kidding. I was just kidding. I was just kidding. Touching receipts. Touching receipts. I was fucking told you, I fucking told you bro.

You've rubbing it all over yourself last night. I saw you. No, I would say it looked. Did you pin your balls in it? Yeah, I shouldn't have done that. I think it was mainly the bad sleep, I think, is very, very impactful. And a lot of people are in a perpetually trying to compensate state for

their poor sleep with overconsumption of stimulants, caffeine, etc. to make up for the shitty sleep, which the half life of these drugs is bleeding into the night when you're trying to get to sleep. It's just this vicious circle of a disaster that results in low, low hormonoput, and it's fucking terrible, dude. And then there's, you know, the diets have been pretty bad in the recent years in terms of like quality and choice of foods. You know, people are going to stuff that's not even food.

Like, what is something that is fake and taste good but doesn't have any micronutrient density? There's that. And just like general, general low-hanging fruit as much as they're obvious, very much getting neglected. Okay, okay. Let's say someone's listening in the go, this Brian guy doesn't seem like my bag.

Don't take an ass full of steroids. I want to get myself to as healthy a level of testosterone, naturally using lifestyle, a diet and maybe non-clinical supplementation as I can. What's the prescription? This is not medical advice. Oh my God, dude. That's so general. I could say-

What would you do if you were to say- I would be like- What are the principles that people should follow? I would say getting to bed at the same time every night, ideally, and waking up at the same time every morning, following your circadian rhythm. You know, as it starts to get dark, you start to wind down, you get to bed at an adequate time, hopefully around, depending on where you live, your schedule, et cetera,

but ideally no later than like 11 or 12, getting up as the sun's coming up, it's not always gonna be perfect like that, but I mean, just following your circadian rhythm in general, very, very much aligns with the diurnal rhythm that your pulse-atile secretion of hormones would follow. And when you start to manipulate that in like an artificial way and trying to, I don't know, putting yourself in situations that are not conducive to high-quality sleep, it's, you know, bright outside, you're trying

to go to bed or whatever, you don't have blackout blinds. Like there are ways to try and hack it, but at the end of the day, I think that even when I track my sleep metrics, trying to go to bed or whatever, you don't have blackout blinds. There were ways to try and hack it, but at the end of the day, I think that, even when I track my sleep metrics, when I go to bed at 10 p.m. versus 2 a.m. I think it's a dramatic difference in terms of quality I feel like in general. And I don't think anyone actually has a full clear answer on that, by the way,

because I've asked guys like, you've been in stuff about if I go to bed at 2 a.m. but I sleep eight hours and I have blackout blinds and I optimize everything, could I get the same health outcomes as if I was you know, a dialed in like 9.30 p.m. sleeper. Well, there would be the difference between that and just going to another time zone basically.

The only thing you would maybe do is restrict the amount of daylight on the back end, because obviously nighttime is gonna arrive sooner if you've got up a little bit later. So you're do is restrict the amount of daylight on the back end, because obviously nighttime is going to arrive sooner if you've got up a little bit later. So you're going to restrict the amount of daylight that you got. But even if you could compensate with that by going, right, okay, I'm going to overexpose myself to sunlight during the day or to daylight, then yeah, that would be interesting. But your body's pretty intuitive, and oftentimes I think it knows better than you do, like when people try and hack their body, sometimes they're fighting against something that is

Not leading to an optimal outcome and they could have otherwise just been following The common principles of go to bed at a good time after the sun goes down get up at the same time every morning Sort of following, you know the normal circadian rhythm that a human should follow Not saying you have to do it, but that's what I would generally recommend. Okay, that's sleep. Sleep is sorted. What else is someone doing? Optimal testosterone, naturally.

A good proportion of not depriving yourself entirely of fats in your diet, because some people will very much, especially in the fitness space, will go protein carbs. They very much want to try and hit their body weight in protein, and then they'll have carbs, but then they will neglect fat content, which can be detrimental to testosterone.

And that's often overlooked, even people are eating adequate calories. They are sometimes depriving themselves of basic things like one macronutrient entirely, or micronutrient density, like one of the things I do is I plug my diet into the sinkhole chronometer, it's kind of like my fitness bell, but it's more comprehensive in that it breaks down all of the micronutrients and minerals of your foods. So it shows what vitamins and minerals are deficient in of your diet model, and then you can then backfill accordingly based on what you're deficient in.

Wow. So that is typically what I would recommend too, because if you don't have the cofactors and substrate to actually produce the hormones, even if you're eating what you consider to be a good diet, it might be deficient in adequate zinc, or it might be deficient in adequate bioavailable B vitamins, or whatever, like it would be worthwhile

to kind of at least one time like flesh out if you follow a consistent diet, what is that yield in terms of all of the vitamins and minerals and is that satisfactory for optimal hormone output? And that's where you can then determine like actual targeted supplementation. Because oftentimes people are blindly taking shit like, oh, I think I need to dig. So I'll just take this. I think compensating for malnutrition in one form or another with supplementation.

If you need to, like I have obviously food, whole foods is in general, I would say going to be better, but it depends because some people don't want to eat more. Some people have goals that are body fat related and they want to maybe even restrict calories and at that point you might be cutting something out that was hitting your micronutrient allotment for some specific thing and that's where you would then supplement potential. So there is a, like a tension between calories, calories in, and the micronutrients that you begin to cut calories to the point where you can't eat enough to be able to get the micronutrients in. Depending on what your goals are, because again, some people don't care about getting,

you know, as lean as you, for example, on. Okay, so we've got food, we've got sleep. What else is in there is the big move that's for testosterone production? Bup, bup, bup, I guess far as environmental stressors and whatnot, it's hard for me to quantify like all the chlorine in your fucking showers, killing your test, like I don't know for sure, but I would probably hedge again.

Have you got a special filter? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you? What brand is it, do you know? I don't know for sure, but I would probably hedge again. Have you got a special filter? Yeah, yeah. Do you? What brand is it? Do you know? I don't know. But you can just search like chlorine filter, shower head chlorine filter or something?

Or is this? Yeah, probably. Like you could probably vet out a good one within with a little bit of research. Don't rely on me for that. I don't even know if mine's the best one. But I remember when I was looking for it, it seemed to be like I would very much do a lot

of the same research as other people are thinking like, okay, YouTube, who do I trust in the industry that otherwise has made videos on this content and is otherwise already dissected the literature? Okay, does that guy know what he's talking about? Okay, let me cross reference it again. So a couple other people that I trust and are educated, boom, and then you kind of create

a conclusive, educated guess as to what is the best. Do they have monetary upside from promoting this thing? Are they sponsored, blah, blah, blah, blah? Go look at the Amazon reviews. Does that look favorable? Obviously stuff can be manipulated. You can't ever fully trust anything, I guess. But I mean, you gotta do,

you just do your due diligence and try and do what you can. What other environmental factors apart from? Yeah, like I was a hyper-sper do what you can. What other environmental factors apart from clearly that was a hyper-wastling example. Off the top of my head, like I know, I don't know how impactful the receipts thing is. Stop touching the seats, son. That's what I'm telling you. So that, I guess, what else?

Oh, cooking in like plastics, I think is something that could be impactful. Cooking in plastics. Not cooking like heating stuff up and like storing stuff in plastic, drinking out of plastic bottles, not ideal. Yeah, okay, we are killing ourselves. I'm traveling, I would normally have a glass bottle.

But yeah, one thing that I found is a really nice solution for that, a bunch of different companies make glass type of a way. Plastic-labeled glass sides, which I to guess is mostly, okay, because the food's not going to be touching the top. Yeah, all my perennials are in glass containers. Yeah, really nice, super easy to clean. Don't smell as much.

If you do end up leaving it for a few days, you don't feel like, oh god, it's infused into the container now, and I've permanently got this sort of moldy residue that's going to be in there. Yeah. Steel shakers. Yeah. moldy residue that's going to be in the steel shakers or using protein and whatnot. Probably some sort of cooler as well would be steel. I'd be interested to know, I'm going to guess that Yeti and companies like that have done a good bit of research into other metals leaking

in. Is there any risk of that? Ben Greenfield was on the show and he was telling me that Zivia, Zivia's the sweet drink, right? He had one of the product development managers at that place on and they used a special type of aluminium that was leaking less aluminum aluminium and British sun. We actually have an extra double jacket I know what you're talking about. Come on now. Come on you're Canadian. Come on.

Do I say stuff weird? Sometimes. Bits and pieces. That's it. A boot apparently. Do you? Are you very polite? I think. Yeah well I the one one of my good friends Dr. Stu McGill, I landed off a plane. And the first thing he said to me when I got to Canada was, how are you? Good. He says, and how have my countrymen been to you if they've been polite? And I was like, is this like a joke or is this real? And he's like, yeah, perfectly polite.

He's like, good, good, good. I got on with his day. So apparently you're genetically predisposed to being polite. But yeah, the... Sorry, that's a really comfortable. the fucking metal, the metal that's in the drink, right? The metal that's in the Zivia can is, they've looked at formulating that in different ways. So people are certainly coming around to it, but I was walking through whole food to the bunch of friends that are big into the health and fitness, anti-sea oil, anti-extrigens in everything, et cetera, et cetera. And I was like, what about that?

Can I have that? No, can't have that, can't have that, can't have that. I was like, what about those candles over there? And they said, no, full of East Regions, can't have that fucking incense over there, that's got it in. So if you actually want to adequately assess the impact of these things though, like again, how impactful are they at the end of the day?

Like even things like your lifestyle, your exercise, your regimen, all super impactful, above and beyond the sleep, the diet, the exposure to all these toxins, etc. Doing blood work, I think, is absolutely warranted to have a baseline as early as possible, where it's, you know, your peak hormone output, you know, 21, 25 years old, have some sort of baseline profile that is comprehensive, so then if something goes awry, you can then go back and identify where there are deficiencies and balances, et cetera, what went wrong and why. So some of these exposures to whatever it is that's detrimental to the testosterone or lackluster fill in the blank. If you change that, you could then get blood work done to assess is my

Ganatotropon output now sufficient compared to before. If it was suboptimal, you can see pretty clearly, like rather than being speculative about, does this help? Maybe I should totally change this area of my life because it might be suboptimal. Like there are some things that might be, you don't want to do that you think are going to be conducive to better hormones and maybe it has no impact whatsoever. And at at that point you could go Get a basic testosterone test. MarickHealth.com. You could go there.

That would be a worthwhile place to go. I'll do your ad reads for you. Thanks bro. I appreciate it. We spoke about Andrew Cuban today. What's your thoughts on him? His contributions. Over archingly is one of the best educational resources, I would say,

that is, um, also one of the only individuals that I believe to be very, very, uh, I don't know, like dedicated to putting out the best information, even at the detriment of potential views, like he will not just host people who will get high views, he will host people that he feels are, have high level contribution to the community at large and are educational and could otherwise inform him of things he doesn't even know, and he's very open to criticism even from YouTubers who aren't medically qualified like myself. Like he did not get upset or annoyed when I first reacted to one of his Jorogan episodes and I had talked about some of the stuff he said about some of the bodybuilding drugs he'd

mentioned, some of the interactions with endocrine hormones. I kind of did one of my classic reaction videos and gave kind of my insight on what I felt to be correct. And he was very, very polite. Like a lot of people could take that the wrong way and be like, I'm a fucking world top-tier neuroscientist and you piece of shit YouTuber, you don't know anything. Who are you to talk about this?

And he was not like that at all. You know, we become decent friends, I would say, since then. And he's always open to learning, even if it's from people who aren't medically credentialed, which is awesome because there are a lot of people out there who are, some of the people I learn the most from aren't MDs or guys who are otherwise seen as the forefront on paper-qualified person. There are people who are just entrenched in learning more and are otherwise very much doing the same thing he does, see where they'll just host people and learn or dig into literature themselves.

They up to day on most of the, on the most cutting edge developments in endocrinology, pharmacology, whatever it is. And he's, yeah, he's great. It seems like a rarity to have someone that has got the scientific rigor and the preparedness to go through what I imagine aren't exactly entertaining papers.

Not exactly like a riveting read. To then take all of that out, look at what does this mean for the everyday person and then turn it into something that's an applied solution. That's an awful lot of work. And the podcast is unbelievably successful and he has this fantastic platform now and his live shows are going well and all the rest of it. But like, let's be fair. He works as podcasters go, that man works incredibly hard for what he gets out. It's not like he's publishing an episode every single day. It's not live streaming all the time. He's taking weeks, months sometimes to do research for a single episode. This one's gonna be about grief This one's gonna be about a

Mating psychology. This one's gonna be about exercise science or whatever You know this guy's gone as deep as is possible and pretty much anything and everything that's available to do it the interesting thing at massive fan of Andrew Become really like tight with him since he came on the show and I find him like a really giving like kind person. Which again, for that industry, you'd think like super autistic, just head in the books without any compassion or whatever and not the case either. The biggest difference or the interesting thing that I realized, I think, since Heuberman's been on the scene, the biohacking community overall has begun to look more and more silly to me personally. I don't know whether that's the case for everybody else, but the very sort of experimental,

forward thinking, like, super out there stuff that was being done kind of seems a bit silly and under-evident. Give me an example. Red light, sunning on your balls, and claiming that that's the biggest thing, the most important thing that you need to do, PCP injections into whatever fucking part of your body in order to be able to facilitate that blah, blah, blah.

Like the different types of lights that people would get either on glasses or around their neck to activate certain glands or whatever that was like a thing for a big while. These sort of necklaces almost that had lights built into them that people would use. Like all manner of wild shit that was happening using like brain train EMF machines in order to be able to optimize your meditation practice and stuff like that. In comparison with someone like Hubertman who just comes out and goes, this is what the science says. This is what we know.

Like hard and fast. This is something that has evidence to back it up. This is a tool that we can fairly derive from those conclusions. This is something that you should try with an appropriate amount of caveats. And to me, it's thrown the biohacking community in a quite harsh light, some of the elements of the biohacking community that was super out there. Now, that being said, there are a bunch of things that I'm sure that Andrew suggests that the biohacking community was light years ahead on.

But if you throw a lot of shit at the wall, inevitably some of it's going to stick. And I think for a bang for your buck, per minute, content consumption versus usable strategy, I think that the science route that Andrew goes down is just second to none. Yeah. And he's very quick to correct himself. He only says something that's wrong. Like I saw your podcast with him and he even like went and commented, I made a mistake at this part. How many people do that?

Yeah. It was his preparedness to not be psychologically attached to the stuff that he puts out. There is something that I think we all probably could learn a little bit from because it's very difficult. And this is where I know that, you know, to bring Brian back into it, it must be difficult to have your entire public persona get dragged. Now, whether it was a contrived persona

in an attempt to sell products that were built off the back of a body that was created using, that is by the buy, however, it's not easy, it's not easy to be criticized online, like it fucking sucks. Like the difference between me and my work and how people perceive that and my worth as a person and whether or not I'm fundamentally a piece of shit, is like kind of hard, you know what I mean? Do you feel this? I mean, you know, you're regularly stepping into all manner of different contested topics.

Is this something that you feel as well? Yeah, like it's, what is the overarching question that you're trying to ask here? Like how do I feel about? Twitter says I'm online. Okay. I'm personally involved with it. What is the overarching question that you're trying to ask here? Like, how do I feel about Twitter system online? Okay. Personally involved with it. Yeah, I definitely read it,

and I probably should be better about maybe not taking it so personally when people are gonna disagree with you and sometimes you could actually be wrong. And, you know, I very much do acknowledge when I'm incorrect on something and try to be open learning more. And, I don't know, when I'm incorrect on something and try to be open learning more. And I don't like, I guess not being so dedicated to your way of, your way of the highway is the only way.

This is very important to maintain, I don't know, flexibility as a creator and have the, be able to retain an audience long-term and have trust factor with them in that you're not just dedicated to something even at the detriment of it being wrong or at their harm or something that you then find out to be totally incorrect. Like, there's a lot of stuff that, back in the day I thought to be true, that ended up not being true.

And I learned otherwise, and you have to be open to going back on that or else you are not a high quality resource, I learn otherwise. And you have to be open to going back on that or else you are not a high quality resource, I would say. You have to be very open to the criticism and or learning more in general, for sure. Keeping the ego small. And this is not just for creators. It's everybody, right? Everybody is existentially, passionately connected to their point of view as a representation of themselves, especially given that a lot of what people are represented

as on the internet now are their opinions. Like you are your takes for a very broad amount of time. Like even the most old school of like Facebook, that is people are going to be having takes on a platform which was supposed to be photos for family and shit like that. So I understand why it's difficult to do it and I feel it in myself as well. But keeping your ego small and having strong opinions loosely held, not loose opinions strongly held, is if you can get used to accepting that you're

wrong or accepting that you need to correct your opinion, course correct the direction that you have with things, it's going to make progress way easier because you're going to be able to crowdsource if you're not existentially like bothered about whether you're right or wrong, you're just simply trying to seek truth. You go, well, I get to crowdsource all of my sense making to everybody. It's like as soon as I get something right, so thank you. Like thank you for informing me about this thing.

Now I know all of this shit, and I'm even better. So criticism becomes an asset, then as opposed to a slight. Yeah. No, I think it's sort of in a way why Rogan is so successful too, because he'll just, he just wants to learn. He's not biased in what,

in how he goes about it. He's not having people on for views. He's not really doing anything of that nature. He's just, he's highly interested in something. He wants to learn more, thinks his audience would benefit from it as well, potentially, has that person on, and just creates like this bank of just vast knowledge that is invaluable.

And he's always opened up correctly himself, even self-deprecating at times. He's like, I'm an idiot. Don't listen to me. But he's highly educated and become extremely... The scope of his knowledge is just insane, given the amount of people he hosts. And it's one of the coolest things. It's impossible not to, man, even whatever whatever, five hundred and fifty six hundred episodes, whatever this will be. Just sheer time and attention of being around smart, interesting people.

You end up, even if you only take one percent of what you've heard from someone, you end up with like so many, I was at Thanksgiving dinner with a mental performance coach for a professional eSports team. And I was like, oh, what fucking talking? Like, mean, you mean, you're like, everybody else get out of the way I could have conversation with this man. And we had like an hour and a bit conversation.

And there was loads of stuff that it brought back up to do with Michael Jiveye, this guy that was Felix Baumgart. Now you know, the dude that jumped from space. He had a problem with his, he had claustrophobia when he was getting inside of the suit and they needed to get this Michael guy in to come and like fucking pull the rip code. Like we need to fix this guy or else

we're not gonna be able to go ahead with the mission. Like thinking about concepts that I've learned from him or Steve Magnus, this guy that wrote another book, stories that I've heard about Tiger Woods or Kirby Bryant or whatever. I'm like, this isn't just me repurposing some shit that somebody else said to me, but this one guy in what feels like an unbelievably niche industry. You get to have this amazing conversation, and you know, that's what the attraction is to shows that I think are diverse, is everybody is such an inherently idiosyncratic, varied individual. I don't know many people that are, what do you like?

I like ultimate frisbee, and that's it. And it's like, no, I like like, like, 20 things, right? I like like, sci-fi from the 80s, and I'm a fan of like modern art, and classical music, and blah, blah, blah. And because of that, you want to try and reflect that in your content consumption, because it feeds all of those different things. And then obviously as a creator,

if you get to be the person that's like, who you're gonna speak to this week? You can go, don't know, whoever I'm interested in, like no barriers. That's what's cool. And then downstream from that, people get to learn it as well. Do you get any good tips for gaming? So I don't, not anymore.

I used to, but nowhere near is like, I was terrible, even when I was trying. But the biggest things that he told me were exactly the same things that you've just brought up to do with Testosterone. I asked him what the biggest problems that his professional e-sports athletes face are for them sleep and caffeine were he was like if I could fix those two things which are obviously both interlinked as well. He said that would probably be 50% of his job. Defined fix for caffeine like what does that involve? These kids who have only managed to get themselves onto a professional eSports team by grinding,

they're all they do is grind, right? They perhaps unsurprisingly, like some kid playing Call of Duty at 13 isn't thinking about a structured periodized training plan, which is what they're going toward now with this mental performance they're doing, like peak weeks, they're having back-offs, they're all this stuff, mental muscle,

the same as the physical muscle, similar at least. They're not doing that, so they get they're purely through grinding, they're doing it usually after school on a nighttime. So you have inculcated a particular type of training practice, which you then need to say, okay, now it's time to be an adult and or a professional. Please, I want you to get up at 7am. I want you to do these things. A lot of the guys also stream on Twitch or have other side hustles that involve or that have

incentives for them to create more content than perhaps is optimal for their training. And yeah, it's a vicious feedback mechanism. These kids are sinking 300, 400 milligram caffeine drinks, consistently throughout the day to keep themselves going. That means their diet's not dialed in because they're constantly suppressing their appetite, is they're going through this shit. And then they're staying up late, they're not getting any sunlight, very little movement.

And he's now trying to fix these problems. An interesting difference is if you look at a normal sport, right, let's say like an American football, which has its problem, CTE and blah, blah, but like for the most part the training, diet, regimen and game practice regimen that you go through is actually making you a fit a human, like you're outside, you have community, you are lifting things, moving things, cardio is getting workout, you're eating whole foods, you're blah, blah, blah, blah, everything's styles, right? Two most unhealthy sports, esports and bodybuilding.

Good point. Well, I mean, talk to me about that. Talk to me about the price that people are paying to do modern bodybuilding now because there's a period where if it's natural it could be healthy by the way. That's not to say, yeah, overarchingly. Non-natural, non-tested federations of bodybuilding. What is your guess or knowledge even about the sort of health impact that these guys are having in order to achieve at the absolute top level. Like, it's hard to quantify, but in general, I would say if you are pushing the envelope full tilt in the open bodybuilding division, you would be lucky to make it past 45 years old if you were doing full tilt bodybuilding the entire time. You mean like you'd be dead at 45? Potentially, yeah.

They give you a going hard from like teenage hood to 45, blasting every single off season, weighing up to 300 pounds, you know, cutting down to, you know, 262.70, stand on stage. You know, sometimes less, it depends on the height of the guy, whatever. I think the top guys at the sport, like I would be impressed if they came out at 45 years old, retired,

and were still lived a normal duration of life. And is that common to, if you have the right genetics and you get picked up and you start doing junior shows, as soon as someone hits 18, 19, 2021, is that the sort of beginning of their use of steroids? In general, a lot of guys will realize quite quickly that everyone they're competing against, even as low as the entry level shows are using shit, and then they feel compelled to do so as well, because to be competitive among those guys, it's just like necessary evil, unfortunately.

They're depending on your genetics, you might be able to get somewhat far. But once you get to the pro ranks, you're not going to win top shows at all if you're natural, it's just impossible. So let's say that someone hasn't dropped out at 45. I'm going to guess in terms of health outcomes, being able to live a normal life which isn't assisted with the ton of drugs on the outside, is that a risk as well? Yeah, so let me sort of circle back to the dying at 45 thing. That's like the work, if somebody is full tilt, maintaining these high body weights perpetually

and doing it for, you know, 10, 20 years, I'm probably predisposed. Yeah, like some of these, some guys will drop in their 20s when they are in this, in probioty building. We're talking about Boston Lloyd last night. Yeah, obviously people will use him as a outlier because his use of drugs was so extreme and just such, he often would neglect even getting diagnostics to assess things. and he just, I don't know. Like, again, I don't have all the insight on exactly what he was doing or not doing, but

it seemed, you know, it was a lot of some mental issues around the compulsion to take certain things that he knew was probably unhealthy, but anyway, the bodybuilders that are trying to live the lifestyle though and are eating copious amounts of foods, taking the drugs they need to maintain the high body weights, it's just unhealthy in general. Like there's nothing fitness or health conducive about it at the end of the day. That in esports too dangerous.

So obviously, magnacy's different in terms of danger, but I mean, like one is, obviously, magnancy is different in terms of danger. But I mean, like, one is, uh, yeah, physically and mentally, pretty problematic. And then the esports thing, you know, it was just the second thing I could think of underneath that makes sense to me. Yeah, I'm talking. There's obviously worse sports. Like, obviously, people were going to be like, what about football? People crashing into each other with their helmets on and stuff. Yeah, obviously, like, obviously, there are things worse.

So it was just a quick remark. But I think in terms of the, like the byproduct of simply preparing for the sport, it's pretty difficult to say that there's anything which gives you worse health outcomes. I'll be interested to know. So the act of actually preparing is not necessarily unhealthy when you are in the middle

of off-season you're training hard, you're doing hopefully a decent, getting a decent step count still, eating your macron micro nutrients, but it's just when you get to the the super physiological range of muscle tissue that your body's supposed to hold and it's literally fighting back against you to try and not hold as much size, using drugs that your body was never meant to process at the amounts you're injecting into yourself, but you're bypassing all the regulating feedback systems such as hamming yourself with super physiological amounts.

It's just anything above that threshold, you are getting into escalating risk territory. And like obviously the natural body billion itself, other than the extreme weight cutting and water depletion potentially, the act of natural bodybuilding is not unhealthy. Like, it's a very healthy thing, and I don't think the general bodybuilding shouldn't dissuade people because it's unhealthy.

It's just the drug use, the excessive body weights, and the excessive eating, they have to do to achieve those body weights with the drug use that is the most problematic. So, you're saying that there is a ceiling to muscle carrying capacity that bodies have and that you start to bounce off a particular limiter because I've always thought like, why is it that you don't have bigger variance in how particular bodybuilders at the absolute top look on stage? Like why don't you have people that are another 50 pounds bigger than everybody else? There's sort of is some people,

like they're have everything big, Grammy. I have, yeah. You could be classified as a tier above, right? And is that with somebody like that, he's maybe got like a, what like a higher carrying capacity is bodies tolerance for being able to not destroy muscle is greater than everybody else is maybe. It depends, but there's definitely, like at the end of the day, it's a genetic thing

because there's no way he's necessarily working harder than a guy who's coming in 10th place. Maybe, maybe is, but there are a lot of guys I know who work their fucking asses off and will never beat him even if they probably work harder. I'm not saying he doesn't work hard, but just in general, there are certain people no matter what they do or how much drugs they take, they will never beat him, even if they double his drug dose.

It's just the genetic predisposition, it could be more muscle fiber content from when he was developing as a, like literally in the womb. Like that, some of that stuff you can't really compensate for just with more drugs. Because you only have so much infrastructure to build off of and induce hypertrophy in and so many muscle cells that you can then try and do things with. And if you don't have that infrastructure to get to the big, Grammy size, like, it's

just not going to happen. But this is like such a hyper outlier scenario anyways, like no one at the end of the day The takeaway for the average person who can you know relate to this because we're not bodybuilders the people watching probably aren't you know top-tier bodybuilders So I try to keep the the context of this more relatable for the the average person like ultimately drugs at super physiologic super physiological doses. There's no situation in which it is, you're not going to have some trade-off for it's use essentially. There's always a give and take when it comes to PETs.

Talking about bro signs, what's your thoughts on no-fap? These go viral always, the no-fap conversations. I think that it depends what you are doing it for. Are you doing it because you've been told by, I know, some like in-cell forum that this is like what you got to do or are you doing it for dopamine detox thing or you're doing it like in what context just in general? What do I think about it? Yeah, and what are the contexts in which you think it's got some efficacy and which are the ones that you think is pie in the sky? I think there are a Yeah. And what are the contexts in which you think it's got some efficacy and which are the ones that you think is pie in the sky?

I think there are a lot of people who are sedentary permits that basically never leave their house and use outlets like pornography to achieve that dopamine hit that is otherwise a lower barrier to entry way of achieving that smashing the dopamine button. There's a lot higher effort to go find a woman, you know, go on a date with her, you know, a tractor, get her into your bed, you know, have his actual intercourse and actually put energy expenditure into that activity as well. It's very easy to sit at your computer that you're already at, open up the browser and smash the dopamine button. So a lot of people just, it's almost like a weirdly paralleled version

of those rat studies where they just wired their brains and then give them the opportunity to smash this this dopamine button essentially and they always choose to smash it over and over again. It's like that is very much paralleled I think in a lot of men nowadays because it's just such a paralleled, I think, in a lot of men nowadays, because it's just such a ease of access now that there is nothing to dissuade them from doing it, and not having the willpower or the even wants to try and avoid it to go seek a higher quality of life than otherwise involved companionship or whatever it is, they very much will take the easy route and you know, it's still achieved the same dopamine hit to them. So for them, it's there, there's wired to be, you know, for them, I think no fat could be useful because at some point,

your biological urges will be like, get the fuck out there and have sex. Because you motivated so much just by frustration. Yeah, like the apathy and the complacency that you have after busing and not, it's just like, you just don't really care about anything. You know? Like why might I go find a woman to be with when I'm satisfied and I just feel fine? You know, I'm just chilling here.

I don't need to do that. So that's where it would be useful. Was it not useful? I think it's useful and individuals who it has actually had a detriment to their quality of life from a relationship standpoint, social interaction standpoint. Some people end up hindering the relationship quality

with their girlfriend too, because they're so porn addicted, they end up over masturbating and then exposing themselves to stimuli that otherwise makes them relatively unresponsive in an actual real life setting with a woman. Like there are many scenarios in which I think no fat or more specifically no porn potentially coupled with some degree of no fat is worthwhile. I think these get conflated a lot. Is the no-fap no porn thing? Like a lot of people just say no-fap,

but in a reality a lot of it is problematic with the compounding effect of the pornography exposure. Because if you're just thinking about your girlfriend, you bust a nut because you haven't seen her in a while, I don't think that's bad necessarily. What else are you gonna do? So it's the pornography and tying that dopamine hit to that activity that is overly problematic.

And then the no fat if it gets if it's excessive fapping or it's hindering your drive to go do things in life, but psychological fapping. Yeah. Yeah. Like at that point, when you can actually sit down and objectively look at yourself and say this is impeding my ability to either get high quality relationships, maintain them in some capacity or it's not leading to what I feel to be a high quality of life in general.

At that point, I think no fat is absolutely retrying. I think there's definitely a lower ceiling for where it's justified to do no porn versus I think no fat. I don't necessarily think no fat needs to even be in the same conversation as no porn always which often is people Just assume it to be one in the same. Yeah, it's got a branding no puns got a branding problem because it's not as catchy Yeah, no faps quite catchy and I don't think even with porn I don't think it has a zero place like I think there are some scenarios in which you know it'd be great Maybe it excites your sex life who knows it's just a matter of like the exposure, like too much or too little,

too much of something is always bad in general. So as you would expect, at some point, you are crossing the threshold into impeding your quality of life in some capacity. I've read about risks online of going too long without coming to men. Any truth to that at all. It's, uh, there is this one study I dug into. It was about ejaculation frequency and there was a pretty clear trend whereby after a week, if you don't, bust a nut, you will have

a big spike in testosterone. And then thereafter you end up having this plateau effect where it doesn't stay high. It kind of like dips back down and then plateaus at baseline. So I think there's some sort of biological like rhythm to trying to drive you to do something. And then it's almost like with with fasting. If people fast the first few days, you're super hungry. You have these biological urges to go eat and get nutrients. And then your body sort of shifts into like anti-catebolic, more like sustained, just preserve yourself, hibernation mode. And I think that very much applies to ejaculation and sexual activity, too. Like if you go too long without it, your body goes into a state of like seemingly adjusting

to no sexual activity to some extent. I am no longer reproductive being. Yeah, like I am. Maybe I'm, and cessery, I am out on a hunt or I'm lost somewhere or I'm at war or something and I need to just not be too concerned about this. So with that, if that was the case and if this study was to be believed and there's probably other factors in blah blah blah. But that would suggest that around about a weekly to fortnightly cadence of either having sex or fapping would actually be an advantage because I'm going to guess you want to get this spike once. It's not like if you weren't to bust a note again for the remainder of that month, you're not going to get weekly spikes each time. You get one and then it plateaus. So you can repeat the

cycle if you jack you lead at one weekend, then you reset the clock every time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's it again, like I don't necessarily, this should be like a wild biohack to try and just recommend and I don't necessarily make sure you only bust once a week, not saying that. Yeah. It's just if you or somebody who is to actually follow like what happens biologically that seems to be in line with what happens. And a lot of people that do know fat, they will also find that it's extremely difficult at the beginning. And then after a while it's like, oh, it's not that bad anymore. Is that maybe something that you actually want to be adopted for? Is that actually something that is so interesting? Yeah. Like do you want to be in a state of, for example, perpetual fasting where you just don't desire nutrients, like maybe

if you're a bear who's hibernating, like, I don't know. But yeah. Well, I was talking to Hamza, who is kind of my window into the younger guy's personal development world. And he was saying that there's a lot of guys that he knows who have attached their sense of self-worth to the number of days since they last fapped. Yeah, there's definitely something to be said about the Feeling like you're working towards something and achieving something and have power over your Your urges like you have a control over your body because you definitely feel like after you break a no-fap streak because you succumbed to the urges You feel like a piece of shit even though it felt good for a second. Mm-hmm. God damn it I just I just fucked up and the people who are able to sustain and you know work past that there's very much like a

An achievement of oh I've gone 27 days without fapping or busing and I'm you know, this is fantastic I have what's Jerry Seinfeldsay or George, it's like power over my domain or something or I control my domain. I forgot what they said, but it's definitely something to be said about the um, I don't know, restraining, definitely giving guys a sense of reward for an achievement of control of self, not giving in to urges. The same way you would not give into, I don't craving sugar or something and you feel good about it, I think some guys do, would expectively tie their self worth, you know, I

don't need sex, I don't go, I can go this long without even feeling like I need, and it could sometimes extend into a problematic thing or it's like, I don't even need a woman, like fuck. Yeah, fuck the other gender. Like I don't even need to have a companion because I'm like that much of a lone wolf who doesn't need to fat, but I don't need a woman. I'm a little woman. I'm a mode for the rest of my life.

Yeah, I think that is the goal seeking mechanism kind of hijacked by something, because you can hijack it with pretty much anything, right? You know, people, I'm sure that serial killers get a good amount of reward when they finally find somebody and do what it is they're going to do to them and dispose of the body. And maybe I'm going to get caught and I don't. You go, well, like, he's seeking a goal. He's going after something. We wouldn't necessarily say that it's something that's adaptive or good for him to do. The same thing goes for the person that feels like they need to use porn in order to

satiate themselves or like they get the reward from that. We can find goal-seeking behavior in pretty much anything. It's about planning in advance what that behavior is going to be and do I actually want to have this as something which gets programmed in. One of the concerns that's happening a lot at the moment is around, um, guys' confidence with girls. And, you know, if you can get, uh, fake satisfaction or a virtual satisfaction from the comfort of your own home, you know, going out and meeting women is like, for a nervous individual or someone that isn't necessarily compelled to do it or doesn't want to do it or whatever. There is a get out of jail free card there. The more dates side

of your channel was something that you spent a good bit of time with. What did you learn about confidence for guys around girls? Like if there was someone that you were speaking to that was a friend or whatever that was like, I'm just really super on confident with girls. Is there any interesting reframes or insights that you relied on when you were starting to build your confidence where you think like that actually helped? Like that was a really good useful framing for me to think about interacting with women. Like for me, it was more about I was not happy with where I was at in my life with the with my dating life and lack of it entirely essentially.

So typically guys who are underachieving in some area, if you, I guess, are wired a certain way, you may feel overly motivated to compensate for that in some way, which could lead to you almost overachieving in that area to feel like you've reached the baseline that somebody else who has just had it from, I don't know, like a normal transition into high school or whatever and had it silver platter to them or something. Because some guys, they're just, you know, will just get girls, you know, naturally,

or they're naturally charismatic. And they don't have to like develop whatsoever. Just turning off this alarm for the Rogan comment. But yeah, so for me, it was more so like, can I foresee this as my life in the future and am I satisfied with it? And at the time, it was not something that I was happy with and not something I felt like, oh, in 10 years, this is something that is sustainable and that I feel is something that I could ever be happy with. No, it wasn't, so I have to make a change

because this is just unacceptable for me. And at that point, I was just pushing myself massively out of my comfort zone. Like it was not a- What did that look like? Like literally going around my campus in between classes and just, you know, talking to girls that I thought were attractive and just striking up conversations essentially.

And the reason for that is to overcome approach anxiety fear. Yeah, yeah, so it was, and this was like before Tinder and stuff really took off so there was a very, very, very, like it was necessary to actually talk to people in real life still. And maybe that's, you know, that has shifted a little bit in recent times. And maybe it's more important to have like a high level social media following and, you know, leverage the DMs game and stuff. But I do think it's very important and impactful on communication skills, your ability to articulate yourself, the ability to have high level, even like business presentations, job interviews to be able to, if you can go up to up to some woman who you find attractive that's sitting there that you've never met before and just strike up a conversation and have like a reasonable dialogue, you know, get her number, go on a date, like you could pretty much crush anything that has to do with, you know, talking to a bro or to a, you know, a potential employer, like oftentimes

I find guys are most scared of somebody they find that they're trying to get something from maybe, or they otherwise are afraid of rejection. Like admirable. Yeah, it's hard to put into words, but if you can, oftentimes if you walk up to somebody, you deem to be extremely attractive and you otherwise were terrified to talk to you, and that becomes like a nothing thing

where you have no anxiety about it and you can just smoothly on a whim, walk up to a girl and have a conversation and introduce yourself and have a reasonable dialogue. You can very much throw yourself into a lot of social situations that otherwise seemed overwhelming prior. How did you get over the approach anxiety

beyond just it being reps? And this goes for girls as well. Like girls also kind of need to get over the approach anxiety beyond just it being reps. And this goes for girls as well. Like girls also kind of need to get over their own approach anxiety in a post-MeToo world, all of the dating advice that they used to get, which was Y-men love bitches and treat him like you don't like him. If girls roll forward with that same like, you know, aloof style, guys are going to take no as fuck no, not maybe an easy to try a little bit harder and be a bit more flirty with me or something. Like that's the old world and you know post 2010s, they don't get to do that anymore.

Was there anything that you relied on like you're looking at the person that you're going to go and speak to and there's a ringing in your ears and your heart rate's at 120 and you're sweating. What got you over the hill of being able to begin doing that? For me, it was seeing people that I found to be relatable, able to get over it themselves. So I was inspired by certain people that I saw who weren't happy with their lives also be able to get over that and become socially fluent, have no anxiety, walk up on a whim to anybody, they please, etc.

And strike up what I feel to be high enough level conversations that a woman is even impressed you're coming up to her, depending on the scenario, because it depends on, you know, if you're good looking, you're not creepy, if you're not good looking, then you are like, there's a whole fucking debate about that whole thing. At the end of the day, all you can do is maximize your self-value through all of these different vectors of gym, lifestyle, et cetera, but ultimately, the social components

is very controllable and something you can develop. And yeah, it sort of is a reps-on, reps-on thing, unfortunately, to some extent. And I think just Jumping into the fire or you know, whatever saying you want to you know, taking the plunge whatever It often is just the necessary thing that needs to be done to be able to develop socially and I don't know if you need somebody to hold your hand to do it. I don't necessarily know that You might be just giving yourself

an excuse. At the end of the day, you're not happy with your life, so are you going to change it or are you not? You have to take some fucking action at the end of the day. So, for me, it was very motivating. I saw a couple guys that were capable of doing it, and I suppose that gave me a bit more inspiration than maybe I would have otherwise had from baseline. But at the end of the day, I didn't have somebody walk up with me to the first girl I talked to. I still had to go up to her and say, hi, my name is Derek,

what's yours? I thought you were cute. I wanted to come talk to you, et cetera. Whatever it was, once you get your foot in the door and say something that shows your intent very clearly, you introduce yourself, you then put out the premise that, you know, I'm interested in you, are you open to a, you know, a'm interested in you, are you open to, you know, a conversation or not, and you either succeed or you don't, and oftentimes you won't, but you'll never be able to figure out if it was a successful thing or not,

if you don't just try and talk to people. And that even goes to talking to dudes, like if you wanna make a friend or whatever, talk to a guy at the gym, ask for a spot, like whatever it is, like you have to have some balls to be able to talk to humans outside of in a online, you know, gaming context or whatever. I wonder whether in the same way as porn has given people, I get out of jail free card for fake signals of fitness and like reproductive satisfaction. If online dating has done the same thing

for people not needing to develop. Yeah, like at the end of the day with online dating, you still have to meet up with the girl and talk to her, so you could argue that it's just a more time-efficient way to do it, and I'm not debating that. I think it is highly useful. The problem is with online dating is you very much can't convey your humor as well often or your tonality or certain things

that might otherwise set you apart in person. So I'm not saying that you shouldn't rely on just online dating because a lot of guys will just crush it. If they have good enough pictures and they have a good enough profile, but mostly pictures, they'll crush it. But a lot of guys won't. I don't know if you've seen the statistics on Tinder success rates of men versus women. It's like, I don't know what it is now. It's probably like 5% of men get 90 to 95% of the girls or something. And it's like, well then what do you do? Are you just fucked? Do you just do nothing?

Like obviously you need to, if you want some level of, I don't know, like a high quality relationship in your life, you have to take some action and some capacity and I don't think the excuse is, well it's just not going to happen because Tinder didn't work out, like figure it out. Dude, I like it. I really appreciate you man. Thank you for coming and seeing me. What have you got coming up next? Is there anything cool that people should expect from you? Doing a pod with Zach Telendir, which is going to be cool.

Yeah. Do that right after this. I have a couple other podcasts coming up that hopefully you guys will find interesting or useful in some capacity. They might vary and I don't know how information dense they are or like, what the style is I'm trying to like get out of my comforts out a little bit and do some more different styles of podcasts that I haven't done before. So hopefully that is well received.

And but in general, you know, you can find me on YouTube more play the more dates or on social media and any of those that handle on any of the social media platforms. Thanks, man. I appreciate you. Right on. You as well. Thanks, man. to handle on any of the social media platforms. Thanks man, I appreciate you. Right on, you as well. Thanks man.