The Joe Rogan Experience - #837 - Gad Saad

Episode Date: August 23, 2016

Gad Saad is Professor of Marketing & Concordia University Research Chair in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences and Darwinian Consumption and author of "The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption" and "The Consuming Instinct" "The Saad Truth" on YouTube -- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLa-VfOWrqWJ1TUk6pvudnkhI91whoR7XP

and we're back what's up buddy how are you how you doing great to see you look tan we've been enjoying the southern california weather sir my my biggest problem every day is to decide which beach between la and san diego to hit what are you bragging bragging about your lax problems my It's my privileged life. Your brown privilege? My brown privilege. It's like a bronze. It's a very bronzish, shiny. In a few days, it'll settle in, and that's when the true glory of God comes out.

I bet your vitamin D levels are at an all-time high. I need to take them in for the Montreal winters, right? Do you supplement when you're in the winter in Montreal? I don't. You don't? Yeah, 100%. Yeah, vitamin D is a critical factor. Or I just come back to do your show in the winter

and then that's how I get my supplement. I don't think that's enough. You need that vitamin D. That's a big thing with apparently with people that live in Seattle in the winter is taking vitamin D and even sun tanning beds. Yeah. People don't realize that sun tanning beds,

although it's kind of counterintuitive, you think they're really bad for you, it's actually not that bad for you. taking vitamin D and even suntanning beds. People don't realize that suntanning beds, although it's kind of counterintuitive, you think they're really bad for you, it's actually not that bad for you. As long as you don't burn yourself, it's actually good. I did a study, well, a paper I wrote. It was a theoretical paper with a dermatologist a few years ago where we looked at some evolutionary explanations for the epidemiology of suntanning. So if I were to ask you now, without you knowing anything about it or not much about evolutionary theory, what's the typical demographic

of the sort of obsessive suntanner? White girls. Well, it's women, young, single, and they usually tend to discount the future consequences for the immediate benefits, right? Right. Smoking cigarettes, they probably smoke.

Exactly. So it doesn't matter whether I'll get melanoma when I'm 73. I'm going tonight to the party and Tony might be there and I'd like to have that. And so this dermatologist friend of mine had written to me. He was doing his fellowship. And he said, look, as part of my research requirements, I have to write a paper. You're the big researcher. Can I do a paper with you?

I said, but you're a dermatologist. What can we talk about? And then I thought, well, let's do the evolutionary roots of suntanning. And that's how that paper came to be. How is that evolutionary, though? What's evolutionary about white girls that don't think about the future? Well, no, it's are there particular ways that we can predict the demographics of people who do certain behaviors? So, for example, pathological gambling.

Who do you think is likely to succumb to that affliction? Pathological gambling, I would say adult men in their 30s. Low status. Low status? Yeah. On average. Okay. And the reason is because it's one of a multitude of strategies to acquire resources, right?

It's the same reason that men rob banks, not women. And so you could... Okay, let's do another one. Eating disorders. Who do you think succumbs to eating disorders more? Anorexia nervosa in particular. Okay. Women.

Women. Now, typically the social science explanation is, oh, it's due to exposure to media images. Right. Now that turns out to be a laughably false premise. Why is it laughable? So here we go. Here's the evolutionary angle. Okay. Hippocrates, founder of modern medicine 2,000 plus years ago, had documented the exact same epidemiology of eating disorders in women. So it certainly can't be because of media right so there there must be something biological that explains the sex specificity of these different uh you know dark side consumption okay and so the evolutionary

perspective is to then look at to the extent that these human universals manifest themselves in exactly the same way across time and place what might be some of these biological drivers compulsive buying almost exclusively women 90 percent women uh pornographic addictions almost exclusively male and right but let's just stick with this one let's just stick with this one the anorexia nervosa you're talking first of all when you're talking about hippocrates you're talking about one lone individual. So completely anecdotal piece of evidence. And he said that women were throwing up. Wasn't it a status symbol back then for women to be overweight?

So actually, it's a good question. Eating disorders are much more likely to occur in cultures of plenty. Right. Precisely because the argument is that you can shut off your reproductive window today. Because what happens when you, so here's the evolutionary angle, when you suffer from eating disorder, the first thing that happens physiologically is you get what's called amenorrhea. Primary amenorrhea is where you haven't had your menses yet, and now they don't come up. They don't, there's no onset.

Your menstrual cycle. Your menstrual cycle, yeah. Yeah. Did you say menses? Your menses, yeah. Is that like the technical term. Your menstrual cycle. Your menstrual cycle, yeah. Did you say menses? Your menses, yeah. Is that like the technical term for it? It's the fancy term for it, yeah. Menses?

Have you ever heard? It sounds like something a little kid would call it. Mommy, I didn't get my menses. Well, now secondary amenorrhea is where you already had your menstrual cycle, and then it's shut off once you have anorexia nervosa. Okay. And then it's shut off once you have anorexia nervosa. But what happens when you have anorexia, when you have anorexia, is that your reproductive potential is shut off. And so what evolutionary scientists have found is that it turns out that when women suffer from anorexia nervosa, there is some environmental trigger that they're being exposed to, rightly so or wrongly so, that they think they should shut off their menses, their reproductive potential, for a better future.

Do you understand what I'm saying? Whoa. So, and let me give you the background to this. There's a model called the reproductive suppression model found in other mammalian species. Let's say a cow. Okay. So, if you take a cow, what would be the biggest environmental threat that it faces, other than predators?

What would you think it might be? Tainted water or food? Or just how much food she can faces, other than predators. What would you think it might be? Tainted water or food? Or just how much food she can have, right? Right. Does she have access to enough calories to sustain her gestational period, right? Well, it turns out that in a mammalian species, a wide range of mammalian species, somehow there is a mechanism, an evolutionary mechanism, that either causes the females of the species to either shut off their reproductive window,

or if they're already pregnant, and then there's an environmental input that says, hey, this is not looking good, what do you think happens to their body? What do they do with the baby? They abort the fetus. They abort the fetus. Right. And now, postnatally, you have infanticide. So in this case, you have the child, but you realize for whatever environmental reason

that it's not going to be fruitful to raise that child. And by the way, you see it in human cultures where typically the one who is killed is the last born, as you would expect, because the other children now you've invested quite a bit in them. And so if you're going to get rid of some of your genetic package, you get rid of the one that you've invested the least in. So all of these mechanisms that are part of something called the reproductive suppression

model, the idea is that eating disorders is a special instantiation of that. Because what the eating disorder is doing, it's shutting off your reproductive potential because you're getting amenorrhea. Right. But is that absolutely connected to why women get anorexic? Because it could easily be just a side effect of them wanting to be ridiculously skinny like it like i would understand with a cow with something that's living in a very wild life a wild world you know this animal out there just eating grass and when

resources are depleted like nature kicks in but there's no conscious decision-making process. When a woman is deciding to be anorexic, at least there's some form of decision-making process that wants her to lean towards a slimmer physique. So that speaks to a very interesting distinction. And so bear with me as I set it up. Okay. There's something in evolutionary theory known as proximate versus ultimate explanations. And actually that speaks to the article that I had sent you. That's one of the points that I discussed in the article.

Proximate explanations in science explain the how and the what of something. Much of science operates at the proximate level. If you want to explain what diabetes is exactly, physiologically speaking, you explain it at the proximate level. The ultimate explanation is the Darwinian why. Why would something have evolved to be of that form? So let's discuss it in relation to something related to eating disorders, pregnancy sickness, right? So pregnancy sickness is a phenomenon that women experience around the world. It's a universal phenomenon found in all cultures. Approx be or approximate exploration might be how do shifts in a woman's estrogen levels affect the severity of her symptoms that's a proximate question the ultimate

question is why have women evolved that physiological response before I give the answer can you guess what that might be? Why do they develop that ultimate response? So why is it that women experience, by the way, I call it pregnancy sickness, but I mean, the typical colloquial term is morning sickness, but some women don't experience it in the morning. I have no idea why. Tell me why. You ready? Yeah. So pregnancy sickness happens during the first trimester of gestation, during a period called organogenesis. This is when the fetus is developing its main organs. During that particular period, it's particularly important that the women not be exposed to food pathogens, teratogens, that might harm the developmental pathway of the fetus's organs.

Therefore, all of the mechanisms that she experiences, attraction to certain foods, pickles, a propulsion from other foods, the feeling of being nauseous, the throwing up, all of those built-in mechanisms are evolved mechanisms that are meant to protect possibly the fetus from being exposed to teratogens. And it's perfectly timed so that once organogenesis ends, that's when the pregnancy symptoms end. So the difference between proximate and ultimate, it's not that one is a better explanation than the other, is that you need both levels of explanations to perfectly understand something. Well, that makes total sense, but it doesn't necessarily apply to why women become anorexic, because the desire to be slim, to look very thin in public, is very strong. Because of social media, or media rather, depictions of women, they're always almost impossibly slim. And then on top of that they

also add photoshop to it right so in the in the evolutionary explanation to the eating disorder story is there is something in the environment that the woman in question is thinking is a threat to her could you think the same thing as the cow felt for the lack of calories? Can you think in the human context what might be such a threat? Do you see what I'm saying? Well, I don't know. What would be such a threat? So, for example, if you feel, rightly or wrongly, right? It doesn't matter whether objectively it's true or not.

Whatever she feels is what the reality is, right? If she feels that there isn't going to be sufficient either kin support, extended kin support when she raises a child, or the most likely thing is partner support. If she feels that there isn't likely to be a good partner who's going to support her since we're a biparental species, then she engages in shutting down her reproductive window. Hence, what you said is true at the proximate level, right? Her thinking can become disordered so that she actually looks at herself in the mirror, even though she's only 70 pounds, and she still thinks that she's fat. But that's a proximate explanation.

But the explanation that I've given you is the ultimate Darwinian why. Together, they make a full, complete explanation of the phenomenon. So it doesn't occur in people that have very healthy relationships with a spouse or it occurs much more rarely? Much more rare, exactly. So the research shows, the evolutionary research shows that the environmental threats equivalent to lacking of grazing area for the cow is lack of extended kin support or mate support to the woman. That makes sense.

That makes sense because it is primarily single women, right? They have anorexia. And that's why, by the way, you see it in cultures of plenty rather than in Ethiopia because you would expect that the woman who shuts off her reproductive potential today, it's because she's hoping that in some future state, things will be better for her to get back on the reproductive train. When you're in Ethiopia, I don't have a chance to shut off my reproductive potential. I need to get the food tomorrow or I'm going to die. Right. Wow. Interesting.

But what that still doesn't cover is Hippocrates. doesn't cover is Hippocrates. So Hippocrates is just one guy who had a sufficient database at the time to describe the findings in very similar forms to the current ones. What I'm saying basically is that if it were that it's due to media images, then, well, he didn't have media images in that time, right? I mean, so how would it be that in ancient Greece, it is also the case that it is only women who experienced anorexia nervosa? Well, what did he describe? What was he talking about? I mean, the specifics, I don't know.

So I haven't read the original manuscript. It's kind of important, though, no? Because, I mean, aren't like ancient depictions of women, like it's desirable for them to be overweight, right? It depends on the culture. I mean, the usual universal that we typically talk of in terms of body types is that it'd be an hourglass figure, which actually is going to speak to the second point of a paper that I send you. So in evolutionary theory, what we do typically is we build what are called nomological networks of cumulative evidence. In other words, when you're trying to make an

evolutionary argument, you don't just come up with a post hoc story, as some people who don't understand evolutionary theory like to say, that, oh, we just concoct these post hoc speculative evolutionary stories. As a matter of fact, the evidentiary threshold that evolutionists typically seek to achieve is actually very high. So let's take the hourglass figure, for example. So what is some data that would convince people that men have evolved the penchant for the hourglass figure? So let's go through some of these. You ready?

Okay. What is some data? Yeah. So in other words, if I wanted to convince you unequivocally of the adaptive argument, the evolutionary argument, as to why men might prefer the hourglass figure.

Well, it would be so that they should have bigger hips. It would make it easier for her to breed. Larger fat deposits in the breasts and the ass. It makes it healthier. She has fat storing. She'll have healthy offspring. Okay, so let me jump in. So if you had medical and reproductive data that shows that women who have that particular body type

are more likely to conceive, then that would be one check. Sure. And we have it. Then we might look for human universals of that preference. In other words, we don't simply use data from UCLA undergrads to tell us what types of body types we prefer. We go to the Anamomo tribe in the Amazon and ask them what type of body types they prefer and so on. So if you then demonstrate the universality of that preference, that's another check.

Now we could look at art data. You pointed to some of the depictions. So we can ask? Ruben, we could look at data from ancient Greece, from ancient Egypt, the pharaohs and so on, from Africa, from India, and we could take the statues from those cultures spanning several thousand years and do a content analysis of the statues and show that they come very close to that hourglass figure. We could take, if that's not enough data, this one's going to clinch it for you, but there's many others that I could give you.

You could take congenitally blind men. These are men who have never had the gift of sight, and you could show haptically through touch that they prefer women that have the hourglass figure, which immediately negates the possibility that it's due to the fact that they were taught those preferences through the media. And so you systematically collect data

from multiple converging lines of evidence where that data becomes overwhelming. It becomes unassailable. And that's how you build an adaptive argument. So contrary to all the guys who say, oh, evolution has just come up with these cute post hoc stories, we're actually profoundly more meticulous and assiduous in the data that we collect. data that we collect. Well, is that really been established that so many men prefer soft, mushy hourglass type figures as opposed to hard bodied women? How many women are you letting these blind guys grope? It's like, are they getting a real study sample to choose from? Or are you just like, like, how's that? I like it. Good. We got it. Well, the particular data with the congenital blind men, I think they only had maybe two or three mannequins.

Oh, mannequins. Wait a minute. Okay. You're letting them fill up mannequins? So all the data that I gave you is not enough? Now you're going to attack the mannequins? Why can't you bring up strippers? I mean, why do you have to have mannequins? Why do you have to have mannequins? Well, because probably it might be difficult to have the ethics approval board of universities have young blind men, or maybe they're not young, feel off a bunch of women. Well, I guess the ethics board doesn't like science.

Because you can't just judge what a guy likes in women by letting him touch a doll. That's ridiculous. That's shit science. Okay, well. Isn't it? Look, every study has some methodological constraints, right? But that one's easy to fix. By having real women being touched? Yes.

I'm sure a lot of women would sign up for that. Okay, well, maybe. Why didn't they try that? That seems so, you can't. I hope, by the way, that I'm not misspeaking. I hope that they did use mannequins. Well, let's find out. What's the name of the study Jamie look at us

2010 he just do congenital blind men and waist to hip ratios and it'll come up It'll come up on the Jamie Board of Truth and the Jamie Board of Truth aka the Internet by the way you could you could take fMRI right brain imaging studies of men that are exposed to women of Try brain imaging studies of men that are exposed to women of different waist-to-hip ratios, and their pleasure centers in their brain light up more when exposed to women that have that hourglass figure. So again, the data is unassailable because it comes from a multitude of countries, a multitude of time periods, using different methodologies. Well, I'm not denying that men enjoy that. What I'm saying is that study… That particular study? Yeah, by using hourglass figures on mannequins.

It's kind of ridiculous. So let me build on that. In one of my papers, I looked at sex dolls, right? Sex doll. How convenient. Honey, I have to look at sex dolls for a paper. Right. So anyways, in that paper, I just went to,

I can't remember the company's name it's it's a real doll probably one of those was it like a realistic one i mean i didn't get them at home and measure them it's they advertise one that looks like a person it looks like a person and they advertise their measurements okay and as you would expect the average waist to hip i mean their hair color changes and their skin color changes but the average waist to hip, I mean, their hair color changes and their skin color changes, but the average waist to hip ratio was close to that 0.7. And so here what you're demonstrating is that marketers, right, these guys that are producing these products are producing products that are in line with our evolved preferences. If they didn't do that, if they produced sex dolls that look like East German female slash male swimmers, it's not going to work well. First of all, how dare you?

Those are women, I think. Are we going to get into the intersex debate from the Olympics? Is that what we're doing? Well, the Olympics is a fascinating place to jump off at that, but no. So I think, okay, the anatomy of desire. The two mannequins stood side by side. Blah, blah, blah. Cargo van, mobile vans. Yeah, okay.

Mannequins. Yeah, it's just two mannequins. It's a shit study. They could have easily gotten strippers. Published in one of the top science journals, but okay. Well, still. Published it all day. It's some fucking mannequin.

You can get real women. All right. I'll speak to them. The only way that would be... Well, even the woman who is like not chosen well you don't know i mean some some guys might be like into petite slim slender model type well that's what's interesting to me is that men aren't really attracted to that model shape no yeah it's weird because women oftentimes think that men are because they see these models in these magazines. And I think that does lean towards the desire for some women to get

into that anorexic state because you sort of get this body dysmorphia thing going on by looking at these almost completely unrealistic depictions. I mean, I know people who are actually built like that, but they're extremely rare, right? It's like knowing someone who's built like a professional basketball player. They absolutely exist, but boy, good luck finding one on a random day, finding some seven-foot-tall super athlete. Right. Yeah, I agree. There's all sorts of differences between what images that you see sometimes and what people truly prefer. I think it's really strange how women always want to paint it

as women being victimized by these unrealistic body images, but you never hear the same from men when it comes to bodybuilders. When men see a guy who's just giant muscles and a big six-pack and just looks like a stud, men never feel like they're being victimized by these unrealistic body depictions. How about height? Right? I mean, most of the guys that you see as leading men, on average, tend to be taller than the norm, right?

So I'm being victimized because I'm a shorter guy, if you forgive me for saying, as you are, right? So how come we don't complain about, you know, short guys need love as well? Or how about social status, right? Typically, you see the depiction, say, in romance novels. I've given this example on previous occasions. I'm not sure if I did on your show. But if you study the archetype of masculinity in a romance novel. They'll look Fabio.

They have long hair. It's the exact same guy, right? He's tall. He's a count. And he's a neurosurgeon. He's reckless in terms of his risk-taking. He can only be tamed by the love of this one woman. He wrestles alligators on his chest, on his six-pack, right? He's usually not a risk-taking. He can only be tamed by the love of this one woman. He wrestles alligators on his chest,

on his six-pack, right? He's usually not a pear-shaped. How many of these books are you reading, man? I'm reading them every single day. I just read one before I came here. Books on tape. But the reality is that the product works because there is a commonality

to what women fantasize about. And whether she's Romanian or Nigerian or Japanese, she likely prefers a high-status, tall alpha male to a nasal, pear-shaped wimp. Is that how you describe yourself? How rude. I am the walking alpha male son. I could call you son because you're a bit younger than me.

Slightly. Plus I've got gray hair, so maybe I can get away with that appellation. But no, look, products that work well are typically those that are congruent with our human nature, right? And those that are not will typically fail. I've always wondered why women claim victim status when they're being compared to unrealistic body images, but men don't. Because I think, and that just kind of relates to social justice warriors, I've proposed the theory of Munchausen syndrome. Have you heard me talk about this? Well, I know what it is, yeah.

So Munchausen syndrome, for the viewers who don't know, is this, you know, you get sympathy and attention by being victim, and so you feign an illness to get attention. Munchausen syndrome by proxy is when you hurt someone else who's in your care, typically an elderly person or a pet, or typically your biological child, because that will garner you empathy points. Well, so then to answer your question, why do women do that? Because some women ultimately are trapped in a sort of big Munchausen love fest where I need to constantly get reaffirmation

and empathy by being the victim to the extent that Western women, you know, have been liberated from all of the typical problems that we see in other parts of the world. I've got to look for a new victim narrative and boom, that's a good one. Well, isn't it also though that it is an unrealistic body shape and that they do feel it's like a completely impossible task for a lot of women who are built like normal people have you seen the body shapes of uh male superheroes and toys yeah they look like me son they look cute that's right they look like you so what about the rest of us that don't look like you how come we don't go into a fetal

well that's what i'm asking why do why is munchausen syndrome more apparent in women than it is in men? Incidentally, in the true form of Munchausen, in terms of harming a child, it's usually always the biological mother who does it. So you're exactly right. So it's just a manifestation of that phenomenon in a new context. So you're exactly right. That's interesting. But I wouldn't have phrased it that way. I would phrase it in more of a term of frustration than some sort of a psychological

disorder. I would think that women are just frustrated with this. See, one of the differences being that if a woman is large boned or, you know, she has a wide waist or something like that, there's very little she can do to try to achieve that model shape. Whereas if a man is slight, he can lift weights and eat a lot of food and get a personal trainer and do a lot of squats and deadlifts and build his body up. A man can make his body look more masculine. It's very difficult outside of surgery for a woman to change the shape of her body. She can get in shape. If she's overweight, she can diminish that. She can lose some fat. She can put some meat on her butt and her legs. But she can't grow breasts. She can't do anything that would make her appear more outwardly feminine. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. By the way, that exactly speaks to some of the antipathy that people feel towards evolutionary psychology. I mean, you hit the nail on the head, yeah. Because there is, wrongly so, there's this idea that evolutionary theory is sort of biological determinism, right? If people prefer facially symmetric faces, and if my face is not facially symmetric, then I'm doomed to a life of twiddling my thumbs and a life of celibacy, right? And that's why there's this narrative that became famous with Naomi Wolf. Do you know who that is? She wrote a book that sold I don't know how many millions of copies called The Beauty Myth,

which I actually critique in my first book. I talked about the myth about the beauty myth. In The Beauty Myth, basically, she provides this liberatory argument against these beauty standards. And here's her argument, which I will sort of summarize very quickly. She basically says, look, women are now winning in every facet of life. And the only place that men can still cause harm to women, that they could still dominate women, and this is going to speak to one of the points that you raised, is by creating this false narrative about the types of women that men prefer. And by pushing this narrative, it makes women feel insecure about themselves. Whoa, hold on.

So her proposal is that the only reason that this exists is because men are trying to harm women? It's a conspiratorial theory. That's hilarious. She must be a lot of fun to hang out with. She's still alive not she's alive she's alive yeah she's and yeah she's reasonably young and still very productive but you know again it's it's a it's a message that sells because if I am a unattractive if genetically speaking I don't score well on some of these universal metrics of beauty I would much rather hear a story

that basically says oh it's all due to arbitrary metrics of beauty, I would much rather hear a story that basically says, oh, it's all due to arbitrary construction of beauty standards. There's nothing innate about these, right? I think there's a lot of women that are very intelligent that run into asshole men so many times that they develop this distorted perception of what a man is, and so they can formulate this theory and feel justified in doing so. They just run into so many weak bitches out there that they start thinking that all men are trying to harm them, and all men are trying to hurt their feelings. Right. And that this theory is valid in her eyes because it's based on the anecdotal evidence

that she's acquired through her whole life of running it. I mean, obviously, she's very intelligent. She's writing books. She's probably far more intelligent than most of the men she's coming in contact with and so she's formulated this theory based on her own personal evidence to protect her own ego you're saying yeah but there's direct there's a direct connection like as a man there is a huge difference in how you uh you react how your body feels when you're around a classically attractive woman like uh let's classically attractive like uh sophie loren in her prime like when you're around her you'd just go

jesus like your hands would get sweaty your heart would start beating you'd start freaking out it is a hundred percent natural and there's there's no like uh oh i want to enforce this because it'll make other women feel like shit. Like that is not it. There is a real genetic propensity. And doesn't it seem as though that should be so trivially banal to accept? But it's not for someone who is an empowered woman who doesn't see any way of achieving that. So if you don't, it's like a man could do steroids and lift weights and become

a giant bodybuilder type dude, if that's what he was really into. And you could achieve that through time and effort could be done. But for a woman to look like one of those women, it's impossible. If you are not built like that, you are not built like that. And that's how it goes. I'll tell you a quick story that I discussed in one of my other books. It was a documentary that I had watched on speed dating, I think it was, where there was a, you know, profoundly overweight woman, I don't know how many, 500 pounds, who was basically arguing that, you know, it's unfair that all these men at this speed dating event are not paying closer attention to her. Unfair. It's unfair because they've been taught to internalize all these arbitrary sexist standards of beauty.

That's what she was really saying? Yeah. Now, but listen to this. So on the one hand, if you're unattracted to an overtly overweight woman, then you are a fattest. But on the other hand, listen to the other side of the coin. If you prefer very overweight women, then there's the narrative that you are fetishizing our excess meat. So if you prefer an overweight woman, you're a bad guy. And if you dislike

overweight women, you're a fattest. So there's no state of the world where someone won't accuse you of being an asshole that's the world we live in well isn't that just the world of just so many different people with varied opinions that are trying to justify their own physical condition sure I mean that's really what humans have fragile egos well there's a new study that they put out recently about the myth of healthy obesity. Because I've seen that read many times, or I've read that, rather, many times where people are trying to justify their own obesity by saying that there's this distorted perception of whether or not people are healthy because they are thin. And that, in fact, there are some diseases. And this is kind of true.

It's some sort of a weird contradiction. There's some sort of diseases where people actually do better and recover because they're overweight. But the reason for that is not because being overweight is healthy. The reason for that is there's a lot of diseases where you don't take in any nutrients while you're sick. And so your body goes into a state of ketosis where it starts burning fat and you're better off using that fat for fuel if you are overweight than if you're a very lean person who has no fat to burn then your body starts burning off uh tissue muscle tissue which is much less healthy for you and much more dangerous

incidentally what you said uh there's i think now a movement to start fattest studies at universities you know how you have women's studies and peace studies and whatever so fattest studies at universities. You know how you have women's studies and peace studies and whatever. So fattest studies, the narrative is exactly what you led off with, which is the idea that there's this kind of medical conspiracy that's pushing a false narrative that basically says being overweight is a bad thing, when in reality there is

no such evidence. No, there's evidence. Sorry, folks. I know. Sorry, folks. Pull up that study. It's really kind of interesting because it's so black and white, there's really no arguing about it. It's not good to overeat. It's just not. It's not good to tax your body.

You know, having a little bit of fat is not that bad. Studies suggest healthy obesity might just be a myth. Suggests that vigorous health interventions may be necessary for all obese individuals. Yeah. That's a fact.

There you go. But everybody knows that. You know that. That's why you see that fat woman and people get repulsed. It's not because they're mean. It's not because they're taught to think that that's not an objective standard of beauty. It's just you see someone fat and you go, oh, this is a mess. This is a mess.

This is someone who must be emotionally fragile because they're throwing food down their face. They clearly have an addiction to sugar or to simple carbs. I mean, they're definitely trying to make up for something. You know, this idea that people are just naturally more fat, well, that's not true because if you look at their diet, it's almost always in support of maintaining a giant body I mean, that's this idea that some people can well there are people that have hummingbird type Metabolisms and they can eat ding-dongs all day and still weigh 90 pounds. Yeah, that's a freak

There's a rare, you know, my sister was like that. My sister's tiny her nicknames peewee That's what I call her. But when we were kids, she always weighed like 100 pounds. She could fucking eat anything. She could drink. She could have a steak. She could eat ice cream. 90 pounds. I mean, that's just what she weighed.

Or maybe I'm exaggerating. She might weigh 105. Right. You know what I'm saying? Like, she just had that crazy metabolism. It's just the way it is. But that's super unusual. Right. for most people

when you overeat. I've posted a few photos on social media of myself in 1985. Actually, that was the first time that I'd come to California to visit my brother. When you were a soccer player,

you were a stud. When I was a soccer player. 4-5% body fat. And of course, I said... Did you really get it checked? I did get it checked. Yeah, but calipers, right? Calipers and the electric conductivity test.

Yeah, that electric thing sucks. I've done that electric thing before. It's way off. It wasn't accurate? The real way is submerging. Submerging is the best way. Right, that's the third way, yeah. The electric thing, apparently, if you're dehydrated, it can be off.

There's a lot of very fast, because a lot of it is, I might be using a bad one, but the one I've been using was in a doctor's office. I might be using a bad one, but the one I've been using was in a doctor's office. But he was even explaining to me that it can easily be off if you're dehydrated and there's various factors. Whatever the number was, it was very low. And this was 85, so this is almost 30, well, more than 30 years ago. And until about my early 20s, 22, 23, 24, I was always grossly underweight. The day day that i stopped being a serious athlete it just snuck up on me every single that's a coincidence that's all that is you think so no okay of course not you're right i didn't pick up on the sarcasm uh but you know it's it's very

insidious it wasn't this is society's standards that they're enforcing on you god exactly very true very true these assholes what it is is a bunch of men who want you to feel bad This is society standards that they're enforcing on you, Gad. Exactly. Very true. Very true. These assholes. What it is is a bunch of men who want you to feel bad. Right. Right. Yeah. So they let you eat.

There you go. Yeah, man. Just fucking run every day. You'll lose a ton of weight. Well, that's not enough because I actually, believe it or not, I train a lot. The only way I lose weight is if I'm very, very careful about what I eat. Without that, I never lose weight. Right.

But you're a smart guy. Why do you allow yourself to get overweight? Oh, boy. We're going to get into this now. Yeah. I mean, this is a subject, right? Yeah, okay. I mean, I don't think it's related to your intelligence because-

Well, it must be, right? Well, let me give you- It's an issue. No. No? Well, you're so quick to dismiss, but it is an issue, right? I walked into a physician's office when I had severe bronchitis. He was, I think, a pulmonologist.

He was chain smoking in his office. Now, is that because he was an idiot who didn't understand the importance? Yeah, he's an idiot. If he's chain smoking, he's an idiot. It's not correlated to his IQ, right? If he's chain smoking, he's an idiot. It's not correlated to his IQ, right? Well, it's correlated to his objective assessment of what is intelligent to do with your meat vehicle.

This guy is stupid if he's smoking cigarettes. That is a stupid thing to do. It doesn't mean that he can't be intelligent in other areas of his life, but he's most certainly shutting down or ignoring some really clear information that we have been given over the past 50 plus years. Well, I think actually what you're talking about speaks to a point that I raise in some of my writings, the idea of whether we make choices simply because we don't have the right information to make better choices. That's usually the typical argument that public policymakers use. So they basically say, oh, if you're engaging in risky sexual behavior, or if you're engaging in a sedentary lifestyle, it's because you don't know any better.

So let's set up public service announcements that teach you better, and then hopefully people will act better. And that doesn't actually work. So the issue is not so much that people, it's not as though I don't know that being overweight is a bad thing. And now that you've taught me better, I will now change my behavior. The problem stems from the

fact that there are these Darwinian pulls that make it difficult for us to extricate ourselves from, right? Whether it be, whether you're addicted to drugs because it tickles your pleasure center in your brain, or whether it be because you're addicted to sex or whether you're addicted to a bit more food than you should be eating, those are the Darwinian pulls that make it difficult for us to do the optimal decision. It's not because we're too dumb to know better, or we don't have the right information. Yeah, but wait a minute, you're talking about food now, not the cigarettes that this doctor was smoking that you were using as an example. That's not the best one, because there's no Darwinian pull towards smoking cigarettes. No, no, no. So forget the nicotine example

for what I just said. In general, when we make poor decisions that lead to deleterious health outcomes, it's not because we don't know any better. So let's go back to this suntanning example. Women know more about the deleterious effects of sun exposure than men do, yet they do it more. If it were only a question of, you know, it's because I don't know any better, then we wouldn't expect women to be doing it more. So it's not a question of not having the right information. It's whether ultimately you have the control to not succumb to these pulls. I mean, we've got the seven deadly sins since, you know, for thousands of years, precisely because very smart people

understood that these are some traps that we all succumb to, whether it be greed or lust or gluttony. In my case, I've never smoked. I've never, well, I've drank, but very minimally. My problem is, I guess, gluttony. I'm a gluttonous freak. Right. But when you say have the control, like what steps have you ever taken to acquire the control?

Do you practice mindfulness? Do you meditate? Do you write down your goals? Do you write down what you eat and what your calories? Have you ever gone to a doctor and found out what your calorie consumption should be? Have you ever tried to alter your diet and maybe go on a fat-burning diet instead of on a carbohydrate-burning diet? Yes, not the mindfulness, but all the other stuff that you said. You've gone on a fat-burning diet instead of on a carbohydrate burning diet yes to all not the mindfulness but all the other stuff that you've got a fat burning diet instead of carbohydrates absolutely so so what have you done for that when i and when i do it you'll see me in three months i'll be 35 pounds

lighter and you won't believe it what have you done like what usually i do so i just do a heavy protein diet minimal carbs with a lot of vegetables. So, you know, six ounce steak, you know, with broccoli and, you know, whatever, something like that with the tomato juice. And that I'll lose kind of like the, well, not the Atkins in the sense that you eat as much fat as you want, but it's really a lot of protein and a lot of vegetables. Well, honestly, the Atkins is when you're saying eat as much fat as you want, a lot of vegetables. Well, honestly, the Atkins is when you're saying eat as much fat as you want, that is actually the trend. The trend is towards a ketogenic diet. When you're talking about getting your body to burn fat, a lot of athletes are getting involved in getting on fat burning

diets. And I actually switched my own diet to that where I didn't really have a problem being overweight, but I was definitely heavier and I had more body fat than I have now. And what I did was I switched over to this, uh, there's a guy named Mark Sisson who was on my podcast before. Um, and he wrote this book called the primal blueprint. And, uh, it's the idea behind it is that you're, when you're eating a lot of simple carbs and a lot of pastas and breads, you're getting insulin spikes, your body's processing all that sugar and your body stores it. And then your body starts burning sugar whereas if you can get your body to a ketogenic state meaning your body burns fats and uses that for fuel rather than carbohydrates you don't really want high protein you want um a minimal protein you want what you're supposed to

have which is like you know a six ounce steak fine. But what you really want is a bunch of healthy fats like coconut oil, avocados. I eat a lot of avocados. Salmon. Salmon is excellent. Right. Excellent. But also because excellent because it supplies you with omega-6s and 3s. Right.

The essential fatty acids, which are really important for brain function. But people, this idea, this is also a big fucking problem that people have. We've been lied to about fats, about the danger of saturated fats and the danger of cholesterol. Dietary cholesterol barely moves the needle on blood lipids. It's not dietary cholesterol that's a problem. It's sedentary lifestyle. It's overeating. It's a consumption of excess carbs. There's a bunch of factors that cause people to be fat and it's not necessarily saturated fats or cholesterol. In fact, saturated fats and cholesterol, that's the substrate for building testosterone. When I went on this diet of having my body burn fat and not just me, but a ton of my

friends, my friend Denny, who's an elite athlete, is a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu world champion. My friend John Rallo, who's an MMA fighter, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt. These guys have all reported, and me included, gigantic spikes in their testosterone production. And it's because that is the building blocks for testosterone. So when you're eating these low-fat diets and these, uh, these like minimalistic diets, try to get your body to be more healthy. You're dropping your body's sex hormone production. Well, we'll have to ask my wife if she has any complaints in that department, but, uh, Oh God. But it's, but honestly, uh, the only problem I have is when I walk, when I walk away

from those types of diets that is where the problem arises of course yeah but i bet that if you walked away from whatever you're on that diet when you get off it do things disintegrate very quickly they don't descend well i'm because for me they do i mean i could i could put on seven pounds in two weeks by simply eating normally once i'm away from that what is normal then if you're putting that much weight seven pounds in two weeks is 14 pounds in a month i mean that means 28 pounds in two months with some liberty that's not normal okay that's a crazy amount of weight to put on if i saw you two months later and you put on 28 pounds like what the fuck are you doing? I'd have to grab you by the hand and sit down with you and go, come

on, man. I don't want you to die. I'm already thinking about all the comments that are going to be at the bottom of your, oh boy. Well, I mean, I'm just saying this because I'm your friend. I want to get you a copy of this book. I would love you to try to do it. But it's not hard to just eat till you're satisfied and not eat till you're full. That's a big factor. That alone is probably 20% of everyone's meal. A lot of people eat and then they keep going. I love to do that. It's fucking awesome. I love to eat a giant bowl of pasta and eat a big steak, but I also work

out like a terrorist. I do that. I work out almost every day and I work out hard. So I keep my body fat down because of that. So even if my diet is shit, So I keep my body fat down because of that. So even if my diet is shit, I still keep my body fat down because of tremendous working out. But then when I adjust my diet as well, I saw a big difference in my energy levels and my cognitive function and a, and a big difference in just overall wellness. Right. You know, I just don't, I mean, I'm an extremist when it comes to physical performance because obviously i've been around it my whole life and i'm in the martial arts world and i'm trying to get my body to do certain things that are very unusual but i just think that people are

not designed to eat big plates of pasta or bread or all these sugars that everybody downs in the form of corn syrup drinks It's just not good for you. Have you seen the documentary Sugar something yeah the sugar that sugar movie yeah It's crazy credible watch with my kids and then we went to the supermarket was hilarious because they're grabbing things going Look at all that sugar the sugar in this they were like grabbing things off the shelf Finding how many grams of sugar per serving and everything.

So let us, maybe I'll say this, you know, if you say something publicly, then you have to kind of say it. So let, here's here's, should I look at the camera here? Next time I'm on your show, I should hopefully be visibly thinner. Yeah, what you're going to do is you're going to wait until two weeks before the show, and then

you're going to stop your period, and you're going to I'm going to go anorexia. You're going to do is you're going to wait until two weeks before the show and then you're going to stop your period and you're going to I'm going to go anorexia. You're going to go anorexia and stop your reproductive system. Very nice. It's just people should be more healthy and the body is designed I mean this whole trend for paleo diets

and paleolithic diets, that's not an accurate term. It's a good way to eat. That's not an accurate term. It's a good way to eat, but it's not an accurate evolutionary term because in the paleolithic era, people ate a lot of grains. They ate whatever the fuck they could. They ate bugs. They were hungry. You know, they did whatever they could.

And they worked hard to acquire that. Yes, exactly. That's a big point. When they needed those calories and grains, like, look, if you're out hiking every day, you talk to people that are like mountain climbers and hikers. They are eating massive amounts of calories. I have friends that go on these gigantic mountain trips. And they literally cannot consume enough because they pack all their food.

My friend Jason just got back from this big trip that he was taking to the Yukon. And he's going up and doing all this mountain climbing. They climbed, they went 100 miles in eight days up in the mountains, like at 10,000 feet altitude. So it's this incredibly grueling experience because there's very little air, and you're constantly doing squats because you're constantly lifting your body up.

You're going uphill. And they were eating two pounds of food a day. That's all you could take. So you have to eat the most calorie-d eating two pounds of food a day that's all you could take so you have to eat the most calorie dense two pounds of food that you could carry because you know for this trip you know you're only carrying a certain amount of food because you have to have your sleeping bag on your back your tent all that jazz and you come out of there you're 15 pounds lighter right here and you know you just had this incredible means like

it's it's like running a marathon every day almost you know, you just had this incredible, I mean, it's like running a marathon every day almost. Are you familiar with the field of evolutionary medicine? Does that ring a bell? In what way? So evolutionary medicine is basically, actually I had one of the pioneers of the field on my show. His name is Randy Nesse. He's a physician by training. So evolutionary medicine is basically trying to infuse within medicine evolutionary ideas.

Typically, most physicians are trained in the proximate world, right? We're talking about proximate and ultimate, about how to deal with the how and what of a disease without ever asking the ultimate why, Darwinian why. So as relating to something that we're talking about now, if you look at the top killers around the world, you know, colon cancer and diabetes and heart disease and high blood pressure, they're all related, as evolutionary medicine folks argue, to what's called the mismatch hypothesis. The idea being that those things that were adaptive to us in an environment of scarcity become grossly maladaptive in an environment of plenty like we have today.

That makes sense. And so basically what you're having, I mean, my gustatory preferences don't change. So my desire to eat the fatty food remains. But what has changed is the fact that I had to do 20,000 calories of expenditure to hunt it down then, and now I could go to the grocery store and get it. There's no caloric uncertainty, no caloric scarcity. to the grocery store and get it. There's no caloric uncertainty, no caloric scarcity.

And so if you look at hunter-gatherer societies that most closely mimic our evolutionary past, they don't have all those diseases. So once they clear the early childhood mortality threats, then they actually live quite long lifespans, precisely because they don't suffer from, I think, their nine top killers. So that's a way of taking some of the stuff that you're very interested in and infusing it with a bit more of an evolutionary twist. That totally makes sense that people would have to expend massive amounts of calories to track down food because that was, at one point in time, what we did all day with our day, whether it's hunting or gathering or farming.

We were constantly working to try to acquire food. That was it. Now that food is so easy, we still have the same genes, right? Exactly right. Yeah. So look, natural selection, right, the mechanism of how species evolve, traits that they have. I mean, when I'm teaching my students, I start off by colloquially saying, look, most animals, including humans, throughout their history have faced, you know, either you don't want to become somebody else's dinner and you want to get enough for dinner for yourself.

Those are the sort of two big adaptive problems. And then you just add to that sexual selection, which is it's not enough to simply survive. Then you have to mate. And so then you want to get the right mannequin. There you go. So that's basically natural and sexual selection in one sentence, right? Don't become somebody's dinner, get enough dinner and then get a mate. And there's your evolutionary. How much, if at all, do you pay

attention to your gut health? Do you, do you eat probiotics? Ooh, see, that's crazy. Is that right? Oh my God. Probiotics are one of the most important aspects of healthy bodies. Like your gut health can affect your mood. It can affect cognitive function. It can affect your personality. There's all these studies being done now on probiotics and of gut health and bacteria content and gut candida. If you have a high level of candida, which a lot of people do, we eat a lot of sugar and simple carbs. You develop this intense craving and hunger for sugar and simple carbs.

When you adjust your gut bacteria, when you start taking in healthy probiotics in the form of kefir, I like kombucha. I like kimchi. I like fermented cabbage and sauerkrauts and natural sauerkrauts and things along those lines. I drink a bunch of different kinds of them and take a bunch of different kinds of them every day, along with this thing called the Onnit Total Gut Health, which is a packet that I take with every meal. It's a massive factor because what's in your gut, like your gut flora, is incredibly important for your overall health and for supporting your immune system. So has that become sort of part of the yearly health checkup that people do? Depends on what doctor you're talking to. See, because most doctors spend very little time studying nutrition.

When you go to medical school and you get a degree, the amount of hours that you spend studying nutrition are so small. And by the time you're out there practicing, this is a field that's constantly evolving and changing and growing. And this leaning towards probiotics as a health supplement is fairly recent in terms of mainstream exposure, but incredibly important. It makes a big... First of all, I hardly ever get sick. And it, it's a big factor because I, I travel constantly.

You're shaking hands. I'm constantly shaking hands. I'm constantly flying on planes and I hardly ever get sick. And if I do, I can point to some pretty obvious factors. Like I didn't get any sleep. My kids are going to school again. They're around other people that are sick. They're sitting in my lap, coughing in my face.'s it's normal stuff and even then i bounce back very quickly and i attribute that to probiotics right i think it's really important to take in healthy cultures have you are you here's another example from evolutionary medicine that relates to children since you mentioned children uh you probably

have heard of the studies that show that if you grow up in an environment that doesn't have any natural allergens, you're at an increased risk of developing respiratory illnesses like asthma. Does that make sense? Precisely because it doesn't trigger your immune system to have the types of responses that you typically would have encountered. So if you have a mother or a father or both parents who are incredibly OCD about having a perfectly sterile and spotless home, prepare for the onset of asthma. So that's another example of a-

That's asthma, but not necessarily allergies. One of my daughters is allergic to cats and we've had cats her whole life. We've also had dogs her whole life. She's been around these animals her whole life, but she's allergic to them. What are the manifestations that she has? She starts sneezing. Her eyes get puffy. The cat can't sleep in the bed with her. If the cat does, she'll start sneezing and she can't help it. It's because my wife's allergic.

It's just genetic. She's also so allergic to horses that we were in Italy and we were riding on one of those horse carriages and she wasn't even on the horse or touching the horse. Just being behind the horse on a horse carriage. She started sneezing and coughing, and we had to get off the carriage. Do you know if it's the saliva of the horse or the dander? The dander. I'm sure she's allergic to saliva, too, but I'm just not swapping spit with horses, bro. Settle down.

Gotcha. All right. What's next on the docket? Now that you've convinced me that I need to lose weight, as if I didn't know better. Well, I'm not saying that you need to lose weight, but I'm saying you're a healthy guy. You're a smart guy. You think about your life. You're very handsome. You're bronze.

You're shiny. You're thinking in these terms of like looking at the big picture, but yet you've got this blind spot. And this blind spot is because you have this indulgence for food and you look forward to it. It becomes your reward at the end of the day. And you sit down and you indulge and then you say, hey, I've worked hard for this and I look forward to it, it becomes your reward at the end of the day. And you sit down and you indulge and then you, you say, Hey, I've worked hard for this and I can enjoy it.

And now I'm married. I've got kids. I don't need to look beautiful. And you want to hear something since we're getting personal in California, when we lived in California, I actually naturally lost a lot of weight without having to worry about anything. I was a lot more active. I ate less. without having to worry about anything. I was a lot more active. I ate less. And we talked about a reward. When you're in the dark, cold winters of Montreal,

and the only reward delivery system is for us to be foodies, then that's the problem, right? Right. And we often talk about that, my wife and I. Do you ever eat at Joe Beef in Montreal? He's your friend, right? Yeah. Have you eaten there? I have not.

Good Lord. You are in the same town as the greatest restaurant on the planet Earth. We were supposed to go there together, I think, when you came to town. Yeah, but I didn't go back.

Yeah, something happened. Yeah. Well, next time. We'll hook it up. Next time I'm there, I'll take you. Well, hopefully I'll be in California.

Well, you're going to have to. Yeah, hopefully. But if you are there, you're going to have to indulge. Yeah. That's one of those places where you've got to get off the diet. Well, it's okay to have a cheat day. Yeah, you're going to have to indulge. That's one of those places where you've got to get off the diet. Well, it's okay to have a cheat day.

Yeah, you're right. But, you know, I think a lot of people have those blind spots, and even intelligent people. What's yours? Booze. Yesterday we got fucked up. Me and Hannibal Buress did a podcast. We got a little too hammered. That's one of those things where I enjoy it while it's happening, But like I worked out today and my head was kind of throbbing.

I was like, this is so stupid. And I don't do it every day, but I do it maybe once a week or once every two weeks or something like that. It's just I know objectively that it's not healthy. Is it that you enjoy the taste or you enjoy the effects after you drink it? I just enjoy having drinks with friends and getting stupid and laughing okay you know um that i just know it's not healthy it's just there's nothing healthy about booze there's nothing wrong and actually there is some some studies that suggest that uh it's uh actually pretty healthy to have a glass of wine or two with a meal and you know you're getting resveratrol and also there there's some studies that or some indications that point to people developed for a long time drinking wine because they couldn't drink still water because they would get traveler's disease.

If they found water, it would have pathogens in it and they would wind up getting sick. So they drank wine for that purpose because you can carry it around with you and it's not going to go bad. But getting drunk, like we were drinking whiskey. We were drinking Jameson or something like that on the rocks. It felt great. We're hammered and laughing. But God damn it, it's so bad for your body.

So if there's an indulgence that I take part in that's not good, it's the occasional getting fucked up. Gotcha. Yeah. It's not good. But I the occasional getting fucked up. Gotcha. Yeah. It's not good, but I don't have a lot of those. I'm pretty good at not having a lot of those, those things in my life, but it's easy to do that. It's easy to trip yourself up because there's a natural tendency towards distraction. You know, the pressure of, uh, attempting to be successful at something,

the pressure of whether it's competition or whether it's uh just this yearning for achievement you look for a release you know from that pressure and that's what a lot of people do they go to cigarettes or they go to booze or they go to food or whatever it is you know i've never smoked a single cigarette in my entire life good for you good i did when i was like 15 i smoked a cigarette with my sister she kept going i quit i quit. I was like, fuck, this is so stupid. Incidentally, I think that if you hit 19 and you haven't started, you almost have zero chance of starting. Oh, I know people who started in their 30s. I know a dude who started, he was fucking 40 years old.

He started smoking cigarettes. I'm like, what are you doing, man? It's so weird. But again, I think it's a sabotage thing where people just go, fuck it, I don't care. I don't care i don't care and by doing that it's almost like they can um by saying fuck it i don't care about my health they could say fuck it i don't care about my student loans fuck it i don't care about my wife leaving me fuck it i don't care about my mortgage fuck it i don't care about losing my

job right it's like this this sort of like denial of reality by indulging in something that's not healthy it reminded me of a irrational position that one of my former students took to justify him smoking and so if you i don't know if you do this in the united states but in canada health canada has this program where they put very vivid images on cigarette packets you have the same thing here right they used to right well not they don't have images but they have the sayings okay but in canada these images i shouldn't even say they used to they still do they're still like so you know what he would do what so to show you how irrational human beings are so he would let's say ask for whatever the brand was marlboro

now he would receive one and look at it. If the warning message was one that would be relevant to him, he'd ask for another one until he received one. Until he got low birth weight. Until he got low, or, you know, don't drink while pregnant, don't smoke while pregnant. Oh, doesn't apply to me. So I looked at it.

He was serious? But you obviously know. That's a Bill Hicks bit, by the way. What is that? Bill Hicks? Yeah, one of the greatest comics ever. Uh-oh. Hicks bit, by the way. What is that? Bill Hicks? Yeah. One of the greatest comics ever. Uh-oh.

That was a bit that he had. On exactly that point? Yeah, he said, just pick one that doesn't apply. Low birth weight. Good. Oh, there you go. So maybe he got it from him. Yeah. But it shows you how, even though we often are fully cognizant objectively about some truth,

our ability to engage in self-deception is limitless, right? Well, it is for some folks. And I think, again, that goes back to mindfulness. It goes back to meditation. It goes back to reflection. Most people live their lives in a constant state of momentum, the momentum of the past constantly propelling themselves forward. And they're always adjusting and trying to make up for all the mistakes that their past has made they don't live their life in a state of in the now they live their life in a state of fuck why did i do that now i gotta do this you know what i you know what i succumb to and i think let me let me know if you feel it too because you have young children i'm obsessed about first for example this is the first time that my daughter did this, and there'll never be another first. I'm always panicking about them growing up.

Really? Yeah. Wow, that's weird. of negativity, even though we're exposed to a hundredfold more positivity, you know, it's a, it's a rough ride out there. And then my solace is coming home to the purity and innocence of my children. And then the reality is that you can't bottle up that innocence and that purity forever. And so I, so speaking of the here and now, rather than oftentimes just enjoying the moment, I'm always worried that in five years she's going to be a prepubescent girl and then there's going to be a bunch of biggish young boys

that are going to come around. So that's something that truly bothers me. It doesn't affect you? You never thought about that? Well, I mean, I don't dwell on it, honestly. I mean, I just try to enjoy every moment I can with them. I try to enjoy all the different stages of their life. moment I can with them and try to enjoy all the different stages of their life.

But, you know, I remember what they were like when they were babies, when they could barely talk. And I was thinking I could never love something as much as I love them. But now I think when I talk to them, I love them even more because now I get to have little conversations with them. When you have like a deep conversation with an eight-year-old, it's pretty intense. It's when it's your child and your daughter. It's pretty intense. Isn't it humbling when they ask you things that clearly demonstrates how you know little about so many things?

Because they often will ask you questions that are profound and deep. Why is lightning in that particular formula? And you try to concoct some story while being truthful and then oftentimes they stump you right uh i just go to google man well it's kind of hard to go to google while you're driving and having a conversation about some some observation that just made but it just shows you again the the purity of the child and sort of looking at the world yeah uh and and hitting you with questions that you frankly can't answer. Well, I always like to say that I can't answer it. I think it's important to let kids know that you don't know everything.

Because I think children automatically look towards adults as being some sort of superior form of a child. Like, well, I don't know anything, but I'm a little kid, but my dad will know. And then if you let them know, like, hey, there's just way too much information for everyone to know. But what's important is you're honest about what you do know. Yes. And we're very fortunate that we have this thing called the Internet. So we can find out what it is that we're trying to get the answer for. And incidentally, I do that with my students when they ask a question.

And let's say I don't know the answer. I'm very open. I say, you know what? I think you got me with this one. Good for you. Why don't you send me an email, remind me, and I'll look into it. And I do it just naturally, but oftentimes they'll write back to me and say, you know, wow, that was so refreshing. You know, you were humble enough to not pretend that you know everything about every single thing, you know?

Yeah, I love that. And it's so frustrating when you're talking to someone who's really smart who doesn't want to admit that they don't know something or wants to deny something's true when they haven't researched it. It's very frustrating. I have a friend who's a brilliant guy who does that. He just, you'll bring something up. He's like, that's not true. And you're like, oh, Jesus fucking Christ. We just Google it. And I've done it with him over and over and over again. I had to have a conversation with him. I said, listen, man, if I tell you something is true, I'm not making it up. And if I'm wrong, it's an honest mistake. But if you just Google it, then you'll know. But you're saying it's not true and you've never even looked at it. But here we are in 2016. You have a fucking, you have a device in your pocket where you can get the answer to virtually anything at any time. So what do you think? Bullshitting's out the window now.

So what's the psychological trait? Ego. He's a very smart guy and he wants to be the smartest guy in the room all the time and so it just gets really frustrating especially if we're somewhere where there's no internet service yeah you're like we're gonna get to internet service motherfucker and then you're gonna apologize it's it's it's this thing that people do where they uh when you're having a conversation with someone they're not just talking to you they're engaged in a contest yes oh yeah men do that all the time i have several of those in my own uh not nuclear family but my family of procreation so my i won't say who but brutal right and and here's another thing that you never admit that you're wrong. Yeah. Right. Because admitting that you're wrong makes you lose face.

And that's such a detrimental dynamic to have. Right. I mean, you know, I might come home at night and I've had a tough day and I might respond curtly to my dog. I actually will go back and then hug my dog because I have enough self-awareness to realize that I didn't give her enough attention. Right. So I have enough humility to never mind, you know, another human. My dog is just as important to me. And if I responded curtly, I will sort of apologize to her. Yet I've got family members. Again, this is not my family of my wife or kids,

but the family that I was born into that have never apologized about anything because they come from a cultural landscape where to apologize to your child, to somebody younger, is to lose face. A parent is always right. And I mean, that might work when you're two. But when you're both now adults, I think you sort of have to get out of that

and realize that we all make mistakes and we all have to own up to them. We all have to apologize honestly when we make a mistake. And yet some people... It's super unhealthy and it's unhealthy for the person who doesn't admit they make the mistake too, because then it puts you in this position of being in denial of what you know to be the truth. You're going to run around pretending that you were right all along when you know in your head that you were wrong. So it diminishes your own personal opinions about yourself. Right. I'm going to tell you a great story. Ready?

On this exact point. Okay. So I'm having a chat with a family member, an older family member from my family. This is the problem person? This is one of the key problem people in my family. And he says something to the effect of, oh, you know, those ancient Greeks, those Christians were really anti-Semitic, or I can't remember the exact details. I said, oh, well, you know, I'm sorry, I don't mean to correct you, but those ancient Greeks were not Christian. As a matter of fact, the way we mark

that era, as we say BCE before common era or BC before Christ. So by definition, those guys were marked as not being Christian. So when he's now faced with sort of historical evidence that suggests that he was wrong, what do you think he does? It's so grotesque that I'm not even sure you can guess what he did. I don't want to guess. So he basically says, no, that's right. That's what I said. I said that they weren't Christian. You said that they were Christian. So he looks at you in the face. That's called, if you don't mind me saying, on air, that's mind fucking, right? He looks at you in the face. He knows that you know, but he has enough in Arabic.

You say, it's this kind of pathological pride, right? Fuck you, right? I'm going to look at you, right? So rather than saying, oh, gee, I didn't know that. Thanks for correcting me. He flips what our original points of disagreement was. Oh, God. You can't talk to that dude.

You got to cut that guy loose. Well, maybe I have. Oh, maybe you have. I like how you said that. Yeah, that's an unfortunate characteristic in men. I guess it probably exists in women, too. But I see it more in men that they will, they'll always want to be right. Right. You know, but it doesn't make you better to have information that someone

doesn't have. Like I like when someone can tell me something that I don't know. Sure. It's interesting. Well, that's, I suspect that one of the reasons why your podcast is so successful is because you exhibit that generosity. If, if you came to the, to every discussion thinking that there is nothing that the other person can bring to the table you're not going to have a show that's going to last long no well it's also it's impossible right we're not talking about like the 1950s when people this narrow view of the world that was defined by their own environment right we're talking about this broad place now where you can just access all sorts of data and one of the beautiful things about the podcast is by sitting down with people like you or all the other awesome guests i get to sit down

with i get to experience the wisdom and the information of someone who's lived a completely different life than me and i just find that really fascinating and i just think that that arrogance that someone would display by doing what that guy did to you and switching around your points and just that's just a child. That's like a developmental dead end that this person went down. So true. So unhealthy. I hear you. But so common, right?

So common. Yeah. What's next? What do you want to talk about? I want to talk about your paper that you brought up. Oh, yeah. Sure. So this is a paper that I was invited to write in one of the leading journals in the field, journal marketing research, where I was asked to talk about the method of evolutionary psychology.

How do evolutionary psychologists conduct research? And it was specifically to address some of the common canards that we hear from the tractors of evolution psychology. Oh, it's all a bunch of post hoc storytelling and so on. And so the paper basically looks at three points, two of which we've already sort of covered. One is the distinction between proximate and ultimate explanations. And again, that's a very important point to make because it basically argues that you'll never have a full explanation of any phenomenon involving biological agents if you don't study the phenomenon at both the proximate and ultimate level. Proximate, how, what, ultimate is the Darwinian why. So that's one. We've already

covered that one. The second method of evolutionary psychology is the building of these networks of cumulative evidence, like the one I gave you with the waist to hip ratio. Maybe I'll give you another one as an example of this mechanism. So, for example, if I want to argue that toy preferences have sex specificity that is innate, right? So it's not that, because typically in the social sciences, we hear that what makes little boys little boys and little girls little boys, little girls, is that boys are taught to play rough with the G.I. Joe. Girls are taught to play gentle with the pink. Yeah, but that's dismissed. I mean, you hear that, but it's very fringe. In the social sciences?

Isn't it? It's still up there. Well, it's only because of liberal colleges. It's not because of it's not people that are objectively intelligent that are recognizing this. But certainly in terms of the university landscape, that is the dominant narrative. What do they use as evidence to point that men are taught to that? Because they've proven that children absolutely gravitate, based on gender, gravitate towards certain types of tasks and toys. So that's what I'm going to do next is I'm going to demonstrate how evolutionary psychologists

build these nomological networks of cumulative evidence. So if I wanted to prove that that premise that you argued is dismissed is truly laughable, how would I go about doing it? And so that's one of the things that I did in the paper. So we could look at children who are in the pre-socialization stage of their cognitive development, meaning that by definition, they're too young to have been socialized. And we could do studies on them to see what is it that they approach first, or what is it that they gaze at longer. And we see that there is a sex specificity in such young children.

So already it demonstrates that it's probably not due to socialization. So that's evidence line number one. We could take other species, vervet monkeys and rhesus monkeys, and now there's some research with chimps, showing that they exhibit the same sex specificity with these types of toys as human infants do. Right. Data number two. We could take data from clinical populations. So

there's a disorder known as congenital adrenal hyperplasia, which is an endocrinological problem that masculinizes little girls, that masculinizes little girls both in their morphology, but also in their behaviors. So if you take little girls who suffer from this disorder, what do you think happens to their toy preferences? They become more like those of little boys. We could take depictions on funerary monuments, you know, these big mausoleums of, you know, dead people from ancient Greece. And you look at depictions of little boys and little girls, and you see that the little boys are depicted with the typical toys, you know, with a ball, with something with a wheel thing. Little girls are depicted with dolls. You could do the studies across a wide range of cultures

that are very different from Western cultures. The phenomenon manifests itself again. And so what you do, again, in evolutionary theory is you build this nomological network of cumulative evidence coming from completely different data sets that then makes it unassailable to argue against it. So that's the second method of evolutionary psychology. The third one I argue is evolutionary psychology operates on what are called consilient trees of knowledge. Consilience is a term that had sort of lost its way. It basically refers to unity of knowledge. So if you say, for example, physics is more consilient than sociology, it's because physics has these organized knowledge trees that sociology

doesn't. So what is a typical tree of knowledge in evolutionary theory? So you could start with something like sexual selection. Sexual selection is basically the idea that how does a peacock evolve its big tail? So how do animals evolve their traits to give them reproductive advantage? That's been established from the time of Darwin through a million different species. So now that leads down the tree to another theory. It's called the mid-level theory

called parental investment theory. Parental investment theory basically says that if you want to know about sex differences within a species, look at the minimal obligatory parental investment that each sex has to have in that species. So in most species, it's the female that has more parental investment. So typically they're smaller. It's the males who fight for access to females.

Females are more careful about the mate choices they make. But you also have sex role reversal species where it's the males who have greater parental investment. What do you think happened to the sex differences? They're exactly reversed, right? So that has been also established. So now we go down. Parental investment theory leads to another theory that basically says that in the human context, females will make more judicious mate choices than men. In other words, women are more careful in the types of mate choices that they must make precisely because they have greater costs if they make a wrong mating choice, which leads to a study that I did looking at how much information do men and women look at before they either reject mates or choose mates.

And what do you think the result shows? When it comes to rejecting mates, women need less convincing. In other words, they acquire less information before they decide all these mates are losers. On the other hand, when it comes to choosing a mate, women look at more information prior to choosing. So what I've shown you here is how you start with a general principle and work down a tree to a specific hypothesis. That's called a tree of knowledge of evolutionary theory. That's what the method of evolutionary psychology is. So contrary to what typical detractors, there'll be some buffoon, some castrato on the bottom of your comment section that says, but evolutionary sciences,

that's not a real science. We call him a castrato. That's right. That's hilarious. Yeah, you like that, huh? That's a term. I know what that is. Good. Those singers that had their balls chopped off. I usually call them the castrati brigade. And of course, in the singular form, it's castrato, right?

So it's a guy who walks around without testes, but a very inflated ego, who then tells you, despite the fact that you've spent 20 plus years studying something he knows more than you all of you evolutionary scientists are you know it's it's interesting to me that there would be people that would be involved in universities that would debate this sort of very objective research. I mean, especially when it comes to gender and obviously there's variables, but when it comes to the gravitating towards certain types of toys and tasks and then it also pertains to career choices as well. Like there's this big push to get women involved in STEM and women involved in technology and

there's discrimination, women in tech. Well, no, women don't gravitate towards those particular jobs. They don't want to do them. Some do, and the ones that do, they cry sexism because there's so few of them. Well, no, it's just not something that they naturally gravitate towards overwhelmingly. Well, that's what, I don't know if you remember the whole debacle with Larry Summers, who was the president of Harvard University, who then became, I don't know if he was in the Obama administration, but here's this guy who was president of Harvard University,

he was giving a speech, probably Jamie can pull it up if he has time. And he was basically giving a talk where he hinted to exactly what you said. He said, he didn't say, oh, you know, women don't have the capacity to go into these fields. I think he hinted to exactly what you said. He didn't say, oh, you know, women don't have the capacity to go into these fields. I think he hinted to exactly what you said. Propensity. They may not like it as much, despite these very aggressive programs that we've instituted to try to attract women. Maybe they're not drawn. Just hinting at that led him to eventually stepping down as president of Harvard. Well, there's a real problem in colleges and universities today with this denial of reality to help other people's feelings or to make other, placate other people's feelings. And it's also this repeating that even Obama's been involved

in repeating this myth that women working the same job makes 77 cents for every dollar the man makes. That's not true. I don't know if you've ever researched that or gone into that. Yeah. So I know, I know from two two sources the only two sources that I've sort of paid attention to that have addressed this I think is Milo Yiannopoulos who's sort of been one of the big champions to try to dismantle that narrative well it's just it's been dismantled by sociologists it's been disbanded Christina Huff Summers did it so so yeah yeah I think you're exactly right well the data is wrong I mean it's totally misinterpreted. The real data is when you look at the overall wealth, like what men make versus what women make, men make more money. But they also work more hours. They also choose different jobs. They also are at a higher risk to die on the job. There's all these different factors.

there's all these different factors the Misconception is that a man and a woman working side by side doing the same job that the woman is making 77 cents to the man's dollar that is not true exactly right and that's the problem with this thing and even fucking Obama He parroted that and Sarah Silverman did it recently one of those Hillary Clinton speeches talking about how women make less than men It's not true right, but it's one of those things that if you tell people they don't believe you But you have to you have to send them studies and then they read it you like we have this myth has been perpetrated so Pervasively it's so common that people parrot it and no one questions it the fucking president parrots it on television like intellectually that is so incredibly dishonest for him to do that if he is aware of the actual stats and he says that just because he knows that's what people want to hear, like, oh, Obama does care.

He is he's caring and sympathetic and he's not a pig. And you probably can fill in the details regarding the, I don't know what the number is, you know, one in five women on university campuses will experience a sexual assault. That is a ridiculous stat. But is that? I don't know that that's not. Define sexual assault. If it's a guy making an unwanted grope, you know, that a guy moves in for a kiss when he doesn't I mean I think you're dealing with a lot of awkward kids They're drunk and they do stupid shit and some of it easily could be sexual assault or sexual

You know in propriety I I don't I don't necessarily think that that numbers off so that I think rape is Much more much more complicated. I mean then I think you're talking about something way less common, but way more disturbing. And I think the real statistics about how many women get raped are way different than what is being proposed. The problem is you start talking about things like an unwanted grope or someone slapping someone in the ass. That all gets factored in. Then they start factoring in things like having sex while intoxicated. And that becomes sexual assault. But conveniently, only for the man to be the one who's the sexual assaulter.

Like if a woman is sober and the man is drunk, no one is ever accusing the woman of being a rapist by having sex with a drunk man. Right. Have we talked, speaking of rape, I'm not sure if we've discussed it on the show. Did we discuss the rape by fraud story on this show? Yes, we have. Well, there's also the new laws that are being passed, rape by fraud, which is fascinating. Like if a guy says he's a prince and, you prince and I'm going to take you to my castle, you will live in luxury forever.

But he's really not a prince. That guy can get charged with rape. What are your thoughts on that? Well, the guy's a piece of shit. But he shouldn't be arrested as a rapist. Well, no, but he is definitely a liar. It's really tricky. It's like what is he doing exactly?

He's being a liar he's uh telling a story that's not true and because of that a girl's having sex with him he's immoral he's unethical it's reprehensible behavior he's not a criminal he's not criminal because if that were criminal as i think i might have mentioned on your show before 95 of people who are engaged in online dating are rapists well Well, yeah, that's true. And also, a lot of guys lie to themselves. They're raping themselves, you know, pretending they really love someone. Is that what you guys call it now?

Masturbation is raping yourself? I don't even mean masturbation. I mean, having sex with someone you're not really attracted to. You're just horny as fuck, and you convince yourself this is the right girl. And as soon as you orgasm, you're like, I got to get the fuck out of here. I just raped myself. I think there's something immoral about it. There's something unethical about it.

But it becomes very tricky when you try to decide whether or not that's a crime. Right. Or you want to prosecute someone for rape for doing something like that. Also, it's weird because presumably the woman had sex with that man voluntarily and enjoyed it and then decided she didn't enjoy it when she realized that guy was crazy or a liar. Isn't that just like a lesson? Like, isn't that just a life lesson? And now you're going to go and be way more picky with who you decide to have sex with? Well, I mean, think of it this way. I mean, again, let's link it back to evolutionary theory, not just in the human context, but across

the animal kingdom, there's endless manifestations of deceptive signaling, right? Sure. Animals, including humans, engage in deceptive signaling. I mean, here's an example that doesn't relate to mating. Aposematic coloring, which is basically warning colors, right? So you have a species of, say, Amazonian frog that has very vivid colors. Why would it be vivid? Well, because it is advertising to everybody, hey, don't approach me. I'm very venomous, right? Well, then there'll be another species of frog that piggybacks on that coloring

that actually itself is not at all venomous. But yet, because it has usurped this signal, now nobody will attack it, right? Right. Oh, boy, what a fraud, right? So the idea, and again, I don't want to receive comments now that I support lying and so on. It is reprehensible. Too late. It is unethical. It is immoral.

I don't do the behavior. Of course. But it's part of life. People lie to one another. People lie to themselves. I think I might have mentioned on the show before, and even if I have, it's worth repeating. There's a gentleman, a very famous biologist by the name of Robert Trivers, who talked about the evolutionary roots of self-deception, right? Why is it that we deceive ourselves? And then the argument there is that the reason why I have to

first believe in a lie before selling it to you. It's because when I lie, I actually have these micro expressions that serve as telltale signs of my lying. If I could suppress these so that when you're trying to look at my face to see if there are any signatures of deception on my face, you won't read them because I've already lied to myself. And so there are even clear evolutionary adaptive reasons for why we lie to ourselves, never mind lying to others. So lying and deception is part of the large repertoire of human behaviors. And to call somebody a rapist for engaging in that reprehensible behavior does nobody any good. That's interesting.

Now, deception also has to be defined, like lying and rape by deception. Like at what level are we still calling it rape by deception like if a guy has a fake rolex on right like and he's advertising that he's wealthy when in fact he's not yeah i mean when a guy pretends he's making a hundred thousand dollars a year but it really makes 45 let's make it less fuzzy let's make it more fuzzy okay how about if i i'm actually a very uh apathetic guy who can't get out of bed till 11 o'clock in the morning but yet i convince whomever i'm going out with that i have this infinite bottled up ambition right so i'm not even faking the rolex watch this is not a tangible

thing right i'm just sending her cues that i'm going places right i've got all great ideas i've got a lot of entrepreneurial spunk in me. I work out every day. I drink wheatgrass juice. I'm super healthy. I meditate. So what, am I a rapist? Yeah, that's a good question.

Like, who are you? You know, I always tell guys you should aspire to be the man you pretend to be when you're trying to get laid. Like, if you could just do that, just be that guy all the time. Like, you know, really, it's the best way to go. Right. But, yeah, that's interesting. Like, that is de just do that, just be that guy all the time, like, you know, really, it's the best way to go. Right. But, yeah, that's interesting. Like, that is deceptive, right? If he's pretending to have all this really admirable behavior.

When a woman fakes orgasm and makes you think that you're a great lover and you have sex with her again. That liar. She's a liar. She raped me. So the next time I had sex with her, it was under the misconception that I was a great lover the first time when she faked the orgasm. So she's raping me that second time. Now, when you were talking about evolutionary psychology receiving a lot of criticism, what is it? And you sort of glossed over it real quickly to make your point.

Like, where's the vast majority of this coming from? Yeah, that's a great question. So it comes from different camps for different reasons right so so let's start let's kind of break them up okay so we can go to the religious folks right i mean but that's obvious though isn't it obvious that they would be detractors well obviously they're not going to look at things realistically because they have this the blind spot let's talk about like professors and right so then the professors typically will be one of again several types they'll be the social constructivists those are the guys who believe

that everything is due to social construction that what makes us human is that we transcend our biology right there's an argument for that though isn't it well we don't transcend our bio we're not strictly biological animals we We're biological and cultural, but we certainly can't negate our biology. What they're basically arguing is that what differentiates us from all other life forms is that we transcend our biology. Right? So they're perfectly fine if you use an evolutionary explanation to explain the behavior of the mating behavior of the salamander. Right. But don't apply that exact same phenomenon when it applies to humans, right? Because somehow we have consciousness and we have higher order thinking.

Culture. That's what culture and that's what makes us human, right? There are guys who, for example, professors who believe that evolution stops at the neck. So they're perfectly happy with you offering an evolutionary explanation for why we've evolved opposable thumbs. That's fine. That's fine. Why we've evolved the particular pancreas that we have, but don't apply it to anything above the neck. Not behavior patterns or cultural. Your personhood, who you are as a human being, right?

Right. There are some guys who don't have any ideological reasons for hating evolution psychology, but because they don't know much about nature of the epistemology of the field, by the very nature of how knowledge is created and generated in evolutionary theory. So for all sorts of reasons, none of which is valid, there's a long queue of, frankly, buffoons who despise evolutionary theory. Now, the reality is that they're going to lose this battle, right? There will be a day when it'll become banal to argue that humans are driven by evolutionary imperatives. And I already see it from my own scientific career. If I look at the antipathy that I faced 15 years ago versus today, it's very, very different, right? The antipathy that I felt from sometimes the same person. I could still have emails from somebody who wrote me 10 years ago thinking that my work

was full of shit, who's now inviting me to his university with all sorts of deference. And so that's the nature of science, right? It's autocorrective. And the reality is the cat's out of the bag. Everything is evolutionary, right? I mean, by the way, we could talk about the range of fields where evolution has made its way and fields where you wouldn't typically think so. Is that something that interests you that we could talk about? of fields where evolution has made its way in fields where you wouldn't typically think so. Is that something that interests you that we could talk about? Yeah, but I want to keep going down this road for a little bit. I just think I find it very fascinating when people oppose things that seem pretty obvious.

And not only that, are unwilling to take into account that it might not be a case of either or, but it might be a case of there's a bunch of combining factors and that evolution must certainly continue to play. It's the idea that we've completely transcended evolution with culture and thinking and logic and language. It's insane. It doesn't make any sense. And I don't know, forgive me if I've mentioned this on this show before, but again, if I have, it's worth repeating. I always talk about the interactionist framework. Interaction basically means everything's an interaction. Most things are interaction between our genes and our environment, right? As a matter of fact, genes get turned on or off as a function of environmental input.

Which is fascinating. Exactly. Evolution happens within an environment. So by its very nature, evolution itself recognizes the importance of the environment, right? So anybody who exhibits hatred or rejection of biology using those types of arguments is simply advertising they know very little about biology. The reality is it's an interaction. And the example I like to give, the metaphor I give is the cake metaphor. like to give, the metaphor I give is the cake metaphor. If you take the separate ingredients of a cake, here's the sugar, here's the eggs, here's the baking soda, whatever the parts are, the butter, they're separate at first. Now you bake the cake. If I then ask you when you have the final cake in front of you, point to the sugar or point to the eggs, you can't. It's an

inextricable mix of both. That's a very good point. That's what we are. We are in an inextricable mix of both. That's a very good point. That's what we are. We are in an inextricable mix of our genes and our unique environments and our unique talents and our unique personhoods. The problem with much of the social sciences has been, and they're losing now by the day, has been that they've completely rejected biology as in any way relevant in explaining anything, mating, criminality, political choice.

For example, there's a field called evolutionary politics or biopolitics, which tries to infuse evolutionary theory within political science. Well, no kidding. I mean, what happens when we're making political choices, suddenly our biology ceases to matter? So evolutionary theory is relevant anywhere that you're studying biological agents. So what is the argument against this? And how has someone gotten to a university level teaching this kind of bullshit?

Right. So it comes from several sources. So maybe we could sort of point to a few. Have you ever debated anyone about this? I mean, I have in various forms, not necessarily in a public one-on-one like this. But I would love to see that. Hook it up, make it happen.

I would like to find somebody who opposes you on this. I read their stuff online, and it's infuriating, because it's unopposed. Like someone who writes a ridiculous blog, and you know right away what the motivation is. It's someone who's distorting reality to fit their own ridiculous view of the world. Yeah. So I've I mean, I've debated them in typically one of two ways, either through the review process where usually they're anonymous and oftentimes I'm anonymous.

So what in a double blind review process, I don't know who they are. They don't know who I am. And then we're engaging in a debate. blind review process, I don't know who they are, they don't know who I am, and then we're engaging in a debate. And oftentimes the paper gets rejected because they're the reviewer, they're the editor, and then they have the final say. So in that context, I've debated. Or I've debated publicly, typically when I go after somebody on Twitter who's espousing these kinds of stupidities, but I've never done it publicly in this way. Have you had a paper rejected that was logical and objective and made a lot of sense? Tons of times. Really?

And give me an example one. So the paper when I was talking to you about the tree of knowledge going down the tree of sexual selection. So I had a paper where I had looked at how much information do men and women look at before they either reject a mate or choose a mate, which I mentioned earlier. That paper originally I had sent it to a top journal in consumer psychology. And to kind of just summarize the position, it was, well, this is all biology. What does this have to do with psychology? So these very esteemed psychologists somehow thought that biology existed in a separate

realm to psychology. In vacuum in a vacuum your brain exists in this other parallel universe no influence the body has no influence in the brain at all exactly the other thing that they were upset about is they were talking about well why is this person who's an otherwise very patronizing who's an otherwise clearly a bright behavioral scientist talking about sex differences when we should be looking at things that make us similar to one another. Well, when you're talking about sex differences in mating behavior, you study sex differences, right?

I mean, it's a fundamental defining quality of humans that they are sexually dimorphic. They are innate differences between men and women. So here are people who did not want to accept that there were sex differences between men and women, and they didn't want to accept that biology has something important to say about psychology, right? Now, if I speak to neuroscientists, if I speak to biopsychologists, they would listen to my stuff and say, oh yeah, no kidding. So in a sense, I've existed in a fractured life in my academic life. If I am navigating amongst my natural science colleagues, then they're all like, oh yeah, I love your stuff.

I love you. If I navigate amongst my social science friends, well, they're less loving and less receptive, but they're coming around. So I think the problem stems from the empty slate premise. The idea that we are born with empty minds that are only subsequently filled by a wide range, by a cascading number of. That's a nonsensical. Isn't it? It is. But also I have a problem with someone saying, why are you looking at this instead of looking at that? Right. at this instead of looking at that.

Well, looking at this, just because you're looking at something, it doesn't make it so that you can't understand why we are all similar in many ways. But the denial of these preferences, of these genetic preferences, of these evolutionary tendencies, that's not scientific at all. Like, that's really preposterous. And the fact that that's being taught to kids and that they go leave these institutions with these thoughts in their head that are based on a bunch of people that have never even existed in the outside world, that's what's fucked up about schools in a lot of ways.

Sure. Is they're going from learning by these people to becoming one of these people, teaching in these schools, and never existing, a gigantic percentage, never existing outside of academia. Absolutely. So to speak to your point about have I ever faced this type of antipathy and so on, I gave two talks when my first book came out at a university in the psychology department and in the business school.

They were back to back on two separate days. So this was a talk on my book, How Do You Darwinize the Field of Consumer Behavior? I gave it in the psychology department first, which is made up of a lot of people who have background in neurosciences and biology. And they all listened and said, yeah, beautiful. No kidding. I mean, of course, to study our consumatory nature, we have to understand the biological impulses that drive us. Great. Exact same talk the next day in the business school. This is one of the top universities in the world. I couldn't get through a single sentence. Why? Because of the amount of hostility that I faced. In the business school? In the

business school. Why business school? So I think, so this is a very interesting question. So I think business practitioners, in other words, business people, not business academics, Business practitioners, in other words, business people, not business academics, actually love my work or historically love my work because they're not vested in a particular paradigm. They're not in ideology. They care about results. What works, right? Or earns them money. Exactly.

You're going to tell me what are the evolutionary triggers for me to develop a more effective advertising campaign? I'm in. I'm in. Talk to me, Professor. I don't give a shit about your paradigmatic fights in academia. But. Yes. But the academics who've been vested in social constructivism or in cultural relativism, every culture is relative.

There are no human universals. There is no shared human nature. There is no shared biological heritage. Then I come in on my biology train and I'm dangerous. We got to shut this guy down. Now, the reality is if you're sufficiently confident about what you're doing, you ride out that storm. And luckily for me, you know, now 20 years into the game, more people are coming to seeing things in the way that I'm saying them. But it's taken a lot of dogged fighting to convince people of the veracity of what I'm saying. So when you were given these speeches and you were being interrupted, what are they saying?

So example. I'll give the first one. How do you explain homosexuality? right? Because their first instinct, no pun intended, instinct is an evolutionary term. They want to show that if everything is evolutionary, if everything is adaptive, then how could you explain something like homosexuality, which by definition is Darwinian cul-de-sac at that end, right? Well, then I say, well, there are some evolutionary theories that try to explain homosexuality, but that's not really the focus of my talk. Can I, can I just go on?

How do you explain suicide? Here's the other. Now, if we are these adaptive creatures that, that have this survival instinct, how do you explain the fact that there is an epidemiology of suicide? Why would somebody take their own life? So if I start, that's pretty easy to describe.

That's, I, I don't think I'd have a problem with, no, but then imagine if this goes on for every syllable that I utter, right? So these are students that are interrupting you? No, no, these are professors.

As a matter of fact... That's so rude. So, two points I'll make. The more senior the person in the room, the more hostile they were. Really? So the doctoral students who took me out to lunch after were all like, oh man, I love your stuff, Professor.

Now why? Again, anecdotally, we can understand why. Because the more senior professors are vested in their paradigms. Therefore, their brains are closed to any ideas that might challenge the status quo. The doctoral student who's still surfing, who's surfing at the buffet of ideas, is open to the idea. Oh, yeah, biology seems to make sense. The second thing that I'll point when you said it's very rude, I actually got upset.

I tried to stay with decorum and politeness. But as we were leaving, I took a couple of those senior folks and I said, you know, what is the point of inviting me here and wasting your money and our respective time by not giving me a chance to get through my talk? Wouldn't it make more sense to give me the forum? And then at the end of the day, if you decide that it's not worthwhile, you throw it in the garbage. But at least you've given me the opportunity to share my ideas with you. Oh, no, no, Professor Saad, you mistook our interruptions. It's because we were so engaged.

I said, well, it can't be really engaged when you're not allowing me to finish a syllable. Well, not only that, it's really simple to take notes and then at the end of it, ask your questions. I mean, why do they feel like they have the right to interrupt your speech? That's a great question.

I usually ask people to hold off their questions till the Q&A period. But I don't know why, but especially in business schools, and it's certainly in some of the top business schools, there is this culture of very sort of alpha maleness where you hammer at the person. Because you're trying to one-up them. And it's very, very... There's a great story on Richard...

Do you know who Richard Feynman is? Yes. The great Nobel Prize winning physicist. I think I read it in his book. Surely you must be joking, Mr. Feynman. So I hope I don't botch the story, but the story goes something like this. He's giving his sort of pre-final dissertation talk, his sort of departmental talk. He's still a doctoral student at Princeton in front of the who's who of leading physicists throughout.

I mean, Einstein is there and everybody's there. And as he's giving his talk as a young doctoral student, there is this one professor who's interrupting him in the way that those folks were interrupting me at that school. And from the corner somewhere, apparently, Albert Einstein says, don't you think we owe the young man the respect to let him finish speaking? And then I'm sure at the end of his talk, he'll have plenty of opportunities to answer us. And then after that, nobody said anything. So I think it's part of that baboon sort of guerrilla thing.

I'm going to show you that I'm the smartest guy in the room. So you typically see it from not the truly elite. The truly elite don't have to do this. But the guys just below want to show that they're the toughest guys in the prison yard, and therefore they interrupt you, they harass you, they heckle you, and so on. The same type of people that would go after you with a hate blog. Exactly. Professors that are just fringe intellectuals that just really aren't that smart,

but they've achieved this notoriety and a status because of the fact they're teaching at some school. Can I mention one such guy? Sure. A grand buffoon, PZ Myers. Do you know who that is? Yeah, I know who that guy is. One of the most execrable creatures that has ever walked academia.

I don't know him personally well, but he's the exact type of guy who exhibits those types of behaviors. He has an incredibly successful science blog. Hat off, hat tip to him for having that forum. But all he does all day is attack fellow scientists in extraordinarily poisonous manners. It's never respectful. Certainly evolutionary psychologists, we're all lobotomized idiots who are faking science. He's the real scientist.

All of us are just idiots who are borderline illiterates. And the reality is the last time that he ever published something was probably around the period of the Renaissance. And yet he feels perfectly comfortable criticizing folks who are infinitely more productive than him. And I only call him out now. I don't know him, but I just despise this type of bully, this kind of arrogance, when they are incredibly honest, hardworking scientists that in their best way are trying to understand the world. But here's this guy who's got a huge soapbox. I mean, I think over 100 million views and visitors on his site.

So he's got a big platform. He's just denigrating everybody. There's a lot of action in that. Like, there's a lot of eyes. If you're one of those people that writes a hate blog, you can get a lot of attention doing that. And some people become very addicted to attention. And if you notice, they start repeating those patterns and blogging constantly over and over again.

And then also, what he also does is anybody who opposes him, he deletes them from the comments. Even if they're respectful. If you're an idiot, you don't know what you're talking about. I became aware of him because of that whole Michael Sherirmer debacle yes the the rape thing right yeah yeah well he accused michael schirmer of rape because he had sex with a woman uh consensually while they were both intoxicated at a conference i think yeah yeah yes oh that's how you got to know yeah well that's how i heard of him right you know And the way it was done was so reckless and so uninformed. You don't know what happened unless you were there.

And also there's photos of Michael Shermer and the girl smiling weeks after this incident. It was all very sordid. Well, it's ugliness, right? It's difficult to understand what he gets out of this sort of frivolous diabolical ugliness it's attention it's attention maybe yeah it gets attention and you know he is the grand poobah of the retarded social justice warriors very true that's a there's a lot of people like that out there and there's again there's a lot of attention in doing something like that um you know and if unfortunately it negates some really good points that they might have about a bunch of different issues.

Because you have to look at it through the lens of this really poisonous person. Exactly right. You know, the first I had heard of him was there was an incident that happened on Psychology Today with a gentleman by the name of Satoshi Kanazawa. Are you familiar with him? No. So Satoshi Kanazawa is a professor, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics. It's a very, very prestigious school in London, England, who was a very popular blogger at Psychology Today. But he had a very sort of bombastic style of writing that sort of drew a lot of attention because of the way he phrased things.

But I guess he thought that he was so popular that he was sort of untouchable. And at one point, he wrote a blog article summarizing somebody else's work looking at racial differences in attractiveness. So, for example, who's most attractive, white women or black women, white men or black men? And one of the results from that data set, this wasn't his own study. He was summarizing somebody else's work, was that black women had been rated as less attractive than white women. And he gave some, I guess, speculative reasons as to why that might be. So that caused a huge, you know, furor. He's a racist. He's Japanese, by the way.

He's a racist. He's Japanese, by the way. He's a racist. He hates blacks. He hates this. They tried to get him out of psychology today. They eventually kicked him out. They tried to revoke. They started a petition to try to revoke his tenure at London School of Economics. But I'll mention two points. Number one, PZ Myers takes this example and says, look, here's what evolutionary psychology is. Here's this racist who happens to be an evolutionary psychologist. All evolutionary psychologists are racist. Well, I mean, that's what racism usually is, right? Generalizations.

All right. I know a friend who is Jewish and who was caught cheating on his taxes. That shows you Jews cheat when it comes to money because they're always looking to make the most money. That's what happens with those Jews, right? So he doesn't see the irony of that. So then I wrote an article, which I frankly, if you don't want me saying, took a lot of courage, where I, and you could probably pull it up, well, you could pull it up if you wanted, where I basically argued that to purge a blogger would set a very dangerous precedent, right?

If you disagree with whatever Satoshi Kanazawa is saying, let his words come back to haunt him, right? His words will be there. If they are truly racist, if he is espousing racial theories that are pure quackery, that will be the biggest punishment he could suffer. But to remove him from the discourse, the public arena of ideas, sets a very dangerous precedent. Now, guess what happened? A lot of my academic colleagues wrote to me privately, said, my God, thank you for having the courage to write

that article. That's exactly what I thought. But I didn't want to write the article because then people might think that I'm supporting Satoshi. So it shows you the cowardice of people. To me, it seemed very natural to write that article. I don't give a shit. I mean, I know what's right and I'm going to support that principle, which is you don't ban people based on ideas that they write. Let their ideas come back to haunt them if they are bad ideas. ideas not only that why is it okay to say that it there's uh there's an evolutionary desire for women to breed with an alpha male like one of these romance novel guys right why is it okay to say that women are more inclined to favor taller men with broader shoulders and longer hair whatever the fuck it is or why is it okay to say that women are less attractive to obese, short men? Why is it okay to say that men would be less attractive to obese women?

Which is a fact. But as soon as you involve race, then you're not allowed to look at the actual statistics. You're not allowed to look at the real numbers. Have you noticed, by the way, that the 100 meters was very racist this year? Was it racist? How so? Black people won? There were no Lebanese Jews who were overweight that were in the final.

Oh. There was no proper representation of the rich tapestry of humanity. Why were they all black? That was clearly racist. Well, we're talking about an athletic event. We're not talking about sex. Right. That was that was clearly racist. Well, that's we're talking about an athletic event. We're not talking about sex, right? It's all sorted because in many ways

You could make the argument that there are women that are far more beautiful than any That are black that are far more beautiful than any white woman that you know sure I mean, there's a broad range of attractiveness and all sorts of different Different races and creeds and different parts of the world. And there's also different people have different things that they're attracted to. Like some people are attracted to short Asian women. Some people are attracted to tall women from Norway. There's a lot of variety in what people personal preference. But when you're just looking at sheer numbers,

which I'm sure he wasn't saying, black women are completely unattractive. Absolutely not. As a matter of fact, I think in the same study, if I'm not mistaken, he pointed to the fact that black men had scored as more attractive. So the result that demonstrates a finding that is racially acceptable is gleaned over the one that is unacceptable that makes him a KKK Nazi. What is he supposed to do? Is he supposed to ignore the statistics? Exactly. Incidentally, the king on this issue is a gentleman by the name of Philip Rushton, who has now passed away a few years ago, who was a Canadian psychologist who spent his career studying racial differences. Specifically, he studied differences in IQ.

And I actually had a personal anecdote with him because early on in my career, I think two years into my original professorship, I think it was in 96, I was giving a talk at a conference. And this hall had maybe 1,500 people. And I hadn't looked at who were the other speakers in my session. But I noticed that people were very, seemed there was a lot of poison in the air. And it turned out, I should have maybe checked before going into the hall, that the gentleman who was speaking immediately before me was this gentleman, Philip Rushton. And he was going to talk about cranial capacity, post-mortem carrying capacity

of black men, black women, white men, white women. And then he would show some racial differences, which would get everybody riled up. And this was probably the only time ever where I was about to give a talk where I was genuinely terrified because I thought that I would just get lynched by proxy because I'm the next guy in line and they're just going to kill me just because I was next on the same stage as him. The good news for me is that after he finished the stock so the room let's say i had 1500 people he finishes the stock i'm getting ready to go up about 425 out of the 1500 leave to follow him and there's no yell at him to yell at him to kill him yeah and and there's maybe like 75 people in the in a room of and I was actually very happy that there were so few people that had stayed at my talk.

The undeniable physical differences in human beings to somehow or another say that bringing those up is racist is really strange. Like there's just some undeniable physical differences in bone structure, bone density. There's just something like, for instance, African-American women tend to have higher bone density uh there's just some thing like for instance uh african-american women uh tend to have uh higher bone density and similar bone density to uh caucasian men which is very rare like in women it's not the same like african-american women have denser bones per capita you know normally rather you're not on average only just in general just in general yeah you know who and who knows what the origin of that is? I mean, you could go into that from an evolutionary standpoint and try to figure out what part of the world they come from, what their ancestors did.

What would have been the selection pressures that would have resulted in this adaptation? They're fascinating conversations. Well, that's exactly what Philip Rushton used to argue. He used to argue, look, I'm not a racist. I don't have an agenda. I follow an interesting line of questions. Yes. And here's the data.

Now, I've asked people who were friends with him privately. So what is the deal on the gentleman? Is he racist? Is he not? And I've never been told by anybody that he was a racist. But here's where I'm confused. If you're showing actual skulls and you're actually measuring cranial capacity,

are you not allowed to do that? Are you not allowed to look at the differences between Asian people and Norwegian people or people from Antarctica versus people? Are you not allowed to do that? Because it seems kind of crazy if you're not allowed to. So that's part, there's a great paper that was published, I think in 2005 or 2006, either in science or nature. I love the title of the paper. I think it's forbidden knowledge.

And it specifically sort of breaks down the types of research questions that if you want to have a viable career as a scientist, you should stay away from. And I think pretty much on top of that list is studying racial differences, especially racial differences that might eventually point to a finding that is politically incorrect. That's an excellent way for you to become the pariah of academia, if not more generally the public. And so, yeah, it's great. I actually did a sad truth clip on my YouTube channel where I talked about, you know, facts are not racist, right?

I mean, in Boolean logic, in mathematical logic, you take a statement and it's either true or false. It has a binary value, one or zero, right? I mean, that's how we create circuitry, architectural circuitry of a computer, right? It has a truth value. Yes, no. So the idea that a statement is racist scientifically, no, it's either false or not false or provisionally true.

But apparently the argument from the other camp is the mere fact that you ask these questions suggests that there must be a reason that is nefarious for you to ask these questions what is the value in asking that question so they sort of infer a nefarious motive to you going down that alley yeah but you can't do that and because it's an appeal to ignorance you're saying that let's all let's all feign ignorance and not look at the actual facts of just the physical bodies of human beings and that they vary based on climate, based on what area of the world, what the people were up to, that were living there for generation after generation that led to the genetics expressing themselves and the way they do in 2016. It's crazy but it's weird it's weird and it's it's almost like in response to what they believe to be illogical criticism that's inevitable it's like this illogical criticism is inevitable so hedge your bets early and say there's no difference between the sexes there's no difference between the races i don't want to get any arguments. I want tenure. I just want to keep promoting ignorance at an institution of learning.

Which is bananas. Incidentally, that's how, you remember earlier you were asking me, so who are some of these detractors of evolutionary psychology? So what you just mentioned kind of can bring us back to that point. Some of the early proponents of sort of this anti-evolutionary position came from anthropologists who saw the potential for biology being misused, or Darwinian theory to be misused, right? So the Nazis can refer to, you know, Darwinian theory, there's a struggle between the races, and we are the Aryans, the Jews lost, so what's wrong with getting rid of them? That's Darwinian. Of course, it has nothing to do with Darwinian theory, but I usurped the theory for my nefarious pursuits.

British class elitists said, hey, there's a struggle between the classes. We are the upper class. Who cares if the lower class are eliminated if we don't fund them, if we don't give them healthcare, if we don't educate them? That's natural selection. Eugenicists said the same thing. You know, what's wrong if we sterilize people who are dull, you know, mentally deficient, people who are maybe a bit too dark, people who are homosexual? Hey, that's cleaning out the gene pool. Hey, that's Darwinian, right? So some anthropologists thought, well, you know, there is going to be misuse of biology. So let's now create a new worldview built on bullshit. So the edifice is built on bullshit after bullshit, but at least there won't be an opportunity for people to otherwise misuse biology. So how do they express that? They created a narrative that basically says that cultural relativism is what defines humanity.

Every culture is unique. Every culture is different. There is no such thing as human universals because that would necessitate biological commonalities, which we don't accept. And so, therefore, for 100 years, anthropology departments have been built on an edifice of pure bullshit, at least the cultural anthropologists. The bio-anthropologists recognize biology, but the cultural anthropologists are driven by a premise of cultural relativism, which incidentally, our common friend Sam Harris tells a great story about moral relativism. And I hope I don't botch the story, but apparently he was at a conference somewhere where he had a chance to speak to the bioethicist who is sitting on the president's commission on bioethics. And she apparently is a sort of moral relativist type.

And he asked her, I mean, are you sure that there are no universal moral truths? whether if there were a culture where people were told that every fourth child has to have his eyes gouged so that he can walk towards the light without eyes, would you support? Well, who am I to judge? So this bioethicist was unable to pass a moral judgment as to whether if you had a religious narrative that says that every fourth child should have his eyes gouged out, she couldn't pronounce a position. And the reason why she couldn't is because she is shackled. She's intellectually shackled by the narrative of cultural relativism.

Who are we to judge other cultures? Hence the lack of criticism for things like female genital mutilation in Islamic communities. And that's why the castrato-in-chief, Justin Trudeau, that's why when he was, before he was prime minister, when he was a minister in parliament, he got very upset when somebody referred to child bride, honor killing, genital mutilation, throwing acid in their faces when they refuse marriage or whatever. Somebody referred to these practices as barbaric and there is no place for them in Canadian society. He didn't get upset by those practices. He got upset by the other politician referring to them as barbaric. Is that true? That is true.

Look it up. Then he later came out and, you know, hedged and so on. Of course, after criticism. Of course. But he's responding to that standard social justice warrior sort of creed. He is the king. And we've talked about this, I think, last time on the show briefly. He is the king of the social justice warriors.

He is taking down Canada to meet where Sweden and the rest of the European hellholes are now becoming as fast as he can. Well, what is his motivation? I don't think it's because he's an evil guy who has nefarious ulterior motives. I think he is simply profoundly misguided because of all the bullshit that you and I have talked about through the years. He comes from an environment of social justice warriors. His dad was the architect. Pierre Trudeau was the architect of multiculturalism in Canada. Now, multiculturalism, as we may or may not have discussed on the show before, has two different meanings. We could talk about multiculturalism as, you know, there are many cultures in Orange County, that's multicultural.

But multiculturalism as a political philosophy is the idea that when people come to your land, you don't ask them to assimilate. You rejoice in the fact that everybody has their unique, distinct cultures where they can express themselves in any way that they can. Well, of course, in some cases, that's fine when it comes to cuisine. It's not fine when it comes to let's cut off some clitorises. It's not fine when it comes to genocidal hatred of the Jews. Honor killings. But from his perspective, he is simply shackled by his inability to have a clear moral compass that says, this is right, this is wrong. Because all he sees is the parasites in his brain that says, who am I to judge? Well, judge, asshole. There are some things that are right and some things that are wrong.

Hmm. Well, judge asshole. There are some some things that are right and some things that are wrong. And when we're talking about things like people objecting to the analysis of cranial capacity of different people, I could see why some people be uncomfortable with that, because I could see how some people would perceive that as being some sort of a justification for racism. And so they would stand there. But as a person who's not racist, I'm not racist, and I don't think you are either, when we're discussing this, it becomes a matter of just being a very curious biological trait. And it doesn't make someone superior or inferior. It makes someone different. And it's fascinating to me because I'm looking at the human evolution of the species

as being this massive complex algorithm that's been going on since the beginning of single-celled organisms branching off into multi-celled organisms. So there's been this process of change and what has made this process so that people that live in Iceland are so big. You know, you look at those men that win those strongman competitions, how many of them are from fucking Iceland? It's crazy. Like, what is that? Was it Viking genetics?

Okay, well, tell me what happened. Why are their bones so big? Why are they so tall? Like, what is it? What is it about certain people in Africa? Marathon runners are always from East Africa. Yeah. Or is it West Africa?

No, East Africa. Which ones? Is West Africa the sprinters? West Africa is the sprinters. That's funny, isn't it? Their muscle structures are very different, right? Slow twitch versus the longer one. So the East Africans, so Ethiopians and Eritreans and so on, Kenyans, have these elongated bodies

that are just built for long distance. The other guys are these packed muscles, right? And that's why you get those differences. Now that is not viewed as racist because ultimately you're talking about success. On the other hand, if you talk about race A is somehow less good at something than race B and where race A scores high on the victimology Olympics, forgive the pun, then you're screwed. You're dead. There was a fantastic Radiolab podcast that dealt with people from one particular part of the world that were amazing at running. And they were talking about their ability to endure pain because of the rituals that they had to endure, the rites of passage as men. Interesting.

Their circumcision done with like sharp sticks and having to crawl naked through thorn bushes and like really dark, dark shit that they had to do. And it was interesting because one guy who had gone through that and became this unbelievably successful runner and just had this unbelievable ability to shut off the pain signal, like to ignore it. But he was also talking about he wouldn't want his son to go through that same process and that he believes that the benefits are not worth it. Interesting do you remember what culture that was um i do not uh jamie could probably pull that up he's probably looking it up right now but it was a unfortunately it's like

i listen to like five podcasts a day so probably a fucking million podcasts ago what is it called kenyan runners it was a kenyan but it's a particular part of Kenya. Very small population of people, by the way, that engage in this really brutal ritual of manhood, rite of passage. It's really, it is fascinating how the, is this it right here?

Yeah, the Kalan. Yes, yes. Kalajin. Kalajin. Kalajin people produced an astonishing number of great long-distance runners. Sub-population of Kenyans. Yes. Only those that practiced those rites of passage. Yeah.

Interesting. Yeah. So it's not just biology with them, but it's also this unbelievable ability to die. And it's called, the actual episode is called Cut and Run because it's about circumcision, about what they're forced to do while they have a stick poking through their dick. It's really hardcore. And that this ability to shut off pain and ability to endure is a key factor in their ability to succeed in running. That it's a mental toughness thing as well.

Like they've maybe perhaps turned on this aspect of their brain. Amazing. Yeah. Have you heard of this other rite of passage? this thing as well. Like they've maybe perhaps turned on this aspect of their brain. And yeah. And have you, have you heard of this other rite of passage? I talk about this in one of my books with the bullet ants. Yes. Isn't that unbelievable? Yeah. I know a guy who's been bitten by one, my friend, Steve, my friend, Steve was in Bolivia. He was there filming his show called meat eater. And he went down there and, uh, he got a bullet ant bite in his foot, and he said it was so unbelievably painful. It actually scores the high. So there's a pain quotient, whatever. I don't know the exact metric, but apparently the bullet ant scores the highest on that.

Yeah. And so this particular peoples, in their rite of passage, you could probably pull it up. They take a glove. They take gloves. They sedate the ants. When the ants wake up, they start stinging the hands that are in those gloves. So there are multiple of these bites. Dozens, all over the glove.

All over the glove. And they have to do that ritual, I think, if I'm not mistaken, 20 times before they are accepted as man or warrior. Yeah, that's someone who could take a fucking beating. Oh, there you go. There you go. Jesus Christ. The amount of pain that you would endure by doing that is just, there was a guy from Australia that did it for some sort of a television special and wound up going to the hospital.

But you see the pain in his face while he's doing it. Incredible. They say it's like getting your hand slammed in a car door 24 hours a day. Incredible. Yeah. And then it lasts a long time. It lasts for hours. What's interesting is my friend Steve, he got stung by this bullet ant.

He said it's unbelievably painful for about an hour or two hours, like where you just like, you can't believe how much pain you're enduring. And then he said after that, he couldn't remember which ankle got stung No, it goes away. It just goes away. And then he's just walking through the woods with these people the Trying to remember the name of the people Yes, yeah, I'm trying to remember the name of these people that he was I Don't remember anyways speaking of bullets can i tell you another story that happened on this vacation so i have a fbi special agent friend here in

southern california and so i frank no fred fred oh you've met him that's true he came here that's right that's right so uh so his last name no i won't i won't i. Actually, we met, Fred and I met another gentleman who's a CIA operative. And we went out, that conversation should be on the podcast. Oh, boy. Maybe I'll give a little few hints later. But anyways, he took me out to a, because we're talking about bullets. I asked him if we could go to a shooting range. And he said, sure, let's do it. So he brought his whole arsenal of FBI stuff. And he had another friend with him who's a security type guy. And so I went shooting for the first time ever. You've never shot a gun before? No. Even though I've grown up in the Lebanese Civil War and I had held a, I think it was a Kalashnikov. I'd never fired a gun.

Wow. It was something. That's interesting. Yeah. I guess you shoot, you hunt, correct? Yeah. But you hunt with a bow and arrow, correct? I've hunted with a rifle, too.

Okay. Yeah, all these animals you see around you, I shot with a rifle. Oh, there you go. I shot that one with a rifle, that one with a rifle. There's one outside with a big arrow. I shot that one with a rifle, too. Right. So I've shot things with both, bow and arrow and rifle.

So when was the first time that you ever shot? Four years ago. Well, guns? No, just guns. Yeah, that's when was the first time that you ever shot? Four years ago. Well, guns? No, just guns. Long time ago. Oh, a long time ago. Yeah. It was unbelievable.

It was really, I mean, it's a lot more. He told me actually, he said, look, I'll book the range for two hours. And either you'll be the type of guy who'll go there and we'll use the two hours. Or you'll shoot once and you'll say, this is not for me. I don't like it. And we'll use the two hours or you'll shoot once and you'll say, this is not for me. I don't like it. And we'll leave. Cause I was asking him,

when should my wife and kids come back to pick me up? Well, it turned out that I stayed for the full two hours, but I can understand sort of the, the response that people might have where, because the, it's a lot more powerful than you think, right?

I mean, you can speak to this probably better than I can. I shot also the, the submachine gun, the FBI submachine gun. I found that a lot easier because it's kind of… Right, the recoil. The recoil. But the guns, and I think they were of different calibers, 22, 45. I don't remember the exact numbers.

Wow, they're incredible. Well, I have some really powerful rifles that were even different, I'm sure, than anything you shot. I have some hunting rifles, like a 300 Win Mag, that is like getting punched in the shoulder every time you shoot it. Because it's designed to shoot moose and elk and big, giant animals. It's a heavy, really strong, powerful round. And, yeah, the vulnerability that you feel when that trigger goes off and you hear that boom. I'm sure you're wearing headgear and ear guards you really have to that's so important there's so many people out there that hunt and shoot without ear protection and they wind up having tendonitis or tinnitus and really yeah yeah all sorts of

issues with their hearing it's so bad for you well what what was interesting is when before we went in he gave me maybe a 10-15 minute safety mini lecture. And the main one that he gave, I mean, this is, of course, live. This is not, these are live bullets. I mean, these are lethal. And he said the number one thing you do is when you, the gun, the gun barrel always points to, because what happens is he said, you know, people pick it up and start doing this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gesture with it. And so to sort of make sure that I wouldn't commit such an error i said here's what we're going to institute as i do every action i am verbally going

to describe it ah that's smart and that really sort of softened aswaj to the fear because then he's listening okay i'm not for example he told me you shoot, take your finger out of the trigger. Trigger discipline. Exactly. So then I would speak it. And by speaking it, it sort of gave me the discipline to never make an error. But anyways, it was a- That's very smart.

They should actually teach people to do that. You think so, huh? Yeah, yeah. I think that your method is probably something that people should adopt. That's very intelligent. You know where it comes from, actually? It comes from some of my research. There's a methodology called verbal protocols. So when you're doing research, you could either ask people to fill out something. So that's where you're only interested in the

output, right? Please watch the stimulus and tell me on a scale what you think, right? Or sometimes I'm interested in the process that you're going through as you're doing something. So in that case, I will have a recorder and I will ask for your verbal protocols. Verbalize what you're doing as you're doing it. What that does is it basically yields very rich data, but that is a real bitch to analyze. Because you're not analyzing numbers on a scale of one to seven. You're not analyzing spikes of testosterone. You actually have to go through these huge transcripts of verbalizations.

You know what it also does? It forces you to exist in the conscious mind versus the reactive mind. You are consciously engaging in a process. So, like, there's a thing called target panic that many archers face. And it's a huge issue because of nerves, especially people that aren't used to performing under nerves. They go into this really almost like a tunnel vision sort of a state and they, they start panicking and they just want to shoot the shot as quick as possible. And so they make a lot of errors.

They make a lot of, because there's a lot of things involved in shooting a bow and arrow correctly. Bow and arrows, it takes so much more discipline than it does to shoot a rifle. Because with a rifle, essentially what you have to do is have your face in the proper position, put your finger on the trigger and squeeze so the shot goes off almost as a surprise. in, put your finger on the trigger and squeeze so the shot goes off almost as a surprise. And as long as you're looking through the scope correctly, you have your rifle centered in or you have your rifle sighted in correctly, it should hit where you want to aim it if the rifle is accurate.

With a bow and arrow, there's so many different anchor points. You have to have the string touching the tip of your nose. You have to have your hand in the exact same place every time. You have to have the string touching the tip of your nose. You have to have your hand in the exact same place every time. You have to have practice countless times. You have to make sure that you're holding your shoulder, your front shoulder in the right position. Your hand has to be holding the bow in a very specific position where you're not torquing the bow left and right.

And so when you go through your shot process, you go through this checkpoint in your mind. When I do it by myself, I say it. I say, okay, hand in the right position, front shoulder position. You say it in your mind or you say it out loud? I say it out loud. I say it out loud. And then when I go through it in a hunting scenario, where obviously you have to keep your mouth shut, I go through that same checklist in my mind. And that sort of in many ways prevents a lot of the panic because that sort of panic exists in the conscious mind. You start thinking, oh, my God, here we go.

Oh, my God, I can't believe it's happening. Don't fuck this up. Don't fuck this up. Ah, you fuck it up. And it's because of this reaction to the overwhelming, unusual stimulation of the event, of the panic panic sets in and you succumb to that unusual pressure yeah so the protocols that i'm talking about they come of two varieties is what's called concurrent protocols or retrospective protocols concurrent protocols is where you verbalize as you're doing the task the The benefit of that is that it's live,

it's top of mind, right? The downside is that sometimes by asking a participant to verbalize, it actually changes their cognitive process. So then you might go to retrospective protocol, which is now tell me in details how you did the thing. Now, the benefit there is that you don't have that interference. But the downside, of course, is that you have memory loss. You don't remember the specifics. Or you also have people who fill in stuff that's bullshit, right? Oh, now the guy wants me to justify how i went and did it now let me

just fill in stuff but that's not really what i did so as is true in most of these methodological choices when you're making these scientific decisions there is no absolute optimal strategy there's always pros and cons to any methodology you use yeah and i think there's also something that happens to people when they do something so many times where it becomes a subconscious action. And then when you ask them to verbalize what the steps are, oftentimes they don't know because they've programmed it into their mind. Like if I asked you to describe in exact detail, what is the process that you tie your shoes with? Right. Like which hand goes first, which finger goes under where. You'd be like, um, how do I do it? Okay.

I take the, but when you tie your shoes, you just go, whoops, caught it. Right. You know, you just go through this standard process. And that happens with martial artists a lot. There's a lot of martial artists that have certain techniques that they've gotten down to a science. But then when you ask them to teach it, you say, okay, what are you doing first? Are you doing this first?

And they go, huh, I'm not sure. And they literally don't know. I've talked to that with certain archers, too. Certain archers, I've asked them, are you looking at the site first, or are you looking at the target first? When you release the arrow, are you looking at the target or the site? They don't know. They don't know. They don't know. It falls into this sort of subconscious state where they've made repetition.

They've repeated the process so many times. They've made this repetition cemented in their subconscious where they could just sort of go into this zombie state. You know, it's funny. I felt that recently trying to play pickup soccer. I felt that recently trying to play pickup soccer. So it's going to speak to that automaticity in exactly how you're saying. So when I was a young guy, young player who can, you know, accelerate past players as if it's nothing, it's a natural thing. I don't think about it. My body reacts. And if you ask me to tell you how I shifted left and right, I couldn't tell you.

you how I shifted left and right. I couldn't tell you. Now as I'm much older and much heavier, those moves that I tried to do, I no longer had the automatic ability. So actually my brain was trying to think, oh, I better turn right, but be careful because my knee is a bit weak. And so I actually felt the difference in the automaticity response, if only by virtue of being much older and much heavier. So there you go. 20 years ago, I could have probably not been able to tell you how I did this. Today, I could tell you how I did it because it was as slow as a turtle. That's funny. Well, that exists in fighting for sure. You drill these moments over and over into your mind so that when you're fighting, they actually just come out subconsciously or they come out without conscious

thought because you don't really have the time to say, okay, I'm going to slip this right hand and then throw the left to the body and then the right high kick. It has to sort of be an automatic response. So you have to be able to go into this Zen state, which is fine in these big movements, these explosive movements like a martial arts thing. But in terms of like an archery thing, you don't want fast, big, twitching, explosive movements to come out automatically. What you want is a very controlled process where you maintain very strict form and you stay calm. And so in that sort of a process, going over this conscious shot making process is probably better for you. Right. Cool. Are you still fighting? No, no, that's really not good for you. No, but I mean, even as a sparring thing,

jujitsu only, you know, that's, and I haven't done that in over a year, but it's just because of a back injury that I've been dealing with. But it's pretty much gone now. But sparring, as far as like kickboxing sparring, I gave that up many, many years ago. It's just even sparring for fun, even just, you have to like really be sure of the person you're doing it with. Because every single time you get tagged, if you looked at your body or your brain, rather, as a punch card. Like say you have 100 holes to punch punch and once you punch through those hundred holes You're fucked right and you might get away with a couple of holes You might get away with three or four or five or ten or twenty. This is all NFL

Yeah, head 100 percent 100 percent and but it pertains to a lot of things and even soccer players Yeah with the head with the heading which is insane you would never imagine like for years for decades rather we had no idea that heading a ball could have detrimental effects but now we're finding out that certain soccer players who consistently headed the ball over a long career develop all sorts of cognitive issues with memory impulsiveness all the same sort of symptoms that you find from fighters incredible. It's amazing because it's not a concussion thing It's a sub concussive trauma thing where you're constantly engaging that Connective tissue inside your brain to try to stabilize the the brain as it Swashes around inside your skull and it starts failing and then the damage of your brain moving around inside of there starts accumulating

Speaking of soccer and your mma stuff i'm triggered by and you're going to be impressed conan conan mcgregor connor connor connor conan connor whatever now i'm gonna get a thousand hate mails here i was trying to be impressive wait for the memes they're coming god i'm dead conan mcgregor be nice to me they're not gonna be nice but it's gonna be okay whatever conan con, whatever. Conan. Connor. Connor McGregor. I'm triggered by him because he's a friend of the nemesis of my top

man. He's a friend of Ronaldo. Oh, the soccer player? Cristiano Ronaldo, apparently. He is? Their buddy-buddy. Oh, okay. And Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have been... And now I hope, I trust that you now know who Lionel Messi is. I now know who Messi... I trust that you now know who Lionel Messi... I now know who Messi is

and I also know that he's a tax cheat. Motherfucker's going to jail, isn't he? No, he's not. I thought he was going to jail. No, I think... Jamie says he's going to the pokey.

He says he's going to get banged. So dudes are going to bang him. There he is. There you go. There you go. Wow. By the way, I will... Gentleman's in great shape.

I will ask you to look at... Can you put it up again? Mm-hmm. I'm going to show you 1985 pictures of me with more defined stomach muscles. Oh, stop. I will show you photos. This is not a big ego showcase. How dare you, Godfather?

It doesn't matter, by the way. You live in the present. Right. Right now, you got a one pack. I'm living in the past glory. Okay. You got a barrel. Let it go.

The six pack is gone. You can get it back, though. That's what we should do. Really? The Dad Sad Six-Pack Project. Yeah. And you sort of film me as I go through the transformation. No, I'm not going to do it.

You're going to do it on your own. I'm busy, bro. How dare you? I'm reaching out in friendship here. This is how you treat me? I'm going to get you a copy of the book. I'm going to get you a copy of the Primal Blueprint. And it's hands-off after that.

Yeah, I can't hold your hand, man. Okay. You're a grown man. You're older than me. You called me son, remember? You're not 50 yet, are you? No, I'm going to get you a copy of the Primal Blueprint. It's hands off after that. Yeah, I can't hold your hand, man. Okay. You're a grown man. You're older than me. You called me son, remember? You're not 50 yet, are you? No, I'm 49. Just turned.

Oh. Yeah. That's right. That's all. Happy birthday. The slide is real. I'm 51, so I'm already, I'm on the down side.

So when it makes it even more difficult to lose weight, you're more set in your ways, your hormone system starts slowing down. It does. Your metabolism, slowing down. It does. Your metabolism, slowing down.

You got to ramp it up, buddy. I do. You got to start off your day with exercise, too. So are you currently at the same weight as you would have been 20 years ago? No, I'm heavier, but more muscle. It's because I've been lifting weights for the last. When I got into jujitsu, like really heavily, which was about 2000, right around the year 2000. I started training in 96, but I got really into it around 2000.

So over the last 16 plus years, I've been lifting way more weights. Like I really got into lifting weights because I realized how significant it is, a factor. And also to protect your joints, it's a big factor too. Just the ability to uh defend yourself better you know i i do a lot of long endurance you know an hour cardio do you but i've always been terrible you do a lot of it how often do you do at least so say i've been here for a month in california so 30 days i probably did it 24 days wow yeah that's amazing yeah what do you do afterwards just so I usually do uh an hour either treadmill or bike or combination sometimes elliptical so these three are usually what time do you do it do you do in the morning oh that's

good in the morning but not very early maybe say you do an hour I do an hour that's a lot man today I did 40 minutes because I was coming on your show uh but uh i usually do about an hour and now here in california i've tried to incorporate weight training usually back home i don't and as i understand that i need to do it more so well i would say that weight training definitely makes your body burn more calories that's for sure and two for two reasons one because when you put on more muscle your your body has more requirements for calories. So it's easier for your body to burn more fuel if you have more muscle. The act of lifting weights is very strenuous.

It burns a lot of calories. And it also, it's just really good for your endocrine system when you start lifting weights, especially if you do things like deadlifts or squats. I can't do any of that stuff because I have three herniated discs in my back. You do? So that's out. What's wrong with your back? What's going on?

So 2005, we were moving from one house to another. I've got a huge library of books. And the reason I'm going to say this will become evident in a second. As you know, book boxes are deceptive in that they look like they're small volume, but they're extremely heavy. I went to pick one up, and I did the wrong motion. I felt my back. And then after that, it would just flare up maybe once a year.

And about four years ago, I went down to bend down, and then I was basically immobilized. What part of your back? It's the left side. Of your lower back? Lower back. There are three herniated discs. So I went to see

a physiatrist and here's his advice. Never bend again. Well, those people are dipshits. There's so many doctors that will tell you don't do this and don't do that. I went to a doctor in 2002 because I had a torn meniscus, just a torn meniscus, really simple injury for someone who's a martial artist. And, uh And they told me to stop doing martial arts. They literally told me, you're going to be a cripple if you don't stop doing martial arts. I'm like, yeah, okay. What the fuck kind of stupid advice is that? I'm like, just scope this goddamn thing and let me get out of here.

I got back on chondroitin and glucosamine. I ate a lot of fish oil. And I've had no problem with that knee since then. Like, they scoped out a chunk of meniscus, which is really common with people that have extreme athletic pursuits, whether it's soccer. Soccer, a lot of guys are tearing, you know, with martial arts. It's a big, it's a normal thing that they do. But to have this asshole tell me to stop doing martial arts, I'm going to be crippled. I just wanted to just say, look, you're a fucking asshole.

You really have no qualifications to be saying this. This is foolish. You fix injuries. You can't tell me that if I don't listen to your stupid, lazy advice. It's just such a dumb thing to say to people, especially when you're talking about a meniscus injury. You're not talking about a severe spinal injury where someone could become paralyzed if they continue the same thing that they're doing. Now you're talking about a meniscus injury. You're not talking about a severe spinal injury where someone could become paralyzed if they continue the same thing

that they're doing. Now you're talking about a meniscus tear. Right. It's really simple. Not only that, they have artificial meniscus now. Now they do stem cells

that actually regenerate meniscus. By the way, stem cell research is another one of those forbidden knowledge topics because of the... Well, it was. It's way more now

because they found so many different methods of acquiring stem cells. But yeah. But during the Bush administration, it was it's way more now because they found so many different methods of acquiring stem cells but yeah but during the bush administration it was hugely problematic and that's one of the reasons why europe got so far ahead of america true and there's a lot of people that go to get certain treatments they got they they had to go to other countries fortunately now there's a lot of stem cell doctors and specialists that are in the United States that are having incredible success with injuries. And a lot of mixed martial artists do it. Demetrius Mighty Mouse Johnson is the best pound for pound fighter in the world.

Just had some stem cells shot into his knee. So this is a really common thing that you deal with some doctors who aren't athletes and don't work with athletes. And then they tell you things like, don't ever lift something again. That is crazy. That is a crazy piece of advice. So you think it is conceivable? A hundred percent. Really?

Yes. I'm going to show you a machine when we get off today. Well, I'll show you in a couple of minutes because we're going to end soon. There's a machine that I have in the back called Reverse Hyper. And it was created by this guy. I've talked about this so many times. People are like, not again. But it was created by this guy named Louie Simmons.

And Louie Simmons is this guy who runs this very famous powerlifting gym called Westside Barbell. And he had a bulging disc himself. And his doctors were telling him they're going to have to fuse your disc and, you know, you're going to have to have an operation. He was like, what? And he couldn't, as a person who is an expert in physiology and a person who's an expert in exercise and teaching people how to get strong, he couldn't understand why if an injury, a compression of the disc caused the disc to herniate, why couldn't a decompression of the disc cause it to reset or to heal? So he developed this machine that does exactly that. It's called the reverse hyper. And I have one of these in the

back. So you see when he's lifting the weights up it's strengthening the back when the weights go down it's actually pulling the back apart it's slowly decompressing the back in an active form but has there been have there been any studies that show that if you use this your herniated disc yes yeah he himself has done I mean no peer-reviewed studies, but athletes have used this time and time again, along with decompression. Spinal decompression is also really important. Spinal decompression, meaning like hanging from your ankles, hanging from your waist. I have a couple different devices in the back that I can show you that allow you to relax your back. And

yoga is also critical. Yoga is huge because there's a bunch of positions in yoga where you are actively decompressing your back. There's one where you reach back, you grab yourself behind the heels, you straighten your legs out and you literally are pulling with your arms and you feel your back go like pop, pop, pop. You're releasing tension and pressure and you're actively stretching your back. So I'm walking out of here invigorated by our chat and filled with hope and optimism. About diet, about exercise.

How much do I owe you, doctor? You know me nothing, my friend. But it's really important for people to work on their core and their spine. And there's so many people that don't. I have a friend of mine who's this big, strong, powerful guy. And he played football and he's done a bunch of different things, but he's never done any real significant core work. And I started showing him some different exercises like windmills and things along those lines.

And he was stunned at how weak his lower back is. Right. Because so many people don't work those muscles. And those muscles are critical for athletic performance, for your ability to move and to protect your spine from injury. There's a lot of injuries that you can avoid by just being strong in your core, in your column, your spinal column, and developing strength around that whole really super sensitive and delicate area of your back. But decompression is real. There's a bunch of machines that doctors have.

And when I hurt my neck, one of the things that I did is went to this doctor. They would have this machine. It kind of straps you in. It just gives you these gentle pulls. What about the upside down one? I have one of those, too. Those are good. Those are good.

Those are good, but you have to learn how to really relax your back. A lot of people, when they hang by their ankles, they tense themselves up. It sort of defeats the purpose. You have to learn how to... You have to learn, and it feels weird. Like you could feel yourself pulling apart. But you have to relax that. You have to allow that to happen. And you have to do it really consistently.

It has to be something you do all the time. It can't be something you do like once every now and again, like, oh, I'm stretching my back out. Because it's going to go right back. And also posture is significant. It's a really important part of so the way i'm sitting right now it's not good yeah i mean that's why these chairs that we're sitting in we're sitting in these um ergo depot chairs and these chairs are designed to make you sit at a

good posture so if you sit like this you'll sit with your spine in a in a good position normal chairs a lot of times your back gets rounded and you sit into them and you sink and then you develop this pain like right around your mid back or maybe perhaps your lower back depending on whatever ailments you've got. These chairs, I sit in these fucking things for hours. I don't have any problem. And I think they're actually in some way beneficial because they force a good posture. It's actually like a static exercise. What do you think about the standing working desk?

It's better than sitting sometimes. But I think these things are great because these things force your spinal column to be in this correct position. But I think the standing ones, a lot of people have a lot of success with that. Also, a lot of people have success with those exercise balls. You ever sit on one of those exercise balls?

They force you to kind of exercise. As you're sitting there, you have to readjust yourself in a posture. Yeah. There's also a lot of those standing desks. They develop these standing surfaces that are there, a surface that's very varied. So instead of standing on this absolute flat, static sort of a floor where you're in the same position all the time. Instead, it's this dynamic surface where it has all these humps to it,

and you move around on it. Wow. So you'll lean on the left leg, you'll lean on the right leg. Have you seen those things? See if you can find one of those surfaces, standing surfaces for standing chairs. It's really interesting. I had a complete rupture of my Achilles tendon when I was a soccer player, and one of the things that I had to do in 14 months of rehab is to stand on one of those boards with a ball.

Yeah. Because just to relearn how to move your ankle to adjust. Did you have to have it repaired surgically? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Massive. That's a big one, right? I was finished after that. I have one of those in my knee. I have an Achilles tendon from a cadaver in my knee.

Yeah. When you get ACL surgery, instead of replacing your ACL with a cadaver ACL, which is significantly weaker, they take the ACL tendon and replace it with Achilles, which is way bigger and way stronger. It makes your Achilles tendon, or it makes your ACL, rather, 150% stronger than a regular one. I don't know if you're aware of how it works with cadavers, but when they replace a ligament, what it does is essentially acts as a scaffolding, and your body re-proliferates this cadaver ligament with your own cells. So instead of it being a normal size, it becomes this fat cord that really keeps your knee

in place. Because I've had both my knees blow out i've had two acl reconstructions one in each knee no that's not it there's other one that's just a chair this guy's on it's a standing desk um surface uh standing surface pull up standing surface for uh for standing desk or surface for standing desk. Standing desk surface for standing on? I don't know. I bet Ergo Depot has it.

Well, there's a bunch of those different kinds of standing desks, but moving surface for standing desk. I don't know. Just don't show me this while you're Googling. I'll go fucking crazy. But I don't even know if it's good. I just saw that someone developed one of those. So when I had my ruptured Achilles tendon, I'm not sure if you ever heard somebody describe what happens.

You actually feel as if somebody hit you with a sledgehammer on your Achilles tendon. When it pops, it feels like you were hit. I mean you drop like somebody shot you. After the fact, so I had the surgery. This was I was a student Graduate student at the time at Cornell I went back to Montreal to have the surgery when I when I went back to Cornell I asked my fellow soccer players what happened who was the guy who tackled me? That had hit me and then somebody's nobody hit you you just drop by yourself

And then I had done you know, I found out that that's what everybody feels. Like an explosion. It's an explosion. But the way your body feels it, it's as if there was an impact. Somebody just clobbered the back of my leg. Nobody was around. I just dropped. That totally makes sense.

It's amazing how fragile we are. It's incredible. People are so, the human body, that's similar. That's one of them. That's a standing board. This one is a surface. It's a surface you stand on. And it's just an uneven surface that has many different layers to it, many different, no, that's not it either.

Whatever. There's a bunch of them. I'm sure, but, you know, there's all these different solutions that people try to come up with for the real problem, which is not sitting in the proper posture at a chair. And I sit in this desk doing these podcasts. Yesterday I did nine hours. Wow. Yeah. And when I'm doing that, I'm just sitting like this.

My back doesn't hurt at the end. Do you feel that your mental acuity is as strong going into podcast number three as it was in number one? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's only nine hours. It's not that big a deal. As long as you're eating food. Well, the reason I ask this is because earlier in my teaching career, I could do back-to-back

lectures, each one being three hours, and it was no problem. Now I can't do it, not because of mental acuity problems, but because when I stand up, my back starts hurting by about hour four. I can't do it. not because of mental acuity problems, but because when I stand up, my back starts hurting by about hour four. I can't do it. Well, let's wrap this up. And I want to show you all this equipment because you should really invest in this stuff. Sounds good. It'll make a big difference in the health of your back because it's one thing really they just don't look into enough.

And the only time they look into it is when they're already injured. Right. And I really wish people would pay way more attention, and I wish I had known this before I got injured. I got injured from martial arts because just the nature of jiu-jitsu and wrestling, there's a lot of people that get injured. I know a lot of guys that have had disc replacements and all sorts of fusions and stuff, and it's just the brutal nature of the sport.

But I think some of that, at at least can be prevented with proper maintenance and proper spine health. Okay. Decompression, stretching. I look forward to your continued- Do you do yoga at all? I don't. You should do it. You know, I do stretching, but I do it in exactly the way that you said I shouldn't,

which is very sporadic and irregular. Yeah. Don't do that. It's got to be a daily thing, man. It's got to be one of those things like brushing your teeth. You write down, you do it, you get it out of the way. Just force yourself. To me, there's certain things that I just can't go through a week without doing.

And I don't allow myself because I know that there's just – it's easy to just fuck off and not do it. It's easy to just be lazy. But when you do that, you do your body a disservice. Quick final anecdote before we end. I know we have to end. Just to point to your incredible reach. So I'm recognized on the street reasonably often.

Usually it's because of visual cues. It's beautiful, right? This is what happened about two weeks ago. I think I might have even tagged you on Twitter about it, but you probably didn't read it. about two weeks ago, I think I might have even tagged you on Twitter about it, but you probably didn't read it. I'm being served by a waiter slash busboy in a place in Venice Beach.

And the gentleman comes up to me and says, excuse me, are you- The gadfather? Are you on? I said, yes. He goes, oh, I recognized you by your voice because I listened to Joe Rogan's podcast. Wow.

So this is the first time that I was recognized auditorily, you by your voice because I listened to Joe Rogan's podcast. Wow. So this is the first time that I was recognized auditorily, not visually. That's a pretty astute listener. That's a guy who really listens to Joe Rogan. But I mean, I say that story simply to point to apparently how infinite your reach is. That's pretty crazy. Or I have a very unique, very sexy, very deep voice. You definitely have that. You definitely have that. But I also think that guy is probably pretty exceptional in his ability to pick out voices. That's pretty crazy. Or I have a very unique, very sexy, very deep voice. You definitely have that. You definitely have that.

But I also think that guy is probably pretty exceptional in his ability to pick out voices. That's amazing. Yeah, because your voice is, it's distinctive, but not super unusual.

You wouldn't think so much, right, exactly. Yeah, well, listen, man, it's always a pleasure having you in. Thank you so much, man. You have an open invitation,

of course, anytime you're in town. And I really do hope you wind up moving here. Thank you, buddy. Fuck those winners up there, buddy. Love you, man. Thank you. I you wind up moving here. Thank you, buddy. Fuck those winters up there, buddy. Love you, man. Thank you.

I love you too, brother. Thank you. All right, folks. We'll be back at 5 o'clock in about 40 minutes with Josh Zeps. See ya.