The Jordan Harbinger Show - 1333: Chris Kolbe | Is Your Gym Shirt Slowly Poisoning You?

Episode Date: May 26, 2026

HyperNatural co-founder Chris Kolbe reveals what's hiding in your synthetic clothes, why it matters, and the simple fix that won't break the bank.Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1333What We Discuss with Chris Kolbe:Polyester, nylon, and spandex are all plastic used in modern fashion — and most people don't realize they're wearing petrochemicals against their skin. When asked directly if they wear plastic, people say no, while pointing at their synthetic gym shirt.The danger is twofold: plastic itself requires chemicals like phthalates (hormone disruptors) to become soft and pliable, while topical finishes for "quick dry," "wrinkle-free," and "water-resistant" claims form a layered cake of chemicals that comes off first and leaches into the body when activated by heat and sweat.Marketing has sold consumers a false premise over the last 30 years: that it takes plastic to achieve performance. Chris Kolbe, a 30-year apparel industry veteran, argues the industry solved performance while quietly creating a whole new set of health problems.Real-world proof exists where it's hardest to dispute: airline uniforms. Delta's purple polyester uniforms caused health problems so severe that flight attendants had to quit working, prompting lawsuits — a rare case where constant daily wear made cause and effect visible.You don't need to torch your closet or buy $400 underwear — start where exposure is highest. Focus on high-contact items (underwear, socks, leggings, gym shirts, bedding), read labels, ask brands for actual receipts over vibes, and upgrade one item at a time. The closet is just the next frontier after we've cleaned up our food, water, and skincare.And much more...And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here — even one sentence helps! Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course!Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom!Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger!This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: HyperNatural: 15% off: hypernaturalstyle.com, code 15JORDANLufthansa Allegris: Go to Lufthansa.com and search for "Allegris" to learn moreBetterHelp: 10% off first month: betterhelp.com/jordanAT&T: Get an iPhone 17 Pro for $0: att.com/iphone or visit an AT&T store for detailsButcherBox: Free protein for a year + $20 off first box: butcherbox.com/jordanSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When it's time to scale your business, it's time for Shopify. Get everything you need to grow the way you want. Like, all the way. Stack more sales with the best converting checkout on the planet. Track your cha-chings from every channel, right in one spot, and turn real-time reporting into big-time opportunities. Take your business to a whole new level. Switch to Shopify.

Start your free trial today. This episode is brought to you by Lufthansa. Lufthansa Allegra is an innovative, elevated travel experience across all classes, focusing on each person with their own individual and situational needs. Look forward to your own feel-good moment above the clouds. Visit Lufthansa.com and search for Allegra's to learn more. Liftonza Allegrais, all it takes is a yes. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger.

On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers, even the occasional Emmy-nominated comedian, Russian spy, former jihadi, or former cult member. If you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our starter packs, these are collections of our favorite episodes on topics like persuasion and negotiation,

psychology and geopolitics, disinformation, China, North Korea, crime and cults, and more. It'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the the show, just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today on the show, most of us have spent the last decade trying to clean up everything that goes in or on our bodies. We're buying organic food, filtering water like we're prepping for some kind of apocalypse bunker, interrogating our cookware, side-eyeing fragrances, reading skincare labels like we're defusing a bomb, and yet every day we wrap ourselves in mystery fabric from the global petrochemical confetti cannon and go, yeah, this seems fine. Your Jim sure.

your underwear, your socks, your leggings, your golf polo, all that stuff pressed against your skin for hours while you sweat, move, overheat, marinate, and pretend that moisture wicking doesn't sound like something a wizard says before poisoning an entire village. Today we're asking how much of the modern wardrobe is smart performance engineering, how much is marketing sorcery, and how much is just plastic with a better publicist? And to be clear, this is not a burn your closet, move into a yurt, and start weaving hemp underwear under a full moon kind of episode. This is about what's real, what's hype, what brands should be proving, and what normal people can actually do without taking out a second mortgage to replace their freaking socks.

Here to help us sort the science from the scams is Chris Colby, who's spent roughly 30 years inside the apparel industry, which means he's not some wellness influencer yelling at polyester from a cold plunge. He's helped build this world, and now he's asking whether the industry solved performance while creating a whole new set of problems. So today we're getting into forever chemicals, synthetics, sweat, microfibers, greenwashing, bio materials, jade, crab shells. Yes, apparently the future of clothing may involve jewelry and seafood scraps, and the five-minute closet audit that will help you make smarter choices without

panic buying $400 underpants from a guy named River. This episode is brought to you in part by Hypernatural Clothing, the founder of which I am speaking with here today on the show. Here we go with Chris Colby. So Chris, you spent roughly 30 years inside the apparel industry, which is like a whole last career, I would say. What's something sitting in the average person's closet that you now look at in a completely different way? One of the things I'm always really amazed to find is when I talk to people and I ask them, like, do you wear polyester, nylon, spandex? And everyone's like, yeah, I think so, whatever workout thing. And I realize that when you ask them, do you wear plastic on your body? And they're like, no. They look at their hands and they're like, yeah. I'm wearing, spoiler alert, your shirt.

And then I think only plastic pants. So there's some kind of jogger, which when they get wet, it runs off immediately. And I'm like, oh, these moisture wicking, I don't even know, they're waterproof-ish and breathable. There's no way that they're not plastic, basically, I think is what I'm saying. And so when you ask people, do you realize polyester is plastic? And plastic is coated in chemicals to give it certain performance characteristics. the overwhelming population does not know, is not aware. And then you ask him, again, like, do you realize that these things on your body

have adverse effects when you're wearing them, particularly if you're sweating in them, and they're horrified to know that it actually leeches into their body? And so most people respond with, I know plastic and polyester is bad for the environment, but I didn't realize it was bad for me. Yeah. So I looked this up, and you might have to, correct me because I did it with Chad Shabit, so that's the caveat. That's the asterisk by me having said I looked this up. I ran some of the studies you sent through the machine as well. And I want to

clarify something. So the plastic itself, it doesn't look like that leeches. It looks like the chemicals they spray all over the plastic. That's what, I guess, leeches or goes into your skin. But the plastic itself, the fibers, they're pretty durable. Well, they do start to break down, but it seems like the stuff worth freaking out about, at least in the short term, is that they spray all kinds of stuff, like you said, on it to make it waterproof, to make it more durable, to make it, I don't know, softer or shiny or whatever the heck those things do. That stuff is when it heats up and gets wet from sweat, starts to stick around. The answer is it's both.

Plastic is petrochemicals. To make plastic soft and pliable requires chemicals that have like thalates in them, which are hormone disruptors. And that's just to make it soft, right? And then there's all these other chemicals that go along with plastic. That's what Thales do. They make it soft. Because those are in shampoo and stuff, too.

Yeah, it's in a whole lot of things. And so just inherently, plastic in apparel requires chemicals. And then when we market that as, say, quick dry or wrinkle-free or water-resistant, those are topical chemicals that are applied to the surface of the plastic. And those things come off first. I see. And so you're getting, I would call it like a layered cake of chemicals. Yum.

Yeah. And then we activate them in. different things we do when it's on our body. And so that's where people don't entirely understand that we've been sold over the last 30 years, that it takes plastic to have performance. Yes, I want to get into that in a little bit. It's funny you mention the Thelites because Dr. Shana Swan, who you probably never heard of or no, that was episode 658. She was fascinating, and I never had so many emails from people. My friend, in fact, one of my friends here in New York said, I replayed that episode like 50 times because we threw away everything in the house

that have these, and I was like, gosh, I hope she's right about this, because he, like, went through his every bathroom and they're trying to have kids. So he's like, I'm getting rid of every hormone endocrine-end-dryrd and disrupting thing that I have. And he showed me essentially a laundry basket full of shampoo bottles, cosmetics, because they're in everything if you don't buy the one that doesn't have that in there. And the other thing that I love about her was she said the words gooch and taint on my show,

even though she's 90 years old. Yeah. Did you see her Netflix special? I haven't yet. I think you or someone in your camp sent me the link to that, and I have it bookmarked to watch. Yeah, it looks really good. There's some really good information that's come out more recently, and this would be one of them is the plastic detox on Netflix, which is about Chana, Swan. She's great, and I'm still 12 years old mentally, so I laughed at her references there. Yeah, you started talking about the genitals and Thelite Syndrome. Yeah, it was some sort of syndrome or something.

Yeah, there's a Thelite syndrome, which shows up in hormone disruption in the womb. it actually stunts the develop of male genitalia. So the thing with phthalates, it's in almost anything synthetic, and it's both the plastic and the things that are being put on top of it to turn it color, to make it perform, to make it soft, all of those things.

And so with all of that, this is getting into our body, and it's causing all kinds of havoc. The industry is kind of solved for performance, but then created a much worse problem than, oh, my gosh, I have a cotton shirt on at the gym. Yeah. So I think if I was just sort of over my arc of my career, like in the 1990s, what I found is cotton was still the dominant fiber in the market. It was still the majority of what we were purchasing consuming. And it was roughly over 55 to 60 percent of the market. In 2006, polyester is the dominant fiber. And polyester nylon and synthetics in total is like 69 percent of the market now. This has shifted over 35 years to such a

significance that natural fibers are really becoming the minority of what we wear. My closet, there's leather jackets, there's cotton t-shirts that have, I don't know, stretchy stuff in it, which I assume is plastic. And then almost all of my pants are these comfy, like athleisure, plastic, sheeting joggers. I guess before we demonize synthetic fabrics, what did they genuinely solve for customers? Because there's a reason they became popular. And there's a reason my closet is full of different colors of this exact same pair of pants. So what happened is really in the mid-2000s, we were started being sold really that performance was technical, like fabrics, like polyesternalia, the sheen, the durability, the wicking, all these things became common knowledge. And they became a real way to market the products as performance.

And so everybody says, I need this for wicking. I need this. It was being applied to everything. And it was both the synthetic materials, but also the chemicals that were being applied to everything. polyester, but also cotton. So we were making wrinkle-free cotton pants. And so what happens is it became like a marketing growth vehicle for apparel companies. It worked very well. You think about your docker's pants and your wrinkle-free dress shirts and all these things, just chemicals being put on top of whatever the fabric might be. In the mid-2000s, if you remember, Under Armour had the campaign

that came out, Cotton is the enemy. Yeah, I don't remember that, but I read about that when I was prepping this episode. And I remember Under Armour, right? I remember I had these white haines t-shirts that I wear all the time and I was like, I'm replacing all of these with, I don't know, Nike dry fit or whatever the competitor was. And, yeah, and then I walked around the gym with a t-shirt three sizes too small for the next five years. We ended up demonizing natural fabrics and we kept putting more, more performance chemicals and things on in marketing that way to the point where the athlete's boom that came over the last 20 years, you think about yoga, running, high rock, CrossFit, all these things that really exploded, all required performance materials and products.

And the big brands that were known for their athletic paralysis and health and wellness became synonymous with these fabrics. And it pushed it to a point where the consumer believed that is the only thing I can work out in. It is the only thing that works. It is what makes me a higher performing athlete. And a lot of that is just marketing. The idea of working out in cotton pants, shorts and a regular shirt in my mind due to marketing akin to I have to go to the gym, but the only shoes I have are these pad and leather shoes that I used to wear at my law firm, but working out in those, right? It's weird, and you would go there and your feet would sweat and you think, oh, these are not ideal, but at least them in the gym. That's how I would feel

about wearing cotton pants at the gym, because how dare you? You can't afford to go to Lulu Lemon and get some, I don't know, what are the Kung Fu pants to work out in? Yeah, so there's a little bit of like you're not legitimate if you don't have. What a low. But the thing is, it's as much a look as it is a real tangible performance. So you ask what synthetics can do well. There are things that there are known for, right? Compression, strength. Think about sports bras, leggings. These are things that synthetic materials do well because they are strong and durable. They can pull you in, suck you up, do all these things that natural things don't do. And they also, they make your

butt looked good. So there's vanity in all this. And I think we were sold really hard on this to a fault. And so what I see is we've lost the plot because what we're thinking we're doing hot yoga, running clubs, gym workouts, sleep health, underwear on our bodies to make ourselves better. It's actually making us worse. And so there's a real negative downside to all of this that is not talked about. And there's a real trade-off for what we think is performance in terms of our health. So the chemicals that are sprayed on there are the main trade-offs. Also, there's environmental trade-offs. I assume it's easier to, what is it called life cycle analysis? You have a cotton t-shirt. It's probably way less of a pollutant, probably biodegrades way faster than a pair of plastic

joggers like I'm wearing right now, for example. Anything that's made from plastic is worse. It's going to be around till the end of time, basically. And it's not just sustainability. It's just worse across the board. And generally, if it's bad for you, it's bad for the environment and vice versa. And so I got into this project that I'm in today called Hypernatural because there are better bio-based ways to make performance. There are safer ways to make sustainable materials remarkable. You can actually give them tangible benefits. And when I discovered this later in my career, I realized it's as much a marketing problem as it is a product problem. And so there's a real opportunity to show people that actually going back to nature isn't a tradeoff, it's actually better for you.

Yeah, so that was kind of my next set of questions is, okay, so what am I giving up if I don't wear plastic shirts anymore? And I actually have been wearing this hypernatural shirt. I thankfully managed to remember to wear to this interview. In my mind, there's no difference between wearing this and wearing what I usually would wear to the gym or around during the day. I think the main difference is this looks like a normal shirt but actually is also performance-esque, whereas the other stuff, like I said, it's three, you know, just sort of you want compression. I mean, that's all you get with those things. Yeah.

You hit on the truth, which is it looks. Yeah, it looks normal. I can wear this now and nobody thinks I'm going to the gym after this because of the shirt that work. Right. Which could be seen as a negative for someone who thinks they're getting performance. Yeah, sure. But it also could be seen as smart by someone that says, I could actually wear this today,

tonight, workout in it, and wear it tomorrow. This is exactly what I've been doing. This probably is TMI, but I'm not a wash my clothes every day kind of person. I wash them when they're dirty. Yeah, I wear it during the day. Maybe I go out again at night or I change at night and then I wear this the next night. And then I work out at it and then it goes in the laundry. I don't just wear it for 10 minutes or go to dinner and throw in the laundry.

And this shirt has lasted several days. And I do what most guys do that we don't admit, which is smell the armpits and see if you can wear it again. This has done a pretty damn good job. This is up there with, what is it? Reno wool where it just doesn't really smell that bad unless you really take it to desk. The thing is you're speaking to, I think, what is going to be the future of our industry, which is people are going to start buying things that are better quality, have more versatility, but they can actually last longer.

I hope you're right, man, because the fast fashion thing, I've done shows about this, it's depressing. You go to these stores, I don't want to mention any names or brands, but the ones that sell stuff, they have 8,000 skews a year or whatever. When you look at the environmental damage from these things and you look at people who love shopping and they buy hundreds of things per year for $8, right? I would love to think that people are going to spend more on something that just lasts a really long time. I like to do that.

But right now you walk into a department store, fancy European department store with red font. You buy 10 things and then you just, I don't know, you wear them during your trip and you go, all right, half of these are unraveling already. Donate. Yeah. And I think we've gone through a high-displementation. disposable cycle when it comes to apparel since 1990. And that's a big part of why synthetics have grown the way they have, because they're cheap. They're easy to produce.

You don't have to grow them, right? You don't have to work with a farmer. You don't have to deal with cotton prices and all these things. Oil is fairly stable until recently. But the idea that it's just cheap, economical, and it's really profitable to sell these things. And so you can sell, Like the sheens of the world have built their businesses on just selling the cheapest, most dirty things at a really attractive aesthetic and just churning them through and then they go into the land film. And so what I realized early on and starting my business is that sustainability actually doesn't sell. You're going to say, hey, this shirt costs four times as much as this other shirt, but it's going to last maybe five or even ten times longer and look better and perform better. Some people just go, yeah, but I want three different colors, so no thanks. Usually it comes down to just cost.

Or like, no way, that's expensive. And then they buy five items that cost way more and last half the time. But they're not doing the math. I'm not doing the math either, most of the time. I don't care. Most people don't. What's happening with sustainability, and you're starting to see this week Everlane was sold to Sheen. I don't know if you saw that.

Oh, really? Oh, that's kind of a bummer. Yeah, so radical transparency goes into radical no transnational. transparency. It's one of those things where the machine doing it dirty cheap is a better business model today. The businesses that set out to run a more ethical business, more transparent, sustainable model are suffering because of inflation, cost increases, and they're making it very difficult to be profitable. And the only way you can really get things of quality to scale is that you've got to make it commercial. That's disappointing. Since you mentioned that brand,

they used to sponsor my show a few years ago. My closet drawer is, full of Everlane T-shirts. And I thought their whole thing was we care about the life cycle of this. And I remember those were in some ways similar, right? They were like high performance but looked nice enough to wear out. And I guess you're right. It's just there's more money in creating something that has a huge margin but is actually crap.

It's soon to be garbage the second it arrives at your doorstep. People don't realize that companies like Sheen and the big fast fashion companies, even like the dupe brands that are copying high-end. designer and bringing it in a cheaper price. A lot of these are factory direct models. And so what happens is they were able to import goods with no duty straight from the factory to the consumer. And that made Sheen and other people really, really successful in the last five years.

Now, the problem with that is when you send it direct from the factory, you have no idea what's on it. There's very little quality control. The factories get to decide what chemical finishes it uses. And a lot of them are just using recycled finishing from down the road from other mines and, you know, sort of industrial. What does that mean? Recycled finishing. What does that mean? They're using recycled chemicals. And you could buy it on a secondary market and you could apply it to your products to give it wrinkle-free or have it travel safe.

But when you open up those packages come from those factories, often there's a smell. Oh, I was going to ask about the smell. So I always joke about this with my wife. I go, hey, I should open this outside because this is full of Chinese factory air. And sometimes you do smell it. It's like a car exhaust was in the bag. I don't know if that's, So it's really in the Chinese factory, but I assume that when you spray something and it sits in a box for a month, when your luggage comes off the plane and it kind of vaguely smells like jet fuel, that's what I feel like I'm opening in my kitchen when I open a package from some of these places. Yeah, so that's a huge warning song. Yeah, I would say so. And not only just washing it isn't the answer, but you have to understand that there's very little oversight on these products coming to the United States. And in general, the textile fashion industry is one of the most opaque and hard to manage supply chains in the world.

There's a lot of parallels with textiles and food, but food is way more regulated than textiles. Yes, I remember there was a big thing about Xinjiang cotton, so cotton from Western China, which they thought might have been farmed with forced labor. And so they banned it, but it's just basically impossible to find out where your cotton comes from, unless you're going to spend money on some sort of private detective consulting firm to, I don't know, walk your cotton from one farm to the factory to the United States. So when these businesses like Everlane come out, they talk about transparency and traceability, well, it just costs more. And so you're already a premium brand by just doing that. Think about Patagonia.

These brands pay more to do it clean and do it transparent. That is not a good business model for a lot of people. And so it's much easier to do it cheap and dirty and opaque. And that's what the majority of the industries do. So when you smell things that don't smell right, listen to your body. If you're wearing things and you start to get rashes, listen to your body. You know what? Actually, I know people that's happened to, although I don't know if we blamed the clothing,

but that's probably the first place we should have looked. So in my 30 years in the industry, what I didn't think a lot about until maybe five years ago is what's actually in the products we were making. When the average shoppers sees, I don't know, moisture wicking or anti- odor, what's going on under the hood? You say chemicals, but some people are going, everything's a chemical, Jordan. Even you've said that on your show, which is technically true. But we're talking about industrial chemicals. I want to close a loop here.

You said the chemicals are sometimes recycled. What are they recycled from? Because that also sounds like it could be kind of gross. Yeah, it could be from any industry. So it could come from the mining industry. you could come from other textile offshoots from industrial bases. But these are all industrial manufacturing supplies. So a lot of them are sharing sources, right?

And so it isn't necessary someone there's inspecting these things to make sure that they're chemically safe for your body. Because the truth is, even if they were, we don't know much about the chemicals that are in our textiles. We just don't. At all, from a science perspective, we just don't really know what they do. There's probably been since the 1950s about 100,000 synthetic chemicals created in the world. Yeah, the whole world.

It's a long time. It's a lot of chemicals, but yeah. Okay. And about 10,000 of those have been mildly tested for human toxicity. Oh, they don't test all this stuff, mildly tested,

as in we tried it and the person is still alive. So you're talking about somewhere between 80 and 90% of the chemicals. We don't really know what the toxicity is. in the product that we're wearing.

Speaking of clothes with hidden chemistry, here's a quick word from the people whose chemistry with this audience keeps the lights on. We'll be right back. This episode is also sponsored in part by BetterHelp. Everybody's got stuff. No matter where you are in life,

how successful you look on paper, or how well you think you're holding it all together, challenges come for all of us. And you don't have to just white-knuckle your way through it. BetterHelp is now accepting insurance in many states with average co-pays around $23. I've been using BetterHelp for years now and therapy has become non-negotiable for me. Working with a licensed professional helps me stay grounded, get out of my own mental spin cycle,

handle life like a reasonably sane adult, which is good news for everyone around me. Just fill out a quick questionnaire, check your coverage in minutes and they help you match with a licensed therapist based on what you need. They've served more than 6 million people globally, me included, and members rate live sessions an average of 4.9 out of 5 based on over 1.7 million client reviews. BetterHelp is in network with major health plans. like United Healthcare, Cigna, Aetna, and more, with average co-pays around $23 for eligible members.

Fill out the questionnaire and check your coverage today at betterhelp.com slash Jordan. That's betterh-h-E-L-P dot com slash Jordan. Average co-pay is based on eligible members. Actual cost and coverage may vary by plan. This episode is sponsored in part by AT&T. You know why I love summer? All those plans we made,

they finally make it out of the group chat. Seems like there's more time to fit everybody in. Whatever you've got in store this summer, capturing those memories is a must. That's why I love the iPhone 17 Pro I picked up from AT&T. It's center stage front camera auto-adjust the frame to fit everyone into group selfies. You don't even have to turn your phone. No awkward cropping or asking strangers to take it.

Just the perfect group selfie every time. And AT&T makes sharing those moments with everybody easy, because you've got to share the pick or it didn't happen, right? Right now at AT&T, ask how you can get iPhone 17 Pro on them with eligible iPhone trade-in, any condition, requires trade-in of iPhone 15-plus or higher, excluding iPhone 16E and 17E requires eligible plan. Terms and restrictions apply, subject to change, visit ATT.com slash iPhone or visit an AT&T store for details.

Don't forget about our newsletter over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash news. It's a great companion to the show, very practical, and a two-minute read just about every Wednesday with little wisdom nuggets from past episodes of the show from us to you. Again, Jordan Harbinger.com slash news is where you can find it. Now, back to Chris Colby. Dr. Shannon Swan said there's Thalates in your shampoo and their endocrine disruptors, and the industry is kind of just like, that's okay, just don't eat it.

Yeah. And so then most regulations that exist in consumer products and textiles is about safe levels of exposure. Not necessarily no, but just safe levels of exposure. What's that called the LD50? You can have this much gasoline per year in your cereal. So when it gets down into the real nitty-gritty of it is you think that the government or there would be some body of organization globally that would be tracking and managing the risks profiles of these things,

like there would be in food. But there's shockingly not. There's no FDA for clothes, basically. There's not even a label. Oh, really? So all they have to require to put in on a label for clothing is the very basic information of what it was made with. But if it's less than 2% of the content,

you don't have to put it in there. And so that could be chemicals. There's all these things that don't qualify. And so what happens is when you really look at it, the shocking thing to me is, like, the Europeans are leaders in this. They're probably the best in class as far as being more rigorous about sort of universal restrictions protections. And they ban about 1,600 known chemicals on textiles. In Canada, it's about 400 toxic chemicals that are banned from being on textiles. And those are all allowed here in the United States?

In the U.S., it's 12. We restrict. 1,200? 12. It might be even less now. Because we seem to be going the other way. Wait. Okay.

So if there's only 12, what are they? They must be pretty bad if everyone else has 1,600. And we're like, now these 12, though. So you're starting to hear more about, you know, like, this is also part of the opaque problem. It's like, these are all acronyms and people don't understand chemicals or chemistry, right? But people don't pee fast, right? I've heard of that because it's the forever chemical. God knows what that means.

You know, you don't want it in your Teflon pans, right? Which is now banned. but you don't really know it's in your leggings. You don't know it's in your wicking. So PFS is a nasty carcinogen, and it does not go away. So, okay, I didn't realize that. I thought everyone was just like, it's a forever chemical. It never goes away.

And I thought, so what? I probably have a bunch of plastic toy soldiers in my stomach that I chewed on as a kid that are still in there. But I didn't realize it was also a carcinogen, and it lasts forever. It's all of those things. In PFAS forever chemicals, we know we don't want it in our pans. We know we don't want it in our food, but it's in our leggy. and it's in anything that has quick drying, wriggle-free, it's dangerous. And so BPAs, BPS, these are things that are microplastics.

These are things that we know we don't want in our food, but they are in our clothing. And so these things are slipping through the system because we want the performance, we want soft plastic, we want the ability to dye our materials a nice color. And so when you put it us all together is we just don't. don't know what's on our body. And there's a lot of evidence and studies that are showing that when these things are on your body, you create heat, friction, and moisture. It literally activates these chemicals and solvents on the materials.

They go into your sweat. When you say activate, you just mean it breaks down the bond between the chemical and the fabric and it just goes wherever. And so there's a term called porosity, right? Our skin is porous. And it takes in about 60, 65 percent of what's on it. I didn't know that. I thought the whole point of skin was keeping it.

everything out. It does until you break down your microbiome with these chemicals and it leaves you more exposed. Yeah, it probably keeps out germs and water, but maybe not industrial chemicals that have not something you found in nature generally. We just don't know what it's actually doing to us. It's like a low dose toxicity every day. And when you sweat, create heat, friction, and moisture, it literally activates these things to the point where they release into your sweat and then they go back into your body. So the analogy I was used with my kids is, would you heat, your food in the microwave in plastic. And if you're an 80s kid, the answer is, sure, why not?

What could it possibly do? What could go wrong? It's no different on your body. When you heat these things up, it literally causes these things to loosen and come into your body. So if you wear workout clothes, do not work out in them at all. The first thing I would say is if you wear polyesterine nylon or spandex in an exercise, sweat environment, stop.

That's going to be a tough one, Chris. Hey, if you have all those nice workout clothes that you spent thousands of things, of dollars on, make sure you never work out in them at all. Just wear them to the office in an air conditioned, comfortable environment only. There's practical steps here. Obviously, when it's 60, 70% of the market, it's in everybody's closet. But it doesn't have to be this way. And I do think it starts with education and awareness and knowing that there are certain things you do not want on your skin all day long. There's certain things that you don't want on the most sensitive parts of your body. You think about genitalia, under the arms, neck. These are you,

These are all areas that are the most sensitive of your body. The neck is sensitive? I never heard that. I can imagine why someplace that sweats a lot would be. Those are your cues. If you're sweating there, it's sensitive. Those are the areas I would avoid, if at all, possible, wearing anything that's highly synthetic or branded as some level of performance.

I hate being doom loopy in these episodes, and I understand there's concerns with synthetic fabrics. Most people are going to slowly either not do anything about it for now or ever, or slowly phase them out, but do I have to go back to wearing something my grandmother, I don't know, made on a loom? What are we going to do about this? You mentioned before, is there a tradeoff between some of these natural fibers and performance because I don't want to work out in wool pants? I don't want to necessarily have to become Amish or a Quaker in order to function in modern society without dying from chemical exposure.

I can tell you just having been on the side of the business side of this is that you have to have commercial solutions that people want to wear. And sometimes perfection is the enemy of getting it right. And I think there's a lot of people in our industry that want to get it right. They want to do well. That's good news, I suppose. But it's never been harder to do it. So the reality is you have to have things that are commercial that are economical for people to really make a change. And so I'm of the mind that you can build businesses that are both innovative, clean, and commercial that people want to buy most of the time, right? And you still might want to buy some other things that maybe they're not perfect. It's kind of like food, right? There's

sometimes you're going to want to have a bag of Cheetos, right? But at the end of the day, you know that isn't the right thing to do, right? And you're aware of it. Yeah, it's advice. You try to make the better choices most of the time. And I think apparel is exactly the same way as food. And so the more you understand and know, the more choice you're given that are commercially viable, the more likely the market's going to shift because the government isn't going to fix it for you. Everything being cheaper and more readily available isn't in itself going to fix it.

What's going to change it is consumers demanding, having things that are transparent and clean, safe, but also feel good, look good. They do the job that you want it to do. And so the ability to do that is the key. And so there are things that exist today that can be better options than wearing plastic underbodies. Yeah, nobody wants to work out in a burlap sack, even if that's the most sustainable option.

It's not going to happen. So it does have to be consumer-led. So what does a responsible brand need to do? Because auditing your suppliers and, I don't know, having third-party testing of your fabric, this stuff, it's so much more work than it is to just, I don't know, pump out some sludge and molded into a pair of shoes or a shirt. Yeah, it starts with making a real commitment to do things naturally. or from a bio-based perspective. So we have a bio-based technology

where we're taking regenerative waste from natural sources and we're repurposing it into a new fiber that has enhanced abilities above just regular cotton and has enhance abilities better than just marino. Can you explain that a little bit? You said you're repurposing waste?

At first glance, that sounds like something you would not want to wear. Hey, it's recycled waste from a plant. But don't know, it's all natural, so don't worry about it. I've got some all-natural waste that I wouldn't want to wear. In the spirit of sustainability, a lot of innovation has happened in this category they call celluloseics. They're coming from bamboo or you hear things coming from regenerative cotton,

in things that are basically scrap waste and they're being broken down and put it to a solution where then they're adding in other ingredients like we use chayatin, which comes from shellfish, crab shells. We use things like jade stone, which comes from the waste of jade mining. And we have a technology that allows it to get down to a nano-sized level. So it's so small that when we put it into this solution and we turn it back into a solid fiber, that they're inherently built into the fiber versus it being sprayed on as a chemical. They're natural ingredients built into this fiber.

And then we can combine this fiber with other natural products. So we use subpoena cotton in ours, which is the best cotton in the world, strong, dies well, growing the United States, expensive. Yeah, because it's grown in the United States. But it's the best. Where do we grow cotton in the United States? Arizona, California, a lot, Texas. I never thought about that.

Yeah, almost all Supima comes to the United States, and it is literally the best. I've been using it for years when I was at Land's End and other places. It's really phenomenal fiber. It's actually so strong, but in the 1940s, they used it on the sidewalls of car tires. Really? Wow. What makes, this is a tangent, but what makes strong cotton? Is it a different kind of cotton seed or is it the processing of whatever standard cotton that just makes it better?

It's all genetics, right? Strands of cotton have longer fibers. And so Sipima is one of the longest fibers. And so when you get elongated fibers, it makes it strong. That makes sense. But also makes it soft and smooth. And so this is kind of nature's best example of how you can make high quality, high-performing cotton naturally. from breeding different kinds of cotton seeds over centuries.

Yeah, it's chinoin, it's soil, it's all of those things. And so on top of that, with our fiber, you can combine it with cottons of choice, of clean cottons, better cottons, which we do. We also can combine it with wool. We can combine it with hemp. And there's all these other things we can blend it with. You're kind of developing a third way. You can avoid going just back to cotton and wool, which is great, but this is better.

And you can avoid plastic and chemicals and unknown. carcinogens by just going natural. So better material in many ways negates the necessity for the chemical to mimic that same function from the sound of it. If you have a long cotton fiber that's soft and smooth, you don't need to spray that garment with something that makes it feel softer and smoother. Yeah. So you can avoid the chemical applications and you're building functionality naturally into the fiber. And so things like Cayetin, which is pretty interesting, like these shellfish properties are natural biopolymers, which are antibacterial, and they're also antimicrobial, so they resist odor. So the shirt you're wearing, you could wear it time and time over again because

of the cayotin inside. Yeah, I wore it for a week without watching it just to see. How long can I wear this thing before it starts to sink? And it was like six days. It does work, but what's cool is it's doing it without chemicals. And so the jade stone we put in, also known in Chinese medicine for centuries as healing, anti-inflammatory. Yeah, I mean, that's a lot of it. I mean, that's a little woo from me. Go ahead, but that's a little bit like, okay, Jadestone. Yeah, my chakras are aligned over here, but that's not what I'm going for. But what we chose it for actually a more practical reason is jadestone is actually thermoregulating. And so it actually has a cooling functionality to it. So it can regulate your skin temperature up to about five degrees cooler

just naturally. And it's pulling heat away from your skin. So you get the circulation effect without having, again, a chemical application to give you the performance. So these are all things where nature, if you find ways to repurpose it, you're taking waste and you're creating natural performance in a whole new way. And this is, I call it the third way, because most people don't know about man-made synthetics or celluloseics, but we know 10-cell and Modell. That's what those are. We have our own version of that has a patent pending on it that has our own 88 different ingredients we put into it, but they're all coming from natural bio-based sources. So you have your own fabric, your own proprietary fabric. It's the lowest level.

is the fiber. So the fiber, we're making fiber in a way that can become a fabric and it can become a full product. And we can put it with so many different things. And the idea is that, because they're bio-based materials, is the future. How do you invent a fiber? Is that something you did? Or you'd get to hire some serious scientists to come up with a new fiber. Yeah? So my partner is a material science expert. He owns his own mill. And so we work with everyone from the cotton farms to making the fiber, to making the yarn, to making the fabrics and even the products. So we do the whole thing. And so when I say the fashion industry has an opaque supply chain, we know the farmers. We know the mills. We know where the fiber is being made. We know all of these things.

We know what's being put into it exactly. And so that's how you get trust. That's how you get verification. Now, we also do certifications because that's how you should be doing this in this industry. What does that mean? That's another company that's not used. examines the material? Yeah, so we do everything. It's third-party lab tested. So we've lab tested and proved the cooling. It's 99.9.9% antibacterial and antimicrobial.

What does that mean? It can't kill 99.9% of the bacteria on it. That would be like hand sanitizer. It does when it's on the fiber. So the fiber itself nullifies any. And this is why you don't get odor, right? Oh, okay. I just thought maybe my hygiene was decent, but no.

Yeah. It's a proof point when people, like, wear it for days and weeks. And they're like, yeah, it literally, it works. And we also test our stuff with third party for chemical safety, too. So there's Okotex 100, which is the gold standard in textiles. That would say that this is chemically safe. They test the final end product, right? So wherever it went along the whole supply chain,

they test the final product to say, this is chemically safe. So Okotex is one way for the consumer to know that you're getting something that's clean. We also use blue sign dyes. Basically, it's a type of dye stuff and process that says, This was done responsibly because the dyes are actually the worst part of the chemicals that are in your clothes. Really? Why is that? So there's all kinds of dyes, but dyes is the original chemistry in our industry. It goes back to the industrial revolution.

And dye color was created by chemist trying to solve polio. And it created a color mauve. It's like a dusty pink. And so all the chemistry that we have in our industry, origin in the dyes. And the dyes turning color, when they created the color green, they're using arsenic and copper. And it was killing people in the Industrial Revolution. And, you know, the people in the factories were having all these lesions. So you could just see the toxicity right away. But over time, what happened is things were basically swept under the rug. And over time, things became a little

bit more regulated like they are now in Europe. But when synthetics came on the market, the toxicity in the dyes required to make plastic turn of color. They use this thing they call azo dyes. And azo dyes are the most toxic dyes, and they're what's needed to dye plastic a color. I see. Wow. I can't believe they used arsenic in copper.

Green not so lucky anymore. I guess you only find those things out the hard way when you have factory workers, I don't know, spontaneously dying from preventable. Oh, gosh, that's just it. People say, well, I'll just go back to organic botanical dyes. And those are also not so commercial because they fade. They don't hold up over time so people think it's bad quality.

And so the thing with dyes is if you go with natural fibers, the dyes can be more safe. They can also be more regulated by things like Gauts and Okitex and blue sign. But there is no safe level with synthetics. There is no safe level for dyeing a polyester nylon spandex garment. Because these azos dyes is what's required. is they're just toxic and they have all the things BPA, PFS, BPS that you don't want in your body. It's crazy. I always have work in progress.

But food, you can buy organic or whatever, you know, other healthy food. Skin care got cleaned up. That was kind of a thing, especially 10 years ago or so. Like, hey, make sure you don't have microbeads or whatever in your shower gel. Cookware got scrutinized with the Teflon pans and everything. Why do you think clothing escaped for so long? Clothing kind of got a pass until now-ish. It's such a huge problem, and it's one of those things where the fashion apparel industry is like a $2 trillion economy.

It's big. And because the global supply chains and the networks that it requires to make it are international, it's very hard to regulate. And so I think the consumers generally have overlooked it. In the big apparel companies have been okay with that because it's more economic. how cool to do it the way we're currently doing. I also think it's just emotionally harder to detox your closet than it is a pantry. If I throw away a bunch of shampoo, I might be like, oh, man, that was kind of expensive. But if I start throwing away $200 pants, $50 shirt, or whatever, I don't know, you can tell I

I don't buy my own clothes. If you start throwing away a bunch of your pants and shirts, that stains when they're still in good condition, right? Or you're donating them, I guess. But still, it's like, oh, man, now you got a $2,000 dent in your clothes. closet if you've got a nice amount of clothes. It's not an overnight thing, and it doesn't have to be. So I think there's ways to simplify your wardrobe. Look at the things you wear most of the time. It would definitely start with the things that you sweat in, things that you sleep in, and things

that you wear close to your body on your skin most of the time. Underwear, your t-shirts, also things that you sleep on, look at your sheets. And so these are things where you do it one bit at time, just like your food, right? You walk into a whole foods, right? You want to buy everything. but you still go to your regular grocery store and there's a little organic section there and you shop that too. And so I think the ability to know where to focus is a good start, finding brands that you can trust

that are certified, you know who's behind the brand. Do they control their supply chain? If it's just some faceless company running an algorithm, making product and shipping it directly from the factory, you should be worried. If you're buying things purely on some functional performance criteria, you should be worried. And so these are things you can eliminate right away.

And God forbid you do hot yoga in these things because I've talked to friends who are hot yoga instructors and they've talked about women having red dye running down their arm after hot yoga. Oh, my God. My producer on this show, he's super into hot yoga. But I've done it with him, and I want to say most people in there

are wearing a very minimal amount of clothing because it's L.A. You might as well show off that bond. But red dye running down your arm is, that's a gross visual. It doesn't have to be that way. We've been sold that we need all of these things for performance, but if the t-shirt you're wearing can do three or four different things for you,

isn't that more valuable than a five or six, $20 plastic teas that lasts less than a year? I would love to have five shirts instead of 35 shirts. Stuff adds up over time, especially for me personally, every sponsor sends a bunch of stuff. So it's usually too much, right? They'll go, oh, what size are you? Medium. And then I end up with 15 workout shirts that are, I don't know, plastic-y. And then I turned down the sponsor because I don't like them, but I still have the product five years later.

So I've got drawers full of stuff. I've started donating it, obviously, because – but I bet you I have 50 shirts, 45 of which I did not purchase. And, yeah, they're all red dye run down the arm at some point. So I think the vision for the future is if you simplify your wardrobe and you have that one drawer, you open up and you know, everything in there is clean. It can do 80% of what you needed to do. You just simplified your life. And then you just kind of find ways to iterate on it. And the truth is, for most people over the age of 40, you've already got your uniform.

I was going to say, man, this is like dad mode. A couple pairs of pants and a couple shirts who wear them every day. Yeah. So those heavy rotation items, those things you're really loyal to, just scrutinize those. Make sure that they're clean, they're natural-based. And then with hypernatural, what we're trying to do is show you that you can still have performance and have it safe. You can still have cooling and breathability and antimicrobial and still have it safe. These are the things that you want on your body.

And we're just getting started. But as we get this patent pending, we're going to work with other brands too, because the best way to get this to more places is to partner with people that are already heavily synthetic and offer them, hey, we have a platform. In our technology, you can even put pharma-grade zinc oxide into the fiber to give you sun protection. Oh, that's cool. If you didn't have to put chemicals on, if you're getting it into the fiber. Again, most of these chemicals, because the quality is not great, they only last 30 washes

and where does it all go? Out into the water, into the oceans. The forever chemicals in all your clothes are washing into everything else, too. And so the best way to do this is just go back and start from what you wear most of the time, get good quality, have it last, have it do a lot of different things. And then if you do need a rain shell to go on a hike, just recognize that thing has Phafas in it. And it probably is going to run off into the environment. This is why even like ski resorts and stuff have a Phafas problem because a lot of this stuff is running into the environment because there's such a concentration of these types of products.

And so you can get PFAS free things from Patagonia now, but that's newer. That's more recent. And so there's just so much of this stuff that goes into the environment. whether it be the microplastics or the chemicals, they just don't go away. And so that includes your body. I ever really thought about that with the ski resorts and everything. That completely makes sense. I'm curious what the most misleading words are on clothing tags and labels. Because you said if there's less than, was it 1% or 2%, you don't even have to write it on there. Imagine if that was the case with a food ingredient. And it's like, oh, this is just all juice, except for 1.9% is motor oil, but we don't have to put that on a label. That would be

horrific and it would never pass mustard but on clothes, that's fine. So we don't have a really rigorous labeling requirement much like food would. And so you just put very basic information on there. And so there's something on your label today. If you ask people what they're wearing, most people would turn

around, look at their label because they don't know. So if there's things on your label that say polyester, nylon, spandex, polyamate, acrylic, microfiber, anything that you don't really recognize, it's probably synthetic and it's probably petrochemical based. So that's a warning sign. But you don't really know what's inside those things, and that's the level down that most people will never know, right, unless you take it to a lab but have it tested.

And so you look for certifications that say it's Okotax or blue sign and things like that just to know that, okay, this is, at least it's tested to be safe. But if you see things like cotton, wool, viscose, hemp, those are bio-based natural things. If you see rayon, okay, that is also biobased. Rayon is a cellulosic material that's very soft and silky, but it does come from original bio-based plants and ingredients. So these are things where if you look at your clothing like you do your food, you'll start to see it differently.

And you'll start to understand that when you stop wearing these things, these plastic things are in your body, and about a month goes by if you keep wearing that T-shirt, you're going to put on something plastic and your body's going to have a reaction to it and you're going to know without looking at the label that this isn't natural, it isn't bio-based. And so your skin will adapt

to not wearing these things because these synthetics, they're causing your skin to stress. How do you measure something like that? I think for me that's almost like, is that science? How are you measuring whether my skin is stressed by wearing something?

Usually your skin tells you because it breaks out in a rash. people have psoriasis, people have autoimmune disease. These are all reactions from your external environment. And a lot of them they can't pinpoint, but there's a lot of correlation and cause associated with textiles on your body. We'll be right back after I check whether my socks are P-FAS-free or just emotionally unavailable. This episode is sponsored in part by Butcher Box. The biggest difference between an average cookout and when people actually remember is the quality of the food that you throw on there. That's why I like Butcher Box. They deliver

premium responsibly sourced meat and seafood right to your door, which means you're starting with really solid ingredients. And for us, convenience is a huge part of it too. With kids, busy schedules, people dropping by, and summer chaos in general, having high quality protein already stocked in the freezer saves us constantly running to the store. Lately, we've been grilling burgers and steaks, and Jen's been making incredible fried chicken wings with clean quality oil better than any restaurant. People really do notice the difference. Butcher Box has over 100 premium protein options, everything from grass-fed beef to wild-caught seafood, no antibiotics, no added hormones, no fillers, just clean, reliable protein, you feel

good serving. We genuinely look forward to our monthly butcher box delivery, and I think once you try it, you will too. Plus, they have a really great deal going on right now. Jen will tell you all about it. As an exclusive offer, new listeners can get their choice between free sirloin tips, ground beef, or chicken wings in every box for life, plus $20 off when you go to butcherbox.com slash Jordan. That's butcherbox.com slash Jordan. Don't forget to use our link so they know we sent you. This episode is brought to you in part by Lufthansa. When people talk about travel, they usually focus on the destination, the hotel, the restaurants, all the stuff that happens after you land.

But the flight is part of the experience, too. Just like a great hotel can shape an entire trip, so can a great flight. That's exactly what Liftonza Allegra is built around. On a long haul route, comfort matters more than people realize. If you're cramped, tired, and can't relax, you feel it the second you land. But when a flight is comfortable, you can actually stretch out, rest, work, or just enjoy the ride. It changes the whole trip. I was thinking about that on my recent Intercontinental Lufthansa flight.

I got so comfortable. I honestly didn't want the flight to end, which is not something you say very often after a long international trip. That's why Lufthansa Allegra's stands out. It's built around the idea that people travel differently. Liftonza Allegra's business class has five seat options. You've got the suite, the privacy seat, and the extra long bed,

the extra space seat, and the classic seat so you can choose what works for you. And that's what I like most. It feels elevated but still practical. More privacy, more comfort, more thoughtful design for the way people actually travel now. Visit Lufthansa.com and search for Allegra's to learn more. Lufthansa Allegrais.

All it takes is a yes. Limited availability on select routes. More routes coming soon. If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do. Take a moment and support our amazing sponsors. They make the show possible. All of the deals discount codes and ways to support the podcast

are searchable and clickable over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. If you can't remember the name of a sponsor, you can't find the code. Email us, Jordan atjurbinger.com. Somebody here will dig it up for you. It's that important that you support those who support the show. Now, back to Chris Colby. I definitely have seen this on Instagram where someone's like, I got this new thing and like, look at this. And there's red lines all over the place.

I see when my wife is scrolling Instagram, there's a lot of female influencers that do stuff like this. Guys don't usually talk about rashes in clothing. But I think women are always wearing sports bras and stuff and they're tight and they are made of God knows what. And then, yeah, you get a rash on your back from that thing. So synthetic plastic materials, they deplete your natural biome on your skin that protects you. Why is that? Because the chemicals kill. You create static electricity. And there's even been tests where guys wear like a synthetic sling for a period of time. Synthetic sling. Tell me more about this. No euphemisms on this show.

It would be grape smugglers, whatever you want to call them, around the male testicles causes infertility. And then there's been studies for this. And then when you go back to natural, they become fertile again. At some point, I've got to look that up. That's one of those citation needed. That's so crazy. I can't believe it. It's actually not a new, it was done probably over 10 years ago, but it was, they were doing it from the perspective of birth control and the idea that the statically

was seen in the things in the synthetic for actually causing male sperm counts to drop. And so if you look at right now, where guys are really interested in this subject is where infertility and hormone disruption is happening. And so people are switching their underwear because it's having a lot of effect on their to see. Static electricity. That's crazy to me that that makes any sort of difference because there's static everywhere, but I guess it's not always flowing through your clothing that is touching your body. Our bodies naturally want natural fibers on them. That's what over the human evolution we've grown accustomed to. So wearing these synthetics in our body is not natural.

The chemicals coming off them are not natural. The off gassing that's coming off them, not natural. It's causing all of these chronic diseases and the health effects that we can, can't entirely identify. But I have people on my team who have psoriasis that only wear our stuff to sweat in, and they have no problems. What is psoriasisic in? Just a dry patch of skin? Yeah, it's skin irritation, dry, redness of skin. But if you have autoimmune disease and you go to your toxicologist and you try to understand, like, what's causing this, the first thing they'll tell you is quit wearing polyester, nylon, and spandex. Jeez, I've only talked to a toxicologist a few times. This is a tangent, but I got blood work done. It was like, oh, your mercury levels

really high. And then I called the toxicologist because it's alarming. And he said, oh, do you eat sushi? Yes. Oh, then don't worry about it. Why not? Is the mercury from sushi better for you? And he goes, well, if you didn't eat sushi and your mercury level was this high, then we'd really have something to worry about because you're probably getting it from your house or something. But if you just eat fish, then you're going to have this level of mercury. And I'm like, but it's red. It's like a 10 out of 10. And basically, as long as you can explain why that is and you don't do it all the time, I guess it's quote unquote fine-ish, but I don't know. I didn't love that answer. It's crazy to me that they would tell you to stop wearing those types of fabrics. But I guess if you're having high

mercury, high-ish mercury in your blood is not the end of the world, but if you're breaking out with dry skin patches all over the place all the time and they're uncomfortable and possibly getting infected, that's a real problem. Yeah. I think everybody has different reactions to things. Roughly one out of five have chemical sensitivities out there. We don't realize the low-dose we're taking. And there's just a lot of trust we put in the system that it's not giving us a high level of toxicity. And one of the biggest misnomer is that somehow low dose is okay in certain things, but with these phthalates, PFS and BPA and BPS, all these thalates, there's no such thing as a safe level. Yeah. So Dr. Swan, I think one of the things she mentioned that I still find hard to wrap my

mind around is a lower dose of some thalite chemicals is actually worse for you than a higher dose. And I believe she explained it in the episode, and I can't remember exactly why. But it had to do with your body getting a low dose. It changes a bunch of things. But if your body gets a high dose, I don't know, maybe it somehow recognizes that it's an unnaturally high dose and the reaction is different. I just found that really disconcerting because you think, oh, it's only a little bit high. That's worse than having it a lot high somehow.

Yeah. And so this is why if you have horrible. hormone disruption concerns, or you have infertility concerns, or you have autoimmune sensitivities. We are living in the age of chronic disease. We all know it. We can see it. People in their 30s getting cancer. And so you have to take clothing seriously. And so it is a huge blind spot. And if we thought about our clothing like we did our food and our beauty, we would actually change a lot faster. And so we're here to kind of say that there's no safe levels of dyes on plastic performance products. There's no safe levels for quick dry and wrinkle-free. If it says wrinkle-free and it's cotton,

that's just as bad. That's dangerous. So really pay attention to the labels and the marketing and who you're buying from if you really want to avoid this environmental exposure when it comes to our clothing because the simple adage is what's on our body is in our body. It's just like, you know, what we eat. And people are not taking it seriously in a way that they're actually changing how their wardrobe is being built. And so we're here to say that it's not a huge sacrifice. You can actually make better products using nature and working with nature. Our approach is it shouldn't be a tradeoff. There should be simpler, better, more versatile ways to do this.

Normally I'm not a huge fan of just, oh, it's natural, so it's automatically better because it's a kind of an appeal to nature fallacy. But as long as you don't have the same sort of tradeoffs, where would you still recommend synthetic performance fabrics, if anywhere? It'd be areas that you need high durability. Okay. So if you need a tent, I would definitely go with synthetic, right? Yeah.

If you want something that has high, you know, abrasion, like you don't want the knees to wear out or things like that, you do need synthetics because they are usually more durable. And so industrial type of things. But if it's touching your skin all day long, I don't think you need it. And I think everything from wool to cotton to supernatural materials can be legitimate alternatives. and you may not get the perfect weight, or you may not get the perfect water protection in certain cases, but it's way better than taking in the stuff. And I think to me it's like we're always looking for perfect and cheap,

and I think there's no such thing. What's the difference between bio-based, which I've heard you say a couple of times, in biodegradable? They're different. Yeah, they're definitely different. I think brands kind of abuse the terms, though, so I'm curious what the actual definitions here are. So bio-based fees it comes from nature.

in some shape or form, it can be repurposed, like we're doing. You're repurposing it into something new, but the origins are bio-based, or it's almost like a version of plant-based, right? But although a lot of times it's minerals or other things that are natural. Biodegradable just means that it is going to break down over time in the ground, and different fibers and fabrics have different biodegradability. Like, leather takes a while. What we make with Hypercool jade breaks down when like three to four months. in the ground. So it's like biodegradable quick. Polyester plastic, five, six, seven hundred years, something like that. Because these things are built for durability also stick around a long time in the ground, right? And so we use like mother-a-pearl buttons on our shirts because those come from

nature, right? So I would say that's natural or bio-based. Our fiber comes from scrap cotton, jade stone, and other minerals. That is biobase because it comes from nature. It's more likely to break down. Now, some things, bio-based plastics that exist, you think about your straws, right? Those do break down, but they'll take a little bit longer, right? They're engineered to last to certain length. So where you see durability and things that are meant to last, they also last longer in the ground. This is a really creepy reference, debatable whether I should leave it in, but I went to Cambodia and I went to the killing fields on a rainy day. There's bones and stuff still, Like I remember stepping on something and it was stuck in my sandal and I pulled out a jawbone with teeth in it because it had washed up and stuck in my sandal horror movie level surprise with that kind of thing.

And you can see there's fabric from people's clothes sticking out of the ground. And it's, I remember thinking, it's just this weird juxtaposition of, wow, that fabric really made it a long time in the dirt and the rain in this moist environment. because all that's left of that person is like the bone and then their clothes is still there. We were bearing some of my shirts in my backyard as a test just to want to see like I want... Thank you for changing the subject a little bit, by the way. And it worked.

The worms took care of it. Over a year, we had it in there. I live in Wisconsin, so it gets a little cold in the winter. But it did work, and I do think one of these things is originally we wanted to make the most sustainable product remarkable. Could we make the best possible product at the least amount of impact. And then we realized sustainability is really the same thing as health and wellness. And so health and wellness is about giving people something that's clean, natural on their body

that actually works with it, not against it. And so the idea is that the way we really move sustainability forward is we're using wellness you can wear. And we can start to do health supportive things with natural things in your body that are not only health negative, but they could actually potentially be health supportive. And so we're moving down this path of how do we build things, not only have quality, but they have this sort of bio-based technology, but they're also in line with our bodies.

We get that jade, get your chi, chakra, chi energy going in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, I brought you some jade stones. I was just down in Sedona, and we were, like, doing all the crystals and all that stuff, you know. And we were in the vortexes, and it was really fun. That's funny. But the cool thing is,

We all intuitively understand that when we get back to nature, it's good for us. Camping makes you feel good. A lot of that's probably not having your freaking phone in your pocket all the time. But yeah, there's all these things that we're not natural to us. And when we get further away from it, we do feel different. And so the same thing goes with you're wearing these things in your body every time. It does feel different. I wear our shirts literally every day have worn them for two years.

I go back and put on my favorite team jersey. And I just literally can't make it an hour. And so what you realize is your body does adapt for better or, worse to what it's wearing. Are you sure that's not some psychological reaction that you're having to your clothes? Like, oh, I'm wearing a plastic shirt now. I don't mean to make funny in here, but I might just do it a little bit. There's these guys that say, like, I'm bulletproof. I do bulletproof this, bulletproof that, bulletproof coffee. And then it's like they smell gluten and they have a breakout reaction. I'm like, how bulletproof are you where you can't even smell McDonald's before you have to, I don't

get an IV bag out of the trunk? To me, again, it's not about perfection. It's about doing what intuitively make sense in going in a natural direction. But just you understand that we've been marketed to for 25, 30 years to believe that we need all of these things to perform. And it's not entirely true. And there's ways to do it better for you. And if you really care about your food, the way you're fasting and you're doing all these things for your bodies to optimize, then you should really pay attention to what's on your body most of the time. And if you're really tuned in, you're going to realize you'll probably be even healthier and better performing by going with natural solutions versus trying to force yourself into thinking that this looks technical.

I need this to golf in because this is what a golf shirt should look like. Not true. Golf shirts in the mid-90s were cotton. Look at Tiger Woods early days. He's wearing cotton. Now look at us today. We all look like we're going to some sort of European disco. The fashion is what's dictating the desire.

the marketing is that we need these things for performance. And the real truth is when you pull out of that and you put something on more natural and you do it for a month or two, you start to see like, you know what, I don't really need these things. Yeah, it reminds me of when they used to play football and they had those leather helmet or no helmet. Or you look even like 70s NBA, right? The little tiny shorts and the cotton socks up to their knees and it's just like, oh, yeah. Or baseball uniforms back in the day. Yep, this is all just cotton. Nobody cared.

They still played, now it's all moisture waking or whatever. I'll tell you a quick, really funny story on performance. I didn't know that our stuff could actually really perform for like an elite athlete. And so one of the creative directors on my team is an Iron Man triathlete. Oh, yeah, okay. Yeah, he's running six, seven miles a day, every day, rowing, swimming, you know, 10 miles. Those guys are built different for sure, yeah. And this guy's legitimate took our t-shirt, the one you're wearing,

and last summer wore it every day on a six-mile run. the whole summer, never washed it. Oh, I was going to say never washed it? Oh, I was going to joke about that. He really never washed it? He swears that he has never washed it. Oh, man. But he said what was really interesting

is that when I'm wearing this, on the top half of my body, I can feel the temperature being cooler. I felt more breathable. And then my synthetic leggings that I'm wearing on the bottom felt completely different. It was warmer, not like suffocating.

And so the contrast was really noticeable. to him. And so he's like, if we could make things that had the compression and the durability, which is something we're working on, because there is bio-based synthetics coming that are derived from corn and sugar, that can start to give us some of those functionalities that we need. And so when these high-end athletes are really in tune to their bodies, and so when someone who's an Ironman triathlete tells you that this works, and I legitimately had put it through the paces, it makes you realize that there is a lot more we can do with what we consider to be performance beyond just plastic.

Speaking of plastic performance, let's hear from our sponsors because even the cleanest closet won't save you from the filthy economics of podcasting. We'll be right back. Also, y'all, we have a subreddit for the show. If you're a redditor, you can talk about episodes of the show or anything you like over on the Jordan Harbinger subreddit.

Now for the rest of my conversation with Chris Colby. Most of us, well, I don't need compression, right? I don't need it. I want breathability and comfort, and that's why I choose most of the things that I choose. And yeah, I've got some stuff that I've had to get rid of over time. I remember the leggings craze, get the leggings and then put shorts over them. And I just remember thinking, like, these are the most uncomfortable things. I'm not doing anything that requires compression for long periods of time.

This is totally ridiculous. So I think part of that, like you said, is just marketing. It's just trendiness. Oh, yeah, I just want to look athletic today. It's a little silly. That's the fashion business. We're all about selling the way things look and making them feel good, and the way we do it isn't entirely healthy.

I mentioned it to say something before about the sunscreen thing. I hate putting sunscreen on. I don't know. I mean, people say, oh, it's got chemicals in it or whatever. I'll be honest, it's just the way that it feels, that greasy feeling. And even the non-greasy stuff, I just, I hate it. It really get to my eyes. My eyes start to feel really not even dry.

There's just this weird feeling that you get from having whatever that is in your eye. So I just wear sun protective clothing instead. And I know that you can't always get it over your face, but I've got, you know, a shemag-looking thing. And it's just way better. You look at SPF and it goes, oh, you need to reapply this every hour, every 90 minutes. If you get wet or sweating more, you got to do it even more often. And then my friend who sells a bunch of outdoor performance clothing, I said, what about UPF on a shirt? If it gets wet, does it change?

if it gets pulled on or whatever, does it change? And he's like, no, it's just always UPF 50 until it breaks down in 100 years, like you said. But of course, that's still a chemical. This one is just the way the fabric is woven? Is that possible? Or is that not possible? But UPS 50's got to be a pretty heavy fabric to do that.

Oh, really? Oh, this is not. It's very light. So this has a chemical in it? Dang, that's disappointing. Just be very skeptical of anything promising performance that you can't trace back to a natural benefit, say like marina wool or something like.

that. If it's really lightweight, it's lightweight, and it's not natural. It's like nylony, stretchy thing. I hate to tell you that it's probably got a chemical. Crap, I got to ask him about that, because he didn't say that it didn't have chemicals in it. I just assumed it was because, oh, it's really tightly woven. He might not know. This guy knows so much about clothes. I'd be shocked if he doesn't know. The question I would ask them is, like, how is it achieving that functionality? Is it topical or is it inherent in the fabric because if it's inherent that it could be built into the weave and the construction. But for the most part, the way we're doing it is we're putting literally pharma-grade zinc oxide

into the fiber. So it's inherently in the fiber. And that gives you an added sun protection versus it being applied on top. And so I think we're going to do all kinds of things that we're adding magnesium into it to help you sleep. And I got to look up the science on that because magnesium on your clothes to help you sleep. That's up there with Jade getting my chakras aligned, Chris, I got to tell you. So this is where we build it and then we let people try it and test it, and that's how we do it. If it has a placebo effect, it helps you sleep, that's still something. The best thing I can advise you can give anybody is just simplify your wardrobe by natural bio-based fibers materials. Your body will respond differently. What claim or claims do you avoid making because the evidence is not there

yet. So a lot of the biofunctional claims require higher level testing. And so those are just really expensive. And so those are things that we're going to do next in our next round of investment. We've done independent lab testing on cooling and antibacterial, it's in verifying the chemical safety of everything. So that's where we've invested our money initially. But like any startup company, you've got to pick your spots. We started by marketing things that people want, cooling, anti-bacterial, antimicrobial. The biofunctional, we think, is the future. And so you can start to build things that just works with your body. The idea is that this is better on your body versus things that are not natural to it. That's our future. That's our

technology. It allows us to inherently build these in. And then we'll test into this with more biofunctional medical testing, third-party testing, but that's a pretty big investment. What's the most scammy version of this category that listeners should watch out for? Where do you see people making claims that are just ridiculous and untrue? Mostly the polyester plastic synthetics. Really? Yeah. But that does all that stuff. It's just maybe not good for you. There's a lot of marketing that goes on without a lot of testing. And that's the truth of the fashion industries. It's about the way things look, not what they actually do. What claim would someone see on marketing that you go, yeah, that literally can never be the case. Maybe sun protection.

Sun protection? Interesting. Yeah. I would say there's a lot of people talking about wicking, quick dry, all these kinds of things. Things quick dry when they're plastic. And then the other thing is like how they achieve in it, right? So I think you want to understand in any functional performance claim, is it inherent in the ingredients that it's being made with? Is it merino, naturally, it's hydrophilic, naturally anti-bacterial, which it is? Or is it being achieved through some sort of artificial means of chemicals that may or may not have been proven, right? And so, again, because you don't have to put these on labels. Yeah. You don't have to really know there's a trust the marketing kind of aspect of it. And so I would argue.

that a lot of this is marketing, and sometimes it's hard to understand the performance. And that's why I like natural things, because you do know that natural things do these things inherently well for thousands of years. What we're doing with the third way is we're testing it more because it is new, but we're also really focused on safety and focused on making sure people know the origins of these things. We're not claiming cotton that is subpoena unless it can be traced. And so verification and reliability is really important. right now because most people are cheating. Even your organic cottons, good chances are not really organic.

If you really saw the way things were being done at the lowest levels, you know that a lot of swapping and switching goes on and then they sticker it and they say it's this. And so with Supima, you can literally genetically trace it back to the farm it came from, which is why we chose Supima. We know it's America and it's traceable. At least you know what you have. You get to sequence the genome of your t-shirt. Yeah.

Crazy. You can. But a lot of things claim to. it's organic, and if they come from certain countries, which I won't name. Yeah. But if they are, you should not entirely trust that is what it says it is. Why won't you name the countries? Because we do business all over the world.

I don't like sticering people in that way. It's also unfair, right? Because if you get non-organic cotton from China, you also get a lot of the other good stuff that's just fine from China. Yeah, you can't get cotton from China. You can't get any cotton from China. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, like literally the cotton, the Qing Jong cotton ban in the U.S.

entirely anything from pain that I'd say. Oh, I didn't realize that you couldn't get any cotton. I just thought it was from that one place, but maybe that's the only place they grow cotton in China. Oh, so it's actually a ban on Chinese cotton, not a ban on Xinjiang cotton only. Yeah. And so while there's good reason for that, but it also drives market prices up and it creates less supply and it creates a lot more cheating. And so every time you... Because there's more incentive to sell nonsense cotton because the price is higher. Or it's easier to claim something that's not and make more money. But when supply is reduced, cheating goes up.

Huh. Okay. In closing, I want to do like a five-minute closet audit. You mention anything that goes on your skin, so stuff you work out in. What's the first item you would tell a normal person to examine? Leggings or shirts or what? Yeah. I would look at the thing you wear almost every day. So it's probably a T-shirt or polo or a leggings.

Those are things that I would start with and really question if they're polyester nylon or spandex. Okay. And then so, yeah, daily golf polos, workout shirts. I want a sane version of this because no one's going to go. I'm throwing away every gym shirt, socks, polo that I have in my closet. What are you going to wear tomorrow? Yeah. And then look at these things that are most sensitive parts of your body.

So your underwear, your bras, things that you're sleeping in, things you're sleeping on. These are all things that you can start with. Okay. Sleep naked. That's the moral of this story. Sleep naked on organic cotton sheets. Cotton knot from China. So underwear, socks, bras, leggings, gym shirts, bedding, my kids' pajamas, I can't even think about my kids' stuff.

Jeez, okay. And the formula is, what, skin contact plus heat plus sweat plus hours worn? I don't know, a little flow chart here. So start with things that you wear the most on your body hours a day. So if you're wearing it at 23 and a half hours a day, start there. Okay, yeah. Then ask yourself, visit on your most sensitive parts of your body. Is it something you're sweating in?

Think microwave plastic. Microwave plastic, yeah, okay. If your kids are wearing these things, I would absolutely start. start there because they're the most sensitive and exposed because their bodies are still developing their skin layers are not as thick. And every sort of team sport you get or every sort of free t-shirt that's given away, they're all plastic because they're cheap. I always ask people like, do we have to have disposable plastic t-shirts as the giveaway? Yeah, that's a good point. You have to work really hard to find something that doesn't have plastic in it. Yesterday, I walked

through the flat iron and went through every store, you know, that we all know, our favorites, right? Yeah, sure. Every store I went into and I asked him, I go, can I get something that doesn't have polyesterine island or spandex in it? And 100% we're like, sorry, we don't have anything like that. Wow. And these are like $70, $80 T-shirts, right? Yeah, it's New York. Yeah, exactly. But it's not even like all cotton and it's still fairly expensive. And so what happens is there's just a lot of opportunities to sort to ward these things off from your wardrobe and then start to ask yourself, like, what can I buy that isn't have these things in it? And is it a good enough quality where I could wear it for a period of time? What should people not worry about replacing immediately?

Your rain shell, for example, right? Stuff that you wear only rarely and occasionally and that needs to be, I don't know, super performance, like a raincoat. Yeah, but you're probably not going to replace your ski pants, right? Things you wear like maybe 10 times a year. Good point. or you're not going to replace that heavy winter jacket that keeps you warm. So there's things that you want, but wool is great. Well, it does a lot of great things and cotton is great. We've built the third way that you can enhance both cotton and wool with hyper-cool jade and hypernatural, but the idea is that it doesn't have to be 100% of your closet.

You can absolutely have some of these other things in it that you're favorites, and they do the job, but be mindful of it's like the 80-20 role, like what you're wearing probably 80% of the time, what's your uniform, What's your go-to? What's the thing that you really love the most? So don't panic. Just start where exposure is the highest. Skin, sweat, heat, duration, and change one thing. I like the same version of this. The last thing I would just say is be mindful of durability.

I think good quality, like buy one or two good things versus 10, like, just cheap, crappy things. Because those things are probably better for you. They're probably going to last you longer. And the actual value equation is better. you can look at it from a number of wares. And so we just get caught up in like cheap on the ticket, but we don't look at the longer arc of things. And I think value is what you get.

And I think you get a lot more with natural fibers and things that are going to work with your body. For me as a chronic overpacker who hates packing because I have to make decisions about, my ideal closet is just a bunch of high value items that you can use for anything. Like I'm wearing the shirt today, day. I'm going to wear it tonight. I'll probably work out in it tomorrow. I just want five of those

and I can fit everything into a carry-on. Instead, I've got a closet just absolutely bursting with stuff that one day I'm going to go to a party where I need to wear a red, shiny velour shirt for sure. So I'll keep this thing like, that's me currently. And my ideal is just that level of minimalism with high function. I think that's where the larger zeitgeist is going. Totally. Yeah. We're post-peak stuff. Yeah, hopefully. Right? And think we're getting a little more practical. And this is just your health and wellness has become really top of mind for everybody. So this sort of fits with the way you're thinking about it. And I love our customers, when they tell me like, you know, I packed Ron when I went to Europe and I only took one short

sleep shirt and it was super hot. So I wore your shirt for 10 days on this trip and it held up, right? And so then this like, true believer. And they're kind of like, if I can travel that light and I can have something that does all these different things, it's just better. And so they don't get hung up on the price. They get more into what it helps. it works. If you've got a daytime shirt, a night shirt, and a workout shirt, you really have three shirts. So if it costs twice as much as a regular shirt, then who cares? You're already, you're saving money at that point, essentially. And at the end of the day, I'll tell you, just being in the fashion business as long as I've been, people will always care what it looks.

Like, does it look good on me? Yeah. Am I tired of wearing the same color all the time? Or do I want something different? Absolutely. That won't change. But you can choose who you want to do that with, and you can choose how much you really, really need. And I'm always astounded by what people consider to be new, because most things out there aren't really new. They're just variations of things. And so I do think you can feel good and look good without it being a tradeoff. I wonder if you think polyester is going to be the lead paint of clothing in 10 or 20 years.

It already seems like it might be in some ways. I think it's like cigarettes. Yeah, maybe that's better now. And like, you didn't die after the first. 10 or even in the first couple years of smoking, but over time, there's an accumulative effect. And I think that's the part where if you really don't care, then just keep microwaving your food in plastic. If you don't really care, just keep smoking, right?

Because it's the same thing. And I always joke to my friends who do high yoga. It's like, it's like smoking while you're doing yoga. And so people are like, well, can you prove it? And so that's the problem with our industry. It's very difficult to prove things singularly in terms of the cause and effect of apparel, because you wear such a variety of apparel. It'd be hard to make somebody wear the exact same clothes for 30 years or whatever to run that kind of test.

Not really possible. But there's been instances where things in the uniform business, say like the airline industry, I used to be the president of Lanzan, and so we used to sell uniforms to airlines. And about five years after I left, we had done the Delta uniforms, the purple ones, the famous, you maybe remember them. And we did them for three or four other airlines. And it caused all of these health problems for the flight attendants so bad that people had to quit working. And they having all of these like really disastrous effects.

It was really affecting the general population that was working for Delta. And so it's one of those things where sometimes people have to wear these uniforms every day, sometimes for a 24 hours. Yeah, I didn't think about that. Yeah, I guess you could run that test. And you could start to see the cause and effect. And so there was actually lawsuits on all this stuff. And even then, very hard to prove, but the direct correlation on the general population was very obvious. And so why is that?

Those uniforms were made to be wrinkle-free, so they looked great, right? They held up over time. They would be color fast, so they wouldn't lose their color. They could be washed many times. They were meant to be strong and durable, right? And so all the things that we built in the original uniforms before that were wool, and now these were polyester. And so there's a lot of industries, whether it be medical uniform and things like that, where they could all shift more natural bio-based things and it would be good for their work

population. And so at some point, we want to do FedEx uniforms and we want to do airline uniforms. We want to do school uniforms, right? Your school uniforms are all synthetic if your kids are going to a uniform school. And so all of these things don't have to be polyester plastic. There are ways to create economies and do this better. But we got to make sure people understand that that's a choice. Chris Colby, thank you very much, man.

Interesting. A little scary, but mostly good news, is in that we are becoming aware of this and able to solve the problem instead of just like doom and gloom. You're going to die from wearing your compression shorts now. Let's hope not. Yeah. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Chess isn't just a game. You're about to hear a preview where Danny Wrench shares how Buildingchets.com put him face-to-face with cheaters, death threats, and a past he had to rewrite to survive. I was born into a cult. As I've talked about it more and more, I've gotten better at just saying that,

naming it for what it was. The collective itself was called the Church of Immoral Consciousness. My generation, within a couple of years, was part of the first group of kids that were being born into the collective, which, again, at that point, it was full communism.

People's finances were merged. When you came to the collective, you gave up all of your material belongings. You just sort of look at it and go, this was fucked up. This was not okay. There is no excuse to be made for this. and then Western media was paying attention to chess for the first time,

maybe since Bobby Fisher in the 70s, this movie had come out, and these two kids trapped in a cult were basically under house arrest and didn't have anything else to do. And anything that Stephen Camp was fond of, everybody was into, right? He was literally in charge of every human being in the collective. I went from zero to being one of the top kids in the country. Within two years, I was already an All-American.

I was one of the top-rated players, and I've worked very hard to heal me. my relationship with my own abusers, not because I'm trying to excuse their behavior, but because I really do believe that forgiveness is not rewriting the past. It's freeing yourself from it. And so with Chess.com, accidental success 15 years later. So we have 25 million games a day, 623 games finishing every second. You can have a different relationship with your experiences if you want to. The obstacle can be the way and you can overcome hard shit. That was my goal with this. To hear the story of how Danny Wrench got on the hit list, check out episode 1289 of the Jordan

Harbinger Show. Big thanks to Chris Colby for joining us today. The point here is not to sprint home, tear open your dresser, and scream that your underwear betrayed you. The takeaway is much more useful than that, and frankly, less likely to get you permanently banned from Target. Start where the exposure is highest. Direct skin contact, heat, sweat, and hours worn. Underwear, socks, bras, leggings, gym shirts, daily t-shirts, bedding. The stuff that's basically living on your body for multiple hours at a time. Read the label. Watch for vague claims like anti- odor,

wrinkle-free, stain-resistant, water repellent, anti-microbial, clean, natural, wellness, whatever. That can mean anything from third-party tested to our marketing, in turn, found a leaf emoji. And ask brands for receipts, not vibes, not inspired by nature, not a photo of a woman standing in a field looking mildly constipated by purity.

Actual receipts, fiber composition, added finishes, P-FAS status, certifications, test methods, wash cycle durability, third-party results, The same move here is not replace everything. It's upgrade one high contact item at a time. That's how you avoid turning a legitimate concern into another luxury panic hobby

for people who already own a $900 juicer and a trauma-informed mattress. We cleaned up the kitchen, we cleaned up the water, we cleaned up skin care, maybe the closet is next. And 10 years from now, we may look back at some of what we wore here every day and say, I can't believe I spent half my adult life

sweating into fossil fuel yoga pants. All things, Chris Colby. We'll be in the show notes on the website, advertisers, deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Don't forget about six-minute networking as well over at six-minute networking. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn.

And hey, the show, it's created an association with podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Tata Sidlowskis, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. In fact, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. If you know somebody who's interested in health, wellness, exercise, performance apparel, or randomly a supply chain nerd, share this episode with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn.

And we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Everything Everywhere Daily. You've heard the phrase, learn something new every day. Sounds nice, but do you actively do it. That's where Everything Everywhere Daily comes in. This podcast makes it effortless. Just 10 minutes a day, you'll walk away with a fascinating fact, a slice of history, a science gem. It's no wonder the show has climbed up to the top as the number one history podcast. It covers history, science, technology, geography, and stories of remarkable people always in a way that keeps you hooked. Not sure where to jump in? Start with these favorites. The eruption of Krakatoa, nature's fury, in one of the deadliest volcanic events ever recorded. Or the spice trade, how a handful of spices changed the course of global history. If you want to make learning effortless and fun, check out everything everywhere daily. it's quick, fascinating, and a perfect way to stay curious. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.